Month: May 2022

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Jesus Christ, are we as a nation in trouble. These are the times that try men’s souls and all that. The key thing we have to understand is we’re an anocracy, not a democracy. We’re in between democracy and autocracy. This is when a country is most likely to have a civil war when it’s either transitioning into democracy or sliding into autocracy.

We, unfortunately, are sliding into autocracy.

Our form of autocracy will be white Christian minority rule. That’s the end game of what’s going on — white Christians will have a permanent strangle hold on national elections going forward and that will be that. We’ll become nothing more than a wealthy version of apartheid South Africa. White Christians will transform the United States into Trumplandia.

We will become identical to Russia in some form and lulz, sucks to be me since I’ve always been something of a loud mouth crank. I couldn’t shut up even if I wanted to, so…oh boy. A weaponized ICE — or whatever — is probably going to come after me at some point in the near-ish future.

Anyway, it’s eerie when your dark “terribly negative” fears about the nation you love so much begin to come true. Take, for instance, Michigan. It’s a crucial swing state each presidential cycle and recently Republicans replaced the people who certified Biden’s win in the state.

As such, it’s easy to imagine that MAGA Republicans are going to YOLO the 2024 election and steal it to the point whereby there is going to be serious, serious talk of some sort of secession among Blue States. Or, it could be that it’s even messier than that with there being coups and counter coups within state governments until the whole country collapses and we have a real knock down, drag out civil war that will leave us bombed into the Stone Age and take a generation to recover from, if we ever do.

Anyway, something’s gotta give. We can’t stay an anocracy forever.

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Way back when, there was thing dingus in Great Britain named Oswald Mosley who was Hitler’s “Man in London.” As I understand it, Mosley was a useful idiot who was laying in wait to be Hitler’s stooge in Britain should Operation Sealion have been successful.

Flashforward and growing numbers of elected Republicans are nothing more than useful idiots who will do whatever our Republican autocrat says whenever the time comes. Many, many Republicans — many of them Senators — are abjectly idiotic.

They got elected not only because they’re dumb, but they are willing to toe the MAGA New Right orthodox into the sun itself if need be. In other words, they’re willing to destroy the United States, burn it to the ground, turn it into Trumplandia in the name of their equally dumb god-king Trump.

But, really, this is just a setup for whenever an actual non-idiot MAGA autocrat becomes POTUS at some point. Of course, the other option is we have a fucking civil war and we bomb ourselves into the Stone Age. Yet, for the time being, I think it’s safe to say that we’re just going to slip peacefully into autocracy.

Something’s gotta give for me to think Blue States are going to put up any sort of fight when the time comes. In the end, America will be governed by a party full of Oswald Mosleys who step and fetch for the autocrat whenever he asks them to.

That’s the general trend at the moment, at least. There are macro trends at work in the United States that make me believe that this really is the twilight of America.

Around 2025, we’re going to be in a new era, one way or another.

By Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Man, oh, man, oh man. I’m getting nervous — and I mean really nervous — about What Happens Next for the United States. A number of different things are converging at the same time and will ultimately crash into each other around late 2024, early 2025.

Right now, two things are making me feel kind of jumpy.

The first is, the rush to control women’s bodies on the part of the entire Republican Party. When it becomes clear that abortion rights will be ended not just for poor women in Red States but wealthy liberal women in Blue states…that could knock the United States on the backfoot. If Blue States feel that the entirety of the Federal government wants them to “bend a knee” to MAGA…oh boy.

And then there is another element of America’s instability that is not as cut and dried on an economic basis — the rise of a MAGA New Right orthodoxy that is based exclusively on “owning” Blue States to the point that they’re blinded to the consequences of their actions.

In other words, Republicans for a variety of reasons keep catching the political car without — to date — any consequences. But there’s a chance that because of the passions of the 2024 presidential election that just might change.

Or not. It could be that we really are slouching towards autocracy and the whole thing will be a lulz. There will be a lot of talk about secession or civil war…but nothing will happen, nothing will come of it.

We’ll wake up 20 years from now and President DeSantis, or Hawley or Pompeo or whomever will be the only president that most Americans have ever known. They will be extremely powerful (probably because of a Constitutional Convention) and extremely wealthy because of graft. Form follows function, after all.

For the time being, I think it’s a safe bet that we’re just going to slip peacefully into autocracy. In the end, no later than 2042, we’re going to be politically identical to Russia.