by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
The United States is fucked. In the future, the events that led to Biden winning the presidency may be seen as having huge significance on the broad sweep of political history. The reason is — but for Biden winning in 2020, the United States was well on its way to becoming an autocracy. What would have likely happened is Trump wouldn’t have made it through his second term — he is old as fuck, you know — and after a caretaker Pence administration a real American autocrat would have taken power.
Or, put another way, at some point in his second term, Trump would have demanded a Constitutional Convention and would have been allowed to run for a third term. It would actually be his THIRD term that he wouldn’t make it through and Trump’s new veep Mike Flynn (or whomever) would be the one to seize “total control” and turn the United States into Trumplandia.
But none of that happened.
So, as I keep saying, the United States right now is an autocracy without an autocrat. All the conditions are there for an autocracy, but Biden is a pretty modern, norm-following president so he doesn’t flip a switch and get ICE to push me out of a window.
But this idyllic political situation isn’t going to last forever. There’s going to come a point where we face an existential choice of civil war or autocracy. When Mike Pompeo or Tom Cotton or Josh Hawley inevitably becomes president and we have one last gasp of traditional democracy in America do we “bow before lord Zod” or do we have a civil war?
For the moment, I think we’re just going to drift peacefully into autocracy. When it happens, a lot of thought leaders on the Left are going to scream bloody murder, but the average person won’t even notice any change in their every day life. Then, in fits an starts, it will become conventional wisdom that you have to be careful what you say or you’ll get snatched by ICE. Or whatever.
Within a generation, the United States will be a nation of “blood and soil” and Good Americans will keep their heads down and enjoy the tax cuts and really fucking conservative Federal bench that ensures that they will never, ever be “canceled.”
I think this because any kind of civil war in the United States would be so scary and horrific that the Powers That Be have every reason to just tell everyone to accept the New Normal of living in an autocracy. It would require MAGA somehow bungling the transition to autocracy for any civil war to happen.
I could see, maybe, this transition bungle happening sooner rather than later if Trump flips out should Cyber Ninjas “prove” he “won” Arizona. That might cause a mini-civil war that is quickly ended because, lulz, MAGA will have struck too soon.
Anyway. What do I know.
