by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
I like to pride myself in having a fairly large vocabulary, so to learn that there is a word for what I’ve been calling the United States “an autocracy without an autocrat” gives me a word boner. I had no idea that the word “anocracy” was a thing, but, lulz ,it is.
I learned this word from Barbara F. Walters, who wrote a book I bought pre-release, “How Civil Wars Start.” It comes out on the 11th and I’m waiting with baited breath to read it. Anyway, being an “anocracy” is one of the preconditions of civil war — with you’re not a democracy yet not yet an autocracy.
Which perfectly sums up what the United States is at the moment.
I’m sure there’s a lot of political theory that explains in technical detail what a fucking clusterfuck in the United States finds itself in, but all I know is America is no longer a democracy at the moment. We’re living in a historical quirk caused by Trump not being a Great Man, but rather nothing more than an avatar, a vessel for white Christian fear and rage over the browning of America.
As I’ve said before, while I’m really looking forward to Ms. Walters book, I disagree with her on the nature of any coming Second American Civil War. She’s assuming that it will come from Reds who start some sort of rolling political violence like The Troubles of Northern Ireland. That only makes sense if, say, Trump peacefully shuffles off this mortal coil at some point between now and 2024.
But the MAGA New Right is ascendant and they would have no reason to do that if they are able to, through or through crook, get presidential power again in 2024. As such, it makes a lot more sense that if will be Blues, at the state level — probably starting with California — that will leave the Union and start a civil war.
Or not. The MAGA New Right is so popular, in real terms, that it’s possible that Trump — or whatever other autocrat gets the historical gig — will win fair and square and we don’t even put up a fight. We slip peacefully from anocracy into an illiberal autocracy.
At the moment, I don’t know which scenario is going to come true. It really could go either way. All I know, as I keep saying, is something’s gotta give. We can’t stay in this half-world of anocracy forever. This is the twilight of the Second American Republic.
The Second American Republic is on its last legs. The question is, do we have a civil war and found a Third American Republic, or do we just become, on a political basis, a clone of Russia?
Only time will tell.
