by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
I have long said that the United States is currently an autocracy without an autocrat. The only thing stopping us from sliding peacefully into Hungary-like autocracy is, well, the fact that Democrats are in power.
Once that changes, that’s all she wrote. We become an autocracy.
This really hit home when I recently had one of my monthly political debates with a far more conservative relative — whom I love dearly. They’ve been completely radicalized because of the culture wars and a general sense of being put upon by the “woke cancel culture mob.”
They have an extensive permission structure built out in their minds for various reasons, but to put a fine point on it, they simply hate the vibes and are willing to vote for a fascist like Trump if that means white Christians can have some security in what they feel is a increasingly secular — and gay — America where not enough of those sweet, sweet white babies are being born.
I’m obviously joking and exaggerating, but that is, in a sense what is going on. White Christians don’t like the direction country is going so they latch on things like the price of groceries when what is really going on is they feel weirded out that some women aren’t ashamed of having abortions and gay people becoming more noticeable.
That’s the thing that is so interesting about what’s going on — I get the sense that a lot of white Christians don’t really have a problem with abortion or being gay, but they DO have a problem with having to talk about it. And, of course, they hate how they feel smug Twitter liberals look down on them.
All of this is the culmination of decades of macro trends all coming together at once — The Fourth Turning, if you will.
So here we are. Waiting around for autocracy to come to America. That’s the general trend at the moment — America is heading towards a white Christian ethnostate one way or another.
Of course, the great irony is that because Trump is the vessel for these macro trends that some pretty surreal, unprecended things MIGHT happen in late 2024, early 2025.
Maybe. I can’t predict the future. But the CONDITIONS are there for some pretty fucked up shit to happen. There is a non-zero chance that Trump gets elected and is so fucking bad at being the person responsible for transitioning us into autocracy that some sort of effort to depose him happens. And if that “Glorious Revolution” is successful, then the specter of a civil war is a real possibility because Red States will get mad and begin to leave the Union.
It’s sad that everything is so fucked up.
