A lot of people are still being very delusional about Trump. They think through some combination of rainbows and unicorn farts, Trump will simply fade away and we can go back to normal. Sadly, barring some sort of Black Swan event in 2024, Trump remains 60,000 votes in five swing states away from being POTUS again.
The question is, how, exactly will Trump end American Democracy?
Logically, what would happen, if form follows fascist function, Trump would soon after getting re-elected demand a Constitutional Convention that will make “America First” changes to the Constitution in such a way that Trump never leaves office.
But there are at least two issues to consider.
One, Trump is old as fuck and while he can destroy American democracy, it will be up to his successor to be in office for decades to come. Second, if Trump literally begins to snatch people he doesn’t like off the street, There Will Be Consequences.
And, yet, may be I’m being too sanguine. Maybe if 1 million smug Twitter liberals leave the country and take their smug, circle jerk podcasts with them, that will be that. American democracy will be snuffed out and we’ll all shrug.
Malignant ding-dong has made it clear that he wants to be a dictator at least for “one day.” And I get that the is working on using Schedule F and Agenda 47 to further that goal.
But.
Maybe Blues should become Blue Meanies.
The issue is even Putin gradually became the autocrat that we now know him to be. It took him a few years to consolidate power. If Trump just rushes into things in 2025 and starts to act like a dictator, I struggle to figure out how far he can get. I am well aware of how you can have a zombie “managed democracy” autocracy, but Trump is so, so very dumb and lazy that if he starts to do a major power grab in the first few days of his second term — there is going to be a reaction.
Now, some context.
The Traditionalists I know love Trump’s policies, but don’t like him in large part because they think he’s a “loser” who can’t win a general. If he wins, however, they will be quite content with his tyrannical policies…until it hits home on a personal basis.
Because if Trump makes deporting 20 million undocumented people in the United States in one fell swoop, then the idea of “show your papers” will become the center of the American experience. There are plenty of conservative white Americans who have at least one non-white person in their extended family and when 1 million armed ICE agents start snatching anyone who isn’t white off the street “just ’cause,” that MIGHT be enough to get even Traditionalists “woke.”
What’s more, even with his own MAGA Deep State in place, Trump couldn’t just instantly, overnight, be an American Tyrant. It would take time for him to ramp up the weaponization of ICE and to quell Blue parts of the country that might be upset with his tyrannical thrashing around.
As such, if Trump wins re-election in 2024, the first few months of 2025 could be very, very rocky. Because the moment Trump is so tyrannical that even Traditionalists have to acknowledge that he’s gone full-tyrant….Trump and everyone else in America has a problem.
Since I can’t predict the future, may be some Black Swan event — like what happened in 2020 and the pandemic — will happen that will allow us to defeat Trump once and for all and all of this talk about civil war / revolution is just going to be seen as silly as all the talk about Y2K back in the day.
I just don’t know. At the moment, it could go either way.
But, like I said, I just don’t understand what, exactly Trump thinks he can do that would allow him to be “dictator,” even for one day. I suppose he could just keep pardoning himself and anyone else who does something illegal. Only time will tell.
I am not a violent man. I’m a man of peace. A man of ideas. I hate guns with all my heart. What’s more, I, in general, hate even basic conflict and will do everything in my power to avoid it. Having said all that, I also refuse to be intimidated by people on the Right who seem to be chomping at the bit for a Second American Civil War.
I once had a boss who would scream at the top of his lungs over a phone bill, but when he had to vote about the arrival of Wal-Mart to town (he was on Town Council) he pretty much just said, “A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.”
And that’s how I feel about the prospect of a civil war. I don’t want one, but don’t try to browbeat me into submission by threatening to start one. It is growing more and more obvious that MAGA is a fascist, bad-faith movement that wants to rule, not govern. They want to turn us into a white Christian ethnostate that will inevitably slouch into excess that will transform American life.
Now, this is the point where I remind you that I can’t predict the future. It could be that all of this is a lot of words over something that isn’t going to happen. We are just going to punt our problems down the road and that will be that. But the MAGA Right loves to use the threat of civil war as a way to spook the center-Left into doing their bidding.
