Month: September 2021

The Ballad Of Norm Ornstein


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Norm Ornstein is starting to become my hero. Whenever I hear him on Deep State Radio, he says exactly what I think about the potential fate of our liberal democracy.

Norm Ornstein

And, really, in the end, our best case scenario could be that people like he and I will scream bloody murder when the autocracy finally arrives…but the final transition will be peaceful and largely unnoticed by the average person. It will simply be taken for granted by the typical American that Republicans are always in control and always will be in control no matter what.

And then they stop voting.

Then, gradually, the darker sides of autocracy will begin to pop out simply because form follows function. The media will be purged. The disconnect between the will of the people and the actions of the government will grow very, very severe. People will be — no joke — pushed out of windows for not shutting up. People like me and Mr. Ornstein.

But plutocrats will still be able to get abortions for their mistresses. They won’t pay taxes at all — that will be only for The Poors. In fits and starts, over a generation or so the Untied States and Russia will, on a political level, become indentical.

And people like myself and Mr. Ornstein will either get pushed out a window, get exiled or we’ll be allowed to continue to rant in a rage about how the America that we all once knew and loved is no more.

Or we have a civil war.

At the moment, however, I think the dark fears I share with Mr. Ornstein will happen peacefully because Americans generally are a pretty copasetic bunch –we’re not French, after all — and the Establishment will be so co-opted by our new autocratic overloads that they will have every reason to tell the masses not to freak out when the inevitable MAGA New Right Constitutional Convention is called.

We’ve got a good, solid 20 years before the whole push people out of windows for political reasons thing will happen (I hope.) Enjoy these remaining years of freedom while they last.

Second American Civil War Scenario 1: The Scalia Endgame


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

There are a lot of ways the United States might have something akin to a civil war — or at least severe, rolling political violence on a national scale — and so I’m going to write a post for each of the different scenarios I can think up. In this scenario, Republicans freak out because one of their important political figures simply shuffles peacefully off this mortal coil.

People just don’t appreciate how on edge the United States is a politically right now. All we would need for significant political violence is some unexpected additional pressure.

So, in this scenario, that added pressure comes from someone like Trump — or Justice Thomas (to a far lesser extent) — gently, and peacefully leaving the land of the living.

The only reason why Thomas might be enough is, well, the country is primed and ready for a national freak out and the MAGA New Right is such a fucking bunch of crybabies that even being down one on SCOTUS might be enough to get them to run around murdering people for political reasons.

But it’s Trump we have to worry about.

If you look at the batshit insane rantings of the MAGA New Right on Twitter, they’re pretty much on a knife’s edge when it comes to political reasons to murder people. And, yet, other than the dramatic exception of January 6th, to date, they’ve been all talk. They, in an abstract, manner, want to murder people like me, but, lulz.

And, yet, since there is absolutely no way the MAGA New Right would ever, for any reason accept that The Dear Leader is mortal and just dropped dead of natural causes, there’s every reason to believe that significant, rolling political violence would occur if Trump proved he wasn’t really the Son Of Man after all.

It’s this scenario that would be closest to the “revolution” that MAGA people keep searching for when the endup at this site. (Sidenote: FUCK YOU, MAGA, YOU BUNCH OF COCKSUCKERS.)

Anyway, the point is — America’s political system is so fragile, so on edge that any additional pressure on it might push it over the edge into the realm of violence on a national scale.