One of the talking points you find within the center-Left Twitter echo chamber is how damaging FOX News is. I agree with this talking point, and, yet I feel it needs to be put in context.
Because of the nature of our society and government — we are supposed to be a liberal democracy, you know — FOX News exists because there’s an audience. In fact, what’s worse, the audience that it makes so much money scaring is growing more and more interested in watching North Korean-style propaganda like OANN and NewsMax that has the barest connection to reality.
That’s what they want, they want to be lied to. Or, put another way, for them the lie is the truth.
And, so, if FOX News had a come-to-Jesus moment and started acting more like CNN, it would lose all its viewers to OANN and NewsMax. How do you fix THAT problem?
FOX News is a symptom of one of a number of macro trends that are lurching us down the inevitable path of the existential choice of autocracy, military junta or civil war. All the conditions are there, it’s just a matter of what the catalyst will be.
But it will happen — something’s gotta give.
At the moment, a lot of people who poo-poo my “doom shit” do so because they simply can’t process, can’t imagine, the idea that the United States, the most powerful country in the world, could face the type of existential choice I keep ranting about.
In short, they have no vision.
And, yet, I have to admit that I can’t predict the future. There is no reveled truth. I could be wrong. Or, more accurately, when we do drift peacefully into autocracy the people who laugh at me won’t even realize what’s happened because their, specific life, hasn’t change all that much for the time being.
When it does, they’ll get upset in private and never, ever admit that I was right all along.
Long Answer If you’re searching for some sort of easy answer as to if the Red States would win a theoretical Second American Civil War, I just don’t have it for you. You probably are out at the cabin, drinking Miller Lite with the guys and someone gets a little too worked up about Vaccine Passports or Cancel Culture or whatever the fuck it is that cocksucker MAGA New Right idiots are upset about at the moment.
You pull up your phone and ask Google, “Will Red States win the civil war?“
And so, here you are.
First and foremost, you’re going to have to make concrete your hazy, abstract thoughts about a “civil war” and give me some sort of war aims. Even more important, is the issue of why do Red States even need a civil war in the first place? What, specifically, would make Red State people think that they need to start killing their fellow Americans in an organized manner because of their political views?
As I tell my conservative relatives at every opportunity, all Red States have to do is be patient and they’ll get everything they ever wanted and then some. Blue State leadership — at the moment — is divided, tepid and weak-willed and, as such, Red States could very easily establish a MAGA New Right autocracy without firing a shot. It’s when you leave the realm of politics and start making things existential that Red States have a severe problem on their hands.
But, lulz, the MAGA New Right glorifies political violence and is itching for the opportunity to eliminate the “liberal problem,” so it’s something that is at the forefront of a lot of Red State people’s minds.
If you’re still eager for a Second American Civil War and want to know if Red States will win it, I need to know what your war aims would be. What’s the point of the civil war relative to you? With the First American Civil War, the war aims of the South were clear — independence in order to protect slavery. With any Second American Civil War, Red State war aims seem extremely abstract.
Red States so hate the way Blue State people think that they’re willing to risk everything for the opportunity to physically harm them en masse. But why? Why do that when you could simply be patient and have the country slide peacefully into autocracy. It appears that the glorification of political violence on the part of the MAGA New Right is nothing more than what you would expect as part of a Fourth Turning — it exists because it exists.
Back to war aims.
I’m having to do some political reverse engineering here, but here goes. The first problem that the MAGA New Right Red States face when gaming out a civil war is, at the core of their desire for a Second Civil War is a severe existential fear of the browning of America. So, after the initial political violence began, it would soon become clear that establishing some sort of white Christian ethno state would be the chief Red State war aim.
As such, Red State people, who to date have been getting everything they want via traditional politics will get a rude awaking — POC will freak the fuck out the moment the MAGA New Right makes it clear they want to “put them in their place.” Hence — a race war will begin. And part and parcel of that race war will be crimes against humanity on the part of Red State governments (collectively known as Trumplandia) who will begin to systematically kill POC in a frantic effort to maintain control.
So, right off the bat, Red States have a race war to deal with — they just don’t have a unified polity because of that.
