Talking to my REALLY conservative Traditionalist relatives, it is clear that Trump has a huge amount of slack ahead of him if he decides to go full tyrant before this very important segment of the political body politic cares. They will cheer if Trump crushes BLM or Antifa in Blue State cities using the Insurrection Act. They will cheer if ICE is weaponized and turned into a Gestapo that forces 10 million undocumented people out of the country.
It won’t be until Trump starts to go after the free press and or snatches people they care about — like ME — that they might sit up and take notice. Or maybe they won’t. They might just become Good Germans and keep their head down and when I call Trump a “fucking cocksucker” at a bar somewhere and get picked up by an ICE agent, they may just shrug and say I had it coming. I love my conservative relatives dearly, but I sometimes fear they aren’t taking the threat from Trump seriously.
Of course, it could be that none of this is going to happen. It could be that Trump loses the election and simply wanders off without a peep other than vague threats of a National Divorce. That is a very real possibility. If that is the case, then we punt our problems down the road another four years.
That’s what I HOPE will happen. I WANT to be wrong. I really do. Anyway. if I’m right, then oh boy, are we in serious fucking trouble.
So. What are we going to do if ding-dong Trump goes full tyrant and starts to shut down the free press? The issue is *ANY* Republican who becomes president would do all the same shit that Trump wants to do, but they would be a lot more sly about it and stagger the throttling of our American birthright — democracy — over the course of a few years.
But Trump is sooooo dumb and lazy that he is going to thrash around in the first few days of his Second Term and scare the shit out of a lot of Traditionalists who are more than willing to give a huge amount of slack as long as brown children would put back in cages.
It’s because drunk cranks like me who are harmless might get thrown into a camp that Trump might, at last, lose some of the not-so-tacit support that he has with Traditionalists. But for how dumb and lazy Trump is, these Traditionalists would be more than willing to be “Good Americans” as life for every day Americans grew more and more autocratic.
It’s because of what a shocking, jarring — and conspicuous — counter revolution the first few days of a Trump second term would be that we’re potentially going to see some pretty fucking astonishing things happen. And, remember, of course, that it’s very possible that none of this will happen.
It’s POSSIBLE that either Trump loses and doesn’t manage to start a civil war through demands for a National Divorce, or he wins and because 1 million smug Twitter liberals flee the country the whole thing is a fucking luzl.
If Tyrant Trump fucks up, we may ALL be antifa starting in early 2025. Who knows. We’re still a year out from when things will probably go haywire, so maybe….we’ll just punt our problems down the road another four years like we did in 2020?
Who knows. I’m not advocating anything! I’m a man of peace, a man of ideas. I hate guns. I hate violence. I just am growing more and more alarmed at what MIGHT happen starting Election Day 2024.
The moment I think I have a stable first little bit of this third draft of the novel, everything collapses. So, I dunno. I guess I have a stable first chapter? Maybe? It’s possible? I really like what I’ve come up with, regardless.
Yes, President of Hollywood, I’m working as fast as I can. I’ve reworked the first scene YET AGAIN, this time so it has more tension in it and is more focused. But the changes I’ve made in the story have now forced me to rewrite everything that comes after it. This. Happens. All. The. Time. I think that’s a sign that my storytelling ability is getting a lot — A LOT — better.
I hope.
Anyway, I continue to fall apart on a physical basis. I have some real concerns about the state of my teeth. I don’t know what I’m going to do about that in the near to middle term. I have a fear things are going to get really, really bumpy, only to sort themselves out in a way I can live with.
It’s just going to suck in the near term. Ugh!
I hope I can sprint between now and Christmas when my next de facto deadline is. Christmas is when some relatives will return who I will feel compelled to show at least the first scene to. They were quite pleased with the last version I showed them, then I asked ChatGPT about what I had written and it said, in effect, “This sucks — no tension.”
So I went back to the drawing board and gave the first scene more focus and more tension. I’ve learned a lot of my problems come from simply having too fucking much going on in a scene. Just by cutting long, meandering scenes into shorter, more focused scenes, I fix a lot of problems.
I have also realized I have to hurry up. I can’t keep screwing around. I have a limited amount of time — I’m NOT going to live forever. I’m already in my 50s and not only may AI make all my hard work moot, the prospect of a significant political crisis in the United States starting in late 2024, early 2025, is a “not great, Bob” type situation.
