I barely know anything about the Paris Commune, but I know enough to know that it may be the closest comparison one can think up when it comes to the Capitol Riot of January 6th in Washington.
But there are some pretty big differences.
If you look back at what happened on January 6th, we were extremely lucky for a number of reasons — the riot didn’t really have any leaders and it didn’t really have any long-term agenda or ideology. It was just a smash-and-grab coup attempt.
But imagine if there had been some sort of leadership on January 6th. They could have established a security perimeter around the Capitol. They could have taken hostages and they could have formed a “government” at the Capitol building.
If they had had any organization or forethought, they could still be there right now, hold up at the Capitol in their own “commune.” I doubt they would have called it a commune, but that’s what it would have been.
They had a very specific historic opportunity and — thankfully — they completely blew it. They “caught the car” and then didn’t know what to do with it. There won’t be a next time.
Any coup-like event that occurs in the future is going to require a shit ton more work by those involved. I still think given macro trends that while there may still be significant political violence in the coming years, it’s the 2024-2025 period we need to keep an eye on.
The key thing we have to appreciate is what a fluke the riot at the Capitol was on January 6th. While future history may prove me wrong — I’m often wrong — it definitely seems as though a lot of things went wrong at the same time on that date.
What happened January 6th was a classic instance of “catching the car.” How else do you explain how gleeful many of the people who participated were? In the moment, most of the people involved had no idea the gravity of what they had gotten themselves into. It was all a big party.
Or, once the beating the shit out of people phase was accomplished by nastier aspects of the mob, it was a party to everyone else. I almost went to DC to “cover” the event for myself and I now find myself sheepishly blanching at what I might have gotten myself into had I gone. I probably would have charged into the Capitol to cover such a historic event, only to get arrested for trespassing, etc.
So, in a sense, I dodged a bullet.
Anyway, I think, in a sense, the terrorists have won in the short term and we’re all terrorized while the actual threat is back to near-zero. So, we’re going through all this pretty much for no reason. The moment people started getting arrested for their participation in the Capitol riot, I think the threat evaporated.
There may be isolated political violence over the next four years, but the Big Ugly has been punted down the road to the 2024-2025 time frame for a number of reasons. A civil war / revolution is coming…just not right now.
It definitely seems as though Trump will, yet again, escape justice. Trump is going to behave (for once) and in the context of the change in administrations, by the time we get around to doing anything about him, passions will have cooled and, lulz, “thoughts and prayers.”
In fact, I would go so far as to say the only way we get any justice for Trump is if things go crazy with the impeachment trial in the Senate and before you know it, John Bolton is testifying and additional impeachment articles are being drawn up for the now out-of-office-Trump.
That doesn’t seem very likely.
And Trump definitely seems as though he’s prepping the way for him doing all that pardoning he wants to do so bad, so ultimately, he lives to fight another day politically. New York State will be pressured to stand down that will be that.
Trump will write his “My Struggle” book in political exile and, well, there you go.
Trump just can’t keep a secret. So, given his public comments leading up to January 6th, it’s beginning to appear as though Trump may have known a lot more about what was going on than we now know.
Usually, during a Trump Era scandal, this is the point when an audiotape of Trump saying something incriminating happens. We all get upset for a few days, then we move on.
But, for the time being, this moment in time feels different and so if something like that did pop out, Trump would face some severe political consequences. Even if he’s got one foot out the door.
I have a general sense at this point that Trump probably knew a lot more about the details of the Capitol Riot than you might think. I doubt he was involved in the specific planning — he can’t keep a secret, after all — but he knew how big the event was going to be and that he might be able to stage a coup using the existing infrastructure that was being built out.
Yet for the time being, I think Trump is going to escape justice yet again. He’s almost out of office and even his extra-political, extra-legal or extra-Constitutional options are kind of limited right now. He could maybe do something in a spasm of panic, but he’s done none of the hard work of autocrat.
My fear now is he’s going to grow extremely passive-aggressive to the point that we start to think he’s a danger to himself our us.
One of the conditions for a civil war – revolution in the United States is there already: the positions of the two sides are beginning to harden. What isn’t there yet is Trump going transaction or there being enough rolling political violence across the country that there are significant domestic political refugees.
Those last two things would be the last stages before the country buckled. And, really, with Trump still president for 10 days, that’s actually not a unlikely as you might think. All Trump has to do is snap — even more so than he already has — and goad people into taking up arms against anyone they feel isn’t MAGA and the other part takes care of itself.
Once America’s transportation system is clogged with Blue people from Red states and Red people from Blue states fleeing for their lives, then, well, we’re going to to show.
