Tag: The Thousand Year Trump

The Agony And The Ecstasy Of The Clusterfuck Of 2024


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m not saying I can predict the future, but it’s pretty easy to see that as the book The Fourth Turning suggests, something pretty fucking huge is going to happen “before 2025.” The thing about catastrophe is if you’re lucky, in the end ,there is some sort of redemption. It doesn’t make it “worth it,” because it’s a fucking avoidable tragedy, but it does at least force people to pick a direction, any direction.

As such, the impending 2024 global catastrophe at least will slice the Gordian Knot of a number of systemic issues that have been brewing for some time now. If we come out the other side and the “good guys” win, then huge swaths of problems that we currently see as immutable and intractable will be solve in a rather abrupt manner. If the “bad guys” of MAGA win, those same problems will be solved as well, albeit in the exact opposite manner.

I don’t think enough people realize how dangerous 2024 is going to be for the entire world. It will be a pivotal moment in human history given it’s difficult not to imagine WMD being used not just internationally, but domestically as well. There’s a real chance that America is going to bomb itself into oblivion in some sort of nuclear-tipped civil war.

But the specifics of such an event are extremely murky right now because I just don’t know who would be leading the two sides and what their strengths and weaknesses might be. All I know right now is the United States’ political system is unprepared for the passions of another presidential cycle and the whole thing is going to unravel either into a violent civil war or a decent into autocracy. There will be no middle ground. We, as a nation, will be forced to pick a fate and everyone is going to have to pick a side. The choice will be stark and terrifying when it happens. There’s a reason why, “May you live in interesting times” is a curse.

A lot of things we worry so much about now will be looked back upon as comical. It’s difficult to be offended at every little slight when you’ve lived through a civil war where 20-30 million people have died. And, alternately, if we turn into an autocracy, you’ll be so worried about avoiding ICE agent thugs that the notion of “cancel culture” will seem rather quaint.

If you want to be hopeful, you can say at least there’s the chance for a “renewed American Covenant” if there’s a civil war. That is, of course, is if there’s a clean ending. If it’s murky, then the United States will split into two nations that absolutely hate each other. Though, I have to note that it’s possible that the entire map of North America might be redrawn in the event of a Second American Civil War.

It’s difficult to imagine that Canada (and NATO) wouldn’t get drawn into a Second American Civil War if it actually happened.

The point is — you have about four years to prepare for a Second American Civil War and / or World War 3. Millions may die. The old order will end and something new will arise from the ashes. It’ll either be a New Dawn or a dystopian hellscape.

No fate but what we make, as they say.

Preparing For The 2024 Cataclysm


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m not smart enough to give you any pithy words of advice about how to prepare for what I believe will be the massive clusterfuck of 2024-2025. There are plenty of books out there like “On Tyranny” that give you basic, practical steps you can do over the coming years.

For my part, I’m working on a novel that I hope is just enough of a success that it allows me to get the fuck out the country before 2024 rolls around.

But, for the moment, that’s being rather delusional, so what I believe is now a near-absolute future history fact — the 2024 choice between autocracy and civil war is probably going to get me just like everyone else.

The issue for me is, I’m delusional and stubborn enough to know that should the 2024 cataclysm happen I will face one of two fates: either I get pushed out a window by an ICE agent or I become a part of some sort of real-world-risk-your-life Resistance to the rise of old school fascism in the United States.

Again, let me repeat — I’m well aware that I’m being delusional. But I love to run scenarios and it’s easy for me to imagine a situation where I would find myself in, like, I dunno, the Free State of New York City after the civil war starts and I get noticed by the Commune leaders.

I know I’m being delusional, you don’t have to tell me.

Or, put another way, I have a very specific skillset that would fit in the chaos of any type of massive social upheaval. I thrive in chaos and if things have gotten as bad as I fear they will, then there’s a least a chance I might be given the opportunity to rise to the occasion.

But there’s always the chance that we’ll go the autocratic route, I get noticed by the autocracy and get pushed out a window while caught unaware. We’re just still too far out from 2024 for me to be able to have any sense of which direction the country will go. Make no mistake, however, the country is going to pick a direction. It’s just a matter of figuring out if it’s civil war or autocracy.