Then, you have two other major issues: population and economics. If California stays in the Union at the onset of a Second American Civil War it, unto itself, would be enough to allow Blue States to dominate everything from the West Cost to Texas in the South to the Mississippi River in the center to Minnesota to the north.
Add to this, in general, the Blue States have far bigger economies and more dense populations geographically and things aren’t looking good for Red States.
But if you STILL want to have a Second American Civil War because you “just want to be left alone” then Red States have a few things going for them. First is, Blue States aren’t really taking seriously how deranged Red States are going into any Second American Civil War. So, it is possible that some sort of sucker punch could happen that would knock Blue States off their feet long enough for Red States to consolidate power — still a problem: race.
Additionally, it’s almost inevitable that WMD will be used by both sides, so you could sketch out a scenario whereby the MAGA New Right is simply so much more fanatical than the Blue States that when push comes to shove on the use of WMD, Red States win because they’re willing to vaporize more people.
The argument could also be made that if Trumplandia simply wants to leave the Union to form its own white Christian ethno state, then, yes, Red States would then probably come pretty close to achieving their war aim. There would be a massive migration of POC out of Trumplandia, but the MAGA New Right hates POC to begin with, so win-win, right?
And, remember, none of this clusterfuck would happen in a vacuum. The DPRK could lop nuke our way to scramble things. WW3 would probably break out during the second civil war, the list goes on.
So, no, Red States wouldn’t win the Second American Civil War, or if they did, they would severely regret the whole thing by the time they “won.”
The #NeverTrump people are what I like to call “radical moderates.” You can quibble about how “moderate” they really are relative to the Left-Right divide before Trump, but #NeverTrump goals are pretty moderate in my opinion. They want simply to protect our liberal democracy at any costs.
Abraham Lincoln, Radical Moderate
In a sense, they really do harken back to Lincoln. Father Abraham was the quintessential radical moderate. At his heart, he was pretty moderate, but in the severe crisis of the Civil War he made a very radical choice out of desperation: free the slaves so as to make the war one of liberation and Union, not just Union.
As such, because the United States is hurdling towards an existential choice of autocracy, military junta or civil war, it’s at least possible that for a moment in time everyone will be #NeverTrump — there will be a United Front with the leaders of the #NeverTrump at its head.
Should it happen, it will be astonishing on a political level because such a unification of political views has only happened one or twice in our history. I would say the Civil War and WW2 are the last times it happened. For AOC to join forces with someone as conservative as, say, Rick Wilson, under “radical moderate” rubric we would have to be suffering a very, very severe political crisis.
Now, as an aside, let me address something I’ve mentioned before – are #NeverTrumpers the modern equivalent of “War Democrats?” At the moment, they are. But the moment we’re facing the type of severe political crisis I fear we’re hurdling towards occurs, they will be something totally different — the vanguard of the the radical moderates.
In other words, the leadership of the people who will have the opportunity to finally destroy the scourge of the fascist MAGA New Right will come from the group of conservatives who are now #NeverTrumpers. The center-Left simply does not have that many leaders to use for such a cause. AOC is pretty good, but she’s still too young and untested.
I can think of half a dozen #NeverTrumpers who could provide crucial leadership for the — glup — war effort, should things get that bad.
Or, put another way, if the crisis grows as severe as I fear it will, instead of the current political situation where you have a huge center-Left then the #NeverTrumpers, you would have a United Front with the #NeverTrumpers providing the leadership.
But all of this is extremely speculative. I’m always wrong, at least to date. I’m just kind of sketching out possibilities given what usually happens in revolutions and civil wars
When it came to predicting the ultimate effects of COVI19, I did a fairly good job of predicting things. Where I made the biggest mistake was on how severe I thought it would be. Given how the Chinese government freaked the fuck out when it was first reported, I assumed it was far more deadly than it ultimately turned out to be.
Anyway.
Let’s look at why, specifically, I think we have three options — autocracy, civil war or military junta — before us between now and January, 2025.
The United States is far less politically stable than we appear. The MAGA New Right talks openly about how liberals are “forcing” them to become radical fascists. They talk in sometimes not-so-vague terms about how soon enough they’re going to embrace fascism once and for all and it will be all liberals’ fault.
