Tag: A Very American Coup

How A Second American Civil War Could Happen Now


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

We have to get some things out of the way before we talk about this — Republicans have no shame and MAGA longs for a Russian-style autocracy. And in the eyes of MAGA — by definition the only legitimate election victory is one where Trump supporters win.

Another thing we have to appricate is — something about Obama’s second term drove Republicans insane. They completely left reality. This happened probably because it sank in that America is changing and they would rather destroy democracy than allow those changes to effect changes in our power structure. Add to this the growing economic power of women and the associated sexual agency and, well, lulz, they want an autocracy.

So, let’s talk about a second American civil war.

The first issue is Trump blew it when he didn’t strike before the election was called by the media. And, so, that’s the real crux of the issue — if Trump was the autocrat I thought he was, then the civil war we all think is going to happen would have already have happened. Trump would have driven Blue States out of the Union, used the Insurrection Act and then re-organized them under some sort of MAGA Reconstruction.

But because Trump isn’t an autocrat but an idiot ding-dong, we are now careening towards an extremely surreal situation where what shouldn’t be happening — Trump leaving office — is actually going to happen. So many Republicans have invested their entire life, career and identity into The Thousand Year Trump the fact that Trump is leaving office is going to causing them significant existential angst.

Let’s get to the point — how could a civil war break out NOW? All I got is Trump goes completely fucking insane and, as such, goes transactional on Twitter. For an actual civil war to happen, Trump would have to demand Red States to attempt to leave the Union. That’s all I got. Then we see if MAGA Republicans really are willing to jump off the cliff at the direction of the Dear Leader.

I have no idea if this is actually possible. But it is a real possibility. As such, that would be the civil war. That would be the opportunity for Good Old Boys in the Patriot Party to murder liberals in cold blood. Yet, because it would be Red States not Blue States leaving the Union, the issue of race would come to the fore. Blacks simply are not going to do nothing if there is an effort to leave the Union by whites in the South.

So, instead of any sort of Trumplandia being established, you’ll just get a fucking race war.

All in all, it’s tragic and sad that so many people would actually WANT a fucking civil war. What is wrong with you fucking cocksuckers?

Cool It People, A Second American Civil War Is Unlikely To Happen…Soon


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Ok, I get it, on an abstract level, Good Old Boys want to join the Patriot Party and murder “libtards” in cold blood because they fear their lives will be ruined when they are “canceled” simply for being conservative.

But let’s break this down.

The thing we have to see is what’s really going on is MAGA people want an autocracy. They want to live in an Americanized version of Putin’s Russia. That’s their dream. Their goal. The irony is that Trump is an avatar for the extensive rot in the American political system and that’s why he’s so fucking lazy. He doesn’t have to do anything other than just be himself.

So, what’s going on right now is there is a crucial element of our fate that isn’t happening — Trump isn’t the autocrat that MAGA wants, he’s just a ding-dong. As such, all my predictions that Trump “wouldn’t lose” were right but for one thing: Trump isn’t an autocrat. He’s an idiot.

All the conditions were there for Trump to destroy American democracy in one fell swoop in any number of ways — and he didn’t do it. The conditions for autocracy continue to exist — the longing for autocracy by MAGA continue to exist — so we are careening towards a surreal situation where what should be happening, isn’t happening.

We should be an autocracy now, but we’re not because the person who otherwise with the means, motive and opportunity to do so — Trump — simply doesn’t have the wherewithal to pull it off.

If Trump was the autocrat I thought he was, he would have struck in some sort of autocratic fashion right before or right after the election in such a way that would have driven the Blue States out of the Union. But he didn’t, so now even if he struck at some point between now and Jan 20th, it would likely happen only because Trump went fucking bonkers.

As such, what’s likely to happen is we’re going to punt this particular problem down the road. It could be something in the 2023-2025 timeframe. This would give the Proud Boys and the Patriot Party time to organize and a “Man on a Horse” to bubble up to the service who would do what Trump wasn’t able to — turn the United States into an autocracy.