But that is so dystopian that I’m just not prepared to believe that’s going to happen. While Trump is going to continue to do everything in his power to destroy the United States, MAGA just isn’t organized enough — or bloodthirsty enough — to leap into the void. At least not yet.
Give them four years to marinate in their hate and I think they will be.
Or, put another way, the great irony of all of this would be if Trump — whose appearance in 2025 was probably about as early as his type political rise was going to happen — squashed what might otherwise be an extremely destructive political movement because he demanded they strike too soon.
But all this could be Trump’s beerhall putsch and he — or someone like him — will be victorious in about a decade. (Which makes a lot of sense.)
I’m pretty good, in a vague way, of calling what Trump is going to do in the Final Days. I pretty much called the significance of January 6th, though I didn’t call anything specific — just that it would be important.
But anyway.
One interesting thing is Trump still hasn’t snapped like I thought he would. I thought he would get into a logic trap and go REALLY CRAZY. But he’s still the usual olde crazy. One sign we would get that he was totally off the reservation would be if he started to do a quick succession of things that did not really help him as the House rushes to impeach him — again.
One of those things would be to use the Presidential Text Alert System — usually reserved for, like, announcing nuclear war — as something akin to a replacement for Twitter now that he’s lost that account.
There’s a lot to take into account on this front.
Remember, in real terms, Trump’s era is over, so he would have to do something that slowed time down significantly for there to be a even more of a mad rush to get rid of him. Trump has yet to do something REALLY FUCKING CRAZY like incite sedition using the Presidential Text Alert System to shoot out a tweet to everyone in America’s phone. In, fact, he seems pretty chill compared to what I expected he would be at this point.
Something would have to change, and change fast — like in the next 48 hours. Yes, he’s supposed to have a press conference at the Alamo, but, really, even if he went Howard Beale at such a conference, he only has less than two weeks in office.
The Final Days of Trumplandia.
Trump would have to go transactional — start a war, tell his followers to overthrow the government in a specific type way or, say, use the Presidential Text Alert System to do any number of really crazy transactional things.
But him just blabbering at a press conference wouldn’t be enough. He’s been doing that for some time now — four years — and it was only when he went transactional in front of a crazed hoard near the Capitol that it mattered to anyone.
So, really, while Trump is, in fact, a massive self-own artist, as of right this second, he’s going to escape justice, just like he always does. Only time will tell.
I’m really angry about this whole Trump situation. One of the many reasons why I’m angry is whatever justice we may get for Trump will happen after it’s moot. All the numerous other things he should have been impeached and convicted for will fall into the memory hole and he will serve out his entire term.
Nothing epitomizes this more than someone I know who voted for Trump this year, and now agrees with me he’s “gotta go.” This enrages me. But for Trump self-owning at the very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, VERY end of his administration, he could easily come back in 2024 and WIN.
So, Republicans have gotten everything they wanted from a Trump Administration and now that it’s over, they can cut Trump loose. The whole thing is value free other than the plutocrat tax cut and young hack MAGA judges.
What’s more, Republicans could get it into their head that it would be politically valuable for them to have witnesses this time around for no other reason than to make it difficult for anything else to happen in Washington during the early days of the Biden Administration.
It’s all very frustrating. And leaves one with a sense of political disorientation and cognitive dissidence. It leaves you asking, “Is that it?”
Trump is probably going to be a modern day Watergate for the Republican Party. Its entire center of political gravity will shift so Trump is its be-all and end-all. I say this because that’s what Nixon became after Watergate.
Reagan was pretty much a Nixon deadender and he almost won the nomination in 1976. So, it makes sense that the Republican Party will either split into a pro-Trump and a lukewarm Trump factions, or Trump will simply consume the whole thing now. It’s also possible that if the Trump faction doesn’t take over the Republican Party that it will bolt into its own party. The Patriot Party, maybe?
So, I would keep an eye on people like Jason Miller as to the future of the Republican Party. If Trump or Ivanka aren’t the nominee, it could be someone like him who gets a lot closer to the nomination than you might think.
Or, maybe Miller will run for Senator. Or Governor.
I guess what I’m trying to say is things are a lot more up in the air than you might think.
There are a number of reasons why what seems like a dumb idea — impeaching Trump a second time with less than two weeks before he’s out of office — is actually good politics.
1.It’s A Failsafe We don’t know if Trump is going to finally snap in the last few days of his term, so it would be nice to have the legal framework to remove him from office on a near-moment’s notice lying around. That’s why this weekend could be significant — Trump could really flip out before impeachment is voted on early next week and we won’t have any way of getting rid of him. Once the House passes impeachment, though, there’s always a chance that the Senate could do a unanimous consent type thing and get him out of office as soon as it becomes clear he’s a danger to himself — or us.