When you begin to accept that the Republican Party is now nothing more than a modern version of Slave Power that will stop at nothing to protect its interests, then, lulz, you have a recipe for disaster on your hands. The Republican Party has officially embraced autocracy and minority rule as its path to perpetual power from here on out.
What did you do to defend democracy, daddy?
What bothers me the most about Twitter liberals is they continue to frame the behavior of notable MAGA New Right elected as if we had a functioning liberal democracy. This, sadly, is not the case. The very thuggish, autocratic things that people like Ron DeSantis advocate are the very things that make them popular with the anti-democratic Trumplandia base.
Now, the ironic thing about all of this is Trump is such an idiot moron that he could very well, simply by existing be the thing that prevents us from peacefully transitioning into an autocracy in all but name. He’s so popular — and yet such a fucking idiot — that what should otherwise be a very easy political transition to autocracy on America’s part may turn into one of the other two options I keep thinking about: civil war or military junta.
The United States has been so stable for so long that it’s difficult to wrap one’s mind around the idea that there might be a civil war here. A lot of people simply can’t grok it as a possibly at all. And, yet, according to all the metrics I keep in my mind about such things a civil war is definitely among the three options we face.
And now, we come to the great irony of all of this — the very same macro trends that could lead us to civil war, autocracy or a military junta — could very well simply give the MAGA New Right everything it wants without destroying our democracy.
For the moment, the center-Left is divided, fractious and ineffectual. America has been drifting towards a more conservative political center for about 50 years now. There’s every reason to believe that the Republican Party — even with the browning of America — could dominate American politics within the context of American political tradition for at least another generation if not more.
But they’re fucking greedy and want an autocracy because they lost the culture wars and they want to “own” the libs once and for all.
And, yet, once the MAGA New Right make shit existential for Leftist soyboys, they could very well have a lot more kick in them than expected. It’s human nature. Let me repeat that: IT’S FUCKING HUMAN NATURE.
The MAGA New Right Red States could very well make the same mistake about the Blue States that the Axis Powers made about the United States in late 1941. Red States think Blue States are “degenerates” who will collapse the moment there’s any political violence.
Surprise! That’s not true!
And, yet, this all raises the issue — why am I so certain that one of three unthinkable options will happen between now and around January 2025.
Besides the glorification of political violence on the Right, the hardening of the political divide and the death of politics in general, I would point to the coordinated efforts on the part of the Republican Party at the state and local level to highjack any election result they don’t like.
Sorry for the shitty quality.
Why give the Republican dominated legislature the right to take over local election certification if you don’t intend to use it? Why make it so fucking hard to vote if you don’t intend to abuse your ability to dissuade people from voting in general. I’m simply taking Republican anti-democratic moves both seriously and literally and then extrapolating from that.
A lot of the people who poo-poo my “doom shit” about our political future either refuse to realize that we’re no longer a functioning democracy or they would be the people who tuned out entirely once we become an autocracy and it becomes clear that it’s pointless to vote.
I’m beginning to think that maybe — just maybe — when we finally face the options of civil war or autocracy the U.S. Military will step in and tell everyone to cool it. We may live under military rule for a few months — years? — but in the end all that will happen is there will be a Constitutional Convention that sorts out all our structural issues and then we move on without a lot of bloodshed.
Doom Shit
But, in general, the macro trends are definitely drifting towards Something Big happening no later than January 2025. At this point, in my mind, the biggest known unknown is if Trump will still be politically viable enough to fuck everything up so we start killing each other for political reasons.
These are the times that try men’s souls, as Thomas Paine would say. The reason is, we now are confronted with the cold, hard fact that every election we have now is existential — if Republicans gain power again, they’re unlikely to ever peacefully give it up.
Combine this with Republicans’ growing glorification of political violence as a means to an end and their blaming of liberals for “forcing” them to radicalize and you have a recipe for disaster.
In the end, we either have a civil war with the specific objective of destroying the Republican Party or we slip into autocracy peacefully. At the moment, that’s what I think is going to happen. It will become political conventional wisdom that that Republicans — one way or another — always win the presidency, people stop voting and ta-da autocracy.
