Ender

Wargaming Our 2025 Fourth Turning Clusterfuck

by Ender

I don’t know what to tell you, folks. I still can’t get a handle on what’s going to happen in the 2024- 2025 timeframe. Are we going to slip peacefully into autocracy or we going to go tits up? At the moment, I lean heavily towards our democracy having one last death rattle and we become an autocracy.

I say that because, at the moment, the people who should be preparing for autocracy are still stuck in an extreme online naivety about what’s going on. I’ve started to listen to Steve K. Bannon’s hysterical podcast — featuring Peter Navarro! — and it’s pretty clear he wants to sucker punch us all in the real world where it counts.

He’s not even on fucking Twitter (thank God) and yet growing numbers of people are taking his marching orders. And, I think, that is the reason why we won’t have a civil war. It really would take a come-to-Jesus moment for a lot of very otherwise level headed people for the Blue States to strike back when Bannon’s plot works and it has become impossible for us to administer free and fair elections.

But I will note that we all need to start thinking on an existential basis. This is very much the quiet before the storm, in a sense. I will also note that I’m wrong all the fucking time. I’ve been so wrong — especially about how effective as an autocrat Trump would be — that I think the issue is more one of perception more than anything else.

The thing I compare America to is the Roman Empire. The Romans never had an actual “king” and when the Lombards named a king, that was the end of the Western Empire. So, too, Americans feel that some form of free democracy is their birth right and the idea of the United States being nothing more than an autocratic Russia clone is not something that would sit well with the average American.

So, it’s very possible that — at first, at least — we will fit the technical definition of an autocracy, on a practical level the average person will just shrug and not even notice that anything has changed. It won’t be until President DeSantis (or whomever) has had a few years to consolidate power that we all wake up and the issue of the day is if we should have a Constitutional Convention or not. Or, even more ominous, it won’t even be if we should, but what the one we’ve called has decided to do.

There are so many known unknowns right now about the Fourth Turning that I just can’t wargame things out with any degree of certainty. All I know is the conditions are there for either civil war or autocracy (and maybe a military junta).

Or, to say it another way — the United States is going through an lingering existential crisis with no ready endgame. It could go either way at the moment. I’m leaning towards a peaceful transition to autocracy. That seems a pretty safe bet right now.

But there is plenty of time for the specifics of the political equation to change in some pretty shocking ways. As such, we could very well have an actual hot Second American Civil War that would, in turn, lead to the Third World War and billions dead as the result of several limited nuclear exchanges across the globe.

It’s going to fucking suck.

I hate violence, so I’d much rather we slip into autocracy. I’m survivor, I’ll think of something. But I’m also not going to be cowed by threats of a civil war by the fucking cocksucker MAGA New Right.

Bring it.

Apostate Republicans Will Lead The Blue States To Victory In The Second American Civil War

by Ender

It’s becoming more and more clear to me that the modern day War Democrats of The Lincoln Project et al will be the leadership of the Blue States if we have a Second American Civil War.

While there are plenty of great center-Left leaders who would rise to the occasion if the shit hit the fan, it’s a tough-as-nails broad like Liz Cheney who will get the fucking job done. I don’t know how it would work, but if we reach a point where the United States is actively attacking itself in a civil war, then principled leadership will rise to the top.

As such, I suspect that ultimately, it won’t be AOC who leads Blue States, but someone like Cheney. There will be endless howls at first from Leftists at such a “betrayal” but when Cheney proves she’s an American Iron Lady they will shut up. I love you, AOC, babe, but you’re still too young, too unfocused and too unserious to get us through a fucking civil war.

U.S. Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) delivers an opening statement during the opening hearing of the U.S. House (Select) Committee investigating the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, on July 27, 2021 at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC. During its first hearing the committee, currently made up of seven Democrats and two Republicans, will hear testimony from law enforcement officers about their experiences while defending the Capitol from the pro-Trump mob on January 6. (Photo by Jim Bourg-Pool/Getty Images)

Cheney, meanwhile, is locked and loaded to destroy the MAGA New Right with everything she’s got.

And it won’t just be Cheney. If things grow existential, most of the Blue State leadership will probably eventually be NeverTrumpers. It will be extremely ironic and probably cause some surreal post-war events as everything snaps back into place, but in the moment of crisis, it will get the job done.

