Month: January 2022

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

There is a little bit of buzz in Canada at the moment about the potental transformation of the United States into a “Right wing dictatorship” by 2030. I don’t think it’s going to be that simple, but here are some reasons for the Great White North to seriously worry about their brothers and sisters to the South.

1. Form Follows Function
   If the United States becomes an illiberal democracy like Russia, we could be talking about “Little Blue Men” seizing a bit of Canada here and there at some point in the 2030s or 2040s. As it becomes more and more clear (in secret) to President Pompeo or DeSantis that the States will become too hot to live in, they will turn north. So, in the end, Canada might be attacked for its abstract “resource” of simply being easier to live in when the planet begins to boil.
2. American Refugees
   If there’s a civil war in the United States, millions of Americans are going to become political refugees and they’re going to pour over the Canadian border looking for refuge. This could happen a lot sooner than you might think, depending on events. Anytime from now to as late as 2025 and America could go tits up, bomb itself into the Stone Age and people will plunge into Canada looking for succor. This would dramatically change Canada.
3. A Major Redrawing of North American Borders
   Just as the US was nervous about being drawn into a Canadian civil war the last time Quebec wanted to leave Canada, so, too, will Canada be drawn into any American Civil War. Probably, the country will be used as a staging ground for EU forces who might want to help out Blue States. But if the Second American Civil War has a far more messy endgame, you could see Blue States swoop in and politely tell Canada to form the United States of Canada in reponse to the creation of Trumplandia.

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

America’s Second Republic is collapsing before our very eyes. We live in an era of political lawlessness, where Trump and his acolytes are above the law and free to think up continuing mischief.

I continue to read a book about the rise of Hitler and I’m struck by how the United States now is very much like the Weimar Republic of the 1920s. We’ve had our beerhall putsch and now we’re waiting to see if Trump (or some other autocrat) wins the presidency in 2024.

And, really, the key issue is we have to face is no one is going to save us. The United States is collapsing on a political basis. The question is, collapsing into what? We have three options — civil war, autocracy or military junta. And, at the moment, I just don’t know which of the three will be the final endgame. The most obvious is we simply slip peacefully into autocracy. That definitely seems the most logical outcome.

Yet, I can’t dismiss the idea that we may have a civil war and bomb ourselves into the Stone Age. That is a very real possibility. And, I would say, the thing that might prevent such a civil war is the total lack of Blue leadership. So, if there was a sudden rush out of the Union by Blue States after a stolen 2024 election, we would see some rather dramatic arrival of Blue leadership simply out of history’s desperate needs at the moment.

But it would be a really big shock.

The third option is a military junta. That’s very possible, too. I could see the United States come to the brink of civil war and there be a military junta formed specifically so we might have a Constitutional Convention that would fix the systemic issues the United States face at the moment. We might see a President James Mattis in that particular situation.

That seems unlikely, however. I continue to vacillate widely between thinking it’s obvious that we’re going to have a civil war to it being obvious that we’re going to slip peacefully into autocracy.

I just don’t know which one is going to happen at the moment.

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

If America either has a civil war or becomes an autocracy, it will happen because of one element of its body politic — the Traditionalists. These are typically white Christians who, in the past, would not see the idea of America being a democracy as a partisan issue.

While they have always been the least progressive of the American body politic, they at least saw the United States as a democracy and would reluctantly, long after everyone has had, embrace change.

My conversations with my Traditionalist family, it is clear that they no longer see the United States as a democracy, in fact, they see us a “constitutional republic” for the specific purposes of protecting their collective power. The Constitution is no longer a venue for the will of the people, it is a firebreak against the encroachment of POC, secularists and feminists.

And that, my dear reader, is why the United States will fall. Because of an extensive permission structure and negative polarization the only “red line” that Traditionalists have is personal. In other words, not until they, specifically, have a personal problem with the new autocratic regime will they sit up and take notice. That will be the moment when they stop being Good Germans and become sudden believers in democracy again.

This is of great concern to ME, because *I* am that personal red line because I fucking refuse to fucking shut up. So, ultimately, when I get drunk at a bar in 2027 and rant about how I think President Pompeo may be skinny now, but he’s a fat fuck and always will be a fat fuck…and ICE swoops in and does God only what to me….THEN my Traditionalists family members will think about something other than how scary brown people or too-sensitive young people are fucking things up for them.

And, so, we have three options between now and January 2025 — autocracy, civil war or military junta. Or, put another way, we’re totally fucked. Nothing and no one will save us. We have to save ourselves. The system is not and will not working.

If you’re someone like the fine people behind the “Mueller, She Wrote” Twitter account and you STILL think somehow, or someway your latest Twitter “boom” will save us — you are a fool. You are a willful fucking fool.

We have some time. Figure out what you believe in and what you’re willing to suffer for in the real world. I don’t write for VOX, I don’t have a received vocal fry for my Tik-Tok, but I do know the truth — I believe in American democracy. That’s my true north. That’s what I’m willing to risk my life and scared honor for.

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Besides “Mueller, She Wrote,” blocking me for my “doom shit,” another reason why I got beef with that popular Twitter liberal account is it seems so very clueless about any expectations that some “boom” is going to save us. Rather than expecting ANY accountability for Trump or the extended MAGA New Right, I would hunker down, start reading up on the rise of Hitler and the beginning of the First American Civil war and figure out what you’re willing to do for what you believe in. (In the real world!)

Barring something pretty dramatic I can’t factor in, the years 2024 – 2025 are going to be a historic clusterfuck of monumental scale. The entire post-WW2 liberal order could collapse once a civil war starts in the US. And, really, a civil war doesn’t even have to start. If we get a MAGA autocrat in 2025, then NATO is dead and everything is going to get scrambled and thrown in the air for a few years.

Remember, all of that would be happening right now but for Trump being a lazy moron who could not be a Great Man. The people who voted for Trump in 2016 voted for an autocrat. They thought they were getting an American Hitler. But, lulz, they just got a moron.

So, history is in something of a pause mode at the moment. It will get going again the moment the House flips and Trump (mabye) becomes Speaker. Trump becoming Speaker would be a huge shot across our bow, indicating how totally fucking bonkers the years not just 2024 – 2025 will be but as early as 2023, too.

But the point is — no one is going to save us. America is very unstable right now for a variety of reasons and either we become an autocracy or we have a civil war. Something’s gotta give.