The Traditionalist conservatives I know love Trump because he’s a fighter. They feel “oppressed” because the “woke cancel culture mob” wants to “groom” little kids and otherwise turn everyone gay.
They feel they risk having their life ruined — or “canceled” if they should happen to do or say something that doesn’t follow the “woke” media agenda. They think all their favorite stars are having their lives ruined by the “woke mob.”
They are aghast at the potency of the transgender movement — especially when children are involved — and the feel the “what are your pronouns” issue to be as alarming as it is ridiculous.
Throw in a heaping helping of negative polarization and you have a recipe for disaster in the guise of the United States turning into an autocratic white Christian ethostate pretty much the next time Republicans have it in their power to do so.
In short, the United States is fucked.
The center-Left is too divided, too wrapped up in quibbling about how many genders can dance on the head of a pin, to do anything preemptively about the dangers we face. And, really, at the moment, I just don’t see there being a National Divorce.
Blues will ultimately bend a knee to fascism and those who have the means will vote with their feet by leaving the country. That, at the moment, seems to be our immutable fate. The only reason why I don’t absolutely believe this is I can’t predict the future and, as such, we might either have a civil war or some sort of military junta.
And, yet, the fix is in for Something Bad to happen. We’re past the event horizon for “the Fourth Turning” if you want to invoke that astrology for dudes brand.
In the end, I think we’re just going to shrug and give up our American democratic birthright because we don’t realize the true implications of becoming a MAGA-themed autocracy. Good luck.
So, once Trump or DeSantis is POTUS in 2025, what’s going on with CNN right now is going to happen to all American media. The shift will happen subtly, behind the scenes and under the rubric of “objectivity.” But will happen. And what’s probably going to tip the average person of that something has changed will be a mistake or overreach on the part of the autocrat.
The most obvious place for this to happen would be late night TV. While CNN is lurching towards MAGA via “objectivity” late night hosts could just be purged in a rather abrupt manner — probably because the autocrat threatens the broadcast licenses of their networks.
But the issue is — because form follows function there is going to be a point in the near future when the only way Americans can get any news that the autocrat doesn’t want them to know about will be to watch the BBC. The only way this isn’t going to happen, of course, is if there’s a civil war. Then that’s a whole different set of changes.
And, yet, again, the point is — America is careening towards autocracy at an alarming rate. We really are an anocracy and we’re far less stable than people would like to admit.
It will be shenanigans like what’s happening with CNN that is how freedom of speech will initially be curtailed — it will be plutocrats working within the system who chill free speech, not the government doing it. Though, obviously, that will come soon enough once the MAGA SCOTUS overturns New York Times V. Sullivan.
When I was growing up, my late mother would often say that I “wasn’t afraid of the devil.” And while I’m not exactly the most courageous person on practical, physical basis, when it comes to standing up to an idea I disagree with I’m a pretty big badass. I have a strong sense of self and a strong sense of what “justice” is.
As such, I find myself growing more and more angry at the intimidation tactics of the frothy MAGA New Right. Just take a look at this:
This is the type of bullshit that people who simply want to live in a traditional liberal democracy have to put up with these days. I have no beef with conservatives, but I do have a beef with fascists. And the MAGA New Right is a bunch of fucking fascists that are either going to turn us into a Russian-style autocracy or are going to ultimately cause the death of more people around the world than the Nazis did.
While I know that sounds pretty hysterical, it’s the truth. And I wish the center-Left wouldn’t allow itself to cower behind “norms” anymore. The MAGA New Right is out for political blood — they say it very outloud these days — and there’s going to come a point when they’re going to attempt to sucker punch the forces of the center-Left.
I’m a man of peace. A man of ideas. But we “Antifa,” (if you will) have gird our loins for what may be about to come — actual, significant political violence against democratic institutions in the United States. And, what’s even worse, there is the other option, of course, which is we just turn into an autocracy without even putting up a struggle.
If that happens, then, of course, wealthy liberals will flee the country at an alarming rate, to the point that instead of freaking out about “caravans” at the border Fox News will scream about “unpatriotic” liberals fleeing the country and demand our autocrat do something about it.
