by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
At the moment, I believe the United States will have one last democratic death rattle in 2024 – 2025 and then slip peacefully into autocracy. The MAGA New Right is ascendant and democracy itself is now seen through the prism of partisan politics.
Add to this the dearth of any form of principled leadership within Blue ranks and it seems that while there will be a lot of angry Twitter threads as our democracy finally dies, in the end, nothing much in the real world — where it matters — will be done about it.
For the first few months, nothing much will change in real terms. Republicans will gloat about being in power again and the autocrat (whomever that may be) will begin, slowly, but surely to use the levers of power to consolidate power. Gradually, in fits and starts, the United States will gradually come to resemble Hungary if we’re lucky and Russia if we’re not.
The big issue of 2025 – 2029 may be the autocrats demand that we have a Constitutional Convention to “pass a balanced budget amendment.” It may be that this happens a lot later than I believe, for no other reason than there will be no need — Peter Thiel and other MAGA-friendly plutocrats will be given free reign to buy up whatever media companies they need to. This will be an end-run around freedom of speech guarantees.
The media will be purged soon enough and politics simply won’t be discussed in late night or anywhere else for that matter. CNN and MSNBC will become “NewsNation” clones, dedicated to bothsidesing things to the point that they no longer can tell the difference between the truth and a lie.
I believe all this because, like I said, there just isn’t any Blue leadership at the moment. And what Blue leadership there is, is actually anti-Trump Republicans like Liz Cheney. So, lulz. AOC is too young and too unserious at the moment to rise to the occasion like we need her to.
All of this is not abstract to me because I fucking refuse to shut up. I have had the luxury of being a drunk loudmouth in a Western democracy all my life. When that freedom of speech no longer exists, then, fuck the autocrat and fuck you if you support them.
I’m willing to ride that particular pony to the bottom, whatever the consequences in the real world may be.