2. Shame While I have no doubt that Trump could come back tan, ready and rested in 2024, at least he’ll have the shame of being the only president to be impeached twice. There’s little more than that we can do to slow things down.
3. A Truth & Reconciliation Commission It’s possible that if #MoscowMitch can’t “process” the impeachment until after Trump’s out of office, that the impeachment trial will happen once Trump’s out office. (I’ve heard conflicting accounts as to if this is even possible.) But the case could be made that once the deadline of January 20th is passed, we could have a significant and deep investigation into the Trump Era in the guise of a pretty moot Senate Impeachment Trial. (Though the issue of Trump being able to run again would be an issue.)
But the issue we have to remember at this point is this — if Trump simply lays low for about two weeks, he’s safe. If he acts up and self-owns AGAIN in some sort of massive screw up that he’s in deep, deep trouble.
As of right now, he looks like he’s going to behave. He no longer has a Twitter account. He’s just going to rattle around in the White House and escape justice like he always does.
The United States is a big, big country. It takes time for some big event to sink in with 330 million people. A lot of people are gaming. Or coding. Or binge watching The Office on Peacock.
So, there’s some lag time between, say, when something like a coup attempt that happened day happens and when it gets processed. As such, there’s something of a significant lag time for any major decision to be made. That’s why gun rights advocates hate, hate, hate any type of decision being agreed upon when people are focused and upset about 20 or 30 kids being shot to death. They know if they can just wait 24 to 48 hours that things will calm down, the dynamic will change and lulz, nothing maters.
This could be interesting.
I’ve been giving this dynamic a lot of thought as we process the coup attempt of 01/06. We have a number of paths ahead of us. One path is we never reach any type of crucial mass and the Trump era is completely value free other than a plutocrat tax cut and a massive amount of young, hack MAGA judges. It will be like it never happened.
We’ll be in political neutral for two years until Biden is impeached the moment Republicans regain the House. And if Trump can just behave for two weeks, that’s exactly what will happen. He just needs to chill out for two weeks and still — still — everything will be “forgiven” by the Right. He can come back tan, ready and rested in 2024 and go back to being a chaos agent for Russia. (Or Ivanka can primary Rubio and have Josh Hawley as her veep and the two of them can be a Velvet Fist in American politics for a generation to come.
But.
There is the problem of Trump going totally fucking bonkers at an alarming rate.
So two things would be at play. One, Trump’s obvious seditious and bonkers behavior would begin to sink in with a lot more people than it might otherwise because of the coup attempt….and a shit ton of people in the next 24 hours are going to see what happened while they were looking and porn and be completely flabbergasted.
As such, either the post-mass-killing dynamic will be at work or something really unique will happen: a counter coup.
In this scenario, the already severe (but manageable) political crisis we’re in is taken to the next level and even though Trump has only two fucking weeks left in office he is somehow removed.
It would be one of the most surreal events in American history.
I have repeatedly over the last few years suggested that something like this was possible. But Blue Check liberals think I’m just another Internet crank, so, lulz, nothing matters.
I would suggest we keep a close eye on Trump. He’s likely to grow ever more erratic on a minute-by-minute basis. He just can’t do the one thing he needs to do: behave.
And the reason is, he’s in a logic trap. He’s thinking not about any type of political future, but pure self-preservation. And there’s going to be significant lag time (a few days) between when Trump goes to a purely self-preservation stance and when the people in the Republican Party who are still thinking about political considerations get woke to this fact.
Trump has already “lost it” as one person close to him has told CNN, so that lag time is now in effect. The question is — the issue of how all of this bounces off American self-perception.
MAGA has about 38% of the electorate under its spell. But there are probably 10% (or more) of those people who are conservative-but-not-MAGA who support Trump because of negative polarization. They hate the center-Left more than they dislike Trump and, so, they support Trump.
The jury is still out about what happens next. Trump, as always, has his fate in his own hands. I think as of this moment he’s probably going to live to fight another political day. Whatever he did to finally — FINALLY — cause his enablers in Congress to cut him loose would have to be pretty fucking bad, given what happened to day.
And he could very well survive for no other reason than the clock runs out.
But.
It’s also possible that the clock WILL RUN OUT and he by that point he will be so completely fucking deranged that he won’t physically leave the White House. Then we have the “Downfall” scenario that I’ve mentioned a few times before and I don’t like thinking about.
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