by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
I often use the throwaway line that if America turns into an autocracy that I will get “pushed out a window by ICE for not shutting up.” But, really, how likely is that even if America becomes an autocratic managed democracy like Russia? I suspect it’s a lot closer to reality than you might think.
But for things to get that bad, some thing would have to happen before. One big thing would have to be the purging of the media in some way. A MAGA purge of the media seems very possible to me. It would probably happen in a rather abrupt fashion when, behind the scenes, President Pompeo or Hawley put the squeeze on TV execs via their broadcast licenses.
And, yet, if people like me really did begin to get pushed out of windows by ICE, things would have gotten so dark that the one thing that has kept America a free country for a lot longer than you may expect would have changed: our self perception. This would probably be accomplished via a Constitutional Convention that was rammed through by MAGA state legislatures.
So, I suspect the whole pushed-out-a-window-by-ICE scenario is something that could very well happen, but it would likely be something that happened a generation after America stopped being a liberal democracy once and for all. Though, it could happen in the context of the radicalization associated with a civil war.
The key takeaway, however, is Republicans have no shame and crave only power and wealth. In the end — if we don’t have a civil war — they’re going to crash past any existing democratic norms we have and take things to the next level.
This will include, I’m afraid, pushing people like me out of windows for not shutting up.
