by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
The conditions are there, at least, for the United States to experience something akin to a second civil war between now and at around January 2025. And, yet, I struggle to figure out if I’m just being hysterical or if there is, in fact, some reason to be honestly worried.
I just can’t game things out.
Every metric that I would use to say, “Oh, of course we’ll have a civil war,” at this point could also be used to for, “Oh, of course we’re going to turn into an autocracy.” So, I dunno. MAGA and the New Right are, in fact, actively destroying our democracy in hopes of establishing some sort of race-based, permanent autocratic minority rule.
And, as of the moment, I would say they’re going to peacefully get away with it. It’s theirs to lose, if you will. In fact, I would go so far as to say if they can just control themselves once they get what they want, the MAGA New Right can run the nation (into the ground) for generations to come. The United States will become Fortress America, China will gradually rise in power and by the end of the century the idea of a “free” America will be looked back upon as quaint.
But form follows function.
Once President Pompeo (or whomever) rewrites the Constitution via a MAGA dominated Constitutional Convention, purges the media and weaponizes the existing ICE infrastructure, it’s very easy to imagine some pretty bad shit happening. The excesses of the newly unbound MAGA New Right regime might grow so severe that there is something akin to a popular uprising and we finally drive a stake through the heart of the MAGA New Right vampires.
The counter argument is, of course, Russia.
They have huge protests all the time and jack shit happens.
So, again, I don’t know which direction the country will take once we finally are forced to decide autocracy or civil war. I do know, however, that if the MAGA New Right gets the civil war they apparently crave, shit is going to get real really quick.
If the last civil war America had is any indication, once the establishment of the United States gets woke on such matters, there is an element of institutional radicalization that doesn’t happen very often. Once it’s impossible for, say, the chatty Cathy’s of Morning Joe to avoid that we’re in the middle of a civil war, they’re likely to take what seem as rather radical political stances virtually over night.
Having to deal with an existential threat does tend to do that to even the most establishment moderate.