I will note also, however, that any number of known unknowns could punt this particular choice down the road again. As I keep saying, we could have a war with the DPRK. Or Elon Musk could kill the trucking industry and cause a complete scramble of our political parties as the far Left and the far Right join forces to go after Big Tech.

One thing is clear, however, enjoy this moment in our history. It’s the quiet before the storm. Either get out of the country while you still can or, I don’t know, begin to think up some sort of practical method to combat the chaos that is going to happen around late 2024.

Good luck.

2025: Life In Autocratic America


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I predict that 2024 will be one of the most significant years in American political history. America will face a stark choice — autocracy or civil war. There will be no middle ground. Everyone will have to make a choice, pick a side.

Right now, I simply can’t predict which direction America will go. Will we implode post election day 2024 into civil war or our our zombie liberal democracy finally just be dead instead of undead.

But let’s take a moment to imagine what life in autocratic America might be like should we not have a civil war.

One thing to consider is, even as our politics finally slides into a Russian-style managed democracy it’s possible that on the cultural side nothing will change. It’s possible that in an effort to prevent any kind of organized opposition to our new fascist government that some of the darker things I fear that might happen won’t happen — at least for a lot longer than one might imagine.

The reason why I say this is Trump was a would-be autocrat and because we had zero political will to do anything about him, there was something of a draw. Trump had political power and cultural power was given over the the center-Left. Trump had “hard” power and people like the late night talk show hosts had soft power.

If that happened again, I would come across as Chicken Little — again — to traditional conservatives who would continue to rant about Cancel Culture and how liberals run everything.

And, yet, form follows function, so it’s easy to imagine President Cotton or President Hawley taking things to the next level and lurching us towards a true fascist state. It’s easy to imagine a point during the 2025-2030 era where there would be an aggressive purge of media outlets, probably via threatening their broadcast licenses.

Once that was accomplished, then the rest takes care of itself. The already existent ICE camp infrastructure is weaponized and ICE starts to push people like me out of windows or throw us into camps to be “re-educated.”

In addition, it doesn’t seem too much to imagine that a MAGA fascist president would aggressively pull troops out of various nations across the globe and even, maybe leave NATO. We would become Fortress America and, soon enough, the entire world order would go tits up as various simmering border disputes exploded. There might even be limited nuclear exchanges resulting in hundreds of millions of deaths.

In the end, should the fascists take over, I don’t see them leaving power at any point during my remaining years on this earth. Ultimately, it would be the excesses of such a fascist government that might be its downfall. But the damage would already be done.

‘The Fourth Turning’ Predicts A Major Political Crisis ‘Before 2025’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The spooky thing about the book The Fourth Turning is there is a specific prediction that aligns perfectly with my own thoughts on America’s fate — we’re going to have a severe political crisis of some sort in late 2024 after the presidential election.

Or, put another way, we will have a severe political crisis (second civil war) if the would-be autocrat that Republicans nominate isn’t able to cleanly steal the election and turn us into an autocracy that lasts at least 50 or more years. That specific prediction is enough for me to think the guys involved know what they’re talking about.

One key take away from the big so far right now is the cycle of human history is somewhere between 80 to 130 years. I’ve been toying with a similar idea — that we’ve reached an era where the last people to remember WW2 are dying off and, as such, the idea of the United States as the “essential nation” is being lost as the primary driver of American foreign policy.

As such, we see the rise of MAGA and the idea of Fortress America. If you twin that with the idea that the choice in 2024 is between civil war or autocracy, then The Fourth Turning‘s prediction that “before 2025” all hell is going to break loose jibes up pretty well with that.

We have to begin to prepare for a cataclysmic break with the past in the winter of 2024-2025. If we become an autocracy that pulls all out all our troops from around the world, then I could see WW3 happening at any point after 2025. For me, the issue is the next autocrat is probably going to be a lot less incompetent than Trump and, well, should we not have a civil war, our decent into autocracy will be swift and breathtaking.

All my dystopian hellscape nightmares that I imagined for the Trump Era will just happen four years later.

