Tag: A Very American Coup

10 Days That May Shake The World


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

So, here we are, on the evening of January 6th, not knowing what’s going to happen. As I’ve said before, America is running on fumes politically and the two sides have hardened their positions enough that just the barest of additional stress on the system would likely make the whole thing collapse.

And by collapse, I mean significant political violence in the United States.

But, for the moment, let’s imagine we somehow defeat the January 6th coup. This is when things REALLY get bumpy. The moment Biden’s victory is certified, Trump may really fucking snap.

It is between, say, Jan 10 (final certification if Republicans push the issue) and January 20th that Trump’s already fragile mental state could grow so perilous that he explodes. He becomes a very conspicuous caged rat who would rather destroy the nation than risk leaving office for various reasons.

He would “destroy” things in a number of ways. He could foment some sort of secessionist crisis. He could start really firing people en mass. He could frogwalk Joe Biden. He could start a war or wars. And, worst of all, he could finally implode into extreme passive-aggressiveness.

If that happens, then Trump could very well scare the ever-living shit out of the entire world as he begins to ramble on Twitter about how “liberals want me to kill myself” or “no one appreciates the power I have when it comes to nuclear weapons.”

Now, even then, I have my doubts as to would anything happen. At least at first. If Trump really went that bonkers, the first thing that would happen would be Republicans would say he was “joking” or that somehow there was some misunderstanding of what he said.

It’s when it became absolutely, 100% clear that that was not the case….then THAT would be when some extremely surreal events would happen very, very quickly.

But the one constant about Trump is you just never can tell. He could more implode than explode mentally and we just kind of drift into the Biden Era, no big deal.

Trump Goes Transactional (Almost)


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Someone on Twitter pinged me, suggesting Trump had, at last, gone “transactional” via his Twitter account. But I don’t think he has, yet. For me, “Trump going transactional” would mean he told his followers to do something specific. Especially if that “something specific” was violence that was not him “just joking.”

It would have to be something completely, totally indefensible. Something that would make conservatives-who-aren’t-MAGA sit up and take notice. An “ask” of his followers in the real world for them to, well, hurt people, stage a coup, blow shit up, crash the Congressional certification, you name it.

Any different series of these things might be done in conjunction. Or not. Trump is so desperate at this point and so devoid of any sense that his actions have consequences that it’s possible he could begin to thrash about in the next 24 or so hours in a way that we’ll look back as the defining moment of his era.

What’s more, it might not even be just the next 24 hours. It could be that January 6th is just the beginning of the Fortnight That Shook The World whereby all Trump does is use a “spaghetti gambit” to attempt to stay in power.

He does all kinds of bonkers things, hoping one of them will work. He could do everything from go transactional on Twitter, to start a war to declare martial law, to frogwalk Joe Biden.

We will know soon enough, I guess.

We’re officially in the danger zone now. All the conditions are there for significant violence in DC, enough, in fact, to be Trump’s “Reichstag Fire.”

Josh Hawley — America’s Would-Be ‘Young Putin’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I thought it was going to be Tom Cotton who murdered American democracy, but, surprise, it’s Josh Hawley who probably is going to get the honor. Traditional American liberal democracy is on life support and it’s probably going to be Hawley who ultimately pulls the plug.

The scenario I could see happening is Ivanka Trump becomes a senator from Florida, she dukes it out with Hawley in the 2024 primary and he ultimately becomes her Veep. They get elected — one way or another — and together they play the part of a fascist velvet fist.

Ivanka would just be the figure head, while Hawley would be the real power behind the throne. This would be similar to the situation in Russia where Putin kept bouncing back and forth between president and premier, never really leaving office. Under this scenario, Hawley would have the potential of being in office 16 years and maybe even more once he really gets into consolidating power and rams through his own Constitutional Convention.