The only reason why I’m willing to entertain then notion of a civil war in even abstract terms is the MAGA New Right’s alarming, and growing, glorification of political violence. They keep ranting on Twitter that their fascist radicalization is the fault of liberals who “just won’t leave them alone.” Jesus, what a bunch of fucking cocksuckers.
We have to begin to gird our loins for the very real possibly that the otherwise peaceful transition into autocracy will somehow be bungled and we do, in fact, have a civil war. The North’s, er, I mean, Blue States‘ war aims should be: destruction of the Republican Party, a just and equable Reconstruction of the former Red States then a Constitutional Convention.
In short, we would need to renew the American Covent that has we last forged in 1865.
But, again, because the method that the MAGA New Right intends to use to initially turn us into an autocracy — the whole throwing things into Congress — is actually in the Constitution, that’s enough hook for the press to shrug and tell everyone to calm down.
The way the MAGA New Right might bungle things is if they are so aggressive and ham-handed in their efforts to win that people see it for what it is, then, well, the country is going to buckle and a civil war will start.
I find myself these days thinking a lot about what the U.S. Military will do should our transition to an autocracy somehow be bungled and it’s clear we’re going to have a civil war. I’m beginning to think rather than a civil war, the U.S. Military would step in — acting President Jim Mattis, anyone? — and that would be the way, ultimately, things would be sorted out.
The U.S. Military is the one remaining institution with the means, motive an opportunity to save us from ourselves.
So, I guess there are three, not two, choices facing us: autocracy, civil war or military junta.
No matter how much the modern Slavocrats may think they can defeat the “woke” soyboys of the Blue States simply by starting a dumb, tragic Second American Civil war, they face a huge fucking obstacle to any such victory: California.
The thing that would make California a new “arsenal of democracy” should a civil war break out is its economy, population and unified polity. It’s a big enough state that it, itself, is a nation. This is where it becomes VERY OBVIOUS how fucking stupid a civil war would be. If you look at what the war aims of the Red States would be, they’re very self defeating.
How could Texas and / or Florida fight back against a California plains state blitzkrieg if they’re fighting a fucking race war? The MAGA New Right wants to establish a white Christian entho state — not something that really engenders a lot of support from POC.
The Liberators
As such, if you can just get California to stay in the Union, you put the state on a war footing as quickly as possible, secure Oregon and Washington then race across the mountain and plains states to Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan. Texas would likely be suffering from an intra-state civil war so you catch them on the back foot. The fighting would be horrific, but California would win. At the same time you have another horrific battle in Ohio and Indiana, but the momentum would be on Blue State’s side.
If things have gotten THIS BAD –where is the Federal government and U.S. Military? — then a race war has erupted in most of the old CSA. you do a peincer movement heading west and south in hopes of hooking up with Atlanta which is probably a strong Blue holdout.
Wildcard: if Red States are panicking, they’re going to use stolen WMD.
And, remember, the entire post WW2 global liberal order will have collapsed so to add to what’s going on domestically in the United States, a number of limited nuclear exchanges will likely have happened.
This entire clusterfuck would be the Fourth Turning. A huge reset. What the endgame would ultimately be would be up to us, if we survive.
One reason why the American MAGA New Right is very, very dumb to crave a second civil war is they’re assuming that all such an event would be is nothing more than politics with the opportunity to use violence against liberals.
The MAGA New Right is so busy sucking its own cock that they forget something: once things become existential for both sides the state of play is dramatically different. A lot of the dumber “woke” shit that Leftist spout off about would suddenly evaporate. It’s hard to be a trustafarian when your family is staring down the barrel of a gun.
That’s probably the single biggest strategic miscalculation of the MAGA New Right — they glorify political violence, blame liberals for “forcing” them to engage in it because they assume the center-Left is made up of a bunch of transgenderd soyboys who will be easy to get rid of. This goes against all of human existence: even the most fey of people are going to fight back extremely hard if their lives depend on it.
That’s why, it’s in the interests of the MAGA New Right to stop being such crybabies and to continue work within the confines of politics — all they have to do is be patient and they’ll get everything they want without firing a shot. I would compare it to Slave Power in 1861. If they had just stayed in the Union, they had probably could have kept their slaves a solid 10 more years at least.
