by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
The United States faces an existential political crisis without any ready answer. That crisis is one of its two major political parties no longer believes in the very liberal democracy that it’s a part of. The Republican Party is now biding its time for the opportunity to win a presidential election and then, well, that’s it. They’re going to crush our democracy and turn us into a MAGA version of the autocratic managed democracy found in Putin’s Russia.
Or we have a civil war.
The aggravating thing about all of this Twitter liberals continue to either think all of this is a joke or don’t grasp that what they’re documenting is pointing to a pretty stark choice at some point in the next few years. We’re all going to have to pick a side one way or another and there won’t be going back. What that choice may be will come down to how deft MAGA is in transitioning the United States from barely functioning liberal democracy to straight autocratic managed democracy.
It’s difficult for Americans to process the concept of an actual modern civil war. Sure, we can in an abstract fashion, but the idea that Americans would begin to kill each other in an organized manner for political reasons is still something we find difficult to grasp in any real, concreate manner.
Meanwhile, people on the far Right have embraced this very thing on a theoretical level. And, as January 6th proved, they’ve decided to start doing to for real, though their application of it on that day was more akin to a farcical beerhall pustch than anything else.
Next time, however, we won’t be so lucky.
I’m not smart enough to tell you what to do about any of this. But don’t lull yourself into any false sense of security about what’s going on in the United States right now. The next few years will be a fucking bumpy ride one way or another.
