by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
Ugh. The idea of America having any sort of major political violence is a gut punch. It’s just something I don’t want. Though, obviously, a lot of good old boys in the heart of Dixie are frantically searching the Internet about this revanchist fever dream — that’s why I have a little bit of an uptick in visits to this otherwise anonymous site.
I’m very content to keep working on my novel even as the country I love implodes. But there are a few things that make me uneasy about my own, personal fate, should the worst happen.
One is where I live. I live in Virginia, which should the absolute worst happen, is probably going to implode. Not only are there major historical sites in the state connected to the first American Civil War, but the Right is already screaming at the top of their lungs about how horrible it is to live in a state with a functioning democracy. So, it’s easy to imagine a situation where should the absolute worst happen nationally, that Virginia is among the states where the first actual bloodshed occurs.
Another issue is, well, me. I’m not someone to sit idly by as the country collapses. Though he’s not some sort of personal hero or anything — I’m well aware of what a bloodthirsty tyrant he was — the person I can identify with as bolts pop off the Republic and water begins to rush in, is Trotsky. Something about how, as I understand it, he was hanging out in Vienna drinking coffee when the Revolution started seems like something that would happen to me. I also find it interesting that when he was in a power struggle with Stalin, he just choked. He just didn’t show up to really, really important meetings.
Regardless, I think I’m being extremely delusional. What’s more likely to happen is I’ll either be shot dead in the opening days of any political violence or I’ll try to help save the Union, but for various reasons I’ll just be what I am now — a nobody.
But I did learn something interesting from a parts of a YouTube talk by Jared Yates Sexton. He pretty much said we need to start treating an impending Second American Civil War the way we did the days before COVID19 struck the United States in a major way. That’s definitely something to take to heart. We don’t really think about when your country implodes that you might not be able to find food, have reliable communication or even electricity.
That, in itself, is rather deep.
And, really, I have serious doubts that there will be a civil war for the simple reason that autocrats always win. We’re just going to slink into an autocratic managed democracy and gradually, on a political level, become identical to Russia.
Honestly, it seems to me that the only reason we should be concerned about a civil war of any sort is the cold, hard fact that Trump is a fucking self-own artist. He’s a moron. That the fate of the Union rests on Trump self-owning doesn’t give me a lot of self-confidence.
In general, I think things are going to stay peaceful. The Russians will hack directly into our election systems as part of a quid pro quo for Trump removing 1/3 of our troops from Germany and that will be that. It will all be something of a dud.
