We have to take the threat of autocratic rule by MAGA more seriously. Not only is the United States far less stable politically than one might think, there are an array of potential events that could added unexpected stress on an already fragile system.
Though I just don’t see Trump ever facing any accountability at all for any reason, even if we do manage to indict him for some reason, that will only lead to some sort of siege by MAGA people who refuse to let him get arraigned. Or something. America is a powder keg right now and we’re oblivious to how close we are to tipping into significant political violence.
Or not. I could be totally wrong about all of this. I’m often wrong, though I did get COVID19 right (to some extent.) I guess a lot of my hysterical, dystopian scenarios come from reading Twitter liberals being oblivious online and trying to do what they won’t do — take the rancid, seditious actions of the Republicans seriously then trying to figure out the implications.
So, it’s very possible to imagine that it’s Trump’s indictment that pushes us over the edge. Trump refuses to give himself up and before you know it, we all stare at our TV sets for days and days as we watch FBI agents try to coax Trump out of his house.
The issue is, the bolts are popping off of America’s politics in ways not seen since the late 1850s. As such, we face a similar situation in 2024 as we did in 1860 — do we let the modern Slave Power of MAGA run the country or do we break an egg to fix that particular problem? That sounds rather hysterical, but I’m growing — in an abstract way — to at least entertain the idea that we should at least fight for our democracy rather than let it go out with a whimper by acceding to modern Slave Power’s demands that we become an autocratic white Christian ethno state.
Fuck that.
But that is an absolute worst case option. I don’t want that. And, yet, a growing element of the Far Right has embraced political violence and autocracy enough that we have to take it seriously. If they’re itching to destroy America, maybe the so-called “Resistance” should pull its thumb out of its ass and prepare for that possible eventuality.
But, again, it’s possible that what will happen is when Mike Pompeo or Tom Cotton or Josh Hawley become POTUS, there will be something of a stalemate. We’ll be an autocracy, but for the time being American self-perception will be too strong for anything too radical to happen. Though, all signs do point to some sort of Right Wing sponsored Constitutional Convention happening within the next decade. Which will fucking suck.
I’m at a loss as to what’s going to happen to America between now and January 2025. But we have to be prepared for some pretty dark possibilities.
The thing we saw after election night 2020 is, once history begins to have a certain momentum, someone, somewhere is going to pop up to take advantage of it. As such, the talk of recounts popping up here and there across the country is very, very dangerous because all we need is one (1) fraudulent “victory” on the part of Trump and the dead hand of history may take to some pretty dark places — like a secession crisis.
It’s very easy to imagine that initially we have some sort of “nullification” crisis in which Trump runs around the country having rallies where he demands the results of the 2020 election be nullified because he “won.” Because that’s a very dumb, batshit idea that is impossible to do, MAGA state legislatures will YOLO it and start to have secession conventions.
And, yet, it could be this is all a bunch of nothing. Trump talks a good game, but he’s way too lazy to actually do the hard work necessary to start a civil war in 2021. Really, that’s kind of the rub — it wouldn’t be Trump who did it. It would be us. We would do it to ourselves.
The issue is, does this crisis happen this year because of fucking Cyber Ninjas (and others) or does it happen in 2024-2025 because a MAGA controlled Congress tells us all to fuck off and nullifies any Electoral College result it doesn’t approve of. That, no matter what, would be the real moment of truth. Either it becomes conventional wisdom that the only way a Democrat can become president is if Democrats control Congress, or we have a civil war and answer the question of what America is supposed to be, that way.
I honestly don’t what which will happen right now. It’s one of those things where a lot of metrics are flashing red…and it could be that we manage to drift through this particular crisis and nothing really bad happens. Or, if Republicans do again take power — which the ebb and flow of history says they inevitable will — that instead of freaking out and turning us into Trumplandia, we come to some sort of an agreement whereby hard power for generations will be in Republican minority white hands, while soft power will remain in liberal hands via the infotainment industrial complex.
That, I’m afraid, is a very, very sanguine take on our prospects.
More likely we’re pretty much just going to face autocracy or civil war. That’s it — no middle ground any more. But, we’ll see. I’m often wrong.