I must note that the funniest part of all of this is the Good Old Boys who come to this site obviously thinking there’s going to be a MAGA “revolution.” I find this hilarious because the logic of a “MAGA revolution” is both dubious and tenuously connected to reality. And that feeling of a need for a “MAGA revolution” is also an example of the yearning for a Tom Cotton or Mike Pompeo to at some point take “total control” in a way that Trump simply wasn’t capable of doing.

A civil war may come, but I struggle to imagine it happening anytime soon because Trump is a ding-dong, not an autocrat.

The Upcoming Jan. 6th Congressional Electoral College Certification Shenanigans


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I don’t know what to make about this one. A lot of MAGA Twitter has pinned its hopes on January 6th now. They believe that all their problems will go away when Congress refuses to seat Electors they don’t like. Trump will win the election that way and MAGA can go back to putting kids in cages and owning libs who say “fuck.”

But there are some serious, serious, SERIOUS problems with this.

So, here’s what will happen under the best of circumstances for MAGA shithead cocksuckers. Someone from the House and someone from the Senate contests a slate of Electors.

The two Houses go back to their individual chambers and debate for two hours. At the end of the two hours, they vote with a simple majority winning. Here’s where MAGA dreams of four more years run into a brick wall.

Not only do Democrats have a solid majority in the House, but the Republican leadership in the Senate is actively opposed to such a ding-dong move. So, there are several reasons why all of this is damaging and disturbing.

The first is, it forces the Republicans to AGAIN be on the record about wanting to overthrow the election. Or, put another way, while will likely help a lot of the more insane MAGA Republicans with the base, the fact that the more moderate Republicans have to make a decision that is recorded is not great.

The next is an expectations game.

As we grow closer to January 6th, Trump is going to AGAIN put all his eggs in a basket that is going to break. He’s going to lose, but his followers who are willfully ignorant at this point, at least have the prospect that they MIGHT win — despite the fact that they definitely won’t — as way to “own the libs” a few more days.

It also again lets the know who is with them and who isn’t. This time, Senate Republicans will get roped into this seditious clusterfuck.

And, lastly, there’s a good chance that once Trump loses this final attempt to overturn the election, he will snap in some way and go transactional on Twitter. This, combined with the deflated nature of MAGA at that point, will lead to either some sort of snap secessionist crisis (because Trump is ranting about this on Twitter now) or just rolling political violence because, you guessed it, Trump has gone transactional on Twitter and is “joking” about the need for MAGA to remind people of the power of the 2nd Amendment.

But let me remind you of something — I, and many other people (Maggie Haberman) greatly overestimate Trump’s practical political acumen. In fact, he’s just a lazy, incompetent ding-dong. Any political violence or secessionist crisis or civil war that happens will be stuff that would have happened anyway, he just is the avatar for the specific set of events.

Gen. Mike Flynn’s Sedition Crazy Train Express


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

So. General Mike Flynn. His latest suggestion is Trump order the U.S. Military to force “redo” elections in various states he lost. This is dumb, dangerous and problematic for number of reasons.

Now that the Electors have voted, I just don’t see how Trump could order the U.S. Military to do such a thing. To call Flynn’s suggestion a pipedream is to give pipedreams a bad name.

But what he suggests does give us some sense of what a dangerous period in American history we’re in. There are people on the Far Right who are so wrapped up in MAGA that they have completely lost sight of what’s going on. Their devotion to Trump is so absolute and so disconnected to reality that it’s nothing more than a political grunt.

Trump good. Liberals bad.

That’s it. That’s all they got.

Flynn — who I think is Trump’s Russian handler — is telegraphing to Trump want the Russians want Trump to do in the name of destroying the country. But what may be really going on is an expectations game.

The Russians through Flynn hope that if MAGA expectations are raised enough that when they, at last, have the Great Disappointment, that they’ll start murdering people and blowing shit up. It seems as though such a “Great Disappointment” might happen sometime between January 6th and January 20th.