Now, as is always the case whenever we discuss such a clusterfuck, there is the issue of Trump. He is such a fucking chaos agent that he could very well, unto himself, be the reason why we have a catastrophic “National Divorce” that precipitates a Second American Civil War.
He really is that bad.
I think a lot of the reason why I keep writing about this is I learned in Asia that I often do well in chaos. And it definitely seems as though the United States is going to collapse into mass, violent chaos at some point between now and January 2025.
At the moment, I can’t do anything on a practical basis to prepare, so I find myself writing a lot about it because it makes me feel better to turn my very real abstract fears into something a little bit more concrete.
Anyway, I have no idea what we’re going to do. Get ready for the “Fourth Turning” or “Great Reset.”
I hate to talk about the pseudoscience of The Fourth Turning, but it’s an handy way to talk about what I fear will happen between now and January 2025. All systems are go for a significant change in the lives of everyday Americans, we just don’t know if it will be a final descent into autocracy or if it will be something akin to a civil war / WW3.
The chief reason why I believe this to be the case is the absolute fidelity that dingus Trump continues to have over the MAGA base. No good can come of this situation. I say this because it seems as though a lot Twitter liberals, who should know better, continue to assume that just because they “hope” that Something Will Change in regards to Trump should he be indicted, doesn’t mean it will.
Or, put another way, a lot of brand name people on both the Right and the Left seem to think there is some limit whereby Trump will get the hint and step aside for the good of the nation, or, for the good of Ron DeSantis and the Republican Party, if nothing else.
And, welp, I just don’t think that’s the case.
I think Trump, in his own very stupid way, is prepared to literally destroy the United States rather than personally either have to move aside for DeSantis or to go to jail. Have we learned nothing from what happened around January 6th? As such, we are primed and ready as a nation for a historic catastrophe. The likes we haven’t seen domestically since the First American Civil War and internationally since WW2.
There is a real greater-than-zero-sum chance that there really will be a Great Reset. That, in a sense, we’re going to have an End of, maybe not The World, but A World. The World we’ve all assumed we would live in after WW2 ended in 1945. And it could all begin to unravel at pretty much any moment now. All we don’t know is the specifics.
Are we going to peacefully slip into autocracy after the 2024 election and turn into a MAGA-themed Fortress America, or are we going to enter a period of rapid, violent change that will stun us all. And, would you believe, at this point, it all really depends on what ding-dong Trump does?
I continue to struggle with the implications of Trump simply refusing to get out of the way. Everyone really, really wants Trump to get out of the way for Ron DeSantis so he can become America’s Putin. And, yet, Trump is more likely to bolt the Republican Party with his MAGA base than he is to give up on his quest to become POTUS in 2024.
One other thing — the conditions for grave instability in the United States starting at (check’s watch) any fucking moment are right there in front of us. Biden is very old and Harris is young and untested. If something, God forbid, happens to Biden, then we could have a situation where there was no veep and Trump could suddenly find every reason to demand to be named Speaker of the House should Republicans take the House this year.
I just want you, gentle reader, to realize the gravity of the situation we face between now and January 2025. We’re one heartbeat away from a Great Reset. I mean, if Trump goes the Scalia route and simply peacefully shuffles off this mortal coil in his sleep — America’s cities would be burned to the ground by very paranoid, very angry MAGA New Right people.
Trump isn’t going anywhere, though, most likely and we’re all going to have to deal with the consequences of that. It’s going to get very, very messy, very, very quickly. Millions — even billions — of people could die, depending on the specifics of any supposed “Great Reset” or “Fourth Turning.”
We live in very dumb times. When the word “liberal” is now so toxic that you can’t even use the very true phrase “liberal world order” without crazy, frothy nutjobs on the Far Right growing very upset and paranoid, you live in very dumb times.
But the point is — since 1945, humanity has lived with unpreceded peace and prosperity because of, well, the “liberal world order” associated with Pax Americana. And since the fall of Communism, things have only gotten better for everyone involved.
And then MAGA slithered out of its black lagoon.