I write a lot about the prospect of a Second American Civil War, and yet, as of right now it’s very much a fantasiam. The idea of a Second American Civil War is evoked more from a general unease about the state of the United States than any real sense that it might actually happen anytime soon.
The issue for me is the conditions are there for a civil war. The positions of the two sides have grown more extreme and absolute. There’s an alarming level of dehumanization that’s taken place in our political discourse. And it definitely seems as though the Right has embraced the glorification of political violence in a rather astonishing fashion.
I would suggest that that while we’re probably drifting in some vague manner towards something that might be described as a “civil war” it’s not going to just magically happen. For an actual “civil war” to happen as the modern American would understand it, you would need a political framework, a government and a military force. If you don’t have any of these elements, then you just have a bunch of frustrated MAGA motherfuckers who, for some reason, think wearing a mask is tyranny.
Even then, if we manage to make it to the 2024-2025 timeframe, there’s a good chance that American liberal democracy won’t go out with a bang, but with a whimper — we’ll just take it for granted that for a Democrat to become president, they also have to control Congress so the Electoral vote is certified. But because of gerrymandering and voter suppression that never happens again.
MAGA controls the United States for generations and we slowly grow poorer and more autocratic to the point that we’re indistinguishable from Russia.
And, yet, there’s a greater-than-zero-sum-chance that something unexpected happens between now and then that sparks an actual, honest-to-God civil war in the United States. It could be anything from the unexpected death of a major political figure to, say, the Cyber Ninjas recount in Arizona “proving” that Trump “won.”
The reason why the latter might cause us to buckle is it would give a fig leaf to elements of the Republican Party who are looking for an excuse, any excuse to take the next logical step when it comes to their refusal to accept a Biden win — nullification.
And given how impractical it would be to nullify a presidential administration, it’s a brief jaunt to seceding from the Union altogether. But there is a lot I can’t figure out or game out. Even if Trump ran around saying he was “really” president because of the sham Cyber Ninjas recount, there’s a good chance that outside of the far right echo chamber that it will be a lulz.
But maybe not. It could be that Trump will get some traction among MAGA legislatures and all hell will break loose. I honestly, at his point, don’t know which scenario to expect to happen.
It used to be I had at least one conservative relative I had regular, friendly debates with. That has ended, ominously, however, because my conservative interlocutor finally was so detached from reality that I got mad and he said he didn’t want to talk politics with me anymore.
I try to be empathetic, so I find myself rolling around in my mind the topics we talked about in our last debate. The key take away I can think of off the top of my head is how much conservatives fucking hate science. It’s not that they don’t believe in it or that they deny it — they just hate it. This is the origin of their collective hatred of Dr. Fauci. In fact, Dr. Fauci was one of several instances where what my conservative relative started to say seemed like it was being beamed out of the Upside Down. It was surreal. It was bonkers. And it was dangerous.
Anyway, another re-occurring theme with conservatives is they “just want to be left alone.”
I assume what they mean is they think that just by being conservative, that just by having an opinion that doesn’t fit the “liberal media’s agenda” that they risk having their lives destroyed via “cancel culture.” I find it curious that conservatives get so worked up over the power of the liberal media when it’s also pretty obvious that for all the talk about the Republican Party dying it is actually growing more powerful as it marinates in its hate.
I struggle to figure out what the solution to how the United States is tearing itself apart. My fear is the only way there’s any solution is some sort of historic “reset” of our politics that involves an actual hot civil war. I could be a lot more empathetic to the concerns of American conservatives if they weren’t so hysterical that they were willing to throw their lot with fascism. Because that’s what we face right now — the rise of American fascism.
And, really, ironically, what has allowed us to doge the fate of the Weimer Republic for the time being is the Right is completely consumed with hero worship of a…ding-dong. Trump pretty much is an American Hitler…but for the part where he just talks a lot and never actually takes the next step of knocking heads. Trump is soooo fucking lazy and disorganized that while he has helped us lurch towards a Fourth Reich, he has also delayed its creation because of his, specific, personality quirks.
It’s not like Trump has the wherewithal to organize any sort of SA-type paramilitary group. So, a crucial aspect of the rise of American fascism doesn’t exist. We have a few would-be paramilitary groups but they’re small and disorganized at the moment. And, hopefully, will stay that way and never organize into one big jackbooted organization.
