I can’t predict the future — no one can. But there very much is an air of inevitability at this point about Something Bad happening in the United States in late 2024, early 2025.
ALEXANDRIA, VA – JANUARY 9: View of empty shelves at a local Giant supermarket as the omicron covid variant causes widespread supply chain delays resulting in empty shelves in many food markets on January 9, 2022 in Alexandria, Virginia. Credit: mpi34/MwdiaPunch /IPX
What that “bad thing” will be, I don’t know.
But whatever it is, it will be so bad that some pretty basic, existential things could be thrown up in the air or put into question. I find myself going to the grocery store these days and asking myself, “What am I going to do when there’s no food here during a revolution / civil war?”
It would make a lot of sense that the similar bare shelves that we saw during the pandemic might return the moment it’s clear the US is on the cusp of buckling one way or another — for whatever reason.
That, of course, sounds very hysterical. And it probably is. Like I said, I can’t predict the future.
While it’s easy to compare Trump to Hitler — and the two men do share a lot in common — I would suggest someone else to compare him to: Pol Pot. The reason why I say this is, if the worst happens, I could totally see Trump demanding the cities be emptied for some sort of American Killing Fields.
Pol Pot
Or maybe it wouldn’t be Trump but someone vaguly acting in his name would would do it.
But the point remains — Pol Pot hated a lot of the same types of people that Trump and his movement hates.
If things get really, really bad in the USA as it transitions to Trumplandia…oh boy.
I don’t know what to tell you — America is seriously fucked up at the moment. And it’s only going to get worse. There is a chance, of course, that some Black Swan event will allow us to take an off ramp — like what happened in 2020 — and all our structural problems will be punted down the road another four years.
The issue is that the Republican Party is so radical now — and so resistant to changing its policies — that, by definition, the next Republican president we have will be a fascist autocrat. The only question, at this point, is how his or her specific personality will influence policy.
It will be very curious to see how, exactly, that works out. There are severe structural problems in the American political system so someone like Trump can bubble up to the surface.
After Trump won in 2016, I saw a — I think — New York Magazine article that was one big liberal “cope” in which they proposed America was “too big.” This was one way of them slyly suggesting what we would now call a “National Divorce.”
To this date, the idea of a National Divorce or anything suggesting the USA should split up REALLY MAKES ME ANGRY. I will admit that in the past, I have toyed, in the abstract, with the idea of Blue States leaving the Union. But when I realized that is just not what Blues would do — if anything like that is going to happen, it’s going to be more of a revolution than a National Divorce — I stopped even thinking such a dumb idea might have merit.
Which brings up the idea of why Red States might be willing to leave the Union.
Well, I live in the South and there is a pretty potent race memory among white Southerners when it comes to the Confederate States of America. To the point that at least one well-educated conservative I know pretty much at this point supports a National Divorce — if it comes to that — because of “vibes.”
And, really, that is what is eating away at the foundation of the United States at the moment — vibes, especially from the Right. The Right gets soooo worked up about how bad COVID lockdown protocols were, then they rest their entire indictment of the Biden Administration on…you guessed it…vibes.
As I’ve written before, there are two ways we have an actual civil war. One is Trump loses and states, starting with Texas, leave the Union to “protect” him from going to jail. Second way is Trump wins, he goes “full tyrant” and things get so absolutely bad that a number of Red States leave the Union because they love that idiotic, malignant ding-dong so much.
So. If all goes according to plan, I’m going to start to query my novel in some capacity in late 2024, and MAYBE as late as early 2025. As such, I’m working on the assumption that the country will be stable enough for that to be a viable option.
So, I may write a lot about The End Times for the USA, but in a practical sense, I’m totally ignoring that possibility. I am doing this because, as I keep saying, all my “hysterical doom shit” is simply me trying to make my abstract fears concrete.
I just don’t know if The Fourth Turning is really going to happen. In fact, I generally don’t think it will. I do think that Trump is probably — at this point at least — win the 2024 election and 2025 could be mass chaos. And, yet, if enough smug Twitter liberals leave the country on their second passport…meh. Maybe that will mean people will be more interesting in read a novel that is part of a six novel project that is pretty much just one long screed against extremism (using subtext.)
Or not. Who knows. All I know is I’m pressing forward with this novel, even though there is definitely a part of me that is….concerned…about the next 18 months and beyond.
If 2020 proved anything, it’s that I just can’t predict the future. As such, I keep searching my mind to think up what I could possibly be missing about late 2024, early 2025 that would somehow give us an offramp from all my “hysterical doom shit.”
At the moment, I got squat.
It seems we’re going to lurch into a very dark and turbulent fate starting around November 2024 and things could be pretty rough for a number of years after that.
Or not. I just don’t know.