In 2024, The Choice Is A Second American Civil War Or Autocracy


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It definitely seem as thought we’re careening towards “the fourth turning” as explicated in the book The Fourth Turning. The key thing for me is Trump was such a weird person — and so bad at being president — that what should have happened in 2020 didn’t happen.

So, it’s going to happen in 2024.

And, even then, it hasn’t happened yet.

There are any number of different things that could happen that could speed up or slow down the fucked up things happening in America which make either a second American civil war or a slide into autocracy — or both — inevitable by 2024.

But the key take away from both my personal predictions and those found in The Fourth Turning is we’re on the cusp of unpreceded instability both at home and abroad in the coming years. And when it happens, it’s likely to be dramatic and awe-inspiring. The whole world that we’ve taken for granted for the last 80-odd years is going to go tits up at an astonishing speed.

I say this specifically because the Republican Party is now fascist in the old-school meaning of the word. They are filled with rage and it’s only a matter of time before the Proud Boys morph into something a lot closer to the Nazi SS than we’re willing to admit to ourselves. It’s very possible that 2024’s election will be marred by such political violence that that, by definition, causes it not to be free and fair.

We may look back at 2020 as the last free and fair election in our nation’s history.

The other option is we descend into a second American civil war and we bomb — nuke? — the hell out of each other until we finally decide if America is going to remain a liberal democracy or go full throated fascist. The ultimate outcome of such a war is something I just can’t predict four years away from it.

I have some very strong opinions on how the Blue States could win such a civil war, but no one listens to me and, lulz, I’m a nobody and probably always will be. “Normal” people just see me as a deranged Internet crank who is “both stupid and oblivious.”

But anyway. Maybe the novel I’m working on will be a success enough that I can afford to move to, I don’t know, Perth or something.

Trump & The Dog That Didn’t Bite


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It’s pathetic how for four years Trump politically terrorized the United States and, now…nothing. For over four years, we’ve been promised that Trump would be “brought down” by this or that criminal investigation and, yet, for the time being it definitely looks as though he’s going to get away with it all.

This ties in to what I long believed — we simply don’t have the political will to do anything about Trump at all for any reasons.

So, for all of you who want some sort of direct comparison between Trump and Hitler, I think that’s it — the January 6th Insurrection definitely has a Beerhall Putsch vibe to it in retrospect. But, let me be clear — history may not repeat but it does rhyme.

As such, it could be any number of would-be autocrats who aren’t Trump who get to play the role of Hitler in this analogy. But let me be clear — the United States’ political system is rotten to its core. The Republican Party is now an American fascist party.

No later than 2024-2025 — barring something huge like aliens or Jesus coming back — will be when either have a civil war or slip into autocracy at the hands of this or that fascist Republican becoming president one way or another.

Any civil war we have will simply be because Mike Pompeo or Tom Cotton or…you name it…bungles the transition into autocracy. Once we become an autocracy, our autocrat will purge the media, bring home the troops, bring about a flat tax, pick your shitty policy.

But we have about four years. A lot can happen between now and then. I would, however, recommend you get the fuck out of the county between now and then.

Endgame 2024: Autocracy Or Civil War


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

But for the want of Donald Trump actually being “the guy from The Apprentice,” the United States would either be in the midst of a civil war right now or having the final stages of its transformation into an autocratic managed democracy occuring.

That was the thing that people like me totally missed about Trump. Sure, he has autocratic impulses, but he was in the end, all talk. It wasn’t the “Deep State” that was his problem — it was him. He was an incompetent idiot with no leadership skills who just thought things would magically go his way without knocking any heads.

But where does that leave us now?

Well, the issue of the day — civil war or autocracy? — has been punted down the road for about four years. There are about six Republicans right now chomping at the bit to do what Trump couldn’t do. And if they aren’t able to manage events properly, then there will be a civil war as we transition into an autocracy.

The issue is, the United States, politically, is now a zombie. It’s a dead Republic walking. Get out while you can, because things are going to get nasty and dark and a shit ton of people may die.

It’s going to happen in the winter of 2024 the way it’s going now. Congress — now controlled by the fascist Republicans — will do everything in its power to give the presidency to Trump, Trump Jr or whatever autocrat the Republicans nominate in 2024. Either they succeed peacefully or they don’t.

