by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
The thing that a lot of political observers miss in America these days is how ascendant the MAGA New Right is. They have all the momentum. As I saw someone say recently, one reason this is happening is the far Right radicals of the MAGA New Right rub the political clit of far more moderate conservatives by weaponizing the peril of “wokeness” as is needed.
So, in the culture wars, MAGA and traditionalists have made common cause. The interplay is this — MAGA / FOX News riles up the average traditional conservative by getting all bent out of shape about this or that latest “woke” outrage. This usually happens right before an election.
Republicans win, and MAGA moves on to the next bullshit thing they’ve thought up to be angry about.
Now, for me, the issue, is, there is an element of the center-Left that really is illiberal. That problem really does exist. I find this a lot in my thinking about the four thrillers I’m working on. On one hand, I’m supposed to have representation in the fiction I write, and yet, a the same time I have no right to write from the POV of anyone other than a CIS white male. How you square that particular circle, I don’t know.
And, yet, MAGA, which is entirely based on the desire to establish a white minority autocrat state, is not exactly coming at all of this in good faith.
The average person doesn’t even understand what it means to be “woke,” just as much as they don’t know what Critical Race Theory is or Cancel Culture. All they know is they’re afraid of being “canceled” by corporations that have taken the position of the other side of the culture wars from them. Throw in a general unease about the rise of women and minorities in the United States and you have a lot of people who don’t even realize how little they want to live in a democracy anymore.
So, as I keep saying, autocracy is very popular in the United States right now. We’re an autocracy without an autocrat. MAGA has gone septic. There is no turning back. We’re fucked. Get a passport and be prepared to either leave the country or be attacked for what you believe in the real world.
If we’re lucky, when the “Fourth Turning” happens, all the silly bullshit of “wokeness” will simply burn off of our culture because people will have had something far more existential to think about than what they’re pronouns are.
But how we get to that point could be pretty scary. We could very well have a civil war and that will be that. Not only will we bomb ourselves into oblivion, but as we do so, the whole world will, too, because our military absence on the world stage will cause WW3.
There isn’t much we can do. These are macro trends we’re dealing with. We’ve passed the even horizon of either tyranny or civil war.
