by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
It’s now self-evident that win, lose or draw, Trump is never leaving power. Never. He will burn the country to the ground — even go so far as to incite a civil war — rather than leave office.
In a sense, one of the worst case scenarios is Trump “wins” on Election Night and he continues to have a thin veneer of being a normal politician. While a lot of center-Left people will be upset — even to the point of violence — it will all be moot. Things will continue to seem “normal,” but the march to an autocratic managed democracy will only accelerate. He will continue to do the same bullshit he’s been doing for the last four years. It’s likely that his extremes will be more, well, extreme.
The press will be purged.
The United States will leave NATO.
There will be a Constitutional Convention.
All these things will follow the same, predictable cycle we’ve grown acustomed to. Twitter liberals — while they still exist — will joke about what Trump wants. Identity politics people will coo what a genius Nancy Pelosi is. And, in the end, Trump will get what he wants. Maybe not exactly in the way he wanted it, but the point will be made.
Once the Constitutional Convention happens, it grows more difficult for me to predict what will happen. Trump is old and deranged, so may be he’d name Don Jr or Ivanka as his successor? Or maybe there will simply be a succession of Trumps in either the POTUS or Veep slot for the next 40 odd years under the new, authoritarian Constitution.
Of course, there is the off chance that Trump has to force the issue of his re-election and the country implodes. It will be a tragedy with no obvious end game. But it may happen. I really don’t want any type of political violence, but Trump is such a moron that he might bungle what is otherwise a sure shot for him.
I just don’t see MAGA-Qanon accepting anything but total victory, so if a lot of things are obvious about MAGA-Qanon will become increasingly more difficult for Twitter liberals to ignore. MAGAQ is likely to start murdering people who oppose them in cold blood, even if Trump “wins” and continues playing coy about his real intentions.
The point is, we’re completely, totally fucked.
Trump’s popularity is unchanged despite the massive clusterfuck that is time in office. There is something existential and structural wrong with the United States and there’s simply nothing that can fix it.
Things are dark and going to get far, far darker in the coming years.
