by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
I’m beginning to wonder if maybe all my jokes about the bolts popping off the United States should be taken a bit more seriously. It definitely feels as if we’ve reached a new era of lawlessness. If it’s not Trump being above the law, it’s people jumping onto stage to attack performers.
If my history serves me correctly, the vibe was similar in the late 1850s. People definitely had a sense that the country was tearing itself apart. The issue is, we need to come to grips with the idea that we’re on a historic macro political “vibe shift” one way or another between now and about 2025.
I can’t predict the future, so I don’t know what it’s going to be, but Something Big is on its way. As I keep saying, I think it’s an existential choice of autocracy or civil war around 2024 – 2025.
I vacillate widely between thinking we’re going to have a civil war and thinking we’re just going to give up and become an autocracy. I honestly don’t know which one is going to happen.
But I will say that SCOTUS is doing us no favors one way or another by overturning Roe. Doing so, in hindsight, could very well be seen as something similar to the Dred Scott decision that definitely was a ping from a civil war about to come.
And, remember, there is, in fact, an economic element to Roe being overturned. If Republicans get greedy and try to turn not just Red States into an anti-feminist dystopian hellscape, oh boy. If it becomes apparent to enough people in, say, California that all three branches are in permanent, firm control of MAGA then there is at least a non-zero chance of a secession crisis that would lead to a civil war.
But l honestly don’t know. It really could go either way.
I think some of the resistance to taking the idea of a Second American Civil War seriously is it just is difficult for the average person to process. People think I’m being hysterical and “terribly negative” because they have a basic belief in the system.
But just look around. Anything to do with Trumplandia is above the law. Trump and his entire coterie keep breaking the law and nothing happens. That makes every0ne — even if it’s subconsciously — begin to think that our systems of law don’t mean anything.
And, really, it could go either way — either we slide peacefully into a Russian-style autocracy and we no longer have to worry about things seeming to fall apart, or things completely fall apart into violent chaos and we only return to “normal” after the end of a civil war.
Don’t know which one we’re going to choose. The next indication of what’s going to happen will be when the overturn of Roe officially goes into effect. If liberals freak out in the real world instead of just being keyboard warriors, then maybe a civil war is more likely to happen than autocracy.
Then the next test will be what happens with the 2022 midterms.
Either outcome could cause a massive clusterfuck. If Republicans lose, they could get so mad that there is significant violence. If Democrats lose because of the administration of elections is now officially corrupt, then, too, there is a chance that will que up violence as soon as 2023.
Just don’t know.