The thing we have to come to grips with is autocracy is actually fairly popular in the United States. Trump was elected because people thought he was going to be an autocrat. In fact, the famous quip about Trump is his governing style is “malevolence only tempered by incompetence.” So, Hawley would just be regular old malevolence, which is what a sizable passionate and organized portion of the electorate wants because they’re afraid of the browning of America and women with sexual agency.

In my mind, this is all but a done deal, but for one thing — Trump.

Trump is such a wild card because of his mental instability and growing freak out about leaving office, that as I keep saying, it’s possible that he might self-own in such a spectacular fashion in the last few days of his time in office that it’s something of a “political 9/11” that so scars people that we actually punt our decline into autocracy for a generation.

But it’s not going to be a liberal fever dream. We’ll all going to get the shit scared out of us when it happens — we may not make it out alive.

The Guns Of January: The Current State Of Political Affairs In The United States Is Untenable


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Something is going to happen. The United States is running on political fumes right now and if history is any guide, someone, somewhere is going to put unexpected stress on the system. It’s almost inevitable at this point.

Or, put another way, while we could very well punt this particular macro crisis in the United States down the road four years, the lines have hardened to such an extent that something that otherwise would not really be a big deal, might spark a sequence of events with no discernable endgame.

I would compare it to Europe mid-1914 right before the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand. Europe was a power keg that just needed a spark to explode — and that spark came. The United States is the same way. But, let me be clear to all the MAGA-Patriot Party shithead cocksuckers who think there’s going to be some sort of conservative “revolution” if the Dear Leader doesn’t stay in power for the rest of his life.

There won’t be a conservative revolution.

This.
Is
Not
Going
To
Happen

There’s not going to be a revolution. You may want to fuck your gun, but you’re not going to have a “revolution.” I don’t know why so many fucking idiots in Texas come to this site looking for my dystopian porn about the end of the United States. Fuck you, you idiots.

I will admit that Trump may TRY to stoke civil undress in a big way in the latter days of his administration in a last-ditch effort to stay in power, but, no, there’s not going to be any sort of conservative “revolution” by so-called “patriots” who want lower taxes and “freedom” from fear of being “canceled” when they’re a dick to women or minorities and get caught.

It’s all very frustrating.

When I talk about a “Glorious Revolution” in the United States, I’m NOT TALKING ABOUT A TURNER DIARIES RACE-WAR REVOLUTION YOU FUCKING IDIOTS. I’m talking about Trump, in a spasm of extra-political and extra-legal acts, being overthrown because, well, everyone who isn’t MAGA finally gets tired of his shit an hits the streets, maybe even up to the point of there being a General Strike.

There may be some serious counter-revolution style civil unrest in the United States, but I see that happening more in four years than now. The far Right, while full of abstract hate and rage against “libtards,” simply isn’t well organized yet. They need to marinate in their hate a few more years before they reach SA / SS levels of hate.

If Trump just freaks out at some point between now and January 20th and declares martial law unliterally or starts a war in an effort to “wag the dog” so he can pull a Constitutional fast one on us, he’s not going to be successful. He is going to seriously scare the shit out of us, but he’s not going to be successful. He just isn’t well organized mentally to pull it off.

So, yes, all the elements are there for significant political violence in the United States any moment now. But it will happen in the context of the Mad King being fucking bonkers, not some sort of Right wing revolution where we all sing kumbha over the broiling bodies of liberals. So, fuck you, you fucking cocksucker MAGA shitheads.

Situations Where Republicans May Finally Turn On Trump


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I continue to struggle with the narrative for the Trump endgame. We just aren’t quite there yet. Come January 6th, we may be a lot closer to understanding that endgame. So, these scenarios are some ideas for the post-January 6th world after any Electoral College certification shenanigan are over.