And I say, fuck that. If you are such crybabies — snowflakes — then shake your money maker and attempt to leave the Union should either Trump lose or Trump win and then be deposed / impeached and convicted because he goes full tyrant.
Don’t threaten me with a good time.
I believe that the ideals that Blue states organize themselves under are true and right and are no less honorable than those of the North during the first American Civil War. I don’t want violence, but there is such a thing as a Good War and I refuse to be scared into submission at the threat of a civil war.
Please, God, let’s not have any of this happen. I just want to live in a traditional liberal democracy. That should not be such a big deal.
If there is new, second civil war, the question of what caused it will be just as potentially controversial and complex as that of the first. But to me, I think just as slavery is the simple answer for what caused the First Civil War, the Second Civil War was caused by one word: abortion.
I say this because, in a sense, abortion is an economic system as much as it is a form of birth control. Where the population of a state lands on the legality of abortion pretty much aligns with if they’re a Blue or Red state. This is a very simplistic point of view — there are some obvious exceptions — but I guess what I’m trying to point out is that if the dominate political party of your state does everything in its power to make abortion absolutely illegal then you’re probably living in a Red state.
Of course, the REAL answer for what caused the 2ACW is, well vibes.
Pretty much the United States is being torn apart by how the two sides perceive each other. Or, to put an even more fine point on it, the issue of how MAGA perceives itself in relation to Blues is what will be the cause of the 2ACW. MAGA is a classic late-stage-empire movement.
It’s about retrenchment combined with the once majority ethnic group — white people — feeling resentment about the growing encroachment of brown and black people. So, in a sense, while slavery was the clear cut macro issue that led to the 1ACW, the 2ACW is about not one clear-cut macro issue, but a number of such issues that all could be referred to under the rubric of “abortion.”
Just from the conversations I’ve had with my far more conservative relatives, it definitely seems as though Trump will have a huge amount of slack should he get re-elected and go full tyrant. It won’t be until it starts to get personal that my Traditioinalist relatives — whom I love dearly — might begin to have second thoughts.
That will be the moment of truth, not just for them, but for the nation in general on a macro level.
We still haven’t actually had anyone vote one way or another when it comes to Trump in either Iowa or New Hampshire, so it’s at least *possible* we all have some sort of lingering group PTSD over what happened in 2016 and we’re wildly overestimating Trump’s actual popularity.
The scenario I have in my mind at the moment is Trump gets trounced in both the Iowa Caucus and the New Hampshire Primary and we all spend about a month mentally masturbating about the possibility that “Trump is done” or that he might run third party.
Then, of course we reach South Carolina and lulz, Trump comes roaring back and eventually everyone else drops out. But I don’t know. I really got burned in 2020 by overestimating Trump. He is so dumb and lazy and such an avatar for deep problems in our political system that maybe his win in 2016 was just a quirk of history and, as such, it’s over for him.
I just don’t know. That seems a little too good to be true, and, yet, as 2020 proved, stranger things have happened.
My tendency to be really paranoid served me quite well as an expat in South Korea. In the ROK as an expat, you’re pretty much one sentence away from scrambling to stay in the country. Living in America, though, this can make me come across as kind of bonkers.
But, having said all that, let’s think the issue what the fuck I’m going to do if the absolute worst happens and I am forced out of my Deep Red part of my state when the country implodes because of “vibes.”
At lot depends on how bad things get and how quickly. If things get really bad in the sense that I don’t feel safe being a Blue in a Red part of a Purple State, then, I suppose I’ll flee to the home of family in a Blue part of the state. But if things got REALLY BAD, REALLY QUICK, things are more complicated.
If there was some sort of infrastructure for Blue domestic political refugees to use, then I probably would grab my passport and stuff some essentials in a backpack and head North. With a general destination of NYC, if I could somehow finagle it.
But that’s very speculative and maybe a bit — or a lot — delusional. The key thing for me is I have to be prepared to bounce the moment it’s obvious that my political orientation is suddenly An Issue to the people around me. They say you go bankrupt gradually, then all at once, and that’s my fear — that I’ll wake up one day at some point after the 2024 Election and a bunch of good olde boys with guns will make it clear that I need to leave town — or else.
