Tag: Second American Civil War

The Fate of FOX News HQ In NYC Is The Canary In The Coal Mine


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I really, really don’t want a civil war of any sort in the United States, but I can’t help myself when it comes to wargaming how it might occur. A key issue is what people aren’t ready for is when Red States believe Trump is president and Blue States think Biden is president and, on a state level, those governments begin to act accordingly.

Now, I know the U.S. Military has said that they won’t do anything to determine who the president is if there is some question — and there will be — but they didn’t say anything about putting down a rebellion of the people who absolutely don’t think Trump (or Biden) is president.

Here’s one possible sequence of events.

Trump “wins” reasonably late in the post-election process, probably with a favorable decision from the Supreme Court. The whole thing is so ham-handed and poorly executed on the part of House Trump that on a pure optics level, it will seem to Blue States that Trump stole the election (which he did.) The populations of Blue States — mostly in cities — will grow so enraged by this theft that they will begin to take it upon themselves to make their anger clear.

It makes a lot of sense that one place where this might happen is NYC. That’s the center of media in the United States and both FOX News and the WSJ are located there. It’s very easy to imagine a situation where the population of the city grows so angry that they loot both headquarters (or worse) and the journalists there are forced to decamp to a Red State.

That would be the pretext for a House Trump crackdown on the Blue States. House Trump would assume they could do a knockout blow — and maybe they could — but it’s also possible that a la the beginnings of the original civil war the first round of victories on the part of Trumplandia will only happen because the Blue States are struggling to get their act together. As the crisis deepens, Blue State leaders with a clear vision as to what to do will bubble up to the surface and things grow far more complicated for everyone involved.

These leaders could come from any area of society. Once politics dies, then everything is throw up in the air and it’s not a matter of who you are, it’s matter of what you can do.

One last note — House Trump is going to shut down the media altogether soon after any major political violence begins. That could go as far as shutting down the Internet itself until they can purge people they don’t like.

While, yes, this will definitely give House Trump a “first mover advantage,” if they make it more difficult for people to look at online porn, the average person might sit up and take notice that their lives are demonstrably different.

I think I’m deluding myself, though.

Seems like there’s just too much momentum on the side of tyranny. The bad guys have won. Not until I see Twitter liberals begin to make plans for some pretty fucked up things in real life will I think there may be any hope. We’re fucked. It’s over.

Leave the country if you can.

Blue States Are In A Better Position Than You Think Should A Second Civil War Occur


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I really, really don’t want a civil war. I will note that while this blog gets about 100 views a day, I’m getting a minor uptick from Red States of people obviously stroking to the idea of a civil war.

This is surreal to me.

The reason is, if you look at the state of play in the country on opening day of any prospective civil war, Blue States are in a lot better strategic situation than you might think. A lot depends on what the goals of any such civil war might be. Remember, Trump is likely to have the military and first mover advantage, so he could very well serve Blue States a knock out blow before they could figure out what they wanted.

But let’s suppose the war aims of Blue States were not to leave the Union, but to unite the country under their banner a la the First American Civil War. While there might be a lot of talk about Blue States leaving the Union, I find that as a war aim is dubious.

The first thing I see when I see a realpolitik map of the United States is how weak the Red States are. That’s why it’s so dumb that Red State people are so eager to start killing people in the name of the Dear Leader. They are playing a really weak hand well because American politics is broken and the moment we’re not talking about politics but war, then the dynamic is totally different.

It’s easy to see how much of the country is Red and simply assume Red States could easily overwhelm the smaller (in geographic terms) the Blue States. The problem with this thinking is Red State people are conflating their political edge with an edge on the battlefield.

In real terms, it’s easy to imagine Blue forces from the West blitzkrieging across, say, Montana and linking up with other Blue forces in the Mid-West. While states like Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan are “Purple” state politically, I seriously doubt if things became life-or-death that they would go Red. There would likely be a lot of political violence in the process of throwing their lot with the Blue states, but it would happen.

Anyway, I could imagine through sheer brute force Blue forces taking the entire Great Plains and Rocky Mountain areas pretty quick.

Now, this when you might say — but what about the South?

That’s a very curious situation. On one hand, the old CSA has a regional memory of rebellion, and, yet, there are two factors that make that not as clear cut as you might think.

