Month: December 2020

Republicans Have Become The ‘Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It is becoming clear that Trump is no longer thinking in terms of politics but rather strictly in terms of self-preservation. As such, we’re careening towards a moment in time when Trump goes extra-legal and extra-political in his attempts to stay in power. There are a number of things that are concerning me about this.

The Defense Department
Trump keeps cramming the Defense Department with cronies. I’ve read somewhere that this may be an effort on the part of Trump to find out how much he could, in fact, get away with if push comes to shove. That’s really nerve wracking because what if Trump somehow manages to move the autocratic dial a little bit. Just a little bit would freak us all the fuck out.

Mike Pence
I’m growing concerned that on Jan. 6th Trump will goad Mike Pence to simply nullify the certification of Electoral College votes by not doing his job — or not doing it in a manner that follows the spirit of the law. Remember, the point of this would be to throw things to SCOTUS in such a partisan manner that they’re absolutely boxed into a up-or-down corner. Trump wants a replay of 2000 because he’s a craven ding-dong who’s actual political skill is little more than that of Chauncy Gardner in Being There. So, it’s very possible that there will be extreme, rancorous debate in Congress over the certification of votes, but in the end, Trump will lose. Even if Pence tries to be a spanner in the works.

Trump Going Transactional
This is a real wildcard. As it becomes more and more clear that Trump is, in fact, going to actually have to leave office, it’s possible that he stops “joking” and insinuating about violence against his enemies and flat out tells MAGA to murder liberals in cold blood. Or he could begin to demand Red States hold snap conventions so they secede. Pretty much anything is on the table once Trump finally snaps mentally.

‘Downfall’
This is probably my worse fear. If we get to this stage of things, then Trump really has lost his mind. This is a very dark situation, indeed. Everything from Trump blackmailing America by suddenly bringing up his ability to use nuclear weapons to him going the literal Hitler-in-the-bunker route would be possible under this scenario.

But there are some things to take into consideration. One is Trump is not nearly as well-put-together as we keep thinking and he’s so unstable and lazy that any transactional things he does may be so half-hearted and poorly thought out that they aren’t very successful.

Yet, we’ve now officially entered the most dangerous phase of the Trump Era. Anything could happen. We could all get the shit scared out of us before it’s over with. There will be no narrative, no value as it all happens.

Trump Destroying Himself Politically By Staging A Coup Would Be A Fitting End To His Era


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I have a number of conservative-but-not-MAGA people in my family who don’t really support Trump but, because of negative polarization, essentially support Trump.

The key issue issue is — to date — Trump has yet to do something that people like me can point to as truly tyrannical. He’s done a lot of “cruelty is the point” things, but nothing obviously extra-political. He’s abused power. He’s significantly weakened our democracy, but he’s yet to do anything extra-political. And, remember, Trump has done some pretty outrageously illegal things — paying off Stormy Daniels, for one — but nothing that was so completely indefensible that we as a nation had the political will to do anything about.

That’s why Trump may be setting himself up for political destruction in the last month of his time in office. If he stages a coup of some sort, that would be a transactional, extra-political event that conservatives-who-aren’t-MAGA would have significant difficulty defending. Maybe to the point of finally endorsing Trump having some accountability at last — they’ve gotten their young hack MAGA judges and huge plutocrat tax cut, why wouldn’t they?

Or, put another way, there may come a point very soon when it becomes clear that Trump cares more about his own perceived self-preservation than any political consideration he will, at last, given the rhetorical tools necessary to get conservative-but-not-MAGA people woke.

Generally, history takes the most ironic path possible, so it would be fitting if after 5 years of terrorizing America Trump loses it all because he stages makes an unprecedented power grab in the last month of his term. The key point we have to take Trump’s coup plotting seriously. This situation has all the classic signs of a epoch-making clusterfuck.

A person with power making significant miscalculations under pressure, is a key one. But I still don’t understand how, exactly, Trump plans to seize power if the U.S. Military won’t follow an illegal order. I guess I could see him going transactional on Twitter, but even then, that would just cause political violence.

I guess, — guess — if he went transactional on Twitter and incited significant political violence then he might use that, in itself, as an excuse to seize power. But this is December 2020, not January 2020. He has just a few weeks in power. He would need a thin veneer of legality to stay in power. There are a few Hail Mary Pass attempts he might try — all involving boxing SCOTUS into a partisan box.

While I have no faith in SCOTUS anymore, for him to place all his bets on them pulling an uber-2000 on us given how reluctant they’ve been to do such a thing to date is really bonkers.

But it’s at least possible that Trump may try just that.

We’re going to be living in “interesting times” far, far sooner than we can possibly imagine.

Welcome To The Political Upside Down, America


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Things are very surreal right now in the United States. It’s beginning to sink in with our deranged ding-dong of a president that his options for staying in power are limited. Add to this that Trump has done none of the prep work necessary to successfully stage a coup and…well…you ain’t see nothing yet.

