I write a lot about the prospect of a Second American Civil War, and yet, as of right now it’s very much a fantasiam. The idea of a Second American Civil War is evoked more from a general unease about the state of the United States than any real sense that it might actually happen anytime soon.
The issue for me is the conditions are there for a civil war. The positions of the two sides have grown more extreme and absolute. There’s an alarming level of dehumanization that’s taken place in our political discourse. And it definitely seems as though the Right has embraced the glorification of political violence in a rather astonishing fashion.
I would suggest that that while we’re probably drifting in some vague manner towards something that might be described as a “civil war” it’s not going to just magically happen. For an actual “civil war” to happen as the modern American would understand it, you would need a political framework, a government and a military force. If you don’t have any of these elements, then you just have a bunch of frustrated MAGA motherfuckers who, for some reason, think wearing a mask is tyranny.
Even then, if we manage to make it to the 2024-2025 timeframe, there’s a good chance that American liberal democracy won’t go out with a bang, but with a whimper — we’ll just take it for granted that for a Democrat to become president, they also have to control Congress so the Electoral vote is certified. But because of gerrymandering and voter suppression that never happens again.
MAGA controls the United States for generations and we slowly grow poorer and more autocratic to the point that we’re indistinguishable from Russia.
And, yet, there’s a greater-than-zero-sum-chance that something unexpected happens between now and then that sparks an actual, honest-to-God civil war in the United States. It could be anything from the unexpected death of a major political figure to, say, the Cyber Ninjas recount in Arizona “proving” that Trump “won.”
The reason why the latter might cause us to buckle is it would give a fig leaf to elements of the Republican Party who are looking for an excuse, any excuse to take the next logical step when it comes to their refusal to accept a Biden win — nullification.
And given how impractical it would be to nullify a presidential administration, it’s a brief jaunt to seceding from the Union altogether. But there is a lot I can’t figure out or game out. Even if Trump ran around saying he was “really” president because of the sham Cyber Ninjas recount, there’s a good chance that outside of the far right echo chamber that it will be a lulz.
But maybe not. It could be that Trump will get some traction among MAGA legislatures and all hell will break loose. I honestly, at his point, don’t know which scenario to expect to happen.
I could write a whole book on why I hate MAGA — and, in a sense I am via the novel I’m writing — but there’s one aspect of MAGA that sticks out above all the rest. That aspect is how MAGA craves transforming the United States into an autocratic white Christian ethno state like Russia.
My white hot rage against this desire on the part of MAGA is the one thing that allows me to tolerate all the dumb things that liberal-progressives have managed to think up to hurt themselves on a political level. I was not raised in a nation that was based on “blood and soil.” I was raised in a nation that was an idea that welcomed immigrants from all over the world and always strove to do better.
Everything else that I hate about MAGA stems from this desire on their part. Trump is simply a vessel for the racism, misogyny and bigotry that is associated with the “blood and soil” concept. The startling thing to me about all of this is I keep meeting otherwise intelligent, educated (and wealthy) people who have bought into the “blood and soil” concept totally.
It’s enough to fill me with a great deal of dread. It’s like a fucking Twilight Zone episode. Things have gotten so bad with a number of people close to me that I am beginning to take some of my more hysterical Trump-era fears far more seriously than I did while Trump was in office. As I keep saying, in the end, we’re going to have a very stark choice as a nation: autocracy or civil war.
The United States is far more politically unstable than the average person may believe. All we need is a little extra pressure put on the system and the whole thing may collapse in a rather abrupt, violent and cataclysmic manner. And, really, the United States is a slow moving train wreck at this point — the only question is what finally pushes us over the edge.
That’s probably my biggest pet peeve about Twitter liberals. They take such glee in pointing out the structural problems in the United States…but don’t take the time to make the obvious cognitive leap to what it all means. It’s like they see a historical train rushed towards us, but aren’t all that interested in helping us get off the tracks.
I just don’t see how the United States doesn’t either become an autocratic managed democracy like Russia or we buckle and start running around murdering each other for political reasons. I hope I’m wrong. I often am. But on a macro level, things don’t look so great.
The point of this is — I, for one, know which side I’m on. I’m on the side of the America I grew up in. Whatever fate that may bring me, I’m ready for.