If they succeed peacefully, my big mouth gets me ships to an ICE “reeducation camp.” If not, then, well, I may die because a cache of WMD is stole somewhere in the United States and the two sides start killing each other THAT way.

Maybe I’m wrong. I often am.

But….

The Fire Next Time: How To Be A Left Wing Populist Demagogue


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It’s becoming alarmingly clear that my precious American liberal democracy is doomed. It’s fucked. For some significant macro demographic and economic reasons, we’re careening towards either civil war or autocracy. This is probably happening in the winter of 2024 as one side or the other freaks out over this this or that thing that the other side did.

So, with that in mind, I would suggest maybe the Left think about beating fucking cocksucker Rightwing nutjobs at their own game. So, if I was taller and more stable, here is what my platform for my Left wing MAGA wanna-be grift would be.

  1. Legalize Pot.
  2. Student Debt cancelation
  3. Breakup of Big Tech
  4. Extreme Regulation of any job-killing new tech
  5. Return of the an actual, honest-to-God progressive income tax
  6. National service of 18 months for new high school grads nationwide.
  7. A serious look at reoperations for slavery

    Sadly, even this is too nuanced for the dumb-dumb American electorate scared of brown people and women with sexual agency. Anyway, the point is, we’re so fucked. MAGA is going to pop out of its spider hole pretty soon and people like me — and maybe you — are going to get rounded up and either shot in the back of the head in American Killing Fields in upstate New York or put in some sort of weaponized ICE Camp.

    Something pretty big that I can’t predict would have to happen to prevent this.

The Fall Of The American Empire


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

If you work on the assumption that some pretty basic concepts about the United States that I assumed to be universal come not from us being a “city on the hill” but, well, because white people were pumping out enough babies to keep them demographically fat and sassy then, well…wow.

It kind of blows my mind that American liberal democracy rests not on American exceptionalism, but the cold, hard metrics of demographics. In fact, in a sense, the whole idea of America being a “melting pot” is a lie: even Germans were seen as a threat in the 1850s-1860s…and they were demonstrably white!

So, if you throw in the speed at which travel happens in the modern world, then pretty much everything wrong with American politics boils down to one thing: a dearth of white babies.

The abortion debate: white women need to pump out more kids!
Immigration: Scary brown people will bring brown babies!
Guns: We have to protect white babies!
Taxes: I need money for my white babies!

Ugh.

What conservatives want is things to go back to “normal” where white people are on top to a point where they don’t even realize they’re on top. As Ezra Kline says in his book, “Why We’re Polarized,” all the civil rights progress of the 1950s and 1960s was seen as largess on the part of the White Majority. Now that White People are nervous about a lack of white babies…screw you guys!

It’s all very disheartening.

All I can say loud mouths like me — who have the most to lose when America slips into autocracy — I need to get the fuck out of this country while I still can.

Fuck MAGA and its false orange prophet.

Why ‘Second American Civil War’ Porn Is So Popular Right Now


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It all started with Ronald Reagan. It was Reagan who told the base that all their problems were caused by evil liberals. So, pretty much, it has been down hill from there.

So, here we are.

About half the American electorate is eagerly waiting a civil war where they are freed from the confines of “cancel culture” so they can murder evil liberals in cold blood without any consequences. I say this because most of this blog’s traffic comes from people in Red States obviously stroking one off in the middle of the night to the idea that if they could just murder liberals then they could provide for a family of five again even without a college education.

I look at my Webstats and it’s a steady flow of URLs from Texas, Tennessee, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and South Carolina who are very, very, VERY interested in some sort of Second American Civil War.

What is so nuts about all of this is if these people would just cool it and let politics take its course, they could get everything they ever wanted. But it definitely seems as though we’ve reached the game of …”but THEN what would happen” where the only logical conclusion is if “cancel culture” keeps going that good old boys in the South (and Mountain areas) will take it upon themselves to slaughter those evil, evil liberals in cold fucking blood.

This is the point where I say — if you’re on of those good old boys: eat shit and fuck off you cocksucker.

Anyway.

The point is, we are so totally fucked. Either there’s a civil war in about five years, or a strong man, a “man on a horse” takes over and strangles our fragile liberal democracy without firing a shot.