That would be when a number of things align — Trump may go transactional in his craziness and MAGA people will finally flip the fuck out because there’s simply no way for Trump to win….or “not lose.” But, again, I struggle to imagine any situation where there’s a secession crisis.

And if there was, it would only be Mountain states with small populations and no black people. Such a secessionist crisis would definitely give good old boys in the old CSA political boners, but, alas, black people in the South are simply never, ever going to sit back and let a bunch of Cooters bring back the CSA.

You thought the fight over Confederate statutes was bad — just wait until the battle is about Neo-Confederacy!

So, fucking cocksucker shithead Neo-Confederates can stroke one out to the “South Shall Rise Again” all they want to, but the Dear Leader totally bungled this situation. He has waited to late. And not even January 6 shenanigans will save them.

‘9/10ths’ — Gaming Out Trump Refusing To Physically Leave The White House


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The thing about Trump is he spit balls different ideas in a rather conspicuous manner. He telegraphs the different options he’s weighing so we all know well in advance different decisions he’s weighing.

Right now, he’s mulling simply not physically leaving the White House on January 20th, after specifically saying he would. Let’s game this out to see why he might do it.

Why He Might
Ratings
What better way to wrap up the Trump Show than a spectacular series finale, one that will be talked about for decades? He would finally get the ratings he’s always wanted.

“Stab in The Back” Martyrdom
Trump could use the imagery of him being frogwalked out of the Oval Office as the ultimate fuck you to the incoming Biden Administration and cause as much damage to the country as possible. Trump might see this is as a great way to kickstart his 2024 presidential bid.

Avoiding Prosecution
What better way to avoid any form of prosecution than to hold up in the White House and use the assurance of the State of New York not going after him as a condition for peacefully leaving? I’m really, really giving Trump too much credit here when it comes to abstract thought, but he might stumble into this logic out of desperation

Why He Might Not
Trump’s a Coward
I just can’t see Trump having it in him to put himself in physical harm. He’s always been just talk. For Trump to do something this crazy, he really would have had to have snapped after January 6th. I could see him doing such a thing in the context of going transactional on Twitter, but otherwise, he probably will just slink away on January 20th or have a big campaign rally somewhere symbolic.

Here’s something I wrote some time ago about this very scenario, but in a different context.

9/10ths
a story fragment of a possible near future
by Shelton Bumgarner

April, 2019

The eyes of the world were on the White House.

Just moments before, President Donald J. Trump, 45th president of the United States, had been convicted by 67 members of the Senate for a whole list of high crimes and misdemeanors. Trump had for weeks now been ranting on Gab about his case in the Senate, bouncing back and forth between threats to start a war with Iran or the DPRK and not-so-subtle hints that he might take his own life should he be convicted by the Senate.

And, now, at last, the moment of truth had arrived.

Trump legally, at least, was no longer president, but he had been oddly silent since the verdict had been announced with great fanfare from the well of the Senate. Trump’s conviction had come after months of investigations on the part of the now Democratic Congress. The length and breath of Trump’s malfeasance discovered by these hearings had rocked the nation to its very core. On more than one occasion, MAGA talking heads on cable news had been interrupted by astonishing breaking news that left them, for once, unable or unwilling to defend the president.

The hearings had ground on for months to such an extent that Trump’s approval had slowly drifted to the 20s and stayed there consistently. Trump’s support was now made up of the very rich and the very poor. Oddly, despite Trump’s near constant demands on Twitter for violence on the part of his supporters, little, if any was reported. Trump had grown so frustrated that he had all but abandoned Twitter at one point for the more receptive Gab social media platform. Though on more than one occasion Rudy Giuliani had made it very clear it was within the rights of the president to declare martial law if he deemed it in the best interests of the nation. More than one delegation of Senate Republicans had gone to the White House to explain to Trump that he was going to be convicted, no avail. Trump made it clear to them, in not so many words that his simply living in the White House made him president, a sentiment best expressed by the legal saw that, “Possession is 9/10ths of the law.”