I’m so old I remember when Yahoo first burst on to the public consciousness. It was probably around the same time as blogs like Suck.com took off. Those were wonderful, revolutionary times. My biggest regret is I wasn’t able to take advantage of them to do something more…productive…with my life.
Anyway.
Yahoo is kind of circling the drain right now. But it does have two big things going for it — eyeballs and a namebrand. Yet there is a major problem going forward: it’s kind of been bought simply to have all the money squeezed out of it while it slowly dies. For Yahoo to mean anything again, you would need someone with big bucks and a lot of vision to wrestle control of it and completely think outside the box.
If I had a few billion on me, here are two ideas as to what to do with Yahoo.
Social media While I know social media is not very hot right now, if you really wanted to save Yahoo, what you do is completely re-imagine it. You lay off a big chunk of its workforce and then rebuild it from the ground up to be something akin to a mixture of Twitter and Facebook. I have thought this out to an extreme, absurd degree. But, in general, what I would do is bone up on the old Usenet news of 25 years ago, updated it and make the site sort of like Reddit but with more features.
A Modern TV Guide You might also turn Yahoo into a TV Guide of sorts for the all the streamers people now use. Turn Yahoo into an entertainment portal for streamers with content connected to them.
The Golden Globes, if you think about them, have always been something of a grift. What happened was, over the years, as the Oscars grew more powerful and our society began to grow more modern, The Golden Globes kind of came along for the ride.
They became a part of the Oscar voting season because they gave people some sense of who was leading heading into them. But, at their center, there was a problem: they were nothing more than the votes of the Hollywood Foreign Press. That’s it. Nothing particularly special about them.
As such, it definitely seems at the moment that their era has ended because of changing expectations on the part of Hollywood. In the end, their demise may be historically value free.
Having said all that, it’s past time for the major streamers to join forces to have their own awards shows. They’re so powerful in Hollywood now, it makes sense that they would have some sort of awards show of their own. Something big and flashy for Hollywood types to get dressed up for. If MTV can have its own movie awards, then the streamers can, too.
I have no idea what is going to happen. Maybe the Golden Globes will come back after some existential thought. Who knows.
The United States is far less stable on a political level than we realize. If I have to spend this much time thinking about all the different ways we could buckle sooner rather than later, we got a problem. I generally believe that if there’s going to be any kind of modern civil war, it’s going to be in the 2024-2025 timeframe.
And, yet, we have to deal with the bonkers Cyber Ninja recount in Arizona that has the potential to be extremely destabilizing. If they do manage to pull a Trump “victory” out of their butt — which they definitely seem hellbent on doing — then there’s a good chance that Trump will pop out of his hidey-hole and scream at the top of his lungs that this “proves” that he won the 2020 election and, as such, the Biden Administration should be “nullified” (whatever that means.)
What’s more, that’s not the only way we might find ourselves in a hot civil war — the unexpected death of any number of major political leaders, for any reason, would do the same thing at this point.
The point is — the United States is at a breaking point. We’re primed and ready for a collapse of historic proportions pretty much at any point between now and January 2025. It’s pretty easy to imagine that MAGA Republicans in Congress will simply refuse to certify the election of anyone they don’t like and that will be when we face a very, very stark choice: do we become a fascist state or do we find ourselves in a hot civil war?
I don’t particularly want either outcome, but as I keep saying, the issue is no one will have a choice. We’re all going to have to make some existential decisions. There will, at last, be no middle ground. We’re all going to have to pick a side, any side and risk our lives by doing so.
It used to be I had at least one conservative relative I had regular, friendly debates with. That has ended, ominously, however, because my conservative interlocutor finally was so detached from reality that I got mad and he said he didn’t want to talk politics with me anymore.
I try to be empathetic, so I find myself rolling around in my mind the topics we talked about in our last debate. The key take away I can think of off the top of my head is how much conservatives fucking hate science. It’s not that they don’t believe in it or that they deny it — they just hate it. This is the origin of their collective hatred of Dr. Fauci. In fact, Dr. Fauci was one of several instances where what my conservative relative started to say seemed like it was being beamed out of the Upside Down. It was surreal. It was bonkers. And it was dangerous.
Anyway, another re-occurring theme with conservatives is they “just want to be left alone.”