One, is race. During the First American Civil War, if you weren’t a freed slave fighting for the Union, you were pretty docile on a macro level. But I seriously doubt a replay of that. The moment Southern Whites using the current political dominance to begin implementing their MAGAQ agenda, something akin to a race war might break out. That, in itself, would greatly weaken the ability of what is otherwise a pretty densely populated part of the country from being easily defended.

Another issue for the old CSA states — especially Texas and portions of Florida — is once things grew existential, there are a lot of moderate people there that would be aghast at the prospect of essentially American Nazis taking over their states. This is a dynamic that would lead a number of old CSA states to implode.

Speaking of imploding states, I suspect within days of any Second American Civil War erupting, Virginia would implode rather dramatically. Virginia is two states — one Red, one Blue — and they hate each other. So, it’s easy to imagine the state becoming completely ungovernable on a political level because the rural parts of the state would rebel against the urban, progressive portions of the state. Things would grow more murky, as well, because of the historical connection Virginia has to the CSA. I could see a lot of Red militants wanting to control cultural touchstones like Richmond and Danville so they could have a link to the past.

One area where Red States (MAGAQ) would have a serious advantage at the beginning of any such civil war is leadership. Add to this MAGAQ being a personality death cult and they would, at first, likely appear to consolidate their power quite quickly. But it’s human nature that even your fey latte swilling hipsters would rise to the occasion if they were staring death in the face. Some basic aspects of human behavior have not changed, no matter how much MAGAQ think they have a monopoly on such things.

But I doubt things would be this clear cut, especially in the beginning. As I said, Trump would have control of the military and a rabid, bloodthirsty 38% of the electorate to turn to. So, it’s possible there would be a knockout blow and there would just be simmering political resentment as Trump turned America into Russia on a political level.

And, yet, Trump is such a fucking moron, that it’s equally easy to see him somehow bungling a sure thing to dramatically that the necessary political and military moves needed for Blue States to engage in a pitched battle with Red States could take place.

But the above is really the absolute worst case scenario.

More likely, everything will be wrapped up on Election Night and we’ll just gradually, in fits and starts, turn ourselves into Russia. Or, put another way, the harder it is for Trump to win, the more radical he will become and the chances of an actual civil war breaking out increase.

Autocrats never lose.

The Coming Second American Civil War



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Editor’s Note: If you found this because you HOPE there’s a Second American Civil War, you’re a piece of shit. Fuck you.

Let me be clear — I don’t think there’s really going to be a “civil war” in the sense that states leave the Union. But I do think the conditions are there for there not to be a peaceful transfer of power. Trump cares so little about America other than how much money he can rob from it, that he’s going to burn the whole thing to the ground to stay in power.

I can’t predict the future, but there is something of a spectrum for us to mull. One one end of the spectrum, Trump is able to use ratfucking the postal service and the bullshit Durham investigation to influence votes enough that he “wins” pretty early in the process.

On the other end of the spectrum, well, all hell breaks loose.

Here’s why I think this. Trump is a complete moron. He’s also very incompetent. So if he “wins” reasonably early in the election process, then our general drift towards an authoritarian “managed democracy” will continue in fits and starts leading up to a Constitutional Convention.

But if Trump has to press the issue, if he has to force the U.S. Military to make a decision, then he’s far more likely to do some pretty radical things out of desperation. This would cause a lot of Americans who otherwise “don’t have time for politics” to sit up and take notice. Once you start fucking with the average American’s self-perception of what it means to be American, some pretty astonishing things may happen.

So, it is easy to imagine a situation where Trump is given by Barr a very thin cover for being president and he simply refuses to leave office. Once you have one half of the country thinking Trump “won” and one half thinking he didn’t, then there’s likely to be unprecedented violence and the U.S. Military is going to be force to do something about it.

I could maybe see some sort of “Unity Government” being established to punt the problem down the road for two years until the mid-terms. But even that might be pushing it.

The issue for me is the American center-Left is so completely ineffectual that by the time people start to figure out what Trump’s done, it will be too late. He will have finally purged the media and the Little Green Men seen in Portland will be taken nation-wide. We won’t know how many people are “vanished” by the government because there won’t be an independent press anymore.

