by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
It used to be that there were all these predictions about how the Mayan calendar predicted the End Of The World in 2012 for some reason. Well, that obviously didn’t happen, but something did happen – 2012 was the year that white people in America began to reach a tipping point with their abstract fears about the changing nature of the country.
So, let’s think about what, exactly, happened in 2012 that caused the political hellscape that we currently enjoy. The most obvious thing is, duh, Obama won a second term. And I think the reason why there was a cascading effect from that event was a lot of Republicans thought Obama was some sort of political fluke caused by the perfect timing of the Great Recession right before the 2008 election.
When it became clear that Obama was actually the first wave of what everyone knew was coming — the advent of America being a minority majority nation, a lot of white people freaked the fuck out. It was the 2012 election that was the last election where Republicans were willing to work within the democratic norms that we all have come to enjoy for the last 240 odd years.
Something about what happened in Obama’s second term facilitated the rise of Trump, MAGA and the Republican Party becoming fascist. It was the high speed social transformation of Obama’s second term that really caused the Republican Party to pretty much be accurately represented by Trump.
If I was, like, smart and stuff, I would be able to give you a itemized deep dive of the specific events that caused conservative white people to freak out and fall into the arms of ding-dong Trump. But, I’m not that smart — and, as such, will never write for VOX, natch.
But it is curious. I think what may have happened is at some point between 2012 and 2016 Republicans realized they had lost the culture wars and, as such, they had to strike back with someone who was a “fighter.” After that happened, the rest took care of itself. Trump was a deranged lunatic, but the Establishment eventually realized he was not only hugely popular with the base, but he could win the 2016 election. So they lulzed everything for young hack MAGA judges and a plutocrat tax cut.
I love alternative history, so I often struggle to think up a way whereby we could have avoided the rise of MAGA and Trump. All I can think up is Al Gore winning the 2000 election. Even then, Obama is such a singular figure in our nation’s political history that it’s easy to imagine him winning anyway and causing MAGA to arise in response.
If you read the book The Fourth Turning, you would say that Someone Like Trump was going to pop up at some point between 2016 and, say, 2024. The demographic trends were going to cause someone like Obama to get elected and then, in turn, someone like Trump would get elected in reaction.
One last thing I think we don’t really appricate is how the introduction of the iPhone may have also sealed our fate. Once social media was no longer tied to our PCs, then things like “cancel culture” and the mainlining of things once seen as freaky was going to happen one way or another.
Anyway, the ultimate end game of this clusterfuck is a complete mystery to me. I have no idea what happens. I do know, however, that we’re going to face a choice of either MAGA autocracy or a civil war. Which one we will pick, I don’t know for the time being.