But I’m still being very speculative. It could be that we don’t have a civil war and we simply slip peacefully into autocracy. People like Cheney are either arrested, pushed out a window or exiled and that will be that.

It really could go either way at the moment.

The Electoral College Is Obscuring The Severity Of Our Current Crisis

by Ender

It’s difficult to make a one-to-one comparison between the modern United States and early 30s Germany for one crucial reason: Germany was a parliamentary system, while the United States has an presidential system based on balance of powers and an Electoral College.

A more honest depiction of the American political system on the ground would show the American Fascist Party being the biggest party, only countered — at the moment — by a large center-Left coalition. If we had a parliamentary system like German, we would all be freaking the fuck out a lot more because it would be a lot more obvious how dire our situation is.

The Democratic Party is really a center-Left coalition of anti-fascist parties, socialists, moderates, Labor, etc. That’s why it’s so difficult to get the party to do anything — it’s not even really a party, but a jumble of different smaller parties fused together because of how we election our presidents.

Or, put another way — the Electoral College, on a systemic level, is luling us into a false sense of security. It’s difficult for us to comprehend that one of the two major political parties in the United States no longer believes in democracy and are hell bent on establishing an autocratic White Christian ethno state. They will stop at nothing to do this, to the point that they would rather wreck the world economy than have any form of bipartisanship.

Politics is now dead in the United States. In a post-political environment, you’re pretty much just waiting for some sort of crisis to spark some sort of violent historical event be it revolution or civil war.

Also, note that if we were a parliamentary system it would be a lot more clear how dire things are because it would be growing more and more difficult for us to form a government. What the fascists GQP New Right Republicans are doing with the debt ceiling would have an immediate effect as opposed to causing a crisis that would only be felt at the polls in about a year.

The point is — the United States is far, far more unstable than you might think. At the moment, the only thing holding the country together is, well, the political system that the Electoral College mandates. That’s why the next crisis will be severe and it will happen either in 2022 or 2024.

Things are dark.

‘Probability of a Second American Civil War’

by Ender

People keep showing up at this site thinking about civil war and or revolution and I’ve decided to answer these searches each time I get one. So, let’s, again, address the probability of a Second American Civil War.

At the moment, the probability of a Second American Civil war is greater than zero. The question is not so much if one will happen, it’s if it is going to happen, when is it going to happen? For the time being, there are so many known unknowns that I can’t tell you one way or another if we’re going to slip peacefully into autocracy or we’re going to have a Second American Civil War. There are too many issues to be settled first.

Of course, it is possible that something out of the blue could force the issue and the country buckles rather abruptly for no other reason than, well, lulz, the MAGA New Right is already locked and loaded to murder like me in cold blood because I have “forced” them to.

But, at the moment, it could go either way. Either we slip peacefully into an autocracy wereby it’s Conventional Wisdom that Republicans will always be in power, no matter what, or the country collapses and we bomb the fuck out of ourselves because…Cancel Culture?

One thing that is not going to happen — our continued muddling through from crisis to crisis. I say this because the Republican Party, on a systemic level, is now a radical fascist organization that is only tempered by it being American. If it was in any other country, it would already be pushing journalists out of helicopters by now.

I do think, however, that things are moving faster than I expected. I don’t know what I feel, but I definitely feel a quickening. We’re racing towards a very dark future and I’m beginning to believe — somehow — we won’t make it to 2024 – 2025. That the decision might be made for us before then.

If we’re lucky, however, we still have a few more years to figure out what we’re going to do when face with either autocracy or civil war.

‘Be Prepared’

by Ender

They say you go bankrupt gradually, then all at once and as such, I suggest you begin some sort of worst case scenario survival strategy. It could be that I’m way overthinking things and it’s the “autocracy” option instead of civil war that happens. So you won’t have much to worry about in 2025 as long as you keep your head down. And don’t rant about what a fucking cocksucker our new autocrat overlord is like I will.

As I keep saying, autocracy is so popular in the United States at the moment that we’re an autocracy without an autocrat.

And, but for Trump running for office again in 2024, we probably will avoid any major bloodshed, other than the blood of Lady Liberty’s slit throat rushing around our legs as Josh Hawley (or whomever) is sworn in on January 20th, 2025.

But Trump definitely seems as though he’s running again and he is such a fucking human political catastrophe that the United States may very well bomb itself into the Stone Age because of him, specifically, being the guy tasked by history to end our Republic.