Finally, a post to Gab came out: “My so-called ‘conviction’ is the work of the Deep State and as such illegitimate. I remain president.”

This set off a chain of events, the likes of which Americans had never seen. Suddenly, everyone on Twitter became a Constitutional scholar as everyone studied the exact wording of the Constitution as to what happens if the president is removed from office by the Senate. The wording is quite clear: he or she is no longer president and that’s it.

Nowhere in the Constitution did it explain what to do if the president simply decided to ignore the Senate. What’s more, nowhere in the Constitution did it state what to do with the nuclear launch codes should a president be removed from office and he refuse to accept the decision of the Senate.

The next few hours were chilling as they were surreal for millions of people not just in the United States but around the globe. The issue of Trump’s physical access to America’s nuclear launch codes was suddenly at the forefront of everyone’s mind. Though it was finally announced that while the nuclear football remained in Trump’s possession, Sec. of Defense Mattis had ordered the American armed forces to stand down for the duration of the crisis.

Trump, on Twitter, was as defiant and unhinged as usual.He threatened to kill himself. He threatened to start a nuclear war. He vowed to declare martial law.

The usual suspects on cable news did their best to spin all of this for Trump. As an anxious nation waited for the now former president to leave the White House, a cavalcade of former Republican Senators and Trump White House staffers attempted to make the former president’s case. Their final argument was that for the good of the country, Trump should be allowed to remain president, despite his lawful conviction by the Senate.

Things began to move rapidly at this point.

Vice President Pence was sworn in but Chief Justice Roberts in a dark, somber event in the Old Executive Building. Meanwhile, it was learned Trump had quietly replaced his Secret Service detail with a private security force that made it clear it was prepared to defend Trump until the bloody end.

At this point, two things happened. A final bipartisan delegation of Congressional leaders came to the White House grounds under the flag of truce. During the course of an hour-long meeting, Trump screamed at them that they had never supported him and the world would be better off if it just ended instead of allowed the forces of the Deep State to ruin America. He made it absolutely clear that he would never leave the Oval Office willingly.

With that, they left.

Next, a surreal, bizarre event, the FBI slowly began to surround the White House. There was much debate online and on TV about how long the nation should wait for Trump to leave the White House. CNN went so far as to do a deep dive into the exact amount of food the White House grounds might have available at any one moment.

Finally, shots rang out from the White House as the battle was joined. It took several hours but in the end, the FBI was finally able to secure the facility. Nearly a dozen personnel on both sides died during the course of the Battle of The White House.

In what would become ionic footage, Trump was quietly escorted from the White House grounds. He spent the remainder of his days ranting on Twitter and Gab that he was the rightful president.

The End.



Trump Era Final Days Predictions


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m always wrong when it comes to Trump, in large part because I give him way more political credit than he deserves. But, just for fun, let’s attempt to predict what may happen between now and January 20th.

The Pardons
The first thing I think we can know for sure is there are going to be a massive amount of pardons while Trump still has it within in power to do so. The first wave will be around Christmas. It will probably start as early as Dec 23. Or maybe we’ll get a heads up on Dec. 23rd that something is about to happen. But a staggering amount of pardons will happen Christmas Eve while everyone is too busy enjoying the holiday to notice. The next wave will probably happen at some point after January 6th when it starts to sink in to Trump that he is, in fact, going to leave office one way or another. It’s probably at some point after January 6th that Trump pardons himself.

The Special Counsels
I could see, at a minimum, two bogus Special Counsels being named — one for Hunter Biden and one for the 2020 Election. There could be a whole shitstorm surrounding the naming of these, especially if Trump has to find someone crazy to head Justice to get what he wants.

The Firings
While I think this is very possible, a lot depends on how much of a crackup Trump goes through post January 6th. If he really snaps, then I think Wray at FBI and Haspel at CIA could get fired and Trump toadies be named simply out of spite. And, in an effort to strike back at The Deep State, Trump could just begin to fire anyone he doesn’t like in the Intelligence Community or pretty much anywhere — specifically someone like Dr. Fouchi. (This would be very moot for a number of reasons, but it would make Trump feel better just to be able to do it.)