I assume what they mean is they think that just by being conservative, that just by having an opinion that doesn’t fit the “liberal media’s agenda” that they risk having their lives destroyed via “cancel culture.” I find it curious that conservatives get so worked up over the power of the liberal media when it’s also pretty obvious that for all the talk about the Republican Party dying it is actually growing more powerful as it marinates in its hate.
I struggle to figure out what the solution to how the United States is tearing itself apart. My fear is the only way there’s any solution is some sort of historic “reset” of our politics that involves an actual hot civil war. I could be a lot more empathetic to the concerns of American conservatives if they weren’t so hysterical that they were willing to throw their lot with fascism. Because that’s what we face right now — the rise of American fascism.
And, really, ironically, what has allowed us to doge the fate of the Weimer Republic for the time being is the Right is completely consumed with hero worship of a…ding-dong. Trump pretty much is an American Hitler…but for the part where he just talks a lot and never actually takes the next step of knocking heads. Trump is soooo fucking lazy and disorganized that while he has helped us lurch towards a Fourth Reich, he has also delayed its creation because of his, specific, personality quirks.
It’s not like Trump has the wherewithal to organize any sort of SA-type paramilitary group. So, a crucial aspect of the rise of American fascism doesn’t exist. We have a few would-be paramilitary groups but they’re small and disorganized at the moment. And, hopefully, will stay that way and never organize into one big jackbooted organization.
But let me be clear — the MAGA Republican Party isn’t dying. If we were still a liberal democracy, then, yes, you could make that argument. But we’re not that anymore –we’re an autocracy without an autocrat. What I mean by that is — all the conditions are there for an autocrat to turn us into a managed democracy like Russia…but for someone to actually do it.
And the one person who history would have do it — Donald J. Fucking Trump — is such a dingbat that for the time being we have a few years of peace. Either Trump will come back tan, ready and rested and take us into the dark night of fascism, or any one of seemingly endless stream of would-be MAGA autocrat presidents will do it instead.
And, as such, that’s why, as I keep saying, we face a stark choice between now and January 2025: autocracy or civil war.
If you want some indication of how unstable the United States is right now just under the surface, look no further that how hysterical the Right is now about Dr. Fauci. He’s because such a lightening rod, such subject of vitriol that is its growing rather startling.
The issue for me is, we need to not poo-poo as much the idea that the biological lab in Wuhan had something to do with the first COVID19 outbreak there. The Right literally wants to murder Dr. Facui in cold blood right now as it is. They are hell bent to figure out some way whereby Dr. Facui is responsible for, or has financially benefited from, COVID19.
As such, if evidence comes to light that does connect the Wuhan lab to COVID19, there could be severe political violence in the United States in more ways than one. The reason why that link is so important to the Right is then they have a ready talking point for any and all criticism of how Trump handled the outbreak. They will be able to piviot to blaming the Chinese, or Dr. Fauci for this or that connection he may have had to the facility.
Any proven link between COVID19 and the Wuhan lab would cause such a political firestorm in the United States that it’s kind of frightening. It is now Rightwing orthodoxy that the lab was connected to COVID19 and that Dr. Fauci is some sort of nefarious, diabolical mastermind who, I don’t know, thought an outbreak was some sort of cure-all to Trump? (The exact reasoning for why he would — contrary to all available evidence — want an outbreak is one of the many dubious logical conclusions the far Right has developed.)
But we have to take this bullshit seriously. There are any number of surreal and dangerous things that might occur if any link was proven. So, as such, we need to take the possibility of such a link seriously and begin to figure out ways to mitigate the rage such a link would cause in certain parts of the American electorate
I have no idea what is going to happen when the bonkers “audit” of votes in Arizona wraps up. I, will, however, be flabbergasted if we go through all this trouble and the they don’t somehow, magically, prove that Trump “won” the state. I guess it’s possible, but it’s highly unlikely.
As such, we have to brace ourselves for Trump taking an extremely questionable and suspect “victory” in ONE STATE as meaning he won the 20220 election and, as such, can demand that its results are “nullified.” That, in turn will lead to MAGA legislatures across the country taking Trump both seriously and literally and trying to do just that.
But what starts off as a “nullification” crusade will inevitably turn into a secession crisis and then all bets are off. The United States is very politically unstable just under surface and it’s very easy to imagine the whole country finally tearing itself apart far sooner than any of us imagine — like this summer.
