It definitely seems as though we’re just not going to make it safely through the 2024 presidential cycle. It definitely seems as though either the United States turns all Red (autocracy) or we collapse into revolution and civil war and (hopefully) the Blue “good guys” win and we turn all Blue because of a Second Reconstruction.
And, yet, it could be this is just more of my “hysterical doom shit.” It could be that lulz, we’ll just muddle through like we always do.
But it seems like it could go either way.
Yet negative polarization is so absolute, so white hot at the moment that I’m very alarmed about our future in late 2024, early 2025. But I can’t predict the future.
America is growing more and more unstable. The sad thing about it is, that instability boils down to something a nebulous and vacuous as “vibes.” Both Red and Blue have reason to resent the union that we find ourselves in. I will note, of course, that Reds are far bigger crybabies than Blues when they don’t get their way or if they feel slighted.
What’s the most surreal element to all of this is Reds are ascendant politically on a macro basis. But they are totally oblivious to this fact. They are so shortsighted and angry at any perceived slight — even though all the political momentum is on their side — that they’re chomping at the bit to start a civil war.
That’s probably the biggest mistake I’ve made when trying to game out potential civil war scenarios — Reds are acting irrationally. They have no political patience and they could very well shoot themselves in the foot and start a civil war even though they are well on their way to getting everything they want if they’re just take a long-term approach to their goals.
It’s interesting when talking to my center-Right relatives how they perceive the center-Left. They seem to think that center-Left people hate Apple Pie and motherhood. They believe that all center-Left people are gay or trans people who hate want to commit infanticide then crow about it on social media.
It’s deeply weird and based almost exclusively on vibes generated within the Right-wing echo chamber of podcasts and Fox News. (Even though a lot of Right wing people like to poo-poo Fox News, the network still sets, a general way, the agenda of the Right wing echo chamber.)
Anyway, I really, really hope that we just muddle through things like we always do (at least have in the past.) But I’m starting to have my doubts.
A sign that the United States is growing more and more unstable is it’s growing more and more difficult for people who disagree on policy to talk to each other. It’s difficult to say what is obviously true when talking to some conservatives, which is, “Hey, you’re a bigot.”
You just can’t do it. If you mention racism or bigotry being the core reason why this or that thing is generating so much fear and hate within someone who should know better, it would instantly end the conversation.
But, here we are — sexism, bigotry and racism are now generating a huge amount of political power within conservative ranks. That’s one of the reasons why the two sides are receding from each other at such an alarming rate — conservatives are very touchy — maybe even a bit delusional — whenever the issue of why, exactly they’re so upset about the “crisis at the border” or abortion.
I don’t know what to tell you — either we collectively dodge a bullet and just muddle through another four years….or we don’t.
One of the absolutely bonkers element of any second Trump Administration is the fact that he will be gunning for something we all taken for granted — birthright citizenship. This make me both very angry and very alarmed because the first thing fascists — like the Nazis — do is start to fuck with who is a “citizen.”
I have conversations with my far more conservative relatives — whom I love dearly — and their reaction to the potential demise of something as fundimental as birthright citizenship is a real life shrug emoji. They just don’t care. All they care about is “securing the border” to the point that when you press them about how they plan to deport 20 million undocumented people — they just laugh.
They don’t care, they just want it to happen, damn the consequences.
So, it definitely seems as though if Trump is re-elected that many of my dystopian fears for his first term will come to fruition. I just don’t know what to tell you folks. It definitely FEELS like I may very well lose my citizenship and find myself in a Trump-branded concentration camp at some point after 2025 if I can’t manage to sell the novel I’m working on and get the hell out of the country.
It is growing more and more apparent to me that should, God forbid, Trump get re-elected that there is only one Red Line for most Traditionalists — the personal. Otherwise, they will be so happy that brown kids are again being torn from their mothers and put in cages that it will all be a lulz.
But when things get personal, then, yeah, Traditionalists might stop being Good Germans.
The only reason why I even bring such a thing up is Trump is so dumb and lazy that he is the only person who might thrash around in such a tyrannical manner as soon as he has power again that the people who should be the core of his support — center-Right Traditionalists — might actually become “Radical Moderates” just long enough for him to be successfully deposed.
