by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
I’m still smarting from the “Mueller, She Wrote” Twitter account blocking me after accusing me of peddling “doom shit.” It bothers me because I struggle to see how, at this point, how that is the case.
In fact, my counter-argument is, a Twitter account inspired by the foolish early-Trump Era belief that a life-long conservatives Republican was some sort of liberal savior of the Republic needs to do some introspection. Much of the Trump Era was a bunch of high profile Twitter liberals sitting around hoping for, or telling us about a “boom” that was going to wrap this MAGA problem up and we were all in the Final Days of a nightmare.
Guess what!
All of that was naïve bullshit.
Mueller, in the end, did such a bad job by wrapping things up rather abruptly and taking too narrow a view of his mandate, that Trump turned around the day after his testimony to Congress and did something that go him impeached.
So, sadly, we have to put aside any foolish thoughts that a “boom” out of the blue is going to save jack squat, much less us.
We’re going to have to save ourselves. And, what’s worse, not only are radicalized Republicans attacking the basic machinery of elections on a tactical basis, they continue a macro, decades-long push to destroy our liberal democracy via gerrymandering and voter suppression. And, what’s even worse, autocracy is popular!
Republicans on a systemic level, are autocratic, anti-democratic fascists who have so glorified political violence that someone may take them up on all their bullshit and a lot of people will get hurt in a rather dramatic, 9/11-level type situation.
While the most obvious scenario is a lone-wolf blowing something important up like what happened in Oklahoma City, given how radicalized the Republican Party has become, it’s just as possible that whatever happens could be coordinated and happen at more than one location.
And I can tell you would would cause it: Republican rage at what they perceive as Biden’s COVID19 vaccine mandates. Just that added bit of pressure on our political system may be enough to cause something violent and dramatic to happen a lot sooner than one might think.
You would be amazed how many well meaning liberals I’ve spoken to who apparently still believe we’re going to be surprised by some combination of “booms,” rainbows, pixie dust and unicorn farts.
But instead of pinning all our hopes on something that is obviously not going to happen, we need to prepare for the worst. And that worst will be the existential choice of autocracy or civil war. I still don’t know which one we’re going to pick. But no one is going to save us.
The modern day Slave Power of the MAGA New Right is ascendant and if we turn into an autocracy the only question will be how bad it will get and how quickly. If it’s a civil war, well, we’re probably going to bomb ourselves into oblivion.
Just, please ,don’t rest your hopes on “booms.” We just don’t have the political will to do anything about Trump. And, even if we suddenly did, there are a dozen other would-be autocrats waiting to dive to finish the job he started. Things are bleak, really bleak and we’re being lulled into a false sense of security right now because we’re an autocracy without an autocrat.
Now, there are conservatives who would tell me that I’m being “hysterical” and simply say, “no, it’s not.” But your normal and I’m not. You have a family that loves you and I could walk off the face of the planet and almost no one would care. We’ll see who’s right in the end. What do I get if it turns out I’m not being “hysterical” after all? A prize?
Or a bullet in the back of the head from an ICE agent?
