Autocrats notoriously are ill-tempered and thin skinned. And there are already rumblings that the income Trump administration has its sights on late night comedy.
As such, it seems clear that Something Bad may be about to happen to Saturday Night Live. It could be that the show might be canceled under the cover of Lorne Michaels “retiring” or something.
Or, it could be purged int some way, along with all the other late night TV shows. As an aside, it definitely will be interesting to see what the fate of Stephen Colbert is. The man has balls of steel in such situations.
All of this is going to happen in the context of Trump being dumb and lazy and rather ham-handed to the point that everyone is going to know it was him who ordered it.
I just can’t stop thinking about how unstable the country is going to be the moment Trump takes office. Some pretty dramatic and shocking things may happen in ways that there would be no obvious endgame.
So if Trump really did purge late night comedy, there would be consequences.
I’m beginning to worry that I may be on an FBI watch list or something. This is completely bonkers because I hate *conflict* much less any sort of *violence.* I do like to make my abstract fears concrete, though.
As such, I do run a lot of scenarios on this blog. I understand if the FBI might think I was advocating secession or revolution or rebellion or whatever, but I’m not! I’m just thinking outloud.
Now, obviously, with the return of fucking Trump my best course of action is to shut up and lay low. But simply fucking refuse to do that. I refuse to obey in advance.
So, there you go, I’m going to keep writing about what I want to write about and see what happens. If that means I end up in some sort of “resistance” detention center then camp, then, well, I guess that’s my fate.
Or maybe they’ll just push me out a window to make it more simple.
It appears as though a path may have been chosen. I have long believed that because Reds are politically ascendant that it would be Blues that ultimately either left the Union or otherwise caused the United States to buckle.
The datapoint that I am using to suggest that Blues are restless is that it seems as though a lot of Blues have given up on Twitter. That seems to be an indication that some sort of psychological cleaving is taking place in the nation at last.
And it’s only going get worse once dumb and lazy Trump is actually president. If he goes full tyrant right away, then a lot of the scenarios I’ve come up with that sound rather hysterical now may come true. If Trump was a true “great man” then, yeah, I could imagine him transitioning the country pretty adeptly into the fascist state that obviously about half the country wants it to be.
But Trump is an idiot.
Or, put another way — if something happens to Trump and J.D. Vance is doing the transition, then it will be pretty smooth. But Trump is so stupid and lazy that if he really does act like a dictator from day one — oh boy. Things could get really hectic really quick.
MAGA has a number of problems ahead of it when it comes to trying to consolidate power. The chief among them is how decentralized the country is. And Trump has made it clear that he’s prepared to use Red State National Guard on Blue States if they act up.
That is a recipe for disaster, if ever there was one.
What this all means, I don’t know. All I know is the *conditions* for something dramatic to happen exist. The Blues have a lot going for them if there is a direct match up between them and the Reds.
It seems to me that it would be more a matter of Blues deposing Trump as opposed to secession. That would, in turn, cause a secession crisis because Red States would get mad and leave the Union.
The point is — it’s at least possible that some rather astonishing things might happen to the United States in the next few months. Trump has repeatedly — REPEATEDLY — told us exactly what he plans to do.
He wants to rule as a dictator and if he does there’s going to be a reaction somewhere. And that doesn’t even begin to address what he plans to do with his new dictatorial bent. He’s going to attempt to round up 20 million people and kick them out of the country.
That, unto itself, could potentially cause the country to buckle.
And, there is, of course, the more personal issue of ME getting in trouble because of the return of Trumplandia. I really want to leave the country and never return. But, alas, I’m just too poor.
So, I guess I just wait for the knock on the door by ICE or the FBI or whomever.
Now that the United States has finally decided that it’s a fascist state, I’m going to recuse myself and simply work on my novel(s.) I’m feeling very rattled and down to the point that I fear I may actually be “depressed.”
I don’t know how long this will last. Probably I’ll snap out of it no later than at some point in 2025 when the FBI or ICE or whatever knock on my door and drag me away to be “vanished.”
I might as well just throw myself back into my novels and see what happens. There’s not much else I can do at this point.
The last time Trump won, I just shut down and stopped watching the news or engaging in social media. I’ve decided to do the same again this go around. It’s just not good for my emotional system to watch MAGA fuckers gloat.
But I don’t know how long I can go.
I think it’s one of those “one day at a time” type situations. The issue is, I need some time to process the fall of the American Republic and the last thing I need is the jarring images of the final decent into fascism.
With all that in mind, I’m determined to get back to work on my novel(s.) That is something productive and constructive I can do instead of stewing in my juices about how ICE might read this blog and decide to push me out a window at some point in the near future.
But dems the breaks, as they say. I have accept that there is a greater-than-zero chance that the Trump regime is going to come after me and murder me in cold blood for simply refusing to tow its fascist line.
All I know is, things are going to get really, really dark. We’re going to leave NATO in 2025. The late night TV shows will be purged to the point that SNL will probably barely be allowed to have its 50th anniversary special before it’s shut down for good.
