by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
We may look back and see 2018 as America’s last peaceful election. There is growing chatter that Trump is going to pull some sort of stunt after the 2022 midterms in the general Philadelphia area. I’ve been too lazy to actually read the articles that mention this, but the headline is definitely alarming.
Add to this that America definitely has Civil War 2 on the brain and you find yourself coming up with any number of dystopian scenarios where things spiral out of control.
One is, there is some sort of Brooks Brothers Riot and somehow that is how Republicans gain control of the House and or Senate. This would, of course, only make Republicans more power hungry and blood thirsty and they would be hell bent on taking things to the next level in 2024. But there would be, of course, alarm within center-Left ranks if this happened, which would maybe cause a lot of Twitter liberals to at least weigh the idea of a Blue Secession in late 2024, early 2025 when Republicans steal the 2024 election in a rather brazen manner.
The OTHER nightmare scenario is, of course, that Reds don’t get all the power they want and they freak out, probably at the behest of Trump. As such we might face some rolling political violence between November and January — and beyond. I am doubtful of this scenario, however. If there is going to be a civil war, it’s going to happen when Red or Blue states attempt to secede. Anyone who thinks America is primed for Troubles-like violence is oblivious to what’s really going on in American politics. They say such shit because they think the idea of states leaving the Union in the modern era is too fantastical to take seriously.
Anyway, I don’t think it’s fantastical at all. There are some tectonic forces at work in American politics at the moment and if we’re going to have A Second American Civil War — which I don’t think we are — it’s going to happen at the state level just like the first civil war did. What happen is people get really distracted by how vocal and insane Reds are and assume that it will be THEY who start a civil war, when they have no reason to start one. Reds are politically ascendant and if there is a civil war, it will be because Blues — at the state level — refuse to bend a knee to autocratic MAGA fascism.
Buckle up, is all I gotta say. The months between Election Day 2022 and when Congress members are sworn in in 2023 could be bumpy — and violent.
