Tag: A Very American Autocracy

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

At the moment at least, it seems as though we are careening towards some sort of MAGA presidency in 2025 and, as such, autocracy. The Republican Party is very clear these days about how much it hates democracy, doesn’t believe in it and goes so far to point out with great vigor that we aren’t even a democracy, but, rather a “constitutional republic.”

So, I predict that as many as 1 million or more highly trained, highly educated wealthy liberals will leave the United States once it becomes clear we’ve peacefully slipped into autocracy.

What’s more, the autocrat — whomever that may endup being — will notice this and at his behest Fox News will go completely batshit over the brain drain the United States will be experiencing. Their go-to, hysterical coverage of “immigrant caravans” will be replaced by the dire implications of “liberal brain drain.”

This will be very ironic, of course, because Fox News has long been on the “If you don’t like it, leave it” side of the political fence when it comes to such things. When wealthy liberals begin to do just that, Fox News will piviot to bitch and moaning about it without blinking an eye.

In fact, because form follows function, I could see the autocrat making it far, far more difficult for people to flee the country. But before that happens, so many wealthy liberal Americans will decamp to Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand and that will be The Issue of the Day at some point after 2025.

This has massive implications for global culture that I can’t fully game out at the moment. But it’s going to happen — or something similar will happen when all the coward Twitter liberals flee the country for a different reason, which would be the country has imploded into civil war.

It will be really interesting to see if Twitter liberals surprise me and rise to the occasion when the time comes. But, really, who am I kidding? They are already getting second passports at an alarming rate. And, given how big the US, it could be I’m low balling how many people will flee the country. All I know is, it’s going to happen and there are some pretty big cultural implications that will stim from it.

Anyway, the point is — these are The Before Times. Act accordingly.

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

One possibility when it comes to America’s decent into autocracy that we need to think more about is what if you held an autocracy and no body came? In other words, the center-Left has a lot of soft power in the US…but pretty much jack shit hard power.

So, it’s reasonable to assume that it’s possible Trump steals the 2024 election, his veep becomes POTUS at some point afterwards, we become an autocracy….and….we don’t even notice much of a change in real terms.

President DeSantis, or whomever, just doesn’t give a shit what the late night hosts say — even though libel laws will likely be changed — and, in general the average person’s life doesn’t change that much. Sure, loudmouth cranks like me who get drunk and tell President DeSantis to suck it may vanish but that would be the outlier.

And, sure, a lot and I mean A LOT of wealthy Twitter liberals would flee the country, but the average American — the Good Americans — would just go about their business. They generally wouldn’t notice any change in their everyday life until it became personal.

Then, oh boy, they will get woke pretty quick.

I say all of this because it would definitely fit more in the collective American personality for there to be a “light touch” autocracy than all my dystopian hellscape hysterical fears. If anything, my hysterical “terribly negative” fears would be things that might come to be gradually to the point that we wouldn’t even really notice that much of a difference in everyday life at first.

But make no mistake — America is careening towards autocracy one way or another. Or we have a civil war. I don’t know which one yet. But I would suggest you enjoy these last few days of “normal” life. You thought the pandemic sucked, you ain’t see nothing yet.