Month: May 2021

The Metrics That Indicate A Second American Civil War Is Closer Than You Think


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

  1. 70% of the Republican electorate think Trump won
    This metric is not one that indicates a healthy liberal democracy. It’s one of those things where you can’t quite figure out the origin of such a Big Lie. The interaction between the base and the Establishment is such that both sides are to blame. But the end result is the same: a huge number of Republicans think Trump should really be president right now. This is the dark goo that would be the could very well spawn significant political violence in the very near future for almost any reason. You just need to put extra pressure on an already failing system.
  2. MAGA’s glorification of political violence
    It definitely seems as though MAGA Republicans have made the cognitive leap to running around murdering people for political reasons, given the opportunity. As such, if you combine this metric with the first one, then you have a very unstable situation indeed.
  3. The Sham Arizona Recount Effort
    It is easy to imagine a situation where this is the catalyst to a very volatile situation. If Arizona Republicans manage to “prove” that Trump “really won” the state, then that cause produce a cascading series of events whereby states like Michigan and Pennsylvania feel compelled to the same thing. Next thing you know, Trump is running around saying he’s the “real” president and because of a combination of rank stupidity and probably being a Russian agent, he stumbled, in a half-assed manner, into causing a second American Civil War.

    Ok, there’s a huge “but” to all of this.

    In this case, the “but” is while there are three major metrics that definitely indicate America is on the cusp of a civil war in 2021, there are also a number of things missing that indicate that if it does happen, it will be more like the 2024-2025 timeframe.

    One major missing metric is someone like Trump, but smart, organized and hardworking. Trump is nothing more than an avatar. He doesn’t have to do anything but be himself and racist, mysogynistic assholes love him. But that, in itself, is not enough to cause a civil war.

    A Second American Civil War would need pressure to be placed on our system by someone who had some vision and organization to at least attempt a straight autocratic play. While I could definitely see Trump riding the wave towards a civil war, it’s difficult for me to believe that he has the mental facilities necessary to actually start one himself.

    But in 2024-2025, we will have the passions of a presidential election to strain the system and MAGA cocksuckers chomping at the bit to not only “own the libs” by knocking their heads, but being willing to simply nullify any POTUS result they don’t like.

    THAT kind of stuff is what would push the United States into a civil war, if we don’t simply turn into a MAGA autocracy.

    Let me say again, however, that I can’t predict the future. We may somehow, magically, muddle through this clusterfuck long enough for Republicans to recalibrate for white people being in the minority. There’s no way that’s ever going to happen, but I guess we can pin the entire fate of the country on such a pipe dream if it helps us sleep at night.

America’s Undead Liberal Democracy


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

On a personal level, I’ve found that American political system now lacks the grease necessary for a functioning liberal democracy. I simply can’t talk politics with my conservative relatives because we live in different factual universes. We can’t agree on facts. And our strongest beliefs are at such absolute cross purposes that we can’t have any political conversation at all.

This is not good.

If people who disagree politically — especially people who are related — can’t engage in any political discourse then your liberal democracy has a pretty big existential crisis on its hands.

Because what happens is either one side begins to feel disenfranchised and comes to see the attraction of political violence or they tune out and you have an autocracy. That’s why we face such a stark choice in 2024: civil war or autocracy.

There are no easy answers. I have no idea what’s going to happen one way or another. But I do know that, if you just look at macro trends and do some back-of-the-envelope extrapolations we are so fucked. We’re in for some historic political instability in the next few years, culminating — one way or another — in the 2024-2025 timeframe with autocracy or civil war.

Again, I don’t have any easy answers for you. I have no idea what you should do. But it is definitely something to keep in the back of your mind going forward.

Existential Lulz: What If We Could Prove Trump Wanted Ukrainian Goons To Hurt Marie Yovanovitch & No One Cared?


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

MAGA Republicans are so detached from the normal rules of traditional American politics that you can find your struggling to come up with a scenario, any scenario, whereby they would finally, at last, throw up their hands and say, “Yeah, that was pretty bad.”

I have come to believe that we could have video of Trump and Armie Hammer having cannibalistic sex parties at Mar-a-Lago and it would be a lulz. In fact, it gives us some insight into the MAGA mentality that they get really, really offended at the idea that Trump might be racist but when there was a rumor that there was evidence of Trump using the “n-word” the general reaction from MAGA was, “Well, how many times did he say it?”

The origin of this warped political sensibility is, of course, racism. The macro demographic trends that are marching us towards a future where white people are in the minority are putting enormous pressure on American democracy. What MAGA Republicans want, of course, is autocratic rule. Specifically, they want an American answer to Russia’s Putin. That’s who they thought they were getting with Trump…but he turned out just to be a ding-dong.

As such, it definitely seems as though 2024 is it — we either turn into a MAGA autocracy or there’s a civil war. What’s more, if there’s a civil war in the United States, it will probably lead to some sort of global “reset” as every simmering flash point across the globe explodes and many, many people die. The entire post-WW2 global order will end and everything will be up for grabs on a geopolitical level.

It’s really going to suck.

But back to the point of all of this — if there was absolute proof that Trump was aware (and maybe even directed) the efforts to physically harm Marie Yovanovitch would it even matter? Would anyone who was MAGA care? A lot would ride on what the proof was. It would have to be pretty concrete. No wiggle room for various interpretations.

Most likely, sadly, what would happen would be there would be a lot of shock and gnashing of teeth on Twitter…and then nothing. Trump would just lay low for a few extra months then he would pop back up, run for president in 2024 and probably win. So, we would have a person who tried to get goons to murder someone as president. Good times.

It’s shit like that that makes one realize how dark things are in the United States right now. The systemic racism at the heart of MAGA is so all-powerful that once they get power again, it’s highly unlikely they will ever peacefully give it up.

But I definitely would suggest you keep an eye on the Trump-Rudy-Yovanovitch situation. Trump is so fucking stupid that it’s very easy to imagine a situation where Trump both knew and directed the efforts to hurt Yovanovitch but it was done in the context of Trump having a poor grasp as to what he was doing. He would have been doing his usual bullshit and the goons on the ground in Kiev would be taking him seriously AND literally.

And, really, I wouldn’t get too excited even if Trump’s machinations against Yovanovitch were the end of his personal political career. There are at least half a dozen would-be American Putins waiting in the wings to do what Trump was too stupid and lazy to do: bring autocracy to America.

The future is very dark.