by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
We’re now almost exactly a year away from one of the most election days in American history. At the moment, it seems, we’re careening towards a crisis not seen since 1860. This crisis could manifest itself in one of several ways.
The most obvious way is, lulz, we simply drift into autocracy with our eyes wide open and shrug as we transition from the halfway situation of being an “anocracy” to full blown autocracy. Trump is re-elected, he goes full tyrant and there’s no reaction on the part of the majority of the population. Of course, that doesn’t mention the 1 million smug Twitter liberals who will flee the country en masse as soon as it’s clear Trump is going to transition us into autocracy.
That scenario, for the time being, seems to be the most likely one.
Alas, there are some other, far darker scenarios that we have to contend with.
One scenario is Trump is re-elected, goes full tyrant and, well, he gets so absolutely bad that there is some sort of “Glorious Revolution” on the part of the populace — maybe with the help of the U.S. Military. I could see the organizers of such a coup using a novel — to say the least — interpretation of the 14th Amendment insurrection clause to kick Trump to the curb by saying he was never legitimately president to begin with.
That might be the legal fig leaf that would allow the New Patriots to get the job done and still be able to sleep at night. But there would be a spectrum with this scenario, with there being a “light touch” revolt that has the specific aim of getting rid of Trump all the way to a far more general collapse of the country because MAGA freaks out.
But, wait, there’s more.
Another situation would be Trump loses, and starts to demand a National Divorce with the specific intent of him personally avoiding going to jail. Then we have a repeat of 1860-1861 with states leave the Union one by one and a massive fucking clusterfuck.
Meanwhile, there is a small chance that rather than wait until Trump goes full tyrant, Blues freak out and do something akin to a civil war / revolution of their own starting as soon as Trump is named the winner.
But my thinking on this has evolved. I no longer think that Blues would cause a civil war. A revolution, maybe, but not a civil war. It’s just the temperament of Blues to want to start a new nation. Blues like me just want to reform and remake the nation that we have.
One last thing — never underestimate the possibility that Reds will, once Trump is in office, begin the process of calling a Constitutional Convention. I think that’s a real possibility.
Anyway. Good luck. You’ve got a year. Use it wisely.