Even this is very iffy.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe we really are going to go straight into a dystopian MAGA Nazi future where people like me are snatched off the street an no one — no even Traditionalists who are related to me — will care or notice.
And, yet, at least now, in early 2024, I’m not prepared to assume that that is the case. I’d like to think that if Trump really does go full tyrant on us that because of the Red Line of the personal that Traditionalists might, just might, look the other way if Trump has to be deposed. (Not that I’m advocating anything.)
It definitely will be interesting to see how, exactly, things play out going forward. Just from my conversations with my far more conservative Traditionalists relatives — whom I love dearly — we are in a lot — A LOT — of trouble if Trump is re-elected.
They just don’t believe that Trump is going to do all the shit that he has made very clear that he is going to do if he’s re-elected. I keep talking about Agenda 47 and Project 2025 and they look at me like they have no idea what the hell I’m talking about.
All I can say is, yet again, that late 2024, early 2025 is going to be VERY INTERESTING.
I was put on blast by a Twitter liberal because I pointed out that if Trump goes full tyrant after his possible election then there will be consequences. She called my comment “optimism bias.”
As is so often the case when trying to debate a complex situation on Twitter, what I was trying to say was lost in the argument. I don’t think I’m being optimistic to suggest that we might have a fucking revolution if Trump goes full tyrant.
That seems anything but “optimistic.”
Seems pretty fucking dark to me.
Her argument, it seems, is this — we just have to give up if Trump wins re-election. We can’t even game out what we might do as a nation if Trump wins. We just have to cling on to rainbows and unicorn farts and put all our chips on “voting harder” and, as such keeping Trump out of office.
Jesus Christ does this confusion make me angry.
Rather than pinning all my hopes on “voting harder,” I think we should start to think seriously about the consequences of Trump being a tyrant in 2025. I just don’t think that the US will go the route of Germany in 1933. The two nations are just too different.
The US is huge, diverse, decentralized and has a strong tradition of democracy. And, if anything, I’m embracing the idea that there won’t be any guardrails if Trump is re-elected.
In fact, it is the very lack of political guardrails that might lead to the very dark scenario of a Blue Revolution that would, in some way, depose Trump.
Jesus Christ did that dumb argument on Twitter make me angry.
It’s comical to try to make some sort of 1-to-1 between Hitler and Germany 1933 and Trump 2025 if he wins. I’m not saying it’s not POSSIBLE that Trump might somehow peacefully transition us into autocracy, just that if it’s Trump doing it, things might not go according to plan.
I have a lot of reasons to believe this.
People keep telling me to read up on the rise of the Nazis….and I have already done it and continue to do it! And the more I read and learn, the more I just don’t see there being a direct 1-to-1 between Trump and Hitler. So the fact that people who claim to have read ever so much more than me about this situation would claim some sort of 1-to-1 is very, very curious — and very annoying — to me.
But let’s go through some reasons why I believe that we can’t just assume that America will peacefully transition into a fascist state if Trump becomes POTUS again.
First, in general terms, Nazism was an expansionistic political philosophy, while MAGA is one of retrenchment. Some of these next differences are pretty obvious.
Germany in 1933 was a smallish, pretty centralized nation that had only become a democracy about a decade before after a horrible loss as part of WW1. America, meanwhile, is a very prosperous, very decentralize and diverse nation where we have a very strong sense of ourselves as being a “free country.”
Furthermore, Hitler was a Great Man of History. He bent history to his will. He was willing to knock heads — using the SA — and he was also, just in general, willing to put in the hard work necessary to transition Germany into a fascist state.
Trump, meanwhile, is a complete lazy idiot. And, what’s more, he’s not a Great Man of History. He’s just an avatar, a vessel for some pretty severe issues in American politics and culture. He just assumes that if he invokes the Insurrection Act that somehow, magically, that will be enough to subdue the Blue parts of a nation of 335 million people.
If it was anyone else in Trump’s historical position, then, yeah, I might be willing to believe America will soon be a true fascist MAGA state. But this is Trump we’re talking about. If Trump just pushes America straight into the cold dark waters of fascism overnight…there will be some sort of consequences.
