This is the third post-election prediction from The New Republic about what might happen this fall.
Trump loses the popular vote but wins the Electoral College.
This is a repeat of the 2016 election. It will highlight the ongoing weaknesses of the Electoral College, having put Republicans who lost the popular vote in office again for the third time in three out of the last seven elections, and three out of the four total times that a Republican has won in that span. But it is a win without cheating or deliberately breaking the system. This will blunt the resistance to Trump, along with the belief that the government is illegitimate. There will be protests, to be sure, but so long as Trump doesn’t choose to have protesters massacred, they will fizzle out as they did in 2017.
This outcome is the hardest to predict. Trump will absolutely let his team attempt to implement Christian nationalism across the U.S. and use every means available to achieve its vision of an America with no immigrants, no trans people, no Muslims, no abortion, no birth control, Russian-style “Don’t Say Gay laws,” license to discriminate based on religion, and all government education funding going to religious schools. Blue states will try to resist this and invoke the same states’ rights and “dual sovereignty” arguments as red staters in scenario one, but it’s unlikely they will succeed due to conservative bias on the Supreme Court and the Trump administration’s willingness to blow off court rulings it doesn’t like.
If Trump goes straight to a massacre via the Insurrection Act, civil war is on the table. It’s highly unlikely that Trump and his Christian nationalist allies will allow a “soft secession,” but it’s possible that the U.S. balkanizes along many of the same lines that happen in scenario one, if blue state resistance is sufficiently strong and the federal government is unwilling to take steps that lead to the civil war outcome. If Trump manages to bring blue states to heel via legal means, and resistance is insufficient to compel blue state governors to refuse to comply, then we end up with option four: fascist, theocratic, hereditary dictatorship.
By Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
This is where I really disagree with The New Republic. The author is making some assumptions that make no sense. Remember, only half the country wants a white Christian ethnostate. There are millions of people in the the most economic productive parts of the country who would balk at the idea of Trump ruling them as a Mad Red King.
As such, here’s my own prediction of how things might go down.
If Mad King Trump really tries to rule the Blue parts of the US a tyrant as it seems clear that he does, then…oh boy. It just makes absolutely no sense to me that Mad King Trump could do all the tyrannical things he plans to do without any SA-like stormtroopers.
That is the key element of Hitler’s consolidation of power.
All these people who are aghast that I think there might be some reaction to Trump going full tyrant are making a basic mistake — they are assuming that if Trump starts to corrupt the administration of law and of justice that Blues are just going to roll over and let it happen.
As I always say at this point — I’m not advocating anything. I just believe in freedom loving Americans to refuse to live as slaves under MAGA tyranny. That doesn’t mean that a lot — A LOT — of smug Twitter liberals won’t flee the country.
They will.
But simply invoking the Insurrection Act isn’t some sort of MAGA fascist magic pixie dust. Rather than having “optimism bias” by proposing all of this, I think I’m being rather radical, clear minded and realistic.
I’m proposing that when pushed into a corner by MAGA fascists that Americans, en mass might rise up against the MAGA Trump regime in a stunning, historic way.
Just broaching this type of radical proposal is rather ironic coming from me, someone who hates any form of violence at all. But even the Constitution enshrines the right of the populace to revolt if need be. It’s weird that that particular provision of our founding document hasn’t gotten more attention of late, given all the bullshit that’s going on at the moment.
I have no idea of the specific of such a dire situation, but you, gentle reader, have to remember that not only is Trump NOT Hitler, but he also doesn’t have the SA to do his bidding. AND, what’s more, the US is far bigger, far more decentralized than Germany in 1933 and it would take time for ding-dong to build out the infrastructure necessary to knock heads the way Hitler did in early 1933.
That would be a window of opportunity for Blue forces to fight back against Mad King Trump. If we are VERY LUCKY, we might be able to co-ordinate some sort of General Strike that might cause such chaos in the country that the U.S. Military might step in and depose Trump in some way.
I know, I know, that’s pretty crazy sounding at the moment, but stranger things and all that.
The key thing for me is Traditionalists. These are people who are MAGA-friendly and they just want to see brown children torn from their families and put back in cages. When things get personal for them — say, when Trump uses a weaponized ICE to snatch their (white) relatives (like me) off the street then all bets are off.
The moment Mad King Trump loses the Traditionalists, then the lock is ticking. If we’re absolutely lucky, then Trump is successfully impeached because of the pressure of a General Strike. If we’re NOT lucky, then there is some sort of “Glorious Revolution” that doesn’t involve much violence, but does result in Trump and his veep being forceably deposed from power.
Now, obviously, this is the point where you say, “But won’t Traditionalists just become modern day Good Germans?”
That is very possible. But, remember, as I mentioned, Trump won’t have any SA shock troops as he enters power again. He’s dealing with 335 million Americans, most of whom have a basic assumption that the rule of law will be fairly and equitably administered.
Without an SA to remind Traditionalists to keep their heads down, there is a chance that their principles might kick in and they might, if nothing else, kind of look the other way as the more radical elements of the center-Left take charge.
I don’t want any of this to happen. But this is kind of personal for me because I’m a loudmouth drunk crank who simply will not, can not shut the fuck up about what a fucking cocksucker Trump is.
I will never, ever fucking shut up.
I would rather die on my feet than live on my knees a slave.
