by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
There is every reason to believe that when the moment comes at some point around late 2024 to early 2025, Blue States will “bend the knee” to MAGA. Given the general trends we’ve seen over the last few decades, there is every reason for the typical American to believe that when the time comes that knee bending will happen.
And, yet, there is a lingering possibility that rather than bending a knee, Blue States — probably starting with California — may make a move to leave the Union. Which, of course, would inevitably lead to a civil war.
But at the moment in 2022, I really struggle to see either a Secession Crisis or a civil war. It definitely seems as though we’re going to simply shrug and slip into autocracy and that will be that.
Every time I come to this conclusion, however, I find myself mulling how it there might be major political violence around 2024 – 2025. It seems, as the moment, that the crux of the risk of a civil war has a lot to do with Trump. Orange Ding-Dong is so stupid and lazy that he, unto himself, could push us into civil war.
If he says “the quiet part out loud” and rubs the theft of the 2024 election by Bannon’s “spiritual shock troops” in the face of Blue States, that, unto itself, could be enough to push the United States into civil war. If, for whatever reason, it’s Ron DeSantis who is the Republican nominee in 2024, the likelihood of a civil war is far, far less.
DeSantis is a traditional politician and, as such, he would be able to maintain the control enough to slip past the weak moment America’s final transition from anocracy to autocracy. He would be able to sooth the fears of Blue States long enough to seize control. Then all notable liberal leaders will flee the United States and that will be that.
We’ll become an autocracy without a shot being fired.
This whole situation is complicated by the growing radicalization of the MAGA New Right. They could very well go out of their way to specifically rile the center-Left up in an misguided attempt to “own” them. The entire edifice of the Republican Party is now growing more and more anti-democratic, autocratic and fascist.
And if Trump is the Republican nominee in 2024, as it seems he might be at the moment, then…the chance that we’ll have a civil war increases significantly. Trump is so bonkers and idiotic that he, unto himself, could be the cause of a Second American Civil War in 2024.
It makes you wonder, of course, if, from a psychohistorical standpoint that we were supposed to have a civil war in 2020 and Trump just wasn’t up to his historical job. But we simply can’t punt the question of autocracy or civil war down the road forever.
That particular question is going to be answered within the next presidential election cycle or two.