He’s so fucking bad at even the most basic elements of autocracy that when the time comes for him to push off the cliff, he figures out some way whereby we turn around a fight back because we realize, at last, that we have it within our power to do so.

As such, you need to think about packing a bug out bag. Start getting the lay of the land around where you live. Do you know your neighbors? How well? Which ones have guns? What are their political views? How vocal about those views are they? How difficult will it be to get any medicines you need? What’s your Red Line for a freak out? What do you do, specifically, when you cross it?

I go on walks around my neighborhood on a regular basis and I’ve begun to imagine what might happen if things grew, uh, existential.

At the moment, we have a long time — a few years — to prepare for such an epic clusterufuck. And, yet, it’s also easy to imagine things getting extremely existential extremely quickly if there was some sort of unexpected domestic 9/11 attack that gave the MAGA New Right cocksuckers the in they needed to attempt to enforce Trumplandia upon us.

But a lot is up in the air. There are too many known unknowns as about and when we make the choice of autocracy or civil war. All I know is I can feel the cold, dark waters of an existential choice beginning to lap over my feet. As such, I’ve decided — again — to start reading books on the Civil War era and the rise of the Nazis in 1930s Germany.

That way, at least, I can have some sense in my mind of knowing how and when things are so fucked that I’m going to have to make some pretty deep decisions one way or another. And, sadly, so will all of us.

America’s Downward Spiral: I’m A Survivor

by Ender

I have long said that if The End comes, I’ll either be the first person to die on the first day or I’ll help bring back civilization. I made that joke for years, not thinking that maybe I might have to put it to the test in a deadly serious manner. Because, lulz, guess what — we’re in an existential crisis in the United States right now.

We’re careening towards a dark, dark future of either autocracy or civil war. At the moment, I still don’t know which one we’re going to end up with. But unless something Really Big happens and we have some sort of temporary military junta instead — we’re either going to slip peacefully into autocracy or bomb ourselves into the Stone Age.

If you don’t see this, you’re either willfully delusional, oblivious or in denial.

Thankfully, we have a few years to plot how freedom loving people are going to handle Steve Bannon’s tyrannical machinations. He’s doing it in the open and, honestly, he’s just playing a historical function — it could be anybody who was doing what he’s doing. He’s just the guy fate picked to have Trump’s ear.

One thing I have to stress is, a lot hinges on Trump running or not. If he doesn’t run, then we pick a peaceful slide into autocracy. And, for a lot of people who find autocracy appealing, once we live in an autocracy, they won’t even notice any difference. They can finally sleep soundly at night knowing the libs are, at last, owned for good and the Cancel Culture terror that “real” America has faced has ended.

It won’t be until much laters, when they, personally, have to deal with the downside of autocracy that they might grumble to those close to them that they regret being Good Germans. But by then, it will be way, way too late — especially for people like me.

But let’s say Trump does run in 2024. If he does, in my view, it won’t be so much that he runs as who he picks as his veep. His first decision will be, of course, does he co-op Ron DeSantis, or does he shiv him politically? If he shivs him politically, the case could be made that Gen. Mike Flynn would be exactly the type of wing nut that Trump would pick as his veep, because, well, Trump will be 80 or so in 2025 and who else to play America’s Putin, but a fucking traitor like Gen. Flynn?

And, yet, the real issue will be what a fucking catastrophe the 2024 presidential cycle is going to be. It’s not going to be a free and fair election because of fucking Steve Bannon and, as such, if we have Trump running around being an idiot, that, in itself, could be just the right amount of added pressure on our already rotting, fragile political system to cause us to buckle.

How do I plan to survive this?

Well, 2024 – 2025 is ways down the road and lot could change in my personal life by that point. But, in general, I’m probably follow the huge mass of humanity leave the South for the safer Northeastern states. I’m just going to follow them north to somewhere like NYC.

This is all very back-of-the-envelope, but I guess what I’m tell you, is either get a passport and leave the country or move to a state that fits your political views. Then hunkerdown and wait for the end of the United States as we know it.

Again — I don’t work for VOX, I don’t produce Tik-Toks with sharp received English vocal fry and I have no idea what you should do between now and 2024 to save yourself and the people you love.

You’re smart, you can figure it out.