I’m not advocating anything! I’m just saying if you do a back-of-the-envelope scenario, it just doesn’t make any sense that Trump could whip out his fascist MAGA cock and get freedom loving Americans to willfully suck on it. It’s just not going to happen.
One last thing — a key element of Hitler maintaining control in the early days was the SA making it clear to the average German that they had better be Good Germans…or else. And just from my discussions with my far more conservative relatives, it seems as though if Trump started to come after cranks like me that even Traditionalists in America might sit up and taken notice at such tyrannical behavior.
But I can’t predict the future. Who knows. But I still have hope that, in the end, we will save ourselves because no one else will.
The thing about having a discussion on Twitter is everyone is running around with scissors and even when you agree with someone, sometimes, they feel obliged to disagree with you.
That’s what happened to me recently when I got into a debate about what might happen if Trump wins this year. There were all these people who telling me that if Trump goes full tyrant on us, then, that’s it. We’ll just become Nazi Germany Redux and no one is going to do anything about it.
I have some serious doubts.
But my doubts are so nuanced that it’s just not possible for people on Twitter to comprehend that I actually agree with them, with a few caveats.
The issue for me is if it was anyone else but Trump in charge of our transition into autocracy, then, yes, we would become an autocratic state without much trouble. But this is Trump we’re talking about.
There is a real risk that rather than him gradually guiding us into what seems inevitable at this point — autocracy — that he will thrash around and be so ham-handed in his efforts that he will make a lot of Blue America very very angry.
I’m not advocating anything, but if Trump just overnight turns himself into a dictator, that will bump into America’s self-perception. And that is why I think there is a chance that Trump, specifically, might be deposed in some way if he does all these crazy dictatorial things he is proposing.
America 2025 will not be Germany 1933. In 1933, Germans were ready and willing to embrace fascism. In America 2025, we’re talking about a huge, diverse and decentralized nation where not only is the military a foundation of our democracy, but the forces of fascism don’t have an SA to run around and knock heads.
And it will take time for an SA to be built out, even if the fascists wanted to create enough storm troopers to round up 20 million people to deport them. And that would be a window of opportunity for, say, a General Strike. But, of course, there is a real possibility that about 1 million wealthy Blues will simply flee the country rather than be the core of any sort of effort to topple ding-dong Trump.
I was accused of “optimism bias” on Twitter by someone who should know better simply because I believe it’s within the realm of possibility that Trump might be deposed.
JESUS FUCKING CHRIST.
I just can’t believe that if Trump does all the fucking bullshit that he is planning that the entire country is just going to shrug and let him do it. Really? Someone thinks that?
I know that, in general, Americans are pretty laid back, but if Trump starts to literally round up 20 million people and to go after his political rivals in a direct way… SOMEONE, SOMEWHERE IS GOING TO NOTICE.
I simply refuse to believe that Trump could go full tyrant and there wouldn’t be consequences of some sort. The US is too decentralized, too big, too diverse and has too much a tradition of democracy for Trump to go full tyrant without there being an effort to depose him.
I hate to even contemplate this, but ding-dong Trump is setting himself up for a pretty astonishing turn of events if he wins this year. He really thinks he can go full tyrant on us in 2025 and there not be any political consequences.
At a minimum, he might get (successfully) impeached.
At worst, something wild might happen that might lead him to be…disposed in some way. I have no idea how that would happen — it would be completely stunning if it happened — but I could imagine some combination of a General Strike and a very fed up U.S. Military using the cover of the 14th Amendment causing it to happen.
Or something. Something huge and dramatic that would be a Day The Earth Stood Still level of bonkers.
Of course, that opens the idea that Trump might pick a veep who was so totally and completely unacceptable and bonkers that he / she would be an “insurance policy” against such machinations.
Seems to me that Gen. Mike Flynn would be just the type of person to be such an insurance policy.
I just don’t know what to tell you, folks. We seem to still be on track to late 2024, early 2025 being totally and completely insane on a political basis.
You must be logged in to post a comment.