The thing about the decline of the American Empire is it’s happening in real time before our very eyes and, yet, we can’t process it. The average person is too busy raising their kids and paying their taxes to give the very abstract concepts that are happening all around us much thought.
But there is a very real chance that no matter which direction the United States goes — autocracy or civil war — we will see the end of Pax America and, as such, WW3 will happen. Remember, all that has to happen for WW3 to be declared is more than one major regional war break out at the same time. So, as such, even if what happens is dingus Trump in his second term pulls out of NATO and pulls troops out of ROK, then, there you go, WW3 on a plate. Because what would happen is the US leaving NATO would be a crushing blow to the post-WW2 liberal order.
As Trump “brought the troops home,” China would fill the massive geopolitical vacuum and invade Taiwan just because of, well, YOLO. At the same time, the DPRK would attack the newly undefended ROK. Then maybe Iran attacks Israel. Then maybe India and Pakistan have at it –with nukes!
The point is — we’re past the Event Horizon now. We’re in the danger zone. Something big, really big is probably going to either happen at any moment or no later than January 2025 around certification day. The bolts are popping off the United States at an alarming rate and there’s a good chance that if we don’t become an autocracy, we have a very nasty civil war with WMD used by both sides.
Regardless, not matter if we become an autocracy or have a civil war, there is going to be a Great Reset or Fourth Turning (or whatever the fuck you want to call it) and many, many people are going to die for a very dumb reason. This is it, we’re at the end of the beginning of Pax America.
I fear I, personally, will have to flee my home for political reasons when everything begins to collapse. My politics don’t fit my location. At least I havea passport.
These days, I find myself thinking of how there was once a point, I think during the 2016 campaign, when a rumor began to circulate that there was evidence of Trump using the “N-Word.” There was even a panicked meeting about within the Trump campaign in which one of his African American supporters asked, “Well, how many times did he say it?”
With that in mind, it’s clear that not only is Trump above the law in general, but for some weird reason his followers don’t have any red line at all. He could start to demand the right to sleep with women on their wedding night and his followers would, after about 24 hours of silence, have a ready set of talking points explaining why Trump, as a former president, has that right and why won’t the woke cancel culture mob let him do something so heterosexual? Trump is, in short, something akin to a God to MAGA, leaving us all to wonder if push came to shove and there was some sort of military action between Reds and Blues if we would find ourselves in a German 1945 “Gotterdammerung” type situation where every man, woman and child was willing to fight to the death for their big orange doofus.
All of this leads me to believe that, in the end, the real battle is who will be Trump’s successor. Whomever Trump picks to be 2024 veep is going to be in a prime position to be something akin to America’s Putin. And, given how bonkers Trump is at the moment, he could pretty much pick literally anyone, ranging from Gen. Mike Flynn to Steve Bannon. Anyone! It could get really dark, in fact.
We may all be Antifa in the end.
As an side, to think, at some point in the next 20 to 30 years, some very serious scholar is going to spend a lot of time writing a very serious, weighty tome about dingus Trump that takes him seriously, at last. It may not be an American who writes it because we’ll be an autocracy, but it’s going to happen somewhere. Unless, of course, WW3 happens it’s all moot.
Or, put another way, my prediction that there’s a real possibility that in the end MAGA will cause the death of more people than the Nazis did. If you factor in that a Second American Civil War would cause WW3, then that’s at least 1 to 2 billion dead right there. And I could see between 10 and 20 million American dead if Blue and Red started to lob WMD at each other in the context of a MAGA “revolution” or 2ACW.
Talk about a Great Reset or Fourth Turning!
Anyway, the point is, we live in the lead up to Something Big historically. I just don’t know if it’s autocracy, civil war, revolution, WW3 or some combination of all of those things. A lot of people are going to die because of a fucking dingus moron racist who is nothing more than a vessel, an avatar for white Christian rage.
And there doesn’t seem to be anything we can do about it.
While I am well known for my abstract hysterics about how bad things are in the United States at the moment as MAGA continues to be ascendant, occasionally, there is a concrete thing I can point to and say — “That’s bad!”
