By Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
This definitely seems like the Before Times. I don’t know what the future brings — no one does — but as I keep saying, either the United States implodes into autocracy or it explodes into a civil war. Call it the Great Reset or the Fourth Turning or whatever the fuck you like — but it’s coming.
A number of macro trends are all coming to a head in late 2024, early 2025. One way or another, we’re headed for a catastrophe in the United States. Either we simply lulz the end of our democratic republic or we bomb ourselves into the Stone Age in the process of figuring out who gets the USA “brand.”
But let me be clear — I can’t predict the future. Maybe we’ll just punt our problems down the road another presidential cycle. And, in fact, even if MAGA seizes control of the country in 2025 things aren’t going to change overnight. There will be a false sense of relief until, of course, it begins to dawn on us that things are beginning to change.
And, before you know it, one a political basis, the United States and Russia will be one and the same. Which, of course, is what the MAGA New Right screams at the top of their lungs right now that they want. It’s not like they’re hiding it. Republicans have a soft spot for autocrats and they desperately want white Christian minority rule.
So, either we have white Christian minority rule or we have a civil war. At the moment, it just doesn’t seem as though the center-Left has the grit to challenge the rise of autocracy in the United States long term. Twitter liberals are already talking about getting a second passport and fleeing the country rather than doing anything constructive in the real world to stop our slide into autocracy.
And, remember, once we’re an autocracy, that’s it. Republicans will be able to destroy the social safety net, cut taxes for the plutocrats and raise taxes on the poor. They will probably finally seize control permanently with a Constitutional Convention.
Then loud mouth cranks like me, who have had the luxury of living in a Western liberal democracy are just going to be fucked. We’ll die in a camp. Or be sentence to long prison terms. But our lives won’t be the same. And then all the Good Germans in our lives who have been waiting with baited breath for the arrival of white Christian minority rule will finally have reached their red line — ME.
Anyway, either you realize how dire things are at the moment or you don’t. Either you’re realistic and understand we’re careening towards a very dark choice of autocracy or civil war, or you think people like me are “terribly negative” for simply pointing out the truth.