But let me be clear — the MAGA Republican Party isn’t dying. If we were still a liberal democracy, then, yes, you could make that argument. But we’re not that anymore –we’re an autocracy without an autocrat. What I mean by that is — all the conditions are there for an autocrat to turn us into a managed democracy like Russia…but for someone to actually do it.
And the one person who history would have do it — Donald J. Fucking Trump — is such a dingbat that for the time being we have a few years of peace. Either Trump will come back tan, ready and rested and take us into the dark night of fascism, or any one of seemingly endless stream of would-be MAGA autocrat presidents will do it instead.
And, as such, that’s why, as I keep saying, we face a stark choice between now and January 2025: autocracy or civil war.
The thing that non-insane, non-MAGA people have to understand is the very serious dynamic surrounding the Arizona audit by Cyber Ninjas. Too many people are comforting themselves by the Biden Administration’s interest in this bonkers audit or this or that other metric that they feel will mitigate the outcome one way or another. And, thankfully, it’s still possible that despite their best efforts, Cyber Ninjas will fail in their efforts to throw the state to Trump and we can all go back to dreading what may happen in 2024-2025.
America 2021
But the whole point of this audit is, at a minimum, to give MAGA a talking point to “own the libs” on Twitter and, if possible, to set up a dynamic similar to what happened at the Capitol on January 6th, only on a national scale. So, while all the talk by New York Magazine that the Republican establishment is all-in with supporting the coup next time, we probably need to take seriously the possibly of a major secession crisis this summer.
With that in mind, let’s so a little back-of-the-envelope wargaming. What are the nuts and bolts of an actual, honest-to-God secession crisis in summer 2021?
The first thing that would happen should Cyber Ninjas pull a Trump “victory” out of their butt is a lot of shock and ridicule with the Twitter liberal echo chamber. This will last maybe a few hours. Then, unfortunately, Trump will probably hold a press conference of some sort where he rants about how this one state “proves” that he “really won” in 2020. He will babble in vague — but ominous — terms about how this “nullifies” the results of the 2020 election and he’s going to weigh his options going forward.
Again, this will evoke a wave of ridicule among the populist liberals of Twitter who will do something akin to, “There he goes again.” But on the other side of the equation, things are going to get dark very quickly. As we saw with Trump’s slow-moving soft coup attempt in fall 2020, it’s very likely that a number of people will pop up who take Trump but seriously and literally on this subject.
People who should know better, will begin to talk seriously about how, exactly, you might “nullify” a presidential election. The Fox News talking heads will spend hours debating the how many MAGA can dance on the head of a pin of all of this for a few days. Either this crisis stays something of a Right Wing circle jerk, or it doesn’t.
What I mean is — either it gets some traction among Republicans with power and they start to do something about it, or it doesn’t. This is something I can’t predict. It really could go either way. But, let’s wargame the worse case scenario.
My best guess is Texas might be the first state to seriously begin to debate what would begin as a “nullification” process and endup being a secession process. Alan West already apparently is trying Texas to do this and Texas’ Republican Party is so insane, so hysterical that it’s easy to see any number of serious, elected Republican officials there go on FOX News (or OANN) to make the case that Cyber Ninjas has “proven” that Trump is still president and, as such, it behooves “real Americans” (MAGA) to do something about it in concrete terms.
It’s possible that Texas Republicans will be the first to actually hold some sort of “convention” to determine the state’s fate. Again, Twitter liberals will chuckle at how dumb this is while MAGA will wait with baited breath to see what happens. There is a pretty good chance, of course, that because Texas is slowly shifting purple long term that such a convention will grow into nothing more than a screaming match. Add to this that Texas is pretty ethnically diverse and, well, lulz.
So, while that’s happening, events will continue to move forward. The Biden Administration will begin to grow alarmed at these developments and make it clear that legally any attempt to “nullify” a presidential election at the state level is bullshit and even more so any secession efforts. At the same time, Trump is probably going to grow hysterical in his belief that he’s still president and he will say and do things that are completely fucking insane.
