by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
Let’s look at what — apparently — the two sides fear when it comes to our political future.
Red (MAGA New Right)
From what I can tell, when the autocracy comes most of the MAGA New Right will either be oblivious or not give a shit. After all, an autocracy ensures they get what they want for the foreseeable future. Reds are, however, touchy about the idea that people like me will be able to point to the autocracy and say, “I was right. We have an autocracy.” So, in a sense, they want it both ways — they want to destroy America and establish permanent white minority rule, but they don’t want anyone to talk about it. (Which, I guess, is natural for an autocracy run by a minority.)
Also, Reds have a severe abstract fear of being canceled. They think, by definition, that being conservative risks having their lives destroyed by not following the evil Blue-Liberal-Progressive Media Narrative.
I’m a fact-based person and there is some validity to this fear. But to believe that we have more to fear from woke corporations than from a future MAGA New Right autocratic government is a huge stretch.
It all boils down to traditional conservatives on a basic level hate anything and I mean ANYTHING that doesn’t fit THEIR media narrative generated, at its heart, by News Corp’s bullshit. They usually won’t admit that their talking points come from FOX News or the WSJ Editorial Page – they can get really worked up about that, in fact — but those talking points are just that, talking points. Regardless of where they came from.
Or, put another way, traditional not-MAGA conservatives feel, becuase of negative polarization, that they don’t have anywhere to turn other than the fascist MAGA New Right and so, in the end, they’ll just be Good Germans while people like me who won’t shut up will get a bullet to the head by an ICE agent.
Whenever I mention this, I’m called hysterical. Conservatives are just not willing to give any credence to my very concrete fears that because I won’t fucking shut up no matter WHO tells me to do so “for the sake of the family” that in the end they’re going to weigh their personal blood connection to me with the demands of a MAGA autocratic state.
By the time they get around to figuring out which thing is more important, I’m dead in a ditch somewhere not being “hysterical” anymore because I’m fucking dead.
And, yet, because those are Blue abstract fears, the Reds I know lulz them all.
Blue
Now, the issue is, I’m not all that liberal-progressive. But I am extremely anti-MAGA New Right. Even though I burn with a white hot rage against the MAGA New Right, on a practical level, I see conservatism as a perfectly legitimate political force in the United States.
What I can’t stand, however, is the MAGA New Right’s coy embrace of fascism that they sell to conservatives by telling them their lives are going to be destroyed by Cancel Culture or that their children will hate them because they were taught Critical Race Theory.
The MAGA New Right is based on a lie that, at its heart, is inspired by conservative white people on a macro basis being afraid of losing power as America grows more and more brown. (Oh my God, have I discovered Critical Race Theory?)
The interesting thing about the attack on Critical Race Theory on the part of the MAGA New Right is they want to make ANY discussion of the influence of race on American politics soooooo fucking loaded and touchy that you can’t even have a conversation about it with someone who doesn’t politically agree with you. Remember, the more traditional “tolerant democracy” politics locks up, the more power the MAGA New Right gets.
So while conservatives are freaking the fuck out about “woke corporations” the MAGA New Right is destroying the very basic fabric of the democracy we’ve enjoyed for 240 years and, by the way, America is a republic not a democracy so fuck you, lib.
I have repeatedly admitted that I was wrong about Trump — not that that has mattered any. Libs are always wrong and they’re going to hell, to, so lulz. I was wrong about Trump because he talked like an autocrat but in the end could not follow through.
But, on an systemic level, the Republican Party is now autocratic so, lulz, the moment they have power again — no matter how they get it — they will make it so they never fucking ever leave power again. When every election you have is existential, that’s not a great sign for your republic — or democracy.
In the end, what I think is going to happen is a lot of anti-MAGA thinkers (both liberal-progressives and #NeverTrumpers) are going to grow hysterical as we slip peacefully into autocracy. And that will be that. The media will be purged, I will be “right” but in the end because the personal lives of the conservaives I know won’t change — in fact, they’ll be happier — then, well, that’s it.
They might grow alarmed when I get “disappeared ” buy they tried to tell me near the end that things had changed and…I just wouldn’t shut up about how President DeSantis is a fucking cocksucker. What else did I expect was going to happen?