We’re going to enter the Upside Down soon, like potentially within hours. But let me clear — all of this happening in the context of Trump thrashing around. There’s going to be limited planning or co-ordination. And because the U.S. Military will not follow an illegal order, I just can’t see any hard coup attempt on Trump’s part being successful.

What’s more, Trump seems to be actively aggravating the a number of political figures he would need if actually was of sane mind enough to want his coup to succeed. That’s why, in a sense, Trump’s coup efforts are more connected to his tenuous connection to reality than his political goals.

His sense of self-preservation is what’s driving these outwardly whacky coup attempts. What makes them dangerous is there are MAGA people in positions of power who are willing to entertain his coup dreams and, as such, get him a lot closer to success than any of us would like.

But even the use of the world “success” in this context is problematic. He might be able to seize power in some extra-political manner, but I struggle to imagine any scenario where he gets to keep it. American civil society is just too strong. There would be a very, very quick and very, very strong reaction because on a political level, America has moved on.

Yes, a lot of MAGA people think Biden “stole” the election, but there are plenty of conservative-but-not-MAGA people who don’t think that and won’t support Trump’s effort to stage a coup.

Trump may surprise me and get away with it, but more likely to happen is the whole thing will be a massive self-own that destroys Trump political once and for all. But we’ll see.

Wargaming A Trump Coup


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

We have to start taking Trump’s coup plotting seriously. It seems as though Trump has settled on January 6th as his last effort to blow up the Consutition before he just loses his mind and begins inciting sedition via transactional tweets.

So, let’s game out what Trump’s plot might be. The key thing we have to appricate is Trump has done none of the hard prep work needed to cleanly pull off a coup. At this point, what’s going on is a side-effect of Trump slowly sliding into insanity at the prospect of no longer being president.

On January 6th, it definitely seems as though Trump’s options are limited. At best, he can get the two Houses to debate for 2 hours and potentially rile the whole country up even more than it already is. If the debate grew really heated — which it will — then it’s very possible that Rightwing shithead cocksuckers could flip out and start blowing shit up.

The real issue for me is Mike Pence. I could see Pence simply not doing his job no matter what. He simply will nullify the certification no matter what the outcome of the vote in Congress. It’s my impression that at that point, the certification by states’ governors would be what was relevant and, as such, Trump would lose.

But the real issue is Trump has more than enough time to prime MAGA-Qanon-Patriot Party shithead cocksuckers to strike should things not go their way. There could be significant political violence on or about January 6th, the likes of which we’ve not seen in the modern era.

I’m also nervous that should Pence nullify certification, that Rudy will sue at SCOTUS in a final, last ditch effort to box SCOTUS into a partisan box. Of course, this would not be happening in a vacuum. If things had gotten that far, then America could very well be experiencing rolling political violence that would be marketed as a civil war.

But there’s one thing we have to remember — to date, MAGA cocksucker shitheads have been all talk. Or, they just haven’t reached Brown Shirt or Black Shirt levels of popularity or organization. They may come, but there not there yet.

So, it definitely seems as though Trump is going to lose in Congress after delaying things some. But because of the expectations game Trump has been playing along with his growing instability, it’s possible that Trump will keep going.

He might grow transactional on Twitter in any number of different ways. Everything from telling MAGA to “remind liberals of the power of the Second Amendment” to demanding that Red States call conventions so they can secede. At this point, I have to make the point that I continue to give Trump autocratic and abstract abilities that he simply doesn’t have.

He’s not an autocrat, he’s a ding-dong. He’s a lazy, incompetent ding-dong who has enjoy unprecedented support not matter what he does because he’s an avatar for the rot and rage in the American political system. That he’s waited until the last month of his administration to freak out and suddenly try to be an autocrat is very telling.

Even if America is an autocracy without the autocrat, we still have a pretty strong civil society, so if Trump got what he wanted — a successful coup that at least initially kept him in power — the reaction to such a “political 9/11” would be so quick, so violent that he simply would not be able to STAY in power.

Things would grow very chaotic very quickly and what might happen is something closer to a Glorious Revolution than a Second American Civil War. In other words, a lot of conservatives-who-aren’t-MAGA would, at last, give up on Trump and he simply wouldn’t have the Mandate of Heaven anymore and he would be deposed.

It would not be fun. It would be scary as hell, in fact. The only reason why I just can’t see Trump pulling of a coup the way he wants to is, well, it’s the last month of his administration and he’s losing his mind. So, yes, he can cause a lot of damage and scare the shit out of the entire nation, but in the end, he just hasn’t done the hard work necessary to steal a second term.