Even the election of Lincoln was, on a political level, a very soft, general indication of political trends. But they South decided on war and they lost everything in a very violent manner.
So, too, could the MAGA New Right lose everything if they turn to organized political violence. Just sketching things out in my mind gives me a lot to work with if things become existential. Blue States have bigger economies, are more politically unified and have populations that are more concentrated. If the U.S. Military somehow collapses and you have essentially state- verse- state warfare without any central military, then California can easily on its own seize everything between it and the Blue States of the midwest with only Texas standing in its way.
America, 2021
But even Texas is shifting Blue and if an actual civil war started it might implode, especially once the state government radicalized and started some sort of “Final Solution” against POC.
And it’s because of how quickly Red States would realize what a huge mistake they had made by pushing us into violence that WMD would be seized and then we bomb ourselves into the stone age. Once WMD were used, everything would be taken to the next level with both sides growing far, far more radical than they ever imagined.
It would be a huge, historic reset not only in the United States, but the entire world. Everything would change, nothing would stay the same. So, it’s best if we just don’t do that, ok? Let’s not start killing each other for political reasons? Please?
But I fear I’m wasting my breath. Just like how war was glorified in Europe leading up to World War 1, so, too, does the MAGA New Right glorify the prospect of a Second American Civil War.
Sooner or later, because the Republican Party on an systemic, essential basis is nothing more than modern “Slave Power” we’re going to either live under its jackboot or destroy it.
Now, a number of NeverTrumpers talk about this need to destroy the Republican Party, but they always talk about it in an extremely abstract, rhetorical fashion. And, for the time being, that’s probably the best course of action. But when such MAGA New Right “thought leaders” like Jesse Kelly and the talking heads of FOX News’ primetime up pretty much say we’re headed towards political violence — and it’s all liberals’ fault — something’s gotta give.
Again, let me be absolutely clear — I hate violence. I hate guns. All of my ranting here is done in sort of a “psychohistory” way. I’m looking at general, macro political, economic and demographic trends and making a pretty obvious conclusion — we’re fucked. And, because I absolutely refuse to let a tool like Jesse Kelly intimidate me, I’m calling his bluff. He’s not going to blame ME for the political violence HE glorifies.
I have seen how abstract fears about — essentially — “replacement theory” on the part of the MAGA New Right are destroying our liberal democracy and I feel forced to make my own abstract fears concrete. Hence, my obsessive “doom shit” about the looming existential choice of autocracy or civil war.
I also love scenarios so thinking up the specifics of how we might either peacefully transition into an autocracy or find ourselves destroying the Republican Party as part of a civil war is definitely my bailiwick. So any suggestion of violence is strictly wargaming. I’m a man of ideas and to me running a wargame about how we might defeat Trumplandia is just part and parcel of that.
Anyway, back to the point — there is going to come a point where just like during the Civil War slave power pushed us to the breaking point and ultimately caused its own destruction, so, too, is it likely that if the MAGA New Right doesn’t turn us into a Russian-style managed democracy that we (e.g. Blue States) are pushed into a historical corner and we have to destroy them on the field of battle.
And let me stress – I don’t want any political violence and I sure as fuck don’t want a civil war. Unlike the MAGA New Right fucktards I actually am aware of how fucking horrific a civil war would be. It would be massive, epic tragedy that would likely leave billions dead because the entire post-WW2 liberal order would collapse and WW3 would happen.
But on a macro historical level, I just don’t see how we don’t avoid either autocracy or civil war. And if those are my choices, I won’t say I “pick” civil war, but that’s the high risk, high potential reward option that is a lot better than living under an autocracy. The reason why all of this is personal for me is I’m a loudmouth kook and I know that having the luxury of living in a free country like the United States has been — to date — is the only reason why I can rant about what a fucking cocksucker Mike Pompeo is without risk of being pushed out a window by ICE. (I talk about this a lot, I know, but it’s just a rhetorical flourish. A running gag, if you will.)