And, really, macro trends in the United States indicate that the Republican Party is all-in on fascism so if somehow we managed to physically remove Trump from office it will just be a pause. Soon enough, a President Tom Cotton or President Mike Pomepo will finish the job that Mad King Trump started.

As I keep saying, I have no idea what to do about any of this. But we have to accept the new normal and realize that some basic freedoms that Americans have come to accept will no longer be there when we need them.

More on this Subject.

We have to get some things out of the way before we talk about this — Republicans have no shame and MAGA longs for a Russian-style autocracy. And in the eyes of MAGA — by definition the only legitimate election victory is one where Trump supporters win.

Another thing we have to appricate is — something about Obama’s second term drove Republicans insane. They completely left reality. This happened probably because it sank in that America is changing and they would rather destroy democracy than allow those changes to effect changes in our power structure. Add to this the growing economic power of women and the associated sexual agency and, well, lulz, they want an autocracy.

So, let’s talk about a second American civil war.

The first issue is Trump blew it when he didn’t strike before the election was called by the media. And, so, that’s the real crux of the issue — if Trump was the autocrat I thought he was, then the civil war we all think is going to happen would have already have happened. Trump would have driven Blue States out of the Union, used the Insurrection Act and then re-organized them under some sort of MAGA Reconstruction.

But because Trump isn’t an autocrat but an idiot ding-dong, we are now careening towards an extremely surreal situation where what shouldn’t be happening — Trump leaving office — is actually going to happen. So many Republicans have invested their entire life, career and identity into The Thousand Year Trump the fact that Trump is leaving office is going to causing them significant existential angst.

Let’s get to the point — how could a civil war break out NOW? All I got is Trump goes completely fucking insane and, as such, goes transactional on Twitter. For an actual civil war to happen, Trump would have to demand Red States to attempt to leave the Union. That’s all I got. Then we see if MAGA Republicans really are willing to jump off the cliff at the direction of the Dear Leader.

I have no idea if this is actually possible. But it is a real possibility. As such, that would be the civil war. That would be the opportunity for Good Old Boys in the Patriot Party to murder liberals in cold blood. Yet, because it would be Red States not Blue States leaving the Union, the issue of race would come to the fore. Blacks simply are not going to do nothing if there is an effort to leave the Union by whites in the South.

So, instead of any sort of Trumplandia being established, you’ll just get a fucking race war.

All in all, it’s tragic and sad that so many people would actually WANT a fucking civil war. What is wrong with you fucking cocksuckers?

More on This Subject.

Ok, I get it, on an abstract level, Good Old Boys want to join the Patriot Party and murder “libtards” in cold blood because they fear their lives will be ruined when they are “canceled” simply for being conservative.

But let’s break this down.

The thing we have to see is what’s really going on is MAGA people want an autocracy. They want to live in an Americanized version of Putin’s Russia. That’s their dream. Their goal. The irony is that Trump is an avatar for the extensive rot in the American political system and that’s why he’s so fucking lazy. He doesn’t have to do anything other than just be himself.

So, what’s going on right now is there is a crucial element of our fate that isn’t happening — Trump isn’t the autocrat that MAGA wants, he’s just a ding-dong. As such, all my predictions that Trump “wouldn’t lose” were right but for one thing: Trump isn’t an autocrat. He’s an idiot.

All the conditions were there for Trump to destroy American democracy in one fell swoop in any number of ways — and he didn’t do it. The conditions for autocracy continue to exist — the longing for autocracy by MAGA continue to exist — so we are careening towards a surreal situation where what should be happening, isn’t happening.

We should be an autocracy now, but we’re not because the person who otherwise with the means, motive and opportunity to do so — Trump — simply doesn’t have the wherewithal to pull it off.

If Trump was the autocrat I thought he was, he would have struck in some sort of autocratic fashion right before or right after the election in such a way that would have driven the Blue States out of the Union. But he didn’t, so now even if he struck at some point between now and Jan 20th, it would likely happen only because Trump went fucking bonkers.

As such, what’s likely to happen is we’re going to punt this particular problem down the road. It could be something in the 2023-2025 timeframe. This would give the Proud Boys and the Patriot Party time to organize and a “Man on a Horse” to bubble up to the service who would do what Trump wasn’t able to — turn the United States into an autocracy.

