by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
Holy shit. This weekend was the first time that I felt my far more conservative relative had crossed the Rubicon into pure cut fascism. Now, before I begin, my conservative relatives have been VERY GOOD to me and very gracious to save my sorry ass on a number of occasions.
So, this is not personal. This is just an alarming political observation.
I bring this up because I have a regular monthly political discussion with one of my intelligent, college educated conservative relatives. I have been trying to avoid these conversations of late, but this time we got into it.
The most alarming part of the conversation was that my relative — whom I love dearly — was officially all-in for MAGA and Trump. They continue to have reservations about Trump the man, but they are totally willing to give up their American democratic birthright to the autocratic aspirations of Trump the idea.
It’s all very alarming. When pressed, my conservative relative agreed with me that only something like Trump murdering someone would be a “red line” that would prevent them from supporting him in the 2024 general election.
Now, there is obviously a lot to unpack here.
The key thing that I notice is how similar to 1850s antebellum America the conversation was. Replace “trans rights” or “abortion” with “abolition” and all the arguments on both sides would be identical.
I pressed my conservative relative — whom I love dearly — about the idea of a National Divorce and they did not dismiss the idea out of hand. It seemed as though the idea of smug Twitter liberals talking down to them would determine if they were willing to tear the country asunder or not if, say, Trump lost the 2024 election.
All of this is very much a potential dystopian hellscape. The only glimmer of hope that I could find from the conversation is what my conservative relative — whom I love dearly — my do if all the as of now rhetorical things Trump could do in his second term became a reality.
There is a very small chance that if Trump did, in fact, go full Tyrant on America that that, unto itself, might cause my principled conservative relative to sit up and take notice. That, of course, sucks because we would have to go through the chaos and turmoil of having a full-blown tyrannical president.
I say this because my far more conservative relative simply can not believe that Trump would actually do all the tyrannical things that he very clearly says he wants to do in a second term. They totally dismiss Trump’s autocratic, tyrannical leanings because he wasn’t able to implement his autocratic rhetoric the first go round.
As such, if Trump literally does go full tyrant in 2025 there is a very small possibility that, on principle, my far more conservative relative might balk at such policies. Of course, that won’t help ME much because I could be dead after an ICE agent shoots me because I won’t shut up about how I think Red King Trump is a fucking cocksucker.
All I can say is late 2024, early 2025 could be fucking lit. We could see a series of surreal events not seen since the end of the Civil War.