The Executive Orders
I could see Trump thinking up some pretty crazy Executive Orders on his way out the door, just to cause as much chaos as possible. The specific one I can think of off the top of my head is one fucking with the 14th Amendment’s birthright citizenship clause. He would do this for no other reason than to force SCOTUS to vote on it. Even if Biden rescinded it, he would have made his point.

The Congressional Elector Certification Clusterfuck
It’s looking as though for no other reason than he’s a spiteful crybaby, Trump could really lean on Republican Senators to vote for his last-ditch effort to overturn the election on January 6th. This is extremely quixotic for a number of reasons, but he would have proven his point. Also, there’s a good chance that Pence will attempt to nullify the whole thing by simply not doing his Constitutional duty. As I understand it, this would be very dumb because if he did that, then the statue says the certification at the state level by governors has precedence and fuck you Mike Pence.

The Transactional Tweets
It’s possible that after Trump is finally defeated on January 6th, that he will fucking snap in a pretty spectacular fashion. Remember, most of his ideas are simply far, far, far, far Right wetdreams that slowly work their way towards him via OANN. So, it’s at least possible that Trump will begin to actively either goad his followers into violence or to demand Red States convene snap Conventions to leave the Union. This would work pretty well in Mountain states, but in the South, this would lead only to a race war.

The White House Squatter
Laura Loomer is already suggesting Trump simply not physically leave the White House, so that’s definitely now a possibility. That would be a fitting way to wrap up Trump Era — everyone staring in horror as we have the Taking of the White House surrounded by MAGA cocksuckers.

Wildcards
There are a number of things I simply can’t predict. One is any number of “political 9/11s” that might pop out of nowhere that Trump might used to take “total control” and simply never leave office. Among them being wars with the DPRK or Iran or some sort of Oklahoma City type bombing somewhere for any reason. We also have an expectations problem ahead of us and the likelihood of significant violence will increase the closer we approach January 20th.

The Looming Second American Civil War: Race & The Paradox Of The Neo-Confederates


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I will admit that it definitely FEELS like the United States has finally run out of political gas and we’re just about to implode into a Second American Civil War. In an abstract manner, you could say there are about 20 states in the Mountain area of the United States that could secede and make then try to negotiate their peaceful exit from the Union. (This, of course, will never happen, but they can try.)

But that’s not really the issue. The issue is the former states of the Confederacy. It’s all the good old boys in across the South who are itching to see the South “rise again.” But, as I’ve said, ironically, it would make a lot more sense for Trump to drive Blue States out of the Union, then crush them using the Insurrection Act than it would for Red (CSA) States to attempt to leave the Union.

The issues: race and economics.

And effort to leave the Union by the old CSA states slam into two pretty huge problems. The first, of course, is race. No amount of pouting by easily triggered snowflake good old boys is going to convince the Southern black community that they could get a better deal in a New Confederacy. It’s a dead on arrival concept.

It’s that specific issue that makes me believe that even if Trump snapped at some point after January 6th and went transactional on Twitter about secession that it just wouldn’t work out. It might cause rolling political — and racial — violence across huge swaths of the country, but it wouldn’t be a civil war. And even if there was a secession crisis, I can’t think of a single old CSA state that cold leave the Union cleanly via a convention.

Andy secession would have to happen after a violent coup and even then, how secessionists would be able to take places like Atlanta, Richmond or Austin is a puzzle. So, at best, they might control big parts of the old CSA and declare some sort of Neo-Nazi state and start murdering black and liberals wholesale. But the whole “South Shall Rise Again” mythos would be…..not quite what the good old boys think it will be.

Let’s talk about economics.

The South, which would do much better as part of a Red State USA instead of a Neo-CSA, is not uniform anymore. States like Texas, Virginia and Florida are far more modern and urban than the Southern Good Old Boys would have us to believe. As I mentioned, Atlanta in itself is such a huge city that it would likely rather stay in the Union by itself than join any secessionist movement by the rest of the state.