  1. Trump Becomes Transactional On Twitter
    In this case, Trump starts to tell his supporters to do specific things. It could be attacking specific people or places. It could be to ask their Red State legislatures to secede from the Union. Stuff like that
  2. Trump Declares Martial Law
    While this one is really possible, I fear it would be a stretch to say it would be enough to cause Republicans to abandon Trump. They probably would support it, under the right circumstances. But the consequences of Trump doing this as a part of an overall “hard coup” might significantly weaken the Republican Party long-term.
  3. Trump Starts a War
    This is probably a lot more likely than you might think. The most oblivious place to start a war would be Iran, but I still think the DPRK might surprise us all and test an H-Bomb or an ICBM and give Trump the excuse to start a quickie war with them. If Trump bungled a war with the DPRK and got a major American city vaporized, that might cause some political recalculation on the part of some Republicans.
  4. Trump Becomes Extremely Passive-Aggressive on Twitter
    In this scenario, Trump begins to tweet some pretty surreal things about how liberals want him dead or some such. Something that was so bonkers that we all began to worry he might hurt himself — and take all of us with him.
  5. Trump Frogwalks Members of “The Deep State.”
    This happens when he really goes bonkers and demands that Biden, Obama, the staff of Crooked Media, you name it, be arrested. If someone mysteriously ends up dead while in custody, well, that might also rattle a few Republicans support for Trump.
  6. Trump Threatens The End of The World
    In this darkest scenario, Trump out of the blue starts to rant about how powerful he is and questions in a very Thanos style, how is life even worth living anymore for anyone. We probably would, at last, get rid of Trump, but we also might all die.

A Bad Guy Victory


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The bad guys of American history are going to win. Anti-Trump political forces simply aren’t strong enough. When the time comes, we’re going to become an autocratic managed democracy no different than Russian.

But.

For that to happen, some prep work would have to be done. We would have to slip into autocracy in the context of there being some sort of thin veneer of legality to it all so instead of getting upset, the average person just shrugs. As long as freedom of speech isn’t really harmed — outside of maybe changing libel laws — then people will be content.

That’s why Trump is such a wildcard. Under any normal circumstance, he would be the guy to put the bullet in the head of American democracy. But while he may have autocratic impulses, he just doesn’t have to mental acuity necessary to pull it off. He wants to be an autocrat without actually doing any of the hard work necessary to…be an autocrat.

Add to this Trump being not only bonkers but a self-own artist and, well, you have the makings of an extremely unstable situation. Or, put another way, while the macro historical trends definitely indicate the Bad Guys are going to win, there’s a chance that Trump, specifically, is going to so bungle that transition from liberal democracy to autocratic managed democracy that he manages to punt that final transition for a generation.

The reason is — American self-perception. We still have a very strong sense of being in a “free country” and if Trump did something bonkers in a spasm of panic that went against that, then there could be severe consequences, at last, for the people who want to turn the United States into a white Christian ethno state.

But all of this would come at a cost.

It’s very likely Trump would do something really, really insane that would scare the shit out of us all at the time — we just wouldn’t know, exactly, what was going to happen or if any of us were going to make it out alive.

As such, we have a situation where Trump really wants to stay in power for various reasons and yet he’s too incompetent to actually pull it off. He may try, but he’s going to be so brazen and bonkers about it that he will fail. There is, of course, always the chance that should we manage to get past January 6th without a successful coup, that Trump will go transactional on Twitter.

He will begin to demand Red States leave the Union and we may very well have that civil war that so many right wing nutjob cocksuckers seem to crave.

Anyway. What do I know. I’m always wrong.

How The United States Could Have A Second Civil War


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I continue to get a steady stream of people to this site interested in my dystopian predictions about America’s future. A lot — and I mean A LOT — of people have a Second American Civil War on the brain, apparently.

While I still contend any such civil war will likely happen in about four years, there is one scenario where it happens NOW. It revolves around Trump being the Mad King.

Right now, a lot of MAGA suck ups continue to make political calculations while Trump — at least in my opinion — has totally gone off the reservation. He’s thinking strictly in terms of self-preservation in the context of him having a tenuous, at best, connection to reality.