Not to say he won’t try. He probably will. And things will probably get violent. But, again, this is December 2020, not October 2020. What’s happening right now says more about Trump’s sense of self-preservation than it does anything about his political acumen as a would-be autocrat.

So, in the end, it definitely seems as though Trump is going to get his coup, then get deposed. And that’s the best case scenario for him. Worst case scenario is he totally loses his mind, holds up in the White House and has his Downfall in the White House Situation Room.

Trump’s Potential ‘Hard Coup’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It definitely seems as though Trump is plotting some sort of coup. But I struggle to figure out how, exactly, he plans to pull it off. He would need some sort of military force. And the U.S. Military simply isn’t going to follow an illegal order.

So, in a sense, we’re careening towards an extremely dangerous moment in our nation’s history because president ding-dong may be so unmoored from reality that he gets so wrapped up in his need for self-preservation that he doesn’t think things through and causes a massive crisis.

The key thing is — Trump hasn’t done the hard work of prepping the way for any type of coup, be it hard or soft. But if he’s thinking purely in terms of self-preservation and not politics, he could strike out of desperation. That, in itself, would be a massive self-own that would destroy him politically and really be a very surreal — and ironic — end to the Trump Era.

All I can think of is Trump’s conspiring with his Congressional idiots to somehow use him going transactional on Twitter in conjunction with them causing problems in Congress when the Electoral College vote is certified on January 6th. That’s all I got. If Trump made some sort of appeal to MAGA to do his bidding then maybe they think they will have a chance to intemidate Congress into doing their bidding when they have to make the decision to certify the Electoral College vote? Maybe?

And, yet, I don’t see how even they would think that was enough. The U.S. Military won’t follow an illegal order and even if there was some sort of Good Old Boy putsch attempt it would not end well. As I keep saying — Trump simply has not done the hard work of being an autocrat.

He had four years to think up different ways to stay in power that could have very well worked, but he was so busy playing golf that he let a whole slew of opportunities slip through his fingers.

He has a month left in office and if he went full gotterdammerung he wouldn’t have the thin veneer of legality he would otherwise need to go full autocrat and never leave office. As I’ve said before, we’re now an autocracy without an autocrat.

If Trump was an autocrat instead of just a ding-dong, many of the conditions necessary for him to pull of a hard or soft coup are there. But he’s simply too lazy and incompetent to be an autocrat. But as I’ve also said before, the real danger is the difference between when Trump goes purely bonkers and when Moscow Mitch notices that Trump isn’t thinking about politics anymore.

Given that Trump has less than a month remaining in office, Moscow Mitch’s first inclination would be simply to wait things out. So, whatever extra-legal thing Trump is cooking up would have to be pretty severe to even catch Moscow Mitch’s attention.

But I have to say — it would be one of the most ironic events in American history if in the end, after five years of terrorizing Republicans, Trump destroys himself politically in a failed attempt to stage a coup. I’m also growing nervous that the end game for Trump may be a lot like the endgame for Hitler.

And that is how, in the end, Trump destroys the United States.

Release The Kraken? Be Careful What You Wish For, Sydney Powell


By Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

There’s talk that Trump may, at the behest of Sydney Powell, sign an executive order seizing voting machines to “look for signs of fraud.” While I guess for a lot of MAGA shithead cocksuckers that would be a good thing, it might be a pretty massive self-own on Trump’s part.

I say this because to date, Trump really hasn’t, in any concrete way, done anything autocratic. He has plenty of autocratic impulses and “cruelty is the point” for most of his policies, but he’s yet to do anything that conservatives-who-aren’t-MAGA can’t dismiss as just liberals having Trump Derangement Syndrome.

But once Trump starts down the path to autocracy, especially at this late date in his administration, it might be just a little bit more difficult for people who love Trump’s policies, his young hack MAGA judges and his tax cuts to be able to defend him. It won’t be impossible — they’ll likely just wave their hand and say he’ll be out of office soon enough, why are we even talking about this, but there’s a risk that he could get REALLY BAD, REALLY QUICK.

If he begins to see things in strictly terms of self-preservation, then the usual political considerations won’t apply. And the real danger will be the time between when Trump stops worrying about any political consideration and when Moscow Mitch notices this.

We could careen into a massive clusterfuck for no other reason than everyone is too busy celebrating the holidays and assuming Trump will leave office in about a month to notice that Trump has completely fucking lost his mind and has no intention of going anywhere without a fight.

I’m wrong all the time. I have no idea what is going to happen. But the prospect of Trump going “full autocrat” with one month left his term is unnerving, to say the least.

Confronting My Own MAGA Stockholm Syndrome


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

We live in surreal times. We have an autocracy without the autocrat. And, so, while it’s very possible Trump may go transactional on Twitter in an desperate, last-ditch effort at self-preservation, it definitely seems as though there is, in fact, going to be a Biden Adminstration.