As such, not only would you have to have some sort of political 9/11 for secession to take off, but your best bet as a Southern Good Old Boy would be for it to be BLUE states that leave the Union, not Red States.

But good old boys gonna good old boy.

A Second American Civil War Won’t Just Magically Happen


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I keep getting a lot of pings on this Website from people living in the Usual Suspects of the “Lost Cause” — South Carolina, Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia and Texas to name a few. They seem really excited about my dystopian hellscape scenarios about a Second American Civil War.

But I suspect a lot of the interest in such a second American Civil War comes from the recent soft coup by 17 states at SCOTUS. I don’t think people really appricate how ingrained the concept of “the South shall rise again” is in the lives of the average Southerner. So, for a lot of good old boys, even the hint of a new CSA is just too much for their poor old minds to comprehend.

With that in mind, let’s think about how we get from where we are to where we would need to be for an actual civil war to happen.

One reason why I think that this is sort of the end of the beginning of a long-term drive towards a civil war is there just isn’t any armed force big enough to challenge the U.S. Military. The Proud Boys are a small, angry disorganized group of assholes. They might blow shit up or murder someone in cold blood, but they aren’t even really even a militia. So, Cooter in Mobile can lust after Yankee blood all he wants to, but as of right now, such bloodlust is extremely misguided.

It would make a lot more sense for Red States to drive Blue States out of the Union, THEN use the U.S. Military on THEM rather than Red States leave and have the U.S. Military crush them. That’s a prime example of what a ding-dong Trump is — if he was anywhere near the political genus that Maggie Haberman would have us believe, Trump would have done a Reichstag Fire falseflag around Election, taken “total control” driven Blue States to revolt then crushed them via the Insurrection Act.

As it stands, he’s pretty much just ranted on Twitter. In other words — he’s done jackshit. It’s truly ironic it’s specifically because Trump, as a person, is so bad at his job as an autocrat that the United States may have dodged an actual fighting civil war because Trump just can’t get his act together.

So, in a sense, all the good old boy boners about a civil war NOW makes no sense. But the passions that Trump’s soft coup attempt has unleashed gives a lot Neo-Confederates a lot of expectations about what might happen — that aren’t based in reality. They FEEL like a new civil war is about to happen, but only in the abstract. It makes them feel good to think, in the abstract, that they can leave the Union and murder as many liberals as possible in the process.

The Good Old Boys’ best bet right now for what they want sooner rather than later would be Trump finally losing his fucking mind and starting to rant on Twitter about how Red States MUST leave the Union immediately. Or, put another way, Trump would have to go transactional on Twitter in some way.

For the time being, however, it seems that Trump may cause a lot of mischief on his way out, but unless we have a “political 9/11” in the next few weeks, it’s going to be closer to 2024-2025 before the conditions are right for a Second Civil War.

Our Craven Ding-Dong POTUS Faces His Final Political Test



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

A number of different things are happening at the same time. One issue is that several different macro trends in American politics have come to a head. The rage that 38% of the electorate feels about the changing nature of American society combined with how white working class men can’t get laid has led to significant rot in the American political system.

Red State rural areas and Blue State urban areas simply have a fundamental difference of opinion about what constitutes America. MAGA and MAGA friendly people think that by definition to be conservative is to risk being “canceled” — have their life ruined — for simply being conservative. And that, is the source of a lot of the rage and willful ignorance on the part of such people.

There are a number of pretty huge problems standing in the way of MAGA getting want they apparently want right now — 4 more years of Trumplandia. The biggest obstacle to this goal, ironically enough, is Trump himself. If he struck in some autocratic fashion before the election was called — or even before the election — then he probably would have gotten away with it. There are many, many different autocratic things he could have done that would have allowed him to stay in office to varying degrees of success.