It’s possible that a number of lily white mountain and plains states controlled by MAGA will race past Texas because of the specifics of their demographics and it won’t be Texas that actually “leaves” the Union, but somewhere like Oklahoma, Kansas, Iowa or South Dakota. If things have gotten this far, the MAGA Republicans in the South will spooge their pants and zoom towards following their MAGA sisters in “leaving” the Union…only to smash up against the issue of race.
As such, Southern states will be in something of a pickle. Politically, they will be chomping at the bit to leave the Union because of “the Lost Cause” but on a practical level those plans might be tempered by something akin to a brewing race war.
Let’s stay together.
Now, one thing I suspect might happen around this same time is Trump finally throws down the gauntlet to the Republican Party and does something of a Gotterdammerung on them — he absolutely forces the hand of the Republican Establishment — are you with nascent “Trumplandia” or are you with the United States.
There might even be some sort of meeting of minds somewhere whereby Trump rants about how important is for the “real” president to be in the White House. He will be completely, and totally in a delusional dreamland, and, yet, Republicans will suddenly have an existential choice before them. Do they throw their lot with Trumplandia, or do they stay in the US government? At last, all their “humoring” of Trump will turn around and bite them.
They will absolutely have to make a final decision one way or another as to how loyal they are to a deranged autocrat.
Remember, all of this will happen really fast and there will be a huge amount of confusion. Once the shock wears off that states for the first time since the 19th century have decided to leave the Union, then very smart, various serious people within the Biden Administration begin plot their response. If things get bad enough, the draft may be re-instated and the U.S. Military will have to dust off shit from the first Civil War.
What say you, Honest Abe?
I guess it’s possible that even the U.S. Military might fracture into MAGA and non-MAGA…but I doubt it? That’s something I can’t game out. If you really want to get dark, you could say that what they lack in economic prowess or population size, Trumplandia will make up for with seized WMD stockpiles. That will be fun. Ugh.
All of this would happen in a few days or weeks, so by July 4th there might be a huge amount of domestic bouncing around on a macro scale as Red people in Blue states and Blue people in Red states rush to safety. All eyes turn to California to see if they’re going to stay in the Union or not.
Looking over this wargame, it seems bonkers and a bit too over the top. The only reason why I even am thinking this way is I want others to take what’s happening in Arizona seriously.
Right now, it’s been established that the only way a Democrat President can successfully name someone to SCOTUS is if Democrats control the Senate. What Republicans want next is establish that the only way a Democrat ever becomes president in the first place is if Democrats control Congress.
In 2024-2025, there is a serious chance that Republicans will make an all out push to make end American democracy once and for all by nullifying a Biden re-election via their control of Congress. And that, my friend, is going to be the moment of truth.
That is when the stark choice I’ve constantly been talking about will occur: autocracy or civil war.
Center-left people in the United States, because of Bush V. Gore, have been conditioned to shut up and accept defeat via a quirk in the system that is upheld by the courts. It is very, very easy to imagine a situation where there will be something of a closed loop when it comes to POTUS.
Because of voter suppression and gerrymandering, Congress will always be controlled by Republicans. In turn, it will become conventional wisdom that we just have to accept that Republicans will nullify any Democrat win and, lulz, sucks to be you. Then we just drift into a very autocratic future where MAGA gets to enact its vision of an America that is identical to Putin’s Russia.
There will be a lot of demonstrations and lots of chatter about how “weak” this or that Republican Administration is, but in the end 30 years from now we will have had a succession of MAGA Republicans who are more and more successful at maintaining power. Throw in a MAGA push to get a Constitutional Convention and there will become a point where we have an identical situation to modern Russia — a huge swath of the population will grow up to know no one but a President Pompeo or President Hawley.
And then gradually it just becomes accepted that ICE is our FSB and if you oppose MAGA you get pushed out a window or thrown into a weaponized ICE Camp. Cruelty will be the point for generations to come.
But.
And this is where we learn how “exceptional” America really is. Is the macro lunge towards autocracy simply the normal progression of our democracy or are things going to be more like the 1860s when we have a massive crisis and then pretty shocking renewal of our American Covenant? Trumplandia will be at its weakest during its birthing process.
It’s at least possible that MAGA Republicans will bungle the transition from democracy to autocracy and there will be a civil war. And, as such, given the strength of Blue States when it comes to their populations, political unity and economies, that instead of Trumplandia, we will have a very blood, very turbulent few years and come out the other side with our democracy redefined and stronger than ever.
