by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
The crux of what makes it so difficult for me to talk to my Traditionalist relatives — who I love dearly — about Trump and MAGA is they are primed and ready to be “Good Germans.” They don’t really think of it in those terms, even if pressed, but when they say they “like what Trump has to say, just not how he says it” what they’re saying is they are prepared to serve the purpose of “Good Germans” in the American political system.
And from what I can garner, they have two red lines. One red line is “violence in the streets” and the only is the personal — if I get snatched up by a weaponized ICE they’re going to help get out of the concentration camp I’m cooling my heels in.
So, if it’s DeSantis not Trump who is our next POTUS, then there won’t be any political violence “in the streets” because he’s so smooth, which will leave the other, final red line of the personal. I don’t expect to get snatched off the street by ICE immediately when DeSantis is sworn in, but it’s inevitable that it will happen.
But the key thing is that fascism is very, very popular in the United States. A lot of people want a white autocratic Christian ethnostate to the point that they don’t even realize the implications of what they want. Want they want describes fascism, but they get really angry when you point this out to them.
The point is –the United States is fucking doomed. We’re either going to slide peacefully into a MAGA themed autocracy, have a civil war or have military junta. There is no middle ground and this is not an abstract to me — I’m going to inevitably cross our new MAGA autocrat, whomever that may be, and that’s going to be that.
Wish me luck.