And, given that Trump won fair and square, there probably won’t be any anger about such moves on his part. But, of course, there is always the chance that a lot of people, upon Trump actually doing all these autocratic, fascist things he keeps ranting about might grow upset.
This is just me spit balling things, but it seems as though Trump won because of white identity politics combined with a big dose of misogyny. Or, to put another way, the strong desire for an autocracy that existed in 2016 still exists.
Which makes you wonder what happened in 2020.
Trump’s defeat in 2020 probably came about in no small part because of the pandemic. Or something like that. Maybe the pandemic jiggled our politics a bit more than any of realized at the moment.
I say this in the context of how bad a candidate Trump is and always has been. Something pretty profound is going on when someone like Trump can become POTUS in the first place.
He taps into some dark part of the American psych that I’d rather not have to think about so much –but here we are.
My biggest concern at the moment is Trump’s counter-revolution will be so sharp and abrupt that it won’t be Reds we have to worry about, but Blues. This would only happen if Trump really leaned into all the rabid fascist bullshit that he has been talking about.
I don’t want this — I’m just talking about it in the abstract — but if Trump goes full tyrant on us the moment he gets into office, well, some pretty dark things could happen. I’m thinking specifically of the possibility that he might be deposed in some way.
That is a very, very dark scenario because he is obviously so popular with Reds that if that happened, there would be a good chance of a civil war because Red States would leave the Union in anger.
I don’t want any of that.
I don’t know what I’m going to do going forward other than work on my novels. It seems inevitable that I’ll run afoul of the weaponized ICE at some point and, lulz, will either be pushed out a window by one or, if I’m lucky, be allowed to leave the country in some way.
If I had the means, I would leave the United States by the end of the week and never look back. But there’s one problem — I don’t have any money. I live in a state of perpetual poverty.
So. That’s a big problem.
But I do think that if — and this is a big if — Trump goes “full tyrant” on the citizens of the United States that some pretty big choices might be made for me — and millions of others. I might, in some way, become a political refugee simply because I simply refuse to shut the fuck up about how much I fucking hate MAGA.
I’m reading a book called “Death of Democracy” that talks about the end of the Weimar Republic and…well…it definitely reads like what’s going on right now. I will note that, as I keep saying, Trump is not Hitler in the sense that Hitler really was a “great man.”
Trump not a great man, but rather a vessel, an avatar for some structural problems with the American political system.
But, back to me.
As I keep saying, I’m going to throw myself back into working on a novel now. I’m not going to use social media that much for the time being. I just need to process what’s just happened in my own way.
But I have to accept that my life could very well be thrown up in the air if Trump goes nuts and goes full tyrant on us.
I am still processing the fact that a malignant ding-dong like Trump won. Regardless of what the nattering nabobs of negativism may say, Kamala Harris ran a good campaign.
The issue is that the United States is a lot further down the road towards autocracy than any of us knew. So, there you go.
To me, the biggest issue at the moment going forward is what will be the reaction of Blues should Trump go “full tyrant.” If he would just ease us into being an autocratic state more like Hungary than Russia, then I think things would be fine.
But my fear is that Trump is so dumb and lazy that he will try to go from zero to 100 on the autocratic scale overnight and, well, that’s when there might be some problems. If Trump attempts to simply rule by decree the moment he becomes POTUS again, then there’s a real chance the country will buckle in some way and we’re going to have some sort of civil war.
I don’t want that, but it is something we have to contemplate going forward. But I am known to overthink things a great deal. As such, I think because of the collective temperament of Blues if nothing else, that lulz, Trump is going to turn us into something closer to Russia than Hungary.
But, remember, the counter-revolution that Trump is about to begin will be like all the others before it — it’s going to eat its young. Probably, specifically, the Jewish and gay members of its leadership.
I won’t happen immediately, but it will happen.
As for me, I’m just going to hunker down and work on my novels, etc.
Well, America 2024 is the Weimer Republic 1933. Who knew? Anyway, this election could very well dramatically change my life because I’m not fucking shutting up, no matter what.
So, there you go — even if ICE is weaponized and it used to come after people like me, well, I guess I got a problem.
If Trump wins tonight, I’m going to do what I did in late 2016 — just tune out. I’m not going to watch or listen to any media for a few months. I probably will focus all my attention on the novel(s) I have to work on.
Because I like to make my abstract fears concrete, I have a number of dark scenarios rolling around in my head, even if Trump loses. I fear that the next few months could be quite turbulent, no matter who wins.
But if Trump wins, oh boy. We really have a problem on our hands. Because Trump is so dumb and lazy, he could go “full tyrant” on us and the next thing you know, the country buckles and I become a domestic political refugee.
Hopefully, that won’t happen. Hopefully.
But if Trump wins, things are going to get pretty nuts, no matter what. For some reason, I have a hunch that if Trump wins, my life is going to change in a big way. I have no idea what that means, but it’s just a hunch.
I live in a really Red part of my state and so, lulz….maybe I’ll be forced out of my home as the country buckles into absolute Blue and absolute Red.
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