U.S. Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) delivers an opening statement during the opening hearing of the U.S. House (Select) Committee investigating the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, on July 27, 2021 at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC. During its first hearing the committee, currently made up of seven Democrats and two Republicans, will hear testimony from law enforcement officers about their experiences while defending the Capitol from the pro-Trump mob on January 6. (Photo by Jim Bourg-Pool/Getty Images)
And that’s how I feel about Liz Cheney losing her primary. Even though on policy, I pretty much disagree with her 100%, when it comes to her willing to sacrifice politically in the name of defending democracy I back her just as much. In fact, I’m so desperate for principled leadership and an elected leader who at least believes that the United States IS a democracy that I’m willing to entertain the idea of voting for Cheney. I say this especially in the context of her potentially being a part of a Unity Ticket.
Anyway, the Republican Party is very autocratic and growing ever more so by the moment. It is inevitable that they will gain power again and when they do, I’m not totally sure that they’re going to ever give it up peacefully. And autocracy is so popular, that there’s a decent chance that Trump could win outright in 2024, no cheating required.
He will cheat anyway, of course, because that’s his nature.
We have to prepare for the United States being faced with the deeply existential choice of autocracy or civil war starting in late 2024, early 2025. If Trump is the Republican nominee, this choice is going to be very, very extreme and severe. There won’t be any middle ground.
And, of course, there is the very real possibility that something akin to The Troubles of Northern Ireland might happen in the United States before then. MAGA is already chomping at the bit to murder people like me in cold blood for political reasons — they sure do come to this Website a lot looking for my dystopian hellscape scenarios.
Too bad my nightmare is their dream. What I fear, they want.
Or, to reiterate, we’re past the Event Horizon for civil war or autocracy and we’re in the danger zone of severe political violence erupting at any moment. It could start because Democrats have an upset win in November. It could happen because Trump is indicted. It could be that Trump pulls a Scalia on us and dies peacefully in his sleep. It could happen for you name it. Anything and everything might be the final straw for MAGA and they grab their AR-15s to murder people like me in cold blood. It’s already all they talk about!
Anyway. I’ve already begun to feel the same sense of rage I felt when Trump was president. I hope to channel that rage into six novels and hopefully finish them before I drop dead. But I have to accept the very real possibility that at some point between now and around 2025 I may become a domestic political refugee and will have to find succor somewhere outside of my current abode because all my MAGA neighbors want to murder me for my political views.
We all may be Antifa before it’s over with.
But, back to Cheney. I really respect her principles. And I still believe that if we do have a National Divorce that she could, ironically, become a Blue State America leader. It would be surreal, but when such tectonic historic forces are a play virtually anything is possible.
We may be in for some pretty fucking strange events between now and January 2025.
People want a simple answer to a very complicated question. They want some sense of when a civil war might start in the United States this year — if ever. The biggest issue is, what exactly do you mean a “civil war.” Do you mean a popular uprising on the part of MAGA that would be like “The Troubles” of Northern Ireland or do you mean something more organized, akin to the First American Civil War.
Here are some reasons why we may have a civil war over and above the FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago.
Republicans have come to glorify political violence Something you see a lot these days within the bullshit echo chamber of the MAGA New Right is the belief that because “liberals won’t leave us alone” that they are being “driven” to extremism. There’s a lot of leading not-so-vague talk as to what all this would ultimately mean. But it’s clear that for a number of “thought leaders” within the MAGA New Right that they have accepted that at some point in the future, they’re going to have to resort to violence to get what they want.
Republicans no longer believe in democracy It is now clear that like any good fascists, Republicans no longer believe in democracy unless it’s for the specific purpose of gaining and keeping power. This view of the system they’re supposed to a part of leads them do extremely destabilizing things that help push the country to the brink.
Trump 2024 Just Trump being the 2024 nominee would, in itself, be enough to cause a civil war at some point in late 2024 – early 2025. He just has a special knack for “owning the libs” in such a way that if he stole in 2024 election and said the “quiet part outloud” that Blue States would grow so enraged that it would be they, not Red States, that left the Union and caused a Second Civil War. But Ron DeSantis is polling exceptionally well at the moment, so either Trump politically shivs him at some point, or he co-ops him, making him his VP, opening the door to DeSantis becoming America’s Putin at some point down the road a little bit.
