by Ender
When it came to predicting the ultimate effects of COVI19, I did a fairly good job of predicting things. Where I made the biggest mistake was on how severe I thought it would be. Given how the Chinese government freaked the fuck out when it was first reported, I assumed it was far more deadly than it ultimately turned out to be.
Anyway.
Let’s look at why, specifically, I think we have three options — autocracy, civil war or military junta — before us between now and January, 2025.
The United States is far less politically stable than we appear. The MAGA New Right talks openly about how liberals are “forcing” them to become radical fascists. They talk in sometimes not-so-vague terms about how soon enough they’re going to embrace fascism once and for all and it will be all liberals’ fault.
When you begin to accept that the Republican Party is now nothing more than a modern version of Slave Power that will stop at nothing to protect its interests, then, lulz, you have a recipe for disaster on your hands. The Republican Party has officially embraced autocracy and minority rule as its path to perpetual power from here on out.
What bothers me the most about Twitter liberals is they continue to frame the behavior of notable MAGA New Right elected as if we had a functioning liberal democracy. This, sadly, is not the case. The very thuggish, autocratic things that people like Ron DeSantis advocate are the very things that make them popular with the anti-democratic Trumplandia base.
Now, the ironic thing about all of this is Trump is such an idiot moron that he could very well, simply by existing be the thing that prevents us from peacefully transitioning into an autocracy in all but name. He’s so popular — and yet such a fucking idiot — that what should otherwise be a very easy political transition to autocracy on America’s part may turn into one of the other two options I keep thinking about: civil war or military junta.
The United States has been so stable for so long that it’s difficult to wrap one’s mind around the idea that there might be a civil war here. A lot of people simply can’t grok it as a possibly at all. And, yet, according to all the metrics I keep in my mind about such things a civil war is definitely among the three options we face.
And now, we come to the great irony of all of this — the very same macro trends that could lead us to civil war, autocracy or a military junta — could very well simply give the MAGA New Right everything it wants without destroying our democracy.
For the moment, the center-Left is divided, fractious and ineffectual. America has been drifting towards a more conservative political center for about 50 years now. There’s every reason to believe that the Republican Party — even with the browning of America — could dominate American politics within the context of American political tradition for at least another generation if not more.
But they’re fucking greedy and want an autocracy because they lost the culture wars and they want to “own” the libs once and for all.
And, yet, once the MAGA New Right make shit existential for Leftist soyboys, they could very well have a lot more kick in them than expected. It’s human nature. Let me repeat that: IT’S FUCKING HUMAN NATURE.
The MAGA New Right Red States could very well make the same mistake about the Blue States that the Axis Powers made about the United States in late 1941. Red States think Blue States are “degenerates” who will collapse the moment there’s any political violence.
Surprise! That’s not true!
And, yet, this all raises the issue — why am I so certain that one of three unthinkable options will happen between now and around January 2025.
Besides the glorification of political violence on the Right, the hardening of the political divide and the death of politics in general, I would point to the coordinated efforts on the part of the Republican Party at the state and local level to highjack any election result they don’t like.
Why give the Republican dominated legislature the right to take over local election certification if you don’t intend to use it? Why make it so fucking hard to vote if you don’t intend to abuse your ability to dissuade people from voting in general. I’m simply taking Republican anti-democratic moves both seriously and literally and then extrapolating from that.
A lot of the people who poo-poo my “doom shit” about our political future either refuse to realize that we’re no longer a functioning democracy or they would be the people who tuned out entirely once we become an autocracy and it becomes clear that it’s pointless to vote.
I’m beginning to think that maybe — just maybe — when we finally face the options of civil war or autocracy the U.S. Military will step in and tell everyone to cool it. We may live under military rule for a few months — years? — but in the end all that will happen is there will be a Constitutional Convention that sorts out all our structural issues and then we move on without a lot of bloodshed.
But, in general, the macro trends are definitely drifting towards Something Big happening no later than January 2025. At this point, in my mind, the biggest known unknown is if Trump will still be politically viable enough to fuck everything up so we start killing each other for political reasons.