The only reason why I frame things this way is to make it clear: there will be no middle ground. Everyone will have to, on an existential level, make a decision and pick a side. No matter if we become an autocratic managed democracy like Russia or if we have a civil war. The time for punting problems down the road has come to an end. We are no longer in normal times.
America is tearing itself apart and MAGA demands are going more radical. And, in a very weird way, one could say that their greatest strength going into whatever clusterfuck we stumble into is also their greatest weakness: Donald Trump.
Trump is — and always has been — nothing more than an avatar. And, as such, it’s easy to imagine he being the specific reason why what could otherwise be a peaceful transition into an autocracy might be bungled pretty severely by MAGA and they blow their opportunity to be a permeant ruling minority.
I have no easy answers for you. I can’t give you a Vox corporate liberal explanation as to what to do to keep your family safe when all this happens. Good luck. You’ll need it.
America is careening towards a very dark and tragic future. I can’t predict the future, but the there are some titanic forces at work in the United States that are tearing it apart on an existential level.
I struggle to imagine any situation where the United State avoids significant political violence up to and including an actual Second American Civil War. The key issue is what, exactly, pushes us past the breaking point.
There are a wide array of scenarios that one can think up at this point. Everything from the importune death of major political figure to the bogus Cyber Ninja recount in Arizona magically “proving” that Trump won the state might be enough to cause the most powerful country in the world to buckle in a rather spectacular fashion.
But none of them have happened yet. It could be that we’ll just do what we always do, which is punt the problem down the road again a few more years. Yet, even if we do manage to punt this crisis down the road, we will likely reach a dead end in the 2024-2025 timeframe.
My current fear is the same dynamic that we saw with the January 6 Capitol Insurrection will happen again on a much larger scale should, say, Cyber Ninjas pull a Trump “win” out of its butt in Arizona: Trump will be so busy crowing about how he “really won” that he won’t notice that his followers have lost their fucking minds and called conventions in a number of states to leave the Union.
By the time he gets around to saying, “sorry, not sorry” it will be too late. There will be a civil war and he’ll be at the center of it woefully unprepared for any sort of actual “war time” leadership. Then were will probably be a coup by any one of a dozen would-be MAGA Republican autocrats.
Good times!
So, the point is, we have to start thinking seriously about what we’re going to do should the collapse come. I wish I was smarter. Then I could layout some sort of practical approach the America’s impeding doom. I got nothing.
Maybe someone smarter than me can figure that out.
MAGA Republicans are so detached from the normal rules of traditional American politics that you can find your struggling to come up with a scenario, any scenario, whereby they would finally, at last, throw up their hands and say, “Yeah, that was pretty bad.”
I have come to believe that we could have video of Trump and Armie Hammer having cannibalistic sex parties at Mar-a-Lago and it would be a lulz. In fact, it gives us some insight into the MAGA mentality that they get really, really offended at the idea that Trump might be racist but when there was a rumor that there was evidence of Trump using the “n-word” the general reaction from MAGA was, “Well, how many times did he say it?”
The origin of this warped political sensibility is, of course, racism. The macro demographic trends that are marching us towards a future where white people are in the minority are putting enormous pressure on American democracy. What MAGA Republicans want, of course, is autocratic rule. Specifically, they want an American answer to Russia’s Putin. That’s who they thought they were getting with Trump…but he turned out just to be a ding-dong.
As such, it definitely seems as though 2024 is it — we either turn into a MAGA autocracy or there’s a civil war. What’s more, if there’s a civil war in the United States, it will probably lead to some sort of global “reset” as every simmering flash point across the globe explodes and many, many people die. The entire post-WW2 global order will end and everything will be up for grabs on a geopolitical level.
It’s really going to suck.
But back to the point of all of this — if there was absolute proof that Trump was aware (and maybe even directed) the efforts to physically harm Marie Yovanovitch would it even matter? Would anyone who was MAGA care? A lot would ride on what the proof was. It would have to be pretty concrete. No wiggle room for various interpretations.
Most likely, sadly, what would happen would be there would be a lot of shock and gnashing of teeth on Twitter…and then nothing. Trump would just lay low for a few extra months then he would pop back up, run for president in 2024 and probably win. So, we would have a person who tried to get goons to murder someone as president. Good times.