Steve K Bannon. Bannon and his toadies are actively working to destroy the framework that weuse to administer free and fair elections. So, it’s very easy to imagine a situation where this gambit works in ways that Trump himself is too idiotic to pull off personally and it will be so egregious that, again, Blue States leave the Union and we have a Second American Civil War.
Extreme negative polarization We’re in for a bump four or so years, no matter what, because negative polarization, on a systemic level, has reached a critical mass. When one of your political parties is fascist and would rather crash the global economy instead of even appear to work for the good of the nation — you got a problem.
A lack of shared values As the big blow up on Twitter in the last 24 hours about a Stephen Colbert song and dance gag about getting vaccinated proves — we can’t even agree on what’s funny. A combination of this and negative polarization is leading to the United States being two nations, one Red, one Blue and when we get around to attempting to elect the next president, the system simply won’t be prepared for the passions it will stir up.
A potentially historic miscalculation on the part of Republicans It’s possible that, much like European powers in the lead up to WW1, when the time comes and Republicans have a choice between peacefully transitioning us into autocracy or fucking with us all so we want to take up arms, they will choose the latter not because they have to, but because they want to. It’s possible that by the 2024 — 2025 period, Republicans will see a civil war as their only choice to consolidate power, even if it’s clear that they could get everything they ever wanted within the system they so obviously loath.
And the issue of “when” is even more difficult to pin down. What do you expect to happen? “When” is both very nebulous and specific at the same time. It’s nebulous because what would you call the “start?” An explosion? People dying for political reasons? It’s specific because you expect there to be “An Event” that you can point to, like the battle of Fort Sumter as the “beginning.”
So, I honestly have no idea “when” a civil war will begin in 2022. But if you’re really interested in “when” a civil war will begin this year, you need to keep a close eye on Donald Trump. He has the fate of the United States in his tiny, tiny hands. If Trump goes transactional and demands political violence in an effort to intimidating the Federal government to stop them from prosecuting him. There is, of course, the idea that there could be some sort of “spontaneous” popular uprising on the part of the MAGA New Right that would involve a lot of wildcat, lone wolves with AR-15s running around, murdering people for political reasons.
That, in turn would force us towards a situation where we face the existential choice of autocracy or civil war sometime around late 2024, early 2025. So, it could be that there would be growing violence between now and that time, but it would not be as organized as what we might see as the 2024 presidential cycle comes to a climax. Because I believe that, in the end, it will be Blues who start a civil war, if it happens, because the 2024 election will have been brazenly stolen by Republicans.
And, yet, since the FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago, it’s very, very possible that a “civil war” could, in fact, start the way everyone has long thought it would — MAGA freaks out and starts blowing shit up. And it would happen for one specific reason — Donald Trump. Because, as I have already said, on a macro level, Republicans are ascendant and they have absolutely no reason to start a civil war because they’re getting everything they want via other means.
Below is a bit more detailed breakdown of description of what a civil war starting in late 2024, early 2025 might look like.
Macro trends are not on America’s side. As I keep saying, 2024 is going to be it. It’s the year when either the United States turns into a Russian-style “managed democracy” or there’s a civil war. Now, this isn’t going to be a complete list of the 50 states, but I am going to highlight some of the states that may be more problematic should a Second American Civil War erupt.
Oregon The state is really two states and, as such, is probably going to be a major flashpoint in any Second Civil War. What’s likely to happen is Portland will buck any attempt at a putsch on the part of bonkers Right wing nutjobs in the rest of the state and, as such, either there’s a really blood struggle in the state or there are a massive amount of political refugees from the Portland area as the rest of the state sides with MAGA.