And, yet, I’m probably being hysterical. I am prone to think up the absolute worst case scenario. I won’t have to worry about any of this. Right? Right?
I have a few relatives — who I love dearly — who honestly believe that evil liberals are trying to turn everyone gay, ban The Bible and are on the cusp of destroying the lives of conservatives at any moment because they don’t follow the “media narrative.”
This, of course, contributes to the whole “let’s destroy the greatest country in the world because of vibes” problem that we all currently face. What’s interesting is my far more conservative relatives — whom I love dearly — are now free speech absolutists because they think if Nazis can burn everything to the ground, then they will have a better chance of being able to, I dunno, say the N word because black people can?
I don’t have a problem with conservatives. Any strong, healthy democracy has a solid conservative movement. What I *DO* have a problem with is fucking MAGA and fucking Nazis. It is telling that even my Traditionalist relatives, whom I love dearly, have bought into to current Gay Scare.
All I can say is, if your political speech gets in trouble because it’s a little too close to Nazi propaganda…oh boy. You got a problem. Maybe tone it down a little bit. And whatever happened to the market place of ideas?
I find it amusing that conservatives think the “free market” can solve everything until that very same free market decides that saving the planet is a good idea. Then it’s “whoa, not THAT free.”
I have some very conservative relatives — whom I love dearly — who continue to be enraged by the policies associated with COVID. They tell me they looked at the data and they will *NEVER* trust the CDC again.
Ok, I get it.
And, yet, these very same people lulz the very real economic data that suggests the American economy is humming along quite well. As such, if “doing their own research” and “looking at the data” helps their overall hatred of evil libs who want to turn everyone gay, then they embrace it. But if it DOESN’T help feed into the conservative media agenda being fed them by all the conservative podcasts they listen to…it is to be waved away and or ignored altogether.
They just *FEEL* that the economy is horrible and that the U.S. Military is now so woke that it’s weak compared to China and or Russia. This really aggravates me because the fact are this: the economy is doing well and the U.S. Military continues to be the most powerful fighting force in the world.
But for my Traditionalist relatives, whom I love dearly, they are very open to America turning into a white Christian ethnostate because of…vibes. They have an extremely simplistic take on politics to the point that what they believe is little more than a grunt. They just know: “Liberal bad.”
The only reason why I even bring this up is it’s so annoying that they make SUCH A BIG DEAL about how the “data” proves that the CDC should be arrested en mass and taken to Gitmo…but they simply don’t care that America’s economy is doing quite well at the moment and we can kick anyone’s ass in the world.
And it gets worse.
At the forefront of the minds of my conservative relatives — whom I love dearly — is the “crisis at the border.” Again, I get it. There is a crisis at the border and more should be done to fix that problem. I will even acknowledge that someone should get impeached to at least focus their minds on the subject.
And they are absolutely against the cornerstone of how to fix the problem — amnesty. Which, I think, tells you what’s really going on — they’re upset about the browning of America more than anything else. But they just can’t bring themselves to admit it, so they get all upset about the “border crisis” then refuse to even address what a fucked up situation we would find ourselves in if we actually tried to deport 20 million people.
But it definitely seems as though if Trump is re-elected in 2024 that the issue of “show your papers” will be the central issue of the day. Birthright Citizenship will be eliminated or ignored and millions of families will be torn apart and a lot of American citizens will be put in camps. AND, the ICE infrastructure that will have to be built out to deport all those people will be ripe for abuse.
And that’s freaky weirdoes like me might find myself in a Trump branded ICE camp at some point after 2025. Good times! But my conservative relatives — whom I love dearly — think I’m a crank for even suggesting such a possibility. They’re too busy getting upset by any perceived slight against Christianity to realize that they have people in their immediate family who will cross Tyrant Trump because they refuse to shut the fuck up.
But I understand why this just sounds like my usual hysterical doom shit. I get it. I understand. All my fears are very speculative at the moment. But the fact remains — the economy is strong, America is strong and the idea of Trump having 500,000 armed ICE agents at his tyrannical deposal is a horrible idea.