It’s clear we’ve given up on liberal democracy in the United States. At the moment, at least, it seems as though Trump will win a second term and I will end up in a camp — if I’m lucky. I dare not think what would happen to my sorry broke ass if I’m not lucky.
All of this is happening in broad daylight. Trump has made it clear that he wants to be an autocrat — specifically a military dictator. And yet the mainstream press can’t even trouble itself to frame the debate around Trump’s pending re-election in the right way.
Meanwhile, I find myself having arguments with conservative relatives about over how it’s a “free speech” issue when it comes to trying to not give Nazis a platform online.
It definitely seems as though our only shot is to hope enough chaos erupts in starting in 2025 that the country becomes so unstable that the military stands down and maybe even deposes Trump. (I AM NOT ADVOCATING ANYTHING.) If that happens, then maybe we could refound the republic and have a Third Republic take the place of the failed Second Republic.
Something, something like that.
But I have my doubts. I think this is it. It’s over. The US is just going to slide peacefully into a Russian-style autocracy and that’s it.
Ugh. Steve Bannon is a fascist bad penny. I see elements of my own personality in his, even if we’re on the exact opposite ends of the political continuum. He fancies himself some sort of Big Thinker or “Trump’s Brain,” but, in the end, he’s just a bunch of fucking hot air.
Steve Bannon But he is dangerous, to an extent, because there is a lot — A LOT — of slack in the system for Trump should he decide to go full tyrant. The issue is, that I think even Bannon might be taken aback at how tyrannical Trump can become at his behest before there are any consequences.
But there will be consequences if Trump takes Bannon’s rhetorical advice and goes full tyrant. (I AM NOT ADVOCATING ANYTHING.) At the moment, at least MAGA doesn’t have a paramilitary arm like the Nazi SA. Two, the United States is a huge nation with a diverse population that has the self-perception of being a “free country.” If Bannon gets his way and, I don’t know, a weaponized ICE starts to snatch Trump opponents — like me! — off the streets…that might cause even Traditionalists who otherwise love Trump to sit up and take notice.
Or not. What do I know. It could be that Trump really can go full tyrant and no one will care. There might be some protests here and there, but it will be too late because the press will be so scared by Tyrant Trump that they won’t report them taking place.
All I know is — buckle up. On a macro basis, the times they are (about) to change.
Oh boy. Are we in trouble. As I often do, I used my far, far more conservative relative as something of a one person focus group. And, yet again, what I learned startled me. They key take away is that there is way too much slack in what Tyrant Trump could get away with before this relative — whom I love dearly — would sit up and take notice.
This is not the first time that I’ve realized this, but as we lurch closer and closer to the end of the Second Republic, my alarm grows more severe. To recap — the First American Republic was founded by George Washington, the second, Abraham Lincoln.
Now, we’re at a crossroads. Either we somehow found a Third Republic or we collapse, at last, into autocracy. Either we have a moment of crisis and then national renewal….or we’re very fucked. I just don’t know which option we’re going to pick at the moment.
It could be that this is it. We’re just going to slide peacefully into autocracy and won’t look back. The Era of Democracy will be over once and for all and I will never again live in a “liberal democracy.” Ugh. Or, of course, I may somehow escape the country and finish my six novel project in some other nation.
I just don’t think we’re prepared for how many smug Twitter liberals are going to flee the country the moment it becomes clear Trump is going full tyrant. It’s going to be quite jarring. All us Poors are going to have to fend for ourselves. Also, I still struggle with what group will serve the purpose of the Nazi SA in our transition into autocracy.
We have to accept that ding-dong Trump could very well single-handedly cause a cataclysm — “a Great Reset” — starting in late 2024, early 2025. Remember, either option when it comes to Trump is a “Not great, Bob,” situation. If Trump loses, then he might start a civil war to stay out of prison. If he wins, then he could prompt a “Glorious Revolution” that could ultimately result in… a civil war.
Oh, there’s going to be a Great Reset alright, but not in the way you think, you fucking fascists.
So, we *could* be fucked either way.
There is, of course, always a chance that I’m really overthinking things and all of this is just more of my usual hysterical doom shit. I honestly don’t know at this point what is going to happen. My concern, of course, is we’re just not taking the possibility that Trump going full tyrant seriously enough.
If Trump really does try to expel 10 million undocumented people from the country starting in 2025….we have a serious problem on our hands. The ranks of ICE agents would swell to at least a million — if not more — to figure out a way to round up all those people. And that doesn’t even begin to address how doing such a horrific thing would fuck up the American economy.
