by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
The center, at last, has not held. There is no middle ground. Either you’re with Them or Us. Either you’re MAGA or you’re not. I say this because I find myself growing annoyed with some of the center-Left orthodoxy and not really finding any options.
I know what I’m experiencing — negative polarization.
So, I guess it happens to people who anti-MAGA, too. As such, I don’t have much recourse when I grow alarmed at how some elements of the anti-MAGA movement take the most absolute extreme position and then I have to defend it because, well, there’s simply no room for nuance or subtly in American political discourse.
But I’ve picked my side and I’m holding to it. And the chief reason I fucking hate MAGA with a white hot rage is that to be MAGA is to deny reality. When you’re entire political world view is so fucked up that you ascribe superhuman qualities to a ding-dong like Trump, well, you got yourself a fucking problem.
Or, put another way, when “owning the libs” is, unto itself, the core of what you believe politically, that’s not something I can really get behind. In fact, it makes my skin crawl. That’s not a political philosophy, that’s a grunt.
And yet, here we are.
I know people like to say I peddle “hysterical doom shit,” but as we careening closer and closer to the existential choice of autocracy or civil war starting as early as January 2023, I don’t know what else to peddle. The United States is tearing itself apart and an alarming rate and for me, the only question at this point is when the crisis finally comes, do we just shrug and slip peacefully into autocracy or do we have a civil war.
At the moment, it definitely seems like we’re just going to slip peacefully into autocracy. Initially, nothing will change, but gradually, over the course of a few years, America will turn into a political clone of Russia and for a lot of conservative Traditionalists, the only line they have about it will be personal. They will only care about the change in American life when somehow, someway someone in their life crosses the autocrat and they have to deal with it.
Otherwise, lulz. The libs will finally be owned and there will, at last, be no risk of someone being “canceled” simply for being conservative.