I must note that the funniest part of all of this is the Good Old Boys who come to this site obviously thinking there’s going to be a MAGA “revolution.” I find this hilarious because the logic of a “MAGA revolution” is both dubious and tenuously connected to reality. And that feeling of a need for a “MAGA revolution” is also an example of the yearning for a Tom Cotton or Mike Pompeo to at some point take “total control” in a way that Trump simply wasn’t capable of doing.

A civil war may come, but I struggle to imagine it happening anytime soon because Trump is a ding-dong, not an autocrat.

A Second American Civil War Is Coming…

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

The conditions are right for second American Civil War. I am thinking it’s going to happen between now and 2025. I say this because to me it seems pretty obvious that Donald Trump as president may be the firebreak between us and this event. What I mean by this is not that Trump is some sort of great leader holding the country together — I think he’s a shit leader — no, it’s that the insane, surreal Right is itching for a fight and only because they have one of their own as president that they don’t act.

So, once Trump is replaced by a center-Left president, it seems obvious to me that the call for secession will grow unbearable. But unlikely 1860-1861, it is more likely to be states in the West that bolt first, not the South. I say this in large part because of race. It just can’t see African Americans voting en masse for secession in South Carolina or Alabama. I can, however, see the residents of, say, Texas or Montana do it.

Of course, there is the opposite possible scenario. It is possible that center-Left states may be the ones, in fact, to leave the Union simply because they don’t feel they’re being listened to. In a way this makes a lot more sense given historical trends, but we’ll just have to see.

One issue is how messy a secessionist movement would be. Would the central government even care, or would it pull a “wayward sisters, part in peace” move and the country would split peacefully a la the USSR in 1991. It pretty much depends on leadership. If there is leadership that demands the nation stay together, then things could get bloody and messy pretty quickly. But if there isn’t the leadership, then the nation is so divided that it’s very possible that the split will pretty much be peaceful.

One interesting issue is what would the respective nations look like post-split. There is the very real possibility that because the center-Left states wouldn’t be contiguous that they would form sort of union with Canada in an effort to fix that problem. Meanwhile, the center-Right states would likely go completely bonkers and push through every insane policy that they’ve wanted to initiate the last 30 odd years. But like I said, only in states like Montana would the split be clean. In the Deep South, any attempt for the state to hold a Secessionist Convention would cause blood to run in the streets.

Should there be a real movement to impeach and convict Trump, should such a move get traction, then that might be the tipping point that causes states to begin to leave the union. So it might not be 2020-2021 or 2024-2025 when all of this happens but 2018-2019. It’s possible. Not probable, but possible.

I think we risk a second American Civil War in part because the views of the insane, surreal Right drift down to the “normal” Right gradually over a few years and so it makes sense that by no later than 2025 what seems insane will be taken as normal by the Right.

All of this doesn’t even take into account a very troubling thing that I don’t really know enough about — Donald Trump is cramming the judiciary with young, insanely conservative judges. So, that’s another thing that might placate the Right and postpone or eliminate the need for them to press secession from their point of view, but make the center-Left feel emboldened to do just that. We may look back on this present era much like the late 1850s, where in hindsight it is obvious that the country is tearing itself apart, it’s just matter of how exactly it’s going to happen.

Adding more fuel to these flames are titanic shifts in our economy. The process of AI, automation and other aspects of the drifting march towards the technological Singularity that we’re now experiencing will bring enormous changes to our society in ways that probably will only hasten or division. Throw in the growing sophistication of AR and VR into the mix and things grow really interesting really quick.

This is the point when I’m supposed to offer up some solutions. Alas, I honestly can’t think of any. That’s why it seems pretty inevitable — at least at this point — that there will be again be Civil War bloodshed shed in the United States within, say, 10 years. I could propose, maybe a “Twitter killer” that might force us to interact with each other in longer than 140 characters, but no one listens to me and I don’t have the skill to design such a service myself, so that’s kind of pointless.

It’s all very sad. I wish there was an easy answer to it all, but there isn’t. We need to engage each other more, need to talk to people we disagree with. But that doesn’t seem like it’s going to happen. So, as of right now, it seems as though all trends point towards us being doomed.

Shelton Bumgarner is the editor and publisher of The Trumplandia Report. He may be reached at migukin (at) gmail.com.