Now, at this point, let me tell the MAGA people who are drinking a cold one and smoking a doobie in Alabama who think there’s going to be some sort of conservative “revolution” to slow their roll — that’s just not going to happen. You guys have plenty of guns, yes, but you want to fuck them, not use them. There’s a big difference between hating libtards in the abstract and actually, like, running around murdering them in cold blood because you’re afraid your going to be “canceled” for simply being conservative.

So, back to the civil war.

Here’s how it could happen. Trump, having lost his mind, does a number of transactional things that are simply, at last, inexcusable on a political level. He declares martial law. He actively begins to tell Red States to leave the Union — and they do.

If you want a civil war — which apparently some of you fucking Right wing cocksuckers do — that’s how you get one. Trump goes full Col. Kurtz on us and actively begins to either do things that cause Blue States to want to leave the Union or goads Red States into leaving the Union…while he’s still president of the Union.

If none of those type things happen between now and January 20th, then you’re just going to have to wait for your civil war. You just going to have to risk being canceled a few more years.

We’re In A Severe Constitutional Crisis


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

As someone smarter than me said on Twitter, “Post-factual is pre-fascist.” So, the next few days will be crucial in deciding the fate of the United States. The reason why I say that is Republicans are beginning to pull some pretty spectacular scenarios out of their asses in an absolute last-gasp effort to keep Trump in office.

The latest scenario is the creation of the bullshit commission that Ted “Born In Canada” Cruz has suggested would delay the certification 10 days so Republicans can have a lot more time for mischief. Even thought the Electoral Count Act exists to prevent a replay of the 1876 situation, that Cruz is even suggesting such a thing indicates we’re now in a significant Constitutional Crisis.

The biggest reason is it seems pretty obvious that while Ted Cruz and other seditious members of Congress are playing politics, Trump is pretty much thinking only in terms of self-preservation. The disconnect between these two mindsets has otherwise normal people playing into the hands of a madman. Trump just wants to stay in power, no matter what (for various reasons) and, as such, he has thought no further than simply “I don’t want to leave office.”

A lot of people on the Republican side involved in this clusterfuck who should know better are playing along because they don’t want Mad King Trump to demand they be primaried in 2022 or 2024. So, they, too, aren’t really thinking beyond the short-term goal of sucking up to Trump and not making him mad. They really haven’t given any thought to what happens if they pull this stunt off? They don’t think they will and so they see no downside in going as far as possible with Trump’s bullshit.

So it’s up to people like me to think about what happens if they “catch the car.” Well, as I keep saying, it would be a “political 9/11.” But even then, the whole thing would be problematic for House Trump for a number of reasons. This is Trump we’re talking about and he is a massive self-own artist. He’s already self-owned in a massive way by not doing his autocrat “homework” of stealing the election outright in a way that would otherwise give him necessary façade of legality that would allow him to consolidate power in his second term.

He’s not an autocrat, he’s just a deranged idiot who was nothing more than an avatar for the rot and rage in the American political system. That’s it. He has zero leadership skills, so he wasn’t even able to do the bare minimum necessary to “not lose” the 2020 election when the time came.

So, here we are.

Now we have a number of different potentially pretty bad scenarios ahead of us. Trump could essentially stage a coup via the “Pence Card” gambit that would, in effect, be supported by about 38% of the electorate. All things being equal, that’s probably enough for him to stay in power. But I keep thinking about how American civil society would process such an event. Sort of a, “how do you explain it to the kids” kind of thing.

People on Twitter talk a good talk about what they might do if a Pence Card Gambit coup took place, but I have my doubts. It could be that there’s significant grumbling, but since Trump would have at least a thin veneer of legality that he would get away with it.

That would break the back of American democracy once and for all and House Trump would formally be founded. But for the moment, there’s no end game. That’s why we’re in a crisis. Any number of different things might happen in the end.