If the United States buckles, then the entire post WW2 security framework does, too and we will be faced with the prospect of WW3. A lot of people around the world, not just the United States will get vaporized.
Yet, again, I have no idea what is going to happen. The Arizona recount could be a big old dud and they we get to enjoy a few more years of stability until MAGA Republicans force the issue in 2024-2025 when they won’t let Biden be re-elected no matter what the outcome is.
I can tell the United States is growing more and more politically unstable because the black hole that is the Trump MAGA grift is growing more and more powerful. It would be so easy to flip a switch, become a MAGA true believer and within four years be drinking cocktails with Stephen Miller.
It really would be that easy.
All you would have to do is sell your soul, lie and actively deny reality. That’s what the grift, once you start to suck its teat, can become all consuming. It’s like blow. You can get quick, easy access to power, fame and cold hard cash but at a cost: your self respect.
I say this because contrary to the populist liberal Twitter conventional wisdom, most MAGA people aren’t ignorant or stupid. They’re pretty fucking racist, misogynistic and greedy, but the vast majority of them are just normal people living their lives. Sure, there are some severe cult members, but there are also a lot of people who feel that MAGA is their only viable political option.
So, I find myself rolling these concepts in my head a lot, struggling to understand how intelligent, educated people are able to invest so much into a lazy ding-bat who is destructive and corrosive. Reading Ezra Klein’s book, “Why We’re Polarized” helped a lot…but I think the book I’m reading about the rise of Hitler probably will help even more once I finish it.
Trump is, and always has been, nothing more than an avatar for some pretty existential problems in the American political system. I really struggle to understand what, specifically, is warping American politics is in such a dark, tragic fashion.
In some respects, Trump is clone of Hitler. And, yet, not quite. Hitler was also an avatar, but he was also a lot more blood thirsty and willing to follow through on his bonkers idea than Trump. Trump thinks he can just rant about what autocratic thing he wants and it will magically be given to him. Hitler realized that there comes a point when you have to start actively hurting people if you’re going to achieve your agenda.
Which raises the question — will we learn even more about the rise of Hitler from who gets to be Der Fuhrer after Trump is physically unable to do it. There are so very many young, ambitious individuals who want to achieve what Trump could not because he’s just an idiot — the end of American liberal democracy and the founding of a Russian-style autocratic managed democracy.
Because that’s what American is careening towards on a macro level. In fact, as I keep saying, the issue could be that what otherwise is inevitable — the United States becoming an autocracy — might not happen because we have a civil war instead because MAGA bungles the transition.
And, yet, there are so many things I can’t game out. I just don’t know. On a macro level, America’s democracy is undead. We’re an autocracy without an autocrat. But I can’t predict the future, so…I guess it’s possible we kind of drift into the future until something happens to change our course?
The thing that non-insane, non-MAGA people have to understand is the very serious dynamic surrounding the Arizona audit by Cyber Ninjas. Too many people are comforting themselves by the Biden Administration’s interest in this bonkers audit or this or that other metric that they feel will mitigate the outcome one way or another. And, thankfully, it’s still possible that despite their best efforts, Cyber Ninjas will fail in their efforts to throw the state to Trump and we can all go back to dreading what may happen in 2024-2025.
America 2021
But the whole point of this audit is, at a minimum, to give MAGA a talking point to “own the libs” on Twitter and, if possible, to set up a dynamic similar to what happened at the Capitol on January 6th, only on a national scale. So, while all the talk by New York Magazine that the Republican establishment is all-in with supporting the coup next time, we probably need to take seriously the possibly of a major secession crisis this summer.
With that in mind, let’s so a little back-of-the-envelope wargaming. What are the nuts and bolts of an actual, honest-to-God secession crisis in summer 2021?
The first thing that would happen should Cyber Ninjas pull a Trump “victory” out of their butt is a lot of shock and ridicule with the Twitter liberal echo chamber. This will last maybe a few hours. Then, unfortunately, Trump will probably hold a press conference of some sort where he rants about how this one state “proves” that he “really won” in 2020. He will babble in vague — but ominous — terms about how this “nullifies” the results of the 2020 election and he’s going to weigh his options going forward.
