by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
Americans generally believe any political problem can simply be muddled through and punted down the road until it’s not a big deal anymore. We have every reason to think this way — generally, in our history, political issues have been “solved’ in a half-assed way, but finally, at last “sloved.”
We have before us, with the 2020 Election, something of a spectrum. On one end of the spectrum, House Trump wins fairly easily and their gradual consolidation of power continues. A Constitutional Convention is called and the very idea of liberal democracy in the United States will be rather quaint. On the other end of the spectrum, House Trump has to fight to stay in power and it burns the entire country to the ground in the process.
Or, put another way, the very things that House Trump would do anyway at one end of the spectrum, they do at the other end of the spectrum only, much, much quicker. Instead of years, it’s days and weeks.
At the center of this clusterfuck is 17-year-old AR-15 shooter Kyle Rittenhouse. If you want some sense of how tight America is right now, how much our traditional political system has collapsed, simply look at his situation. He murdered two people in cold blood, but in the eyes of MAGA-Qanon, he’s a regular second coming of John Brown.
Kyle Rittenhouse lies at the intersection of the entire fucking clusterfuck we find ourselves in because MAGA-Qanon is now fine with extra-legal killings in the pursuit of their agenda. On a macro level, we’re pretty much just about where the Wiemar Republic was in 1933. MAGA-Qanon no longer sees liberal democracy as legitimate. They see it as a means to an end. If they can’t get what they want using it, then they’ll start murdering people until they do get what they want.
This is why people like former Vice Magazine writer Tim Pool are so important to understanding what’s going on. (Please, MAGA-Qanon fucktards — eat shit. I’m not obsessed with him and he’s just a good shorthand for how completely fucked our situation is. Please fuck off.) Anyway, he calls himself a “disillusioned liberal.” He seems like a pretty smart guy — if extremely intense. His abrupt hatred for liberalism almost makes you think his last girlfriend was liberal and she really broke his heart or something. His hatred of liberalism is personal for some reason.
But Pool is emblematic of what’s going on in America — he’s a smart guy who has come up with a cogent reason why he supports a fascist. According to Pool’s logic, both Trump and Hitler are just “assholes.” It’s better to destroy 240 years of democracy than let a “coward” like Joe Biden become president. Sure, Pool. Sure. Whatever floats your boat.
(I keep expecting Pool to notice me writing about him and either block me on Twitter or swoop in and put me on blast. He’s a successful guy — especially compared to me — and so, lulz, maybe he doesn’t see me as worth his time. But I am prepared to “own” my views.)
So, fascism is here. Tyranny is victorious. America is finally “great” again.
Regardless, the point is, America is either going to gradually become more an more a fascist state or it’s going to implode and it will all happen a lot quicker than we imagine.
The same logic that the Right uses to defend Kyle Rittenhouse will be used for significant political violence against anyone MAGA-Qanon doesn’t like. There’s no norm or law that is going to stop this fate.
America is Russia. Russia is America.