Let me again say, I can’t predict the future. There is every reason to believe that in the end, the US will simply shrug and we either have four more years of Biden or we turn into a MAGA America First nightmare and it’s all a lulz.
But because I like to make my abstract fears concrete, let’s really think about the nuts and bolts of a possible Second American Civil War starting in late 2024, early 2025.
The state we should keep an eye on in this situation is Texas. The state is already an autocratic MAGA bastion, and so it makes a lot of sense that if Red States feel they need to bounce that Texas would be the first state to do it. Tradition would suggest that South Carolina might be the first out the door, but there are so many African Americans in the state….whoa buddy…that, in practical terms might not be as sure a thing.
But Texas has just the right demographic composition that if Trump lost in 2024, or if he won then went full tyrant in 2025 and was deposed, they seem to be the state that would call up a snap secessionist convention on the fly. Now, there are some obvious complications to this idea. On the ground, Texas — as I understand — is s l o w l y — shifting to Purple.
As such, even if Texas MAGA Nazis were able to sucker punch the populace by calling up a Secessionist Convention overnight, there would be some pretty dire consequences going forward. You could easily imagine a scenario where the state capital of Austin went full Paris Commune on the rest of the state and there was some sort of Siege of Austin.
Ok, let’s also think about how things might play out with other Red States. I think pretty much all the low population Red States of the Mountain area would flee the Union the moment Texas made it clear they were serious. Utah is one of those states that could go either way because it’s a hotbed of NeverTrump support…but one of its Senators is Mike Lee, so lulz?
Now we get to even MORE complication. States like Oregon and Virginia would likely implode because of how diverse they are. If we started to have a serious secessionist crisis, there would be A LOT of self-selection across the country as people bounced to states that better fit their own personal political views. And then, of course, there is the issue of places like Austin and other Blue dots in Red States that would either be razed by Red forces or see a huge amount of depopulation as their political difference became untenable.
And don’t even get me started about my fears of Trump going Pol Pot on us an emptying the “Godless cities” so American Killing Fields can be filled with the bodies of Blues.
And, remember, none of this will happen in a geopolitical vacuum. World War 3 would start the moment it became clear that the US was too pre-occupied blowing itself up to do anything about various regional conflicts around the globe. What’s more, if any sort of Second American Civil War dragged out long enough, then the outside world would begin to get involved, too.
I could totally see the DPRK dropping a few H-bombs on the US to kick us while we’re down.
Anyway, if things get so bad that we have states leaving the Union….yikes. May God have mercy on our souls.
I was raised in the church and have a lot of relatives who are still Christians, so I know all about how alienated many modern conservative Christians feel. They tend to think that all of America’s problems could be solved if everyone turned to Jesus.
While I suppose this is true, some of my relatives really, really wanted a white Christian ethnostate without thinking about the consequences of doing such a thing. They want whites and men on top and they want there to be only one gender and none of this “pronouns” business.
They don’t have a problem with people being gay, but they should be quiet about it. And if pressed, they probably wouldn’t have a problem with someone getting an abortion as long as it was a deep personal shame that the person never spoke of to anyone.
What the Christians I know seem to want is to replace the Administrative State with the Moralistic State. They think taxation is theft and they want a total ban on abortion, birth control in general and online porn. They want to gut the modern safety net, even as they require any human egg that is fertilized by sperm to be carried to term, damn whatever horrific life the child may have once they’re born.
With that it in mind, that is yet more indication that the U.S. is tearing itself apart and there is a better-than-zero-sum chance that there will be a civil war (Reds if Trump loses) or a revolution (Blues if Trump wins.)
And, yet, there is every reason to believe that just like in 2020, somehow we’ll find an off ramp, a “third way” that allows us to punt our problems down the road again. And, hell, who knows, maybe the fabric of the nation is strong enough that no matter what, we’ll muddle through in some way and all my political dystopian hellscapes will seem rather amusing.
I really, really want that to happen.
If some of the things I fear will happen, happen, it will s u c k.
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