The Abstract Rage Of Rep. Louie Gohmert


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Let’s look at what’s going on with Rep. Louie Gohmert’s lawsuit against Mike Pence of all people. It seems to me there are a few reasons — in his mind — for the lawsuit.

  1. Catch Pence’s Attention
    Gohmert’s suit is about, in part, simply catching Pence’s attention and reminding him of what he might be able to do if he was so inclined. While Pence could be a dick and throw the nation into chaos, up until fairly recently, he was a pretty traditional — if far Right — politician. So, for him to do something crazy on January 6th would at least appear to be out of character.
  2. Remind Pence of his Duty
    By bringing attention to what Pence’s responsibilities are, Gohmert is attempting to put pressure on Pence to fuck things up. Again, Pence came up through the ranks as a pretty “normal” politician, so it would really be wild for him to do what Gohmert and others want.
  3. Make Everyone Talk About What Pence Could Do
    Another aspect to the suit is to get everyone talking about what Pence may — or may not — do when the opportunities arises. This is where the suit has been the most successful, by far — I mean, I’m talking about it right now.

    Now, let’s talk about how bonkers all of this is to begin with. Gohmert is definitely ahead of the curve in the whole fascist take over of America. And, if he would just fucking be patient, he would definitely get what he wanted. America is a center-Right nation and obviously had Trump in 2016 been the “guy from The Apprentice” then we would be an autocratic, managed democracy right now. Our democracy would, at last, be dead and we would just have House Trump in power for the foreseeable future.

    But there’s a problem — Trump.

    Trump is just a very lucky ding-dong — and now a very lucky DERANGED ding-dong — and so it’s possible that Trump could do something so fucking insane between now and January 20th that we don’t just punt Gohmert’s fascist dreams down the road one election cycle, but for a generation.

    I don’t know. Everything is still very much up in the air. Not until around January 6th will we have a better understanding of what, if anything, is going to happen with all of this.

No, You Fucking Right Wing Nutjobs, You Aren’t Going To Start A Revolution


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Looking at my Webstats, I definitely get the sense that there’s a lot of talk out there in Right Wing circles about some sort of Revolution if They Don’t Get Their Way and Trump stays in power despite him losing the election.

While it’s easy to imagine some sort of major political violence in, say, about four years, if the tree of liberty is watered with the blood of fucking Right Wing cocksuckers right NOW, it will be in vain. The far Right has an abstract rage against “libtards” but I honestly don’t understand what, exactly, they think they would get out of any sort of “revolution” at the moment.

Americans, in general, are pretty copacetic and there’s a quantum leap from having an abstract rage against people who disagree with you politically and actually running around murdering them. There would be real-world consequences to doing so and I don’t think the far Right is prepared to have to deal with that — yet.

Give them four years for the Proud Boys to turn into the SA / SS and the Republican Party to turn into the National Socialist American Worker’s Party and we can talk. When you’re REALLY willing to risk dying or spending the rest of your life in prison because of the vague notion that you might be “canceled” by the evil globalist cuck overlords then, well, I’ll take you seriously.

Now, though, meh. You fucking cowards.

The absolute craziest part of all of this is it may be Trump, himself, who destroys any possibility of a Right Wing “revolution” anytime soon. Trump is not fucking well mentally and it definitely seems as though he is on the cusp of forcing the issue of some sort of coup very, very soon.

Or, put another way, it’s possible that Trump could do something so insane in the waning days of his administration that he kind of slices the boil when it comes to such matters and the whole decent into revolution and civil war that an alarming number of Republicans seem to be looking forward to will be punted down the road a generation.

But, as I keep saying, for that to happen, Trump would extract a pound of political flesh from us. It would be horrific. It would be a quantum leap beyond what happened on 9/11. It would be a New Era for a number of reasons.

The issue is — we’re now entering a very unstable moment in our nations history. If we can just make it past January 20th without Trump nuking us all into the stone age, then we worry about if fucking Right Wing nutjob cocksucker shitheads will get their “revolution” or not.