Virginia Again, this is really two states. There’s the NOVA-Richmond-Hampton Roads urban corridor and everything else. It’s very easy to imagine a situation — especially with Virginia’s historic ties to the first Civil War — where the state implodes as we grow closer and closer to a Second Civil War. Too many good old boys in the rural areas of Virginia might get wrapped up in the “Lost Cause” mythos and decide to seize places like Danville (the last capitol of the Confederacy) or Richmond (another Confederate capitol.) If nothing else, simply because of the larger population of the “Blue” parts of the state, there will be significant violence and political refugees as the Blues consolidate power.
Michigan I don’t know as much about this state, but it definitely seems as though once the pre-war process of coups and political consolation begins that there will be at least a coup attempt on the part of the Far Right. Again, don’t underestimate how once you actually start murdering people that the dynamics of things change significantly. It’s very possible that there would be a coup in the state, it would fail, and there would be significant political violence as the state’s Blue population fought back and put the state firmly on the Blue side.
New York Yet again, we have a situation where once politics fails us that the otherwise banal regional differences in a state tears it apart. New York City is far more progressive than the rest of New York State and, depending on how things work out, it’s possible that New York City could become a revolutionary hotbed to the point that is tears itself away from the rest of the state and proclaims itself a Free City. This almost happen during the first Civil War. If nothing else, there will be a serious jiggling of the relationship between NYC and the rest of the state to the point where it aligns itself in any Second Civil War with New Jersey and Connecticut in a way that update New York does not. Or, again, there could be significant political consolidation as Blues from all over the northeast flee to New York and the MAGA-friendly natives of the state flee elsewhere.
Maine I really don’t know that much about this state other than a vague belief that the northern part of the state is far different than the southern part. It’s very easy to imagine significant consolation in the state one way or another as people flee to it as the rest of the country buckles. The state is big — if sparsely populated — and it’s strategic location near the Canadian border might be enough for it to be the home to large refugee camps.
Texas Texas would be in an odd situation as the country fell into civil war because its long-term political trend is shifting Blue, but it’s part of the South and a lot of people consider themselves Southern and MAGA. So either it simply buckles into its own intra-civil war or the MAGA cocksucker fucktards push out all the Blues who flee to Blue States nearby. The end result would be a lot of pissed off former Texans who would be of great benefit to the Blue cause.
California In a sense, the whole fate of the United States rests on what California does. If it simply bolts from the Union, then that significantly hobbles the Blue cause on the ground. California sitting on its hands and become its own nation in the event of a Second Civil War makes it far more likely that either Red states win or there is some sort of half-ass balkanization of the United States. But if California stays and fights, then they could provide not only the necessary economy and population for a Blue state victory — after many, many dead — but also something of a vision for what America would look like after we’re finished bombing ourselves into oblivion.
The Deep South It’s very easy to imagine at the onset of a Second American Civil War most of the old Confederacy on a political level getting extremely excited and having a massive amount of momentum to either leave the Union outright or support the Republican controlled Congress’ attempt to brazenly steal the election. Then reality would sink in — all of the Southern states have significant African American populations and once politics is no longer a viable method of solving problems then the far more brutal dynamics of realpolitik would kick in. I just can’t imagine millions of African Americans lulzing a return to the Confederacy, no matter how badly the white political establishment of those states may want it. So, even though the South has a lot of people and a big economy, it would be, on a regional basis, too busy fighting a race war to really help the Red cause all that much. If things really grew as radical as I fear they will — probably because WMD are stolen and cities start to get vaporized — it’s the Deep South where you’re most likely to see some WW2 level atrocities as radicalized whites begin to murder blacks en mass.
As for the rest of the states, their ability to pick one side or the other is probably far easier and their biggest problem would be dealing with political refugees.
The Roman Empire had its Crisis of The Third Century and it appears as though the Anglophone world has it’s own political crisis in the 21 Century. Three of the five major English speaking democracies currently have very fucked up political systems. Two out of the five — the United States and Great Britain — definitely seem to be careening towards some sot of potential breakup.
If I was smarter — and, maybe, wrote for Vox or Foreign Affairs — I could give you a lengthy explanation of why this is the case. But I’m just some hayseed rube in the rural part of a flyover state, so lulz, I don’t know. I have no idea what is wrong with Australia, but I do have some sense of what’s wrong with the UK and especially the US.
