I just don’t see any way that the bad guys of TrumpBarr don’t win. Even though I’m very pleased with how many people are voting right now, in the end, it won’t matter — TrumpBarr will likely nationalize the National Guard across the country Election Night and stop voting “until SCOTUS can figure things out.”
Or whatever.
We’re too far down the road to tyranny. In fact, we’re IN tyranny. Autocrats never lose. There’s going to be A Very American Coup and because we can’t get the conservatives-who-aren’t-MAGA to care, it’s going to be successful. There may be some violence and threats of secession, but in the end, nothing will happen.
It will all be decided at SCOTUS and it will just be a more extreme version of 2000. I just don’t see any other outcome. Even if there was a landslide, you have to actually count the votes, you know. TrumpBarr will either never let that happen, or they’re just going to sue everything and everyone to SCOTUS and win there.
Darkness is here. We’re in a dystopia. Get out of the country while you still can. Proles like me will just have to make do as best we can. I’ll be snatch off the street or pushed out a window by ICE soon enough. Maybe sent to a re-education came and die there. Who knows.
The only way that doesn’t happen is if people are willing to risk things important to them in the real world. I just don’t see that happening. And if they do, Qanon or whomever will respond in kind and the whole country will implode.
If that happens, then TrumpBarr uses the Insurrection Act from here on out. Maybe there will be a dystopian Second Reconstruction. Autocrats never fucking lose.
All signs point to Trump simply never leaving office, no matter what. I say this because of Bill Barr. Even if Trump loses in a massive landslide, Barr is going to be Trump’s hatchet man and make sure all Trump’s troubles go away. In the end, it all endsup at SCOTUS and Trump wins 5-4 or 6-3.
And, yet, it has to be noted that this isn’t going to happen in a political vacuum. This is not 2000. The reason why the Republicans were able to steal that election was the country wasn’t as polarized and it was something of a sucker punch. It took us years to process what happened and why.
While I absolutely believe at this point that TrumpBarr will “not lose” the 2020 election, there is at least small possibility that I’m wrong. In the end Trump’s incompetence will finally, at last be his downfall. But the nation will have to go through a traumatic experience to get rid of him.
Here’s the idea — it soon becomes apparent that TrumpBarr has lost “the mandate of heaven.” So much so that even Senate Republicans, sated by a huge tax cut and hundreds of young, hack MAGA judges might begin to distance themselves from The Dear Leader.
One metric to look at is Sen. Lindsey Graham. If Graham starts to make it clear that Trump should leave office because, lulz, he lost the election, then that’s a good indication that even though Trump is using the full weight of the U.S. Government to stay in power, that the political ground has shifted subtly beneath him.
But the biggest metric to look at his Trump himself. If Trump’s insanity and political criminality fuse — which they will — then it’s possible we enter a gotterdammerung situation where Trump, using Barr, sort of forces the issue. He forces EVERYONE to take a side on an existential level. So much so that the Republican Establishment itself begins to fragment.
I guess you could call this the “Very American Coup” scenario. In this situation, TrumpBarr’s attempt to “not lose” the election is nothing short of a political 9/11 attack. Everyone knows what’s going on. Everyone is on the same page. And it all boils down to if you’re a Trump “true believer” or not.
So, even though even Senate Republicans don’t want Trump to take everything to SCOTUS, he does anyway. He wins there and the country is so fucking enraged at what has happened, that the fucking bolts finally pop off and the United States implodes along the lines of the Soviet Union in 1991. But probably in a far more messy, violent manner — The Big Ugly.
It just seems like 2020 is it. This is the election where 50-odd years of macro trends all crest at the same moment and all of our nightmares and dystopian fears happen at the same time.
I honestly don’t know the endgame. I honestly don’t know if TrumpBarr wins or if such a brazen extra-political attempt to stay in power will be enough to get conservatives-who-are-not-MAGA to get woke or not. If we can’t get that crucial part of the electorate to finally show some backbone, then on a political level, at least, the United States in 2021 will be identical to Belarus in 2021.
The thing about what’s going on right now is it’s difficult, if not impossible, to figure out how serious Trump is about staging A Very American Coup and how much is him simply hedging his bets. Trump may simply want a wide-array of options to choose from.
And, remember, Trump must know by this point that Russian hackers are going to (attempt) to directly change the results of the 2020 election by hacking directly into our election computer systems. As such, that MIGHT be the real explanation behind the odd decision on the part of the Trump Campaign to go dark with their advertising in key battleground states right before the election. Trump is lulzing it because he knows nothing matters at this point — the fix is in.
Anyway, let’s imagine he decides to go ahead with his Very American Coup. What happens?
The Coup The key thing you have to remember is Interior Minister Bill Bar is going to fuck with the election in a very “Who, me?” kind of way. He did it with the Mueller Investigation and he’s going to do it with the election. In fact, I would go so far as to say his success in blunting the blow of Mueller Investigation has given him a very good understanding of what to do.
As long as House Trump controls the post-election narrative, they win. As things grow more and more unhinged, the pressure will be on Biden to accept “defeat” for the “sake of the country.” So, it’s easy to see a situation whereby somehow even though a coup takes place, The New York Times and others play right into Barr’s hands by not even recognizing that a coup has taken place.
And, really, Barr has every reason to believe he will win. So, it’s very possible that even if MAGA state legislatures simply seat Trump Electors out of spite, a wide swath of the mainstream press will go full Vichy on us. I could see this being the setup to not a civil war, but a fucking revolution.