Any time you’re talking about leaving politics behind and settling things but killing people for ideological reasons, oh boy. War is hell and unpredictable and should be avoided at all costs. But, if I HAVE to think about it, the Blue States are a lot like the North — it might take a little while for them to get their shit together, but in the end they can vanquish their rival vision of America. A lot would depend, of course, on what California did.
If it simply leaves the Union at the onset of a Second American Civil War, then, lulz, welcome to Trumplandia.
It’s times like these where I wish I went to Harvard and worked at VOX so I could get paid to figure out what to tell you to do at this point. As it is, I’m at a loss.
One of the more alarming things to happen in modern American politics is how thirsty the MAGA New Right is for autocrats all over the world. The latest thug to have their Tiger Beat spread cut out and pasted on their bedroom wall is Hungary’s autocratic superstar Viktor Orbán.
Talk about what the fuck.
It’s astonishing that it feels like two eras — the late 1850s and the late 1930s — are fusing together in some sort of weird political Frankenstein’s monster. It’s like as if the leaders of Slave Power went on a tour of the Russian Empire and were impressed with how docile the serfs were. Ugh!
What really astonishes me is how all of this is happening is broad daylight and it’s not a huge scandal. It’s like how all those Republican Senators celebrated the 4th of July in Moscow — of all places — a few years ago. That was another what the fuck moment.
What we have to take seriously is the Republican Party is radicalizing in broad day light. It’s now a fascist autocratic white nationalist party. By definition, if it ever gains power again, it’s going to finally extinguish our undead democracy. Given that even an undead democracy has a natural ebb and flow to it, Republicans are going to gain power again.
And they’re probably never going to let it go.
Any discussion of this clusterfuck, however, has to address that the very thing that has allowed the MAGA New Right to gain so much power in broad daylight — Trump’s “chaos agent” nature — is also the movement’s greatest weakness. Trump flings off so much inept chaos just by existing, that he could very well start a civil war that would at least give Blue States a fighting chance at destroying the Republican Party cancer.
So, in a sense, Trump remains a macro historical wildcard. He has such absolute control over the fascist Republican Party that it’s possible he might transition us into an autocracy. And it’s also that because he’s a fucking idiot, he could bungle that same transition and cause a civil war that leads to the destruction of the Republican Party just as much as the first Civil War prompted the destruction of Slave Power once and for all.
But the fact remains — the Republican Party must be destroyed if we are to remain a free country. On a systemic, intuitional basis, the Republican Party is now fascist, autocratic and white nationalist. I’m not thrilled at the idea that the United States would ever have to go through the tragedy of civil war again, but if my only other option is to live in an autocracy like Orban’s Hungary, what the fuck else are we going to do?
And, yet, no fate but what we make. There’s still a chance that we’re going to drift towards some sort of situation where we have an autocracy — a Democrat can only become POTUS if Democrats control Congress — but the fascist Republicans will be so busy making abortion illegal and giving plutocrats yet another tax cut that they whole pushy-pushy out of windows thing will remain just a running gag for me.
Say what you will about the #NeverTrump movement, they definitely have principles. And, I think, that’s what makes #NeverTrump groups like The Lincoln Project so appealing to liberals. NeverTrumpers are so principled, articulate and passionate about how much they fucking hate Trump that they sometimes outshine liberal leadership on the subject. (I find the vast majority of liberal leadership rather timid and tepid, at best.)
Now, I have to note — the existence of the #NeverTrump movement has a spooky similarity to the War Democrats of the Civil War. So, in a sense, history is repeating itself, which does not bode well for the long-term political stability of the United States.
In fact, it’s not too difficult to imagine a situation during a Second American Civil War where President AOC picks a NeverTrumper as her veep in an effort to unite the country, or something.
That sounds rather fantastical — it is — but it is at least within the realm of possibility, the way things are going.
I guess what I’m saying is, NeverTrumpers could balloon in political significance should Blue States find themselves actively trying to destroy the Republican Party. I mean, a liberal democracy needs some sort of conservative party if it’s going to be a…functioning liberal democracy.
If there is a Second American Civil War and the “Good Guys” — read, people like me — win, NeverTrumpers would be the core of any new conservative party, for better or worse.
We really need to destroy the Republican Party, by the way. It’s gone septic and its very existence as an organization is an existential threat to our democracy.
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