by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
I’ve seen enough. The conditions are now in place for some sort of major political-related tragedy to happen just about any moment in the United States. I have no inside information from the Dark Web (or whatever) I just have a hunch. The MAGA New Right’s rhetoric has reached a point where it’s just a matter of time before someone takes them both literally and seriously and someone important gets hurt.
A lot, of course, would hinge on who got hurt, how badly and how. I don’t like to articulate exactly the kinds of things I fear might happen because I don’t want to put it out into the universe, but needless to say, whatever happened might be Big.
If such a tragedy happened, here what I think would we see. First, there would be silence on the part of the MAGA New Right. They might vaguely say something about “thoughts and prayers” but that would be it. They would be hunkered down, trying to figure out what their talking points would be.
After about 24 – 48 hours of radio silence, the media narrative they would want us all to believe would be it was the act of someone who was “mentally unstable” and nothing they said or did had anything to do with it — even if there was some sort of manifesto that directly said they did! In other words, for their bullshit echo chamber, they would nullify reality with this event just like they did with January 6th.
“It wasn’t me,” they would say in unison until the faithful believed it.
Now, this has always worked in the past. But there is a small chance that if the Something Big I fear might happened was Big Enough that this wouldn’t work. Remember, the two sides are so absolute in their views now that politics only functions on the edges. So, if it was absolutely proven that Trump’s ranting about being re-instated was specifically and directly responsible for someone getting hurt, then the reaction of that crucial 1% of the electorate that open minded would determine everything.
There’s a huge but to all of this — the MAGA New Right is a macro issue. So whatever happened would have to be not just big, but fucking HUGE to actually put them on the back foot for, say, an election cycle or so. Again, while I have a few scenarios in my mind, I just don’t like to write them out.
So, in general, I think we’re just too divided for any type of tragedy to unite us, even briefly. It would have to be international terrorism, and only then it would be for about 24 hours. Or, if it was domestic political terrorism, it would have to be a huge fucking event.
In general, we’re fucking doomed. The macro trends are too powerful and the trendlines are all pointing towards the existential choice of autocracy, military junta or civil war.