But, for me, specifically, I’m on a hair trigger to start figuring out how, on a personal level, I can get out of where I live in Virginia. My sate is one of several that would likely collapse in the event of a severe Constitutional Crisis and my politics don’t fit the part of the state where I live.

And, yet, I won’t go anywhere unless something concrete has already happened. For instance, some sort of infrastructure designed to support domestic political refugees like me.

All I know is, I have a number of talents and when things grow existential, I might have an opportunity to shine.

Are Steve Bannon & The MAGA New Right Making A Fatal Strategic Miscalculation About The 2022 Midterms?

by Ender

It’s occured to me that I may be so wrapped up with my “hysterical doom shit” for what might happen in 2024-2025, that I’ve totally missed something: Steve Bannon’s plans to end free and fair elections in the United States will ready by 2022.

It could be that Bannon’s plan is to strike not in 2024, but in 2022.

I could see this making a lot of sense to Bannon because if he can pull it off and nothing of note happens because of it, then no matter how idiotic Trump is in 2024, our peaceful transition to autocracy will be a foregone conclusion.

This if that was his plan, it’s high risk, high reward.

It’s high risk because it would be something of a sucker punch, and, as such, it’s possible not even the corporate shills of Morning Joe (or whatever) would be able to calm the populace down should it become clear that the will of the people has been obstructed through extremely brazen corruption of the system.

I don’t know how exactly it would play out, but Bannon gets his way and on a systemic level there is wide spread nullification of Democrat wins because of “corruption” then…oh boy. That would really up the ante on political violence which would, in turn, be something the new MAGA GQP New Right Congress could use to go after the Biden / Harris Adminstration.

Or something.

The point is — we have to stop assuming it will be 2024-2025 that we have to worry about. The Fourth Turning might happen a lot sooner than we think.

I Haven’t Been This Spooked For America’s Geopolitical Future Since COVID19 Broke Out In Wuhan

by Ender

I got a lot wrong about the COVID19 pandemic when COVID was first reported in Wuhan. The biggest thing I got wrong was how deadly it would be. Given the first reports of how much of a freakout the Chinese government was going through, I assumed we were in for The Stand levels of death ahead of us. I remember going to the grocery story and imagining what it would be like to rummage for food there in some sort of post-apocalyptic, COVID ravaged world.

Things turned out to be bad, but not that bad.

The worst we had was a run on toilet paper, of all things.

I went to the grocery store today and it wasn’t COVID I was worried about, it was a Second American Civil War.

I looked at the bountiful shelves of food and products and wondered if one day — probably at some point after January 2025 — I would walk into the same grocery story and there….just wouldn’t be anything there because the country had imploded into civil war.

This particular dark vision isn’t months away, but years away. And it’s only one of several potential options ahead of us. But for Trump running again, it’s easy to imagine my fears of political violence around January 2025 being way, way overblown.

All things being equal, if Trump isn’t the Republican nominee in 2024, it’s very easy to see us simply slipping peacefully into autocracy. The trains will continue to run on time, if you will.

But Trump definitely seems like he’s going to run again and, as such, the likelihood that he, through sheer idiotic incompetence will push the United States into civil war grows to at least 50 /50, if not more. And, what’s worse, the case could be made that it won’t even be the 2024 presidential cycle that does it, but the 2022 mid-term cycle.

I say this because Steve Bannon et al are aggressively working to corrupt the institutions associated with what we take for granted in the United States — the administration of free and fair elections. It’s at least possible that if it’s widely believed that the 2022 midterms were corrupt that a civil war could break out then, not as part of the 2024-2025 post-election day shenanigans that I fear.

And all of this is largely being planned in broad daylight. Bannon is organizing the staffing of election boards across the nation with insane, bonkers Big Lie advocates who might get a little bit too big for their britches in 2022 and push us into a civil war two years earlier than I currently expect.

Because, make no mistake, Bannon and his toadies are recalibrating from the failure of the January 6th Insurrection. It’s possible that they might concluded that if there’s no sexxy TV footage of people going nuts and storming the Capitol, that the talking heads of MSM will lulz things.

This seems dubious to me, but it’s that type of miscalculation that starts wars — civil or otherwise.

But there are too many known unknowns right now. Things could go a lot of different ways. I would suggest you start to think about 2022, and not 2024-2025 being the Fourth Turning, however.

