by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
MAGA these days craves autocracy. In fact, one could say that’s the central issue of the moment — Trump was supposed to be an autocrat, and “not lose.” And so, when he didn’t do what everyone thought he would do — be an autocrat — it’s left us all, both me and MAGA, in something of a daze.
That’s why we’re careening towards an extremely surreal moment in American political history. We’re an autocracy without the autocrat. All the conditions are there, but Trump is a ding-dong. His power comes from being a pure avatar for the rot and rage found within the American political system.
But, weirdly enough, Trump really is nothing more than a deranged Chauncy Gardner of “Being There” — he’s so lazy and incompetent and stupid that he simply can’t give his followers what they want: an autocracy. Hence, his followers beg him to “cross the Rubicon” and take “total control” but he’s just not up to it. And, in a sense, it’s too late.
If Trump had struck in some autocratic fashion right before or right after election day, then he probably would not only be cruising towards a stolen second term, but he probably would have goaded the Blue States into a secession crisis which would have given him the ability to reconstruct them in his own image.
Which, of course, is exactly what MAGA-Qanon-Patriot Party cocksucker shitheads want, NOW. It’s a very surreal event that if you take Trump seriously as a political Great Man, him being an idiot has saved American democracy to fight another day. We all overestimated him.
This is not to say he still can’t cause trouble.
There’s a decent chance he may finally go completely fucking insane at some point between, say, Jan. 6th and Jan. 20th and do all kinds of accidently-on-purpose autocratic things on his way out the door. He could go transactional on Twitter. He could demand that Red States leave the Union and have “real” America have its “real” president…maybe with a capital in Montgomery, Alabama?
But that’s a wildcard at the moment. It definitely seems as though besides a huge tax cut for plutocrats and hundreds of young, hack MAGA judges the Trump Era could be pretty much entirely value-free. The country will continue to be 48% Blue and 48% Red, but for the time being have something akin to a functioning, if weakened, democracy.
As such, what the MAGA-Qanon-Patriot Party cocksucker shitheads want — an autocratic strike that causes a civil war — will still happen, just in about four or so years. It won’t be Trump, it’ll be Tom Cotton or Mike Pompeo who finally strangles American democracy.
Or, put another way, once Trump is out of office, there’s a chance that American politics will snap back into place in a rather surreal fashion. Republicans will try to use Jedi mind tricks on the American populace so they can go back to bad faith arguments about this or that contrived kerfuffle as though we’re back to Obama’s second term. The massive hypocrisy of this won’t work on a lot of people, but it will probably work with enough people for Democrats to lose the House and Biden to be impeached as soon as possible.
I have no idea what is going to happen in post-Trump America. But I do suspect it’s going to be extremely surreal because when Trump had the means, motive and opportunity to murder American democracy…he went golfing.
