by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
The thing I’ve noticed from people on both the Left and the Right when it comes to Trump is an odd sense that somehow if we just “hope” enough that he won’t come back in 2024. The thing about Trump is he’s an avatar for deep-seated structural problems in our political system.
As such, barring something spectacular, Trump has a better-than-even chance of being elected president again in 2024. Much like how there came a point when there was a certain inevitability to the fall of Rome, so, too, is America careening towards autocracy on a macro level.
This is a historical Big Idea the likes of which we haven’t faced since 1860. And, at the moment, I think we’re just going to peacefully slide into autocracy. There is, of course, a chance that there be a spectrum when it comes to violence from none to a civil war / revolution, but I’m not convinced that either side has it in them to actually pull the trigger one violence.
Sure, there will be a lot of talk about it no matter what happens in 2024, but now, in August 2023, there just doesn’t seem to be the gumption on either side to risk life-or-death violence on the scale necessary to either start a civil war (National Divorce) or to some sort of Resistance Revolution.
At least, I hope I’m right. Both a Red Civil War or a Resistance Revolution would be a massive fucking clusterfuck on an astonishing scale that would, by definition, prompt World War Three and potentially the DPRK lobbing a few h-bombs our way.
So, in a sense, these months before Election Day 2024 are kind of the quiet before the storm. A decision of some sort is going to be made about the nature of America one way or another. I struggle to believe that we’re going to find some sort of Third Way like we did in 2020 that allows us to punt some severe political problems down the road another four years.
The era of hope is over. The era of preparation has begun.