In other words, House Trump and Barr pretty brazenly steal the election post-Election night by fucking with the selection of Electors. The New York Times‘ Maggie Haberman in a ever-so-droll way, signs away the Republic. She poo-poos the notion that anyone has the right to object to this theft and goes back to telling randos like me that I don’t know anything about (access) journalism.
So, this would be a moment of truth. I honestly can’t tell you which way the public would go. There might be some protestings here and there, but Barr controls the media narrative so completely that The New York Times focuses only on the violences associated with these otherwise peaceful protests and that’s it. We turn into an autocracy without even putting up a fight. Remember, the Women’s March has some pretty huge peaceful protests every year and the national press lulzes them because it’s just a bunch of angry broads, amiright?
The Counter-Coup This is very iffy because of what I describe above. But let’s say Trump, despite “winning” so absolutely brazen in his theft of the election that he enrages enough of the population that Nancy Pelosi finally, finally, finally, finally, FINALLY really begins to play white knuckled power politics with Trump. She begins a game of chicken with him.
Now, the thing to remember is, there are a lot of different things that would have to go wrong for Trump for this to happen. A lot. He’s going to bank on a hard 5-4 vote in his favor at SCOTUS if it comes to that. And he’ll be right. But it’s at least possible that out of sheer desperation, Pelosi drops an H-bomb on Trump’s plans to steal the election.
She announces soon after the last 5-4 SCOTUS vote a two pronged attack against Trump’s coup. First, the House will immediately impeach Trump the moment it comes into session in January. But it won’t be a “skinny” impeachment, it will be a 10 article political MOAB. Everything Trump — and Pence have done over the last four years, from Stormy Daniels to general abuse of power will be thrown into the expansive articles of impeachment. Now, if the Senate hasn’t flipped, then lulz, this is all smoke and mirrors.
MoscowMich does exactly what he did with the first Trump impeachment. But, let’s suppose the Senate does flip. If the country is obviously beginning to fall apart at this point — which would be the only way Pelosi would actually have the guts to do any of this — then there might be a real shot that both Trump AND Pence would be convicted.
This is where things get tricky.
In an effort to placate some very angry Biden voters, Pelosi says she’s going to step aside and have the Democratic House name Biden as speaker of the House, thus putting him in line of succession. The argument that Pelosi could make is that desperate times call for desperate measures and one coup deserves another.
Remember, this would NOT happen in a vacuum. The entire country would likely be on the cusp of implosion at this point. And Trump could very well send in the D.C. national guard (or whatever) to Capitol Hill and try to disperse any impeachment proceedings. But let’s suppose that doesn’t work for some reason, maybe a massive human shield of voters or something.
So both Trump and Pence are convicted — in no large part because Senate Republicans realize the country is probably going to descend into civil war / revolution anyway — and Biden becomes POTUS in a very roundabout manner. He proceeds to name Harris as his veep, and the Senate approves her at a record speed.
If things have gotten THIS BAD, then obviously Trump — who is probably barely hanging on to his sanity — will hold up in the White House. But it’s reasonable to believe that rather than play Hitler-in-the-Berlin-Bunker, he steals Marine One and races to, say, the very CSA-friendly Mobile, Alabama.
The thing about The Atlantic article published today that makes me feel a lot better — even though the subject is rather dystopian — is it gives me some sense of how we might ultimately remove Trump in some sort of peaceful fashion.
But, first, let’s look at two quotes from the story in that is extremely unsettling.
Ok, here’s the deal — this is exactly the type of post-election shenanigans I have long assumed Trump would pull. In fact, it’s kind of eerie to see something you’ve thought about for years actually really fucking happening — Trump’s going to stage a coup.
But another thing I’ve said is, a lot would have to go wrong for Trump for this to happen. Bill Barr’s “preliminary summary” of the Durham Investigation would have to somehow not throw the election for Trump. The fucking with the postal service that Trump allies have done recently would have to somehow not throw the election for Trump. The Russians hacking directly into our election systems as part of a quid pro quo for Trump removing 1/3 of our troops from Germany would somehow no work, either.
As I have long said, the harder it is for Trump to “win” on election night, the more ham-handed and radical he will become post-election. He is literally going to destroy the country to save himself.
Now, here’s something interesting — Trump might be so focused so absolutely on stealing the presidential election, that he doesn’t spend all that much time (if any) worrying about keeping the Senate. He may still keep the Senate, but remember, if he actively steals the presidential election, then the dynamic that would otherwise happen — of him losing and the Senate flipping — would still happen with the Senate.
As such, if Trump were to pull A Very American Coup, then there would be, at least, some political recourse — impeachment. And, this time, the dynamic would be significantly different in that there would actually be political due process once the Articles of Impeachment arrived at the Senate.
It’s easy to see a situation where it wouldn’t just be Trump’s coup that he was tried for, but all the bullshit he’s done over the last four years. So instead of a shame trial in the Senate, Trump gets a very long, very thorough and very excruciating trial.
None of this would happen in a vacuum, of course. The same dynamic that happened with Trump’s first impeachment would happen with this one. Rudy would pop out of his crypt to rant about how it was the impeachment that was the coup and not the coup that Trump actually did. There might be violence. And, fuck, Trump might even press the issue if he got nervous enough by going full tyrant and using a nationalized National Guard to prevent the impeachment trial from taking place at all.
But the argument could be made that our one possible peaceful solution to the Trump “problem” is he’s convicted in the Senate. Then of course, we would have the problem of MAGA-Qanon surrounding the White House and Pence being president illegally, but at least, once we physically removed Trump from the White House, have removed him as an existential threat to the Republic.
For some reason, I find the idea of there at least being SOME possible peaceful solution to tyrant Trump re-assuring.
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