Again, this will evoke a wave of ridicule among the populist liberals of Twitter who will do something akin to, “There he goes again.” But on the other side of the equation, things are going to get dark very quickly. As we saw with Trump’s slow-moving soft coup attempt in fall 2020, it’s very likely that a number of people will pop up who take Trump but seriously and literally on this subject.
People who should know better, will begin to talk seriously about how, exactly, you might “nullify” a presidential election. The Fox News talking heads will spend hours debating the how many MAGA can dance on the head of a pin of all of this for a few days. Either this crisis stays something of a Right Wing circle jerk, or it doesn’t.
What I mean is — either it gets some traction among Republicans with power and they start to do something about it, or it doesn’t. This is something I can’t predict. It really could go either way. But, let’s wargame the worse case scenario.
My best guess is Texas might be the first state to seriously begin to debate what would begin as a “nullification” process and endup being a secession process. Alan West already apparently is trying Texas to do this and Texas’ Republican Party is so insane, so hysterical that it’s easy to see any number of serious, elected Republican officials there go on FOX News (or OANN) to make the case that Cyber Ninjas has “proven” that Trump is still president and, as such, it behooves “real Americans” (MAGA) to do something about it in concrete terms.
It’s possible that Texas Republicans will be the first to actually hold some sort of “convention” to determine the state’s fate. Again, Twitter liberals will chuckle at how dumb this is while MAGA will wait with baited breath to see what happens. There is a pretty good chance, of course, that because Texas is slowly shifting purple long term that such a convention will grow into nothing more than a screaming match. Add to this that Texas is pretty ethnically diverse and, well, lulz.
So, while that’s happening, events will continue to move forward. The Biden Administration will begin to grow alarmed at these developments and make it clear that legally any attempt to “nullify” a presidential election at the state level is bullshit and even more so any secession efforts. At the same time, Trump is probably going to grow hysterical in his belief that he’s still president and he will say and do things that are completely fucking insane.
It’s possible that a number of lily white mountain and plains states controlled by MAGA will race past Texas because of the specifics of their demographics and it won’t be Texas that actually “leaves” the Union, but somewhere like Oklahoma, Kansas, Iowa or South Dakota. If things have gotten this far, the MAGA Republicans in the South will spooge their pants and zoom towards following their MAGA sisters in “leaving” the Union…only to smash up against the issue of race.
As such, Southern states will be in something of a pickle. Politically, they will be chomping at the bit to leave the Union because of “the Lost Cause” but on a practical level those plans might be tempered by something akin to a brewing race war.
Let’s stay together.
Now, one thing I suspect might happen around this same time is Trump finally throws down the gauntlet to the Republican Party and does something of a Gotterdammerung on them — he absolutely forces the hand of the Republican Establishment — are you with nascent “Trumplandia” or are you with the United States.
There might even be some sort of meeting of minds somewhere whereby Trump rants about how important is for the “real” president to be in the White House. He will be completely, and totally in a delusional dreamland, and, yet, Republicans will suddenly have an existential choice before them. Do they throw their lot with Trumplandia, or do they stay in the US government? At last, all their “humoring” of Trump will turn around and bite them.
They will absolutely have to make a final decision one way or another as to how loyal they are to a deranged autocrat.
Remember, all of this will happen really fast and there will be a huge amount of confusion. Once the shock wears off that states for the first time since the 19th century have decided to leave the Union, then very smart, various serious people within the Biden Administration begin plot their response. If things get bad enough, the draft may be re-instated and the U.S. Military will have to dust off shit from the first Civil War.
What say you, Honest Abe?
I guess it’s possible that even the U.S. Military might fracture into MAGA and non-MAGA…but I doubt it? That’s something I can’t game out. If you really want to get dark, you could say that what they lack in economic prowess or population size, Trumplandia will make up for with seized WMD stockpiles. That will be fun. Ugh.
All of this would happen in a few days or weeks, so by July 4th there might be a huge amount of domestic bouncing around on a macro scale as Red people in Blue states and Blue people in Red states rush to safety. All eyes turn to California to see if they’re going to stay in the Union or not.
Looking over this wargame, it seems bonkers and a bit too over the top. The only reason why I even am thinking this way is I want others to take what’s happening in Arizona seriously.
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