Because Trump is doing everything in his power to make it seem as though he’s not going anywhere, when he finally does leave office it’s going to be a very surreal moment in our nation’s political history.

I hate the Trump Administration with a white hot rage — so much so it’s inspired me to write a novel — and I haven’t even begun to believe that the autocrat may have, in fact, lost. This happened because Trump isn’t an autocrat, but rather an craven ding-dong, but whatever.

Anyway, the point is, we’re all in for some rather surreal days of political change when we all have to admit to ourselves that our long national Trump nightmare is, in fact over.

Now, let me put this into context — we are going to be very, very lucky if we just drift into the Biden Era. I am still not prepared to believe Trump isn’t going to somehow remove a pound of flesh from us as a nation on his way out. If he does that, then we wouldn’t just “drift” into the Biden Era, we would be pushed.

The first few days of the Biden Administration would be us all processing whatever horrific thing Trump did on his way out. I hate to say this, but it’s beginning to become a real possibility that Trump may hunker down in the White House and, gulp, chose Hitler’s Gotterdammerung exit rather than risk going to jail.

Or, put another way, we’re going to know soon enough if Trump is no longer thinking about things in political terms, but rather exclusively in personal terms. If Trump finally snaps and all his decisions are made solely on personal considerations, then the end of the Trump Era may be so shocking that it will dwarf even 9/11.

What exactly might happen, I don’t want to think about. But I have a few ideas of how dark and tragic things might get — especially if Trump won’t leave the White House we have to go in and get him out.

Anyway. Be prepared.

The Coming Trump Singularity


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.

Things Are Moving Extremely Fast With The #Novel Now


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m at peace over this novel now. I have a very specific vision and I have the ability to tell it. While there are a multitude of things that could go wrong, I know in my heart that I’m going to at least get a first draft done very, very soon in real terms.

So, again, anyone who told me to “just write” a few years ago can fucking suck it, you shithead. I’m glad you’re out of my life.

Because writing and developing this novel is a marathon, not a sprint, I’m occasionally taking little breaks so I can reflect and do a lot of reading. I’m quite pleased that I finally have figured out how to tell a version of this huge story I came up with a few years ago.

It’s still very possible someone will steal a march on me creatively for various reasons, but it’s out of my hands at this point. I just have to focus on my own vision and see what happens.

Prediction: Trump May Incite A Secession Crisis


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The curious thing about Trump is if he had any native political acumen, he would have done a major autocratic move at some point between October and just after the election. That would have likely goaded the Blue States into leaving the Union. He could, in turn, have put down such a revolt and reorganized them in his own MAGA image.

But he didn’t.

And now that he’s waited this long, his autocratic options have grown far more limited. And, yet, there’s a serious risk that once his absolute unwillingness meets his absolute realization that he lost, that his mind may lock up and he’ll go bonkers.

Because, I really don’t see any way he “crosses the Rubicon” and takes “total control” via martial law. There’s just no way he can do it. I guess he could start a war with the DPRK or Iran and try to pull a fast one on us. But it seems more likely that if he is really surrounded by crackpots and kooks that they’re going to drift towards the obvious: him going transactional on Twitter. Specifically, he may begin to demand that Red States leave the Union.

He would say that he’s the rightful president and those states who agree with him need to leave the Union. He might flee Washington for good and hold up somewhere while he goads Red States to leave the Union via conventions. He can probably get a huge swath of Red States in the central part of the country to do so because they’re white. But they have small populations and small economies, so while there would be significant political violence that would be called a “second American civil war” it wouldn’t be until the states of the old CSA got into the act that things would get lit.

But, as I keep saying, the black community simply isn’t going to allow old CSA states to leave the Union and all Southern whites will get for their trouble is a race war.

Such sedition would happen in the context of Trump finally losing his mind. I’ve long debated if Trump would “implode” or “explode” mentally in the end. It definitely looks as though he’s heading towards the latter.

As such, Republicans will face their final test — do they support Trump’s sedition or do they at last cut him loose? It seems this will be a real existential test for Republicans because at some point their absolute fidelity to Trump and his MAGA base will bump up against the cold hard fact that his behavior is, at last, absolutely indefensible and he’s a liability to their own political futures.

So, the split between people who lulz this and those who can’t take the final crazy train to sedition might — at least for one political cycle — destroy the Republican Party.

But there’s a huge caveat to all of this — since Trump isn’t an autocrat but a ding-dong, he could just, well, do nothing. He might rant a lot on Twitter, but he never finally goes transactional. He never finally takes the last step that would destroy the Republican Party.

Trump is so unpredictable — and so easy to overestimate — that we’ve still got some time before which direction he is going to go becomes obvious. But the closer we get to January 6th, the closer we come to knowing one way or another.

Once we get past the January 6th meeting of Congress, we’re going to know not only Trump’s fate, but our own.