by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
Most of the traffic this site gets now is from people nervous about the possibility of a Second American Civil War. They have every right to be. American politics isn’t functioning anymore and either, in the end, the United States becomes an autocracy or we implode into civil war / revolution. At least, that’s the macro trend as of March, 2021.
I’ve been reading as much as I can about the rise of Hitler and, in general, tyranny. It definitely seems as though the recent Capitol Insurrection is just a sign of things to come. Only because Trump is a fucking lazy idiot are we not, right now, either in a civil war or in the final stages of some sort of autocratic consolidation of power.
But, here we are.
We’ve punted the existential threat the GQP don’t the road maybe four years. All the conditions are there for the GQP to, at last, strangle American liberal democracy in 2024. Republicans will control Congress in 2024 and since they hate democracy as much as they hate brown people and women with sexual agency, when the exact same thing that happened in 2020 happens AGAIN, well, we’re just fucked.
We either have a civil war or we turn into a MAGA-Qanon themed autocracy. As I keep saying, get out while you still can. If there is a Second Civil War, you would be a fool to think WMD won’t be stolen at some point and used. We’re going to nuke ourselves out of existence. That’s how civil wars are — they’re nasty and sometimes go in directions you can’t expect.
So, for the time being, we’ve punted the specific crisis of a civil war down the road. But when the time comes — around 2024 – 2025 — we’re going to be faced with the same choice we were faced with in 2020: autocracy or civil war?