The UK’s problem seems just as existential as the problems the United States faces. The UK is pretty much the lone multi-ethnic state in Europe and it current has a very late Austro-Hungarian Empire vibe to it. It’s very easy to imagine the country breaking up into its constituent states and that will be that.
The US, meanwhile, is a bit more complicated. The US has the choice of autocracy or civil war before it and we just haven’t gotten to the point in that particular process where I can game out which one is going to happen. I have the general sense that the US is going to drift peacefully into some sort of “lite touch” autocracy until we elect an autocrat who is a bit too power hungry for their own good and then we either have a popular revolt or things get really, really dark.
Anyway, the point is — outside of New Zealand and Canada, the entire Anglophone world is in far more turmoil than one might think. The English speaking world is in a simmering, long-term political crisis with no ready solution.
The US and the UK, specifically, are in serious trouble. All I can say is the next few years may be far, far more dramatic on a geopolitical level than we could possibly imagine.
I talk to my far more conservative relatives about the dark path that MAGA is leading us down and a recurring defense they use is sort of, “Oh, that would never happen.” This, in large part, is a function of the extensive permission structure that’s been built up specifically to allow conservative people who are turned off by MAGA to turn around and vote for Trump anyway.
And, I have to admit, that while Trump is definitely “autocratic friendly” in the end, he was just too dumb and lazy to follow through on his more extreme anti-democratic rhetoric.
I feel, however, that anyone who lulzes the dangers of MAGA, ignores how on an systemic level, the Republican Party is now hell bent on establishing a “blood and soil” white Christian ethno state in the United States. Political history teaches us that form follows function and, as such, once MAGA inevitably comes to power again that what Trump only talked about in the past is going to become a reality.
The autocratic forces at work in the United States are just too strong. Historical determinism would suggest that there will come a point when all my dystopian hellscape scenarios are going to come true. And that’s when I wonder how my conservative relatives are going to react.
What I think is going to happen is they will become, at last, “Good Germans.” They will generally be pleased with how they can finally sleep tight at night because MAGA has eliminated any possibility of them being “canceled” simply for being conservative. Any excesses on the part of MAGA will be justifiable because the boarders will be secure, abortion will be illegal and elections “secure.”
I, being an anti-MAGA loudmouth, see things dramatically different. What is nothing more than an abstract for my conservative relatives is very concrete for me. I have no idea what the specifics of any of this will be, but the case could be made that at some point President Pompeo or President Cotton will purge the media in some way and then weaponize the existing ICE infrastructure.
As such, it’s very possible there will come a moment when my conservative relatives will be required to weigh their personal needs with my political transgressions in this new, dark MAGA fascist era. I’ve already told at least one of them to just turn me in. I know that sounds hysterical right now, but I’d much rather be turned in by my Good German relatives than have them beg me to shut up for the sake of the family.
It’s just not going to happen.
I often weigh how long, exactly, it might take for this “form follows function” concept to turn us in to what MAGA wants us to be –an Americanized version of Putin’s Russia. I struggle with this because it’s very possible that for some time after we become an autocracy, MAGA autocrats won’t really touch the one thing that would make people sit up and take notice: the First Amendment.
For some time, they would likely be quite content to weld hard power via law and policy and laugh at Twitter liberals who freak out at this or that autocratic thing that has been implemented. A lot of how this would actually go down depends on the personality quirks of whichever autocrat in waiting happens to finally ascend the throne.
But, my rough estimate would be we would gradually grow more autocratic and then suddenly get REALLY autocratic. My guess right now is this would happen when the MAGA fascist leader we finally elect demands a Constitutional Convention to “pass a balance budget amendment.” They will get their convention, then it will turn around and enshrine MAGA into law for good.
Then things are really going to get shitty for people like me.
Yet, I’m sketching out things that will likely happen at some point between now and, say, 2041. Of course, there is the other option, which is we have a civil war and after we bomb the hell out of each other, we sort things out and gradually go back to the way things were. But that would be a tragedy and I’d prefer not to go through that hell.
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