The most obvious thing that might throw everything up in the air is some sort of “health incident” that one or both of the old codgers who are running for president might experience. As for Trump, I don’t wish physical ill on him for no other reason than if ANYTHING happened to that fucker, the country might collapse into severe political violence not seen since the death of Martian Luther King Jr — only this time it would be red necks burning things to the ground because they believe the “deep state” did in their false prophet.
I suppose maybe a war — DPRK, I’m looking at you — might throw things up in the air. Then Biden would be a War President and he MIGHT be able to unite the country just long enough to defeat Trump.
If — God forbid — Something Happened and Biden was no longer the nominee, that would REALLY scramble things a great deal and things could go in directions no one — least of all me — could predict.
As an aside, I will note that it definitely seems as though Republicans may lose the House this year, which would que up Trump being impeached sooner rather than later if he went “full tyrant” on us. Throw in an actual effective General Strike and it’s at least possible THAT would be how we got rid of that malignant ding-dong.
But all of that is VERY speculative.
I have no idea what is going to happen. I just want to live in a peaceful, prosperous America that has a functioning democracy. That should not be too much to ask.
I fear it’s just too late. There’s simply nothing that can be done — barring something I can’t predict — to prevent political catastrophe starting in late 2024, early 2025.
I mean, when headlines like this:
…do nothing to stop Trump from being 60,000 votes in five swing states away from being POTUS again….we got a problem.
As such, I think all I can ask of my Traditionalist relatives — whom I love dearly — at this point is that they will give me material support should the country collapse and we find ourselves on opposite ends of the sudden very real political divide in a country torn asunder.
The issue with Trump going full tyrant should he be re-elected is there is a real chance that the whole political infection that is MAGA is the risk it might go septic, that it might cause a real fucking catastrophe.
So, let’s think about how that might play out. We’re going to go most likely to least likely when it comes to people MAGA might try to put in Trump-branded camps.
Undocumented People This is the gimmie. This is the thing that Trump will use as cover to build out the infrastructure for all the OTHER bad things to happen. But, remember, Trump is dumb and lazy so there will be a window of opportunity between the time he says he’s going to round everyone up and when he actually does it.
Gay People If you just follow the current trends of the Gay Scare that the US is undergoing, it seems logical that gay and transgender people will eventually, inevitably, be rounded up and put in the camps that were originally built for undocumented people.
Various Other People I think, in the end, because of Trump’s personal prejudices, that MAGA will soon enough come after the mentally ill, alcoholics and the handicapped. It’s all a matter of time.
The big question of course, is what the reaction by Blues will be to such tyrannical behavior. That, I’m afraid, I can’t answer at the moment.
Oh boy. I am well aware of how hysterical this sounds, but here goes — I’m afraid I’m going to be driven out of my home in late 2024, early 2025 because my politics don’t jibe with my part of my state. I live in a deep, deep Red part of my state and every time I see some ultra-MAGA bumper sticker, I wonder if that’s a portent of things to come.
They say you go bankrupt gradually, then all at once, and so my fear is everything will be normal until at some point after the 2024 Election and then….blammo…some beefy, armed redneck will knock on my door and tell me to get the hell out of town because I’m Blue.
And, yet, now in early 2024, that type of talk really does seem rather hysterical. But I’m kind of paranoid (obviously) and, as such, I like to game out what I will do should the absolute worst happens. A lot depends on the specifics of me being driven out.
There is a big difference between being driven out peacefully and having to flee because the whole country is collapsing into revolution and or civil war. But I suppose there’s only so much I can do right now.
Now that it’s mainstream Republican orthodoxy that the insurrectionists of January 6th are “hostages,” I wish members of the center Left would gird their loins for the battle royale we face. My fear is that it won’t be until Trump is re-elected and he goes full tyrant that a lot of center Left people will stop being keyboard warriors and start to think about how they can address MAGA fascism in the real world.
I’m not advocating anything. I hate violence. I’m a man of peace, a man of ideas. But I am saying that just telling people to “vote” or “pass it on” on Twitter won’t mean jackshit when 500,000 armed, weaponized ICE agents are running around snatching people off the street if they don’t have their “papers” or if they’re “an enemy of the people” because they wrote that Donald Trump can suck their cock on their little blog that no one reads.
I just want center Left people to get “woke” in the real sense of the word — they need to change their mental frame of reference. Center Left people need to realize that we may be going to the show in the sense that all my hysterical doom shit may be just….the reality that we’re going to have to live with in just a few months.
How likely is all that? I don’t know. I can’t predict the future. All I know is the center Left can’t allow itself to be sucker punched in January 2025 when Trump does exactly what he has been saying he will do for years now — become a tyrannical dictator who rules over Blue portions of the country as a king.
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