But he didn’t do any of them and now that the Electoral College has voted, it’s now much, much harder for Rudy to use his usual disinformation techniques to run slipshod over democracy since we’re now, again, in a political crisis. The reason we’re in a political crisis — even if we don’t see it for that — is only through extra-political measures can Trump stay in power.

Or, put another way, the soft coup techniques he used in the courts recently would have to be replaced by hard coup techniques of an actual autocrat. But there are a lot — a lot — of problems for Trump going forward to pull such a thing off.

Many of his followers are begging Trump to go full-autocrat and declare martial law, or what have you. But there’s an important element of this they miss — Trump can’t just do this out of the blue. If he did — no one would follow his order.

What he COULD do, is goad his followers into some sort of Reichstag Fire event which he could then, in turn, use to invoke the Insurrection Act and attempt to maybe stay in power no matter what. But, again, even then, now that the Electoral College has voted…that’s a pretty dubious strategy. Even if something happened out of the blue — like a war with Iran or the DPRK or a coordinated series of political killings or Oklahoma City type bombings — Trump’s time in office is growing to an end.

Really, it seems to me Trump has one ace up his sleeve — in a sense: he could just snap and go completely fucking bonkers and thrash around, trying to destroy the country as much as possible on his way out. There are any number of pretty insane things he could do. He could start tweeting about how Red states need to leave the Union before January 20th. He could attempt to arrest any number of people he doesn’t like as a negotiating tactic so HE doesn’t go to prison after he leaves office.

But, remember, pretty much at any moment now, some pretty lit extra-political events might happen because Trump is hoping he can win in Congress Jan. 6th because that’s a POLITICAL event.

And, yet, I’ve overestimated Trump’s actual political ability so many times over the years, that what’s more likely to happen is we’re just going to drift into the Biden Era. Things will be in political neutral for about two years until the House flips and Biden is impeached for Hunter Biden’s laptop (or whatever) and there will be a lot — a lot — of surreal political discourse as suddenly our political norms snap back into place while, at the same time, Trump keeps doing what he’s always been doing an we just shrug.

Like we always do.

But there is a good chance that the weeks leading up to Jan. 20th are going to be unpredictable, unstable and extremely bumpy. How, exactly, all the plays out is anyone’s guess.

The Monster Always Comes Back One Last Time


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

For the time being, we can all sigh a huge sigh of relief. The Electoral College voted without a hitch and now Biden is a pretty huge leap closer to actually being sworn in.

The Dead Zone as documentary.

But as with any horror movie, the monster is probably going to come back one last time. We got our first sense of that just about when the Electoral College wrapped up voting — Bill Barr is leaving just before Christmas. As such, we now enter the most dangerous phase of the Trump Era to date. Trump has every reason to demand a dozen Special Counsels to look into every aspect of the “Deep State” his way out.

These Special Counsels would be given a huge, vague charge so they could go after every aspect of Biden even before he’s sworn in. They would be what was needed for the Republicans to impeach Biden the moment they won the House and took over in 2023.

But this is Trump we’re talking about. It’s very easy to imagine he being far more dumb and ham handed about it all. I could very well see him doing something directly against Biden himself — or Obama, or whomever — specifically for the purpose of destroying the United States so everything would be so fucked up that New York State wouldn’t have the ability to concentrate on him.

Or, put another way, between now and January 20th is the danger zone. Everything from Trump going insane in such a way that significant political violence begins in the United States to a wide array of completely batshit insane things that so destabilize the country that there could be a serious secession crisis the first 100 days of the Biden Administration.

The main issue right now is Trump simply won’t concede so that gives MAGA hope that somehow, someway, they can still win. It’s a pretty massive clusterfuck we find ourselves in because either MAGA “catches the car” and there’s a civil war for that reason, or they don’t and they start blowing shit up…which starts a civil war.

And so we go back to the main issue of the day — the fate of 300 million Americans and about 7 billion humans rests on Trump. Will he continue to simply be a very incompetent ding-dong, or will he finally summon the energy to bring the United States to its knees and potentially destroy not just the United States, but everything.