And, yet, here we are with a large portion of American conservatives chomping at the bit for that very thing to happen.
I am growing more and more frustrated by well-meaning Twitter liberals who think that they can avoid risking their “lives and sacred honor” when it comes to defeating Tyrant Trump simply by “tweeting harder.”
They’re such pussies that I think it’s inevitable that when Tyrant Trump starts to literally round up people in late January 2025 that they’re just going to flee the country en masse. They just don’t have the guts to do anything else. They are going to leave us Poors to our own devices as the ranks of ICE agents swells and is weaponized and mysteriously drunk crank citizens like me will just go “poof” as 10 million undocumented people are rounded up and put in camps.
I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’m a man of peace. A man of ideas. But I would also die on my feet than live on my knees a slave. So, lulz, come at me bruh?
I just am never, ever going to shut up. I’m never going to be a “Good German.” So, yeah, I’m willing to do the one thing that all those fucking smug Twitter liberals with careers and families aren’t willing to do — actually take an existential risk for what I believe in.
But, hopefully, it won’t come to that. Hopefully, Biden will win in 2024, Trump will fade into political oblivion and I can somehow sell my first novel.
Ok. There’s a lot to unpack here. It seems as though malignant ding-dong Trump and his goons MAY have made a pretty big strategic error in their plans to turn the United States into an autocracy starting in late January 2025. As I’ve written before, they assume that through sheer force of will they can corrupt the administration of justice and of the executive and turn America into a Hungary-style managed democracy without any problems.
They seem to think that as long as they have the Insurrection Act in their back pocket that everything else will be unicorns and rainbow farts for their autocratic dreams. That may be so….but I have some quibbles.
The ironic thing is just as liberals seem to think that someone is to swoop in and save us from Trump if they just tweet harder, so, too, do MAGA fascists believe that invocation of the Insurrection Act is some sort of fascist fairy dust. This, despite the U.S. Military being loathed to get involved any political issues fights and the United States being a diverse, decentralized country with a huge population and a long tradition of democracy.
So….lulz?
Yes, there is a lot of low hanging fruit for Trump in the first few days of his tyrannically second administration. He can arrest a lot of people he doesn’t like — or drive them out of the country. He can fire 100,000 civil servants, turn Voice of America into his propaganda organ, pull the US out of NATO and our troops out of Korea and Japan.
BUT…..none of this will happen in a vacuum.
And, as such, if there is some sort of massive revolt against dingus Trump for these tyrannical moves by the population…the Insurrection Act can only do so much. There is a key thing that Trump is missing — he has no paramilitary group to “forcefully suggest” to people that they shut up and go along with the America First agenda….and if they don’t, they end up in a camp.
There are two things to consider at this point.
One is, clearly while Trump is weaponizing the existing ICE infrastructure to round up 10 million(!) undocumented people in the US….he could probably use that same weaponization to turn ICE agents into something akin to the SA. So, I could see Trump passing a HUGE FUCKING BILL that would enlarge the ranks of ICE Agents to an astonishing level. They would serve the purpose of the Nazi SA in the first 100 days of Hitler’s consolidation of power in early 1933.
Or, Trump could go the more direct route and somehow organize an actual MAGA SA made up of consolidated group of Patriot Front, Proud Boys and Oath Keepers who would be his goons as the US lurched towards a Nazi-style autocracy.
BUT….This, too, would NOT happen in a vacuum. There would be some lag time between when all hell broke loose in the US because Trump went full tyrant and the time where he would have a 500,000 goons on the streets to knock heads. That would give anti-fascist forces a window of opportunity. Things like a Woman’s Strike or a General Strike with specific anti-fascist demands might be enough to convince the U.S. Military to at least stand down, if not actively join anti-fascist forces. In a sense, we would all be antifa at that point.
Remember, however, all of this would be happening in the context of mass chaos in the United States. There would be no assurance that any Blue Glorious Revolution would work — it could endup like what happened in Turkey and only make the autocrat more powerful by failing. And even if it was successful, it’s very possible that it would only cause a Secession Crisis as Red States — probably starting with Texas — would leave the Union rather than accept any sort of reforms that they knew would hurt the fascist MAGA agenda.
I don’t think the fucking nattering nabobs of negativism on Twitter realize how bad things will get if Trump is re-elected. We would be going to the show, folks. This would be it.
America would either turn into a Russian-style autocratic state or we would somehow found a Third Republic.
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