It’s shit like that that makes one realize how dark things are in the United States right now. The systemic racism at the heart of MAGA is so all-powerful that once they get power again, it’s highly unlikely they will ever peacefully give it up.
But I definitely would suggest you keep an eye on the Trump-Rudy-Yovanovitch situation. Trump is so fucking stupid that it’s very easy to imagine a situation where Trump both knew and directed the efforts to hurt Yovanovitch but it was done in the context of Trump having a poor grasp as to what he was doing. He would have been doing his usual bullshit and the goons on the ground in Kiev would be taking him seriously AND literally.
And, really, I wouldn’t get too excited even if Trump’s machinations against Yovanovitch were the end of his personal political career. There are at least half a dozen would-be American Putins waiting in the wings to do what Trump was too stupid and lazy to do: bring autocracy to America.
I suggest everyone enjoy the less than two years we have left before Congress flips and Republicans control two out of the three branches of government. That will be the first step towards the very stark choice America will face in 2024: autocracy or civil war.
Now, there may be some variations on all of this — I can’t predict the future, after all — but our democracy is so weak and its politics so undead right now that I just can’t see the return-to-normal that we have going on right now lasting beyond 2024.
There are so many would-be autocrats waiting in the wings for Trump to make up his mind about running again and the push to nullify any vote that Republicans in Congress don’t like so strong that 2020 may be looked back upon as the last free and fair election the United States had. Of course, if we have a civil war and the “good guys” win, then after about five or so years of WMD-caused mass death we may begin to return to a normal — if very changed — American again.
It really bothers me how oblivious Twitter liberals are about how dire things are right now in the United States. We’ve been lulled into a false sense of safety because Trump is gone, but take one look at the continued lunacy of MAGA Republicans and you see more than enough to send a chill down your spine.
MAGA Republicans have already made the cognitive leap necessary to begin murdering people for political reasons. All that has to happen is some sort of undue, unexpected pressure is placed on our political system and the rest will take care of itself.
It’s logical, right now, to assume that pressure will come simply from the passions of the 2024 presidential cycle. But it could be something else — that happens sooner. If, say, Trump pulls a Scalia on us and simply dies of natural causes because he’s old, that event, in itself, may be enough to spark massive political violence because, lulz, MAGA cocksuckers will assume the Deep State murdered him.
But let me say again — I can’t predict the future. Anything can happen. But the only reason why the stark choice of 2024 didn’t happen in 2020 is because of one person: Donald Trump. If Trump had been the person people thought they were electing in 2016 and not a ding-dong, then we wouldn’t have had a free and fair election in 2020 and we would now all be living under the thumb of Trumplandia.
As I keep saying — get out of the country if you can. After about 2024, America is going to be a place anyone who isn’t MAGA is going to want to live in. Or there’s going to be a civil war and we’re going to bomb ourselves into the stone age so American Karens don’t have to worry about being “canceled.”
One of the lingering questions of the enormous clusterufck that was the Trump Administration is how much Trump knew in advance about the physical risk Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch faced when she abruptly bugged out of Kiev. If you could prove that Trump knew exactly what was going on and was cool with it, then you got yourself a pretty big scandal.
If you could get to the next step of proving Trump not only knew about the goons intentions but approved of them and even maybe directed them, then, well, we’re going to the show.
It’s been a while, so my memory is a bit fuzzy, but just using what we already know about particular situation, it’s enough to send chills down your spine. Trump said, at one point, that Ambassador Yovanovitch was “going to be going through some things” and I seem to recall Trump getting even more explicit to the point where it definitely seemed as though he wanted physical harm to come to her.
Now, too often in the past I’ve thought Trump was going to be dealt a mortal political blow for this or that thing he did and absolutely nothing came of it. So, the case could be made that even if you could prove Trump not only knew but directed the goons who forced Ambassador Yovanovitch to flee Ukraine for her life in the middle of the night…it’s very possible MAGA would see it as a lulz.
But of all the post-presidency things that might, just might kneecap Trump’s chances of being the Republican 2024 nominee….proof that he was active in a plot to murder the American ambassador to Ukraine might(?) be enough to do the trick.
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