We Need A ‘United Front’ To Combat Bannon’s Efforts To Be The Doula Of Tyranny

by Ender

Steve Bannon is full of shit. But, so am I at times. It’s eerie to me how similar Bannon and I are when it comes to our fascination with wargaming. At the moment, Bannon is on the march. The nebulous group of agitators he leads are destroying the institution we use to elect people in our previously free-and-fair elections.

And because we’re letting him do this in broad daylight, he has a huge advantage. No one is going to stop him. By the time 2024 rolls around, all the conditions will be there for us to slip peacefully into autocracy. But, of course, for one thing — if Donald Trump runs again, then, we’re probably going to have a civil war.

So, if anyone would listen to me — which they won’t — here’s what I would do in response. Lean into the passion, leadership and vision of the people associated with The Lincoln Project. (I’m not unaware of their lingering scandals, etc, but I’m working with what I got.) Then you get the usual Deep State Radio podcast folks and the Crooked Media folks to form a United Front with them

Then you plot.

Once you establish that because of Bannon’s tyrannical machinations that we’re at the very beginning of a severe political crisis, we need to stop dicking around. If we can get some concrete nation-wide plans organized for what we’re going to do when the entire election system fails us in 2024, we’ll at least be a lot better off than we would be if we just wait for Bannon’s evil little baby of Trumplandia to be born.

They key thing is — stop relying upon hope. Trump has proven time and again that if you rely upon “hope” to fix him as a problem, you’re suffering from a mixture of denial and delusion.

The first order of business for this proposed United Front would be what to do at the critical juncture in the 2024-2025 timeframe when we face autocracy or civil war. And if it looks like the country is — gulp — going to actually descend into civil war (ugh) what will Blue State war aims be?

I only stress this because Bannon has specific war aims for any civil war. It’s all they fucking talk about these days! They want to establish a white, autocratic Christian ethno state of “blood and soil” where scary brown people controlled and women know their “place.”

Instead of waiting for the civil war to start, the United Front needs to game out the ideology of the Blue States, now. What would the Fight To Save The Union be about? What would be for? Who would be good political leaders in such a crisis for Blue States to rely upon on an existential level?

For no other reason than it gives me some sense of empowerment, I’m probably going to spend way too much mental energy thinking up what all those goals should be in the coming days.

Trump Is Definitely Fucking With Texas

by Ender

For all their talk about “don’t mess with Texas,” it sure looks like Texas Republicans are letting Trump grab them by the pussy. Hell, maybe even do some butt stuff before it’s over with.

I once read a great book about how Huey Long (who was a far better autocrat than Trump has ever been) had near-dictatorial control over the politics of Louisiana during the Great Depression. In modern day Texas, it seems when Trump says “jump,” Texas Republicans are already jumping like they’re Trump’s bitch.

Here’s what I believe is going on — Texas has all the problems of the United States in micro. Texas is shifting blue because of changes in demographics and this is causing a great deal of existential insecurity on the part of Texas Republicans. In short — there is no such thing as a moderate Texas Republican now. The entire Texas Republican Party, on a systemic basis, has radicalized to the point that Trump has absolute power over them.

This is a prime example of how we need to start doing triage. Just write Texas off on a political level. There are a number of states across the Union that we just have to write off in the context of, well, politics. Texas is the biggest of them because we’ve reached an autocratic critical mass. Going into whatever happens in January 2025 — Texas is a lost cause.

It’s because of such bullshit that I think our best course of action is “strategic retreat” for the time being. Instead of wasting time, energy and cash attempting to do traditional politics with Republicans that are hell bent on establishing an autocratic white Christian ethno state, pull back and start to figure out long-term goals.

Chief among them, sad to say, would be: what should Blue State civil war war aims be? At this point that really sounds like some of the “hysterical doom shit” that I’ve been accused of peddling by “Mueller, She Wrote,” but I honestly don’t know what else to tell you.

The fact that ding-dong Trump has absolute political control over the Great State of Texas is a “not great, Bob” type of realization. We have to stop deluding ourselves as to what is about to happen. Steve Bannon is actively working to serve as “doula” to American tyranny and we’re letting him pull it off in broad daylight.

So — we pull back, use these last few years of peace and quiet to figure out our strengths. I hate to talk like this because, lulz, I sound like Steve Bannon. Maybe he can adopt me like Bill the Butcher.

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