by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
All the great clusterfucks in human history happen when different groups make reasonable — but flawed — calculations. It’s at least possible that we’re careening towards a notable example of this.
Right now, everyone is weighing various political considerations for Trump going forward. But the thing we have to begin to wonder about is what happens when Trump stops thinking about politics and starts thinking about something far more basic — self-preservation.
If this happened, it would be the final thing that forced all the MAGA people who have said “both sides” or “I hope he won’t do that” or “I pray he won’t do that” to, at last, have an opinion. What happens when Trump decides that he would rather destroy the United States than either admit defeat and or risk going to prison in New York State.
I honestly have no idea what would happen. Either these people, at last, say, “He’s gotta go,” or they simply say nothing and let him incite political violence or whatever in hopes that it’ll all go away and they can admit people like me were right about Trump 20 years from now when it’s all moot.
It would be a fitting end to the Trump Era if he, in a rabid attempt to stay in power, destroyed everything. His political future. The Republican Party. Even MAGA itself.
Of course, if Trump destroyed everything because he went from politics to base self-preservation it would come at a massive cost. It would be rolling “political 9/11” that would scare the shit out of everyone. In fact, there are some pretty dark scenarios.
When the traditional considerations of politics no longer are an issue for Trump because, well, he’s fucking insane, then we would be in for an epoch-making type crisis. We all may start to worry about how easy, exactly, it is for the president to launch a nuclear strike.
But it might not even get that bad, but still be really scary.
It’s easy to imagine Trump going transactional in the lead up to Jan 6th. He might tell the Proud Boys to begin to blow shit up in D.C. in an effort to intemidate Congress into voting to overthrow the vote of the Electoral College. Or, put another way, Trump has been a huge stress test for the Constitution and, as such, it’s easy to imagine to situation where for no other reason than it’s an actual event that can go ways we can’t predict, the Congress certification of the Electoral College votes is a potential wildcard.
Any number of different weird things might happen — especially since the Democrat majority isn’t really very big in real terms. So, I don’t know, humans are humans and it’s at least possible that Trump might “not lose” in Congress which would, in itself, probably cause a civil war / revolution.
But even if we get pass the Congressional certification, we really would enter a surreal moment in America’s political history. The reason is — the days between Jan 6th and Jan 20th would be when Trump would have every reason to go transactional on Twitter.
He could do everything from incite political violence to demand Red States to leave the Union via snap conventions. And that’s the point when there would be a historical record scratch. Such behavior on Trump’s part could split the Republican Party a minimum.
It could even go so far as to destroy MAGA itself because, at last, MAGA would be seen for the cancer it is.
So, it’s at least possible that Trump in his thrashing about for self-preservation on his way out, destroys not only the United States, but MAGA and himself. When the crisis is all over, our entire political system could be scrambled for a few years as we figure out how to process what has just happened.
But I’m notorious for getting things wrong. Yet is is something to think about.
