Things are beginning to move fast now. So fast, in fact, that I’m beginning to worry that my otherwise well thought out and logical belief that if we have a Second American Civil War that it will happen in 2024 -2025 when Blue States leave the Union after the theft of the 2024 presidential election.
And, yet, here we are in 2022 and the specter of Reds starting a civil war (or “popular” revolt?) is growing more and more real.
I’m just about to believe I was wrong. But something happened that I could never have predicted — the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago. If there is the kind of right-wing “Troubles” type civil war that people like Barbara F. Walter have written about it will happen because Trump, feeling trapped, goes transactional and demands his followers begin to blow shit up.
Then there could be a significant rise in political violence in the United States, especially stochastic terrorism. There would be a reason for all that violence that didn’t exist before, when I thought it wouldn’t happen — an concerted effort to intemidate the Federal government in an effort to protect Trump from criminal accountability.
That’s what I couldn’t predict when I came up with all my 2024, 2025 Blue States start a civil war predictions — Trump, on a personal basis, would finally be held accountable and that would give the very well armed MAGA New Right an excuse to initiate significant political violence well ahead of the 2024 election cycle.
But it hasn’t happened yet. And it may never.
And, yet, all that would have to happen is Trump feel so cornered that he went transactional. He’s already done it one, to some extent with January 6th and we’re already beginning to see signs that we’re lurching in that direction now. But it hasn’t happened yet.
A whole lot of people continue to put the entire fate of the most powerful nation in the world in the hands of fate by assuming that their “hope” will get them out of the current Trump-induced crisis.
But what we have to accept is Trump could very well become very, very toxic politically…and yet become POTUS again. And if he feels he might get indicted and booked, he could very well begin to demand Red states to leave the Union in an effort to intimidate the Federal government into letting him off.
The thing that isn’t going to happen, at least without a lot of difficulty, is any sort of pivot towards any of the other would-be autocrats who want to be Trump’s successor. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis wants to lead the Trump without Trump version of MAGA and, yet, Trump is in the game again and if anything he’s growing more powerful by the moment.
And, yet.
I want to make clear that we’re not only past the Event Horizon when it comes an existential choice of autocracy or civil war, we’re now in a danger zone of political upheaval that will come to a head in late 2024, early 2025. One thing I fear is going to begin to happen at an alarming rate is stochastic terrorism against groups like the FBI, trans people and anyone else the MAGA New Right hates for various reasons.
There is a real that Trump, who is demonstrably losing his mind, will grow so absolutely politically toxic — and yet refuse to go away — that he, unto himself, is the single reason why the country collapses into something along the lines of a civil war.
But it hasn’t happened yet.
Maybe it won’t. But with Trump, we just don’t know. There are just too many elements to all of this that I can’t game out. I do believe, however, that we’ll have a lot better understanding of things the moment we learn how well the Democrats did with the 2022 midterms.
If Republicans gain control of the House again, then things will grow very unstable very quickly. They will impeach both Biden and Harris repeatedly. They will impeached any number of other people they don’t like. In fact, I would suggest that for the years 2023 – 2024 that’s all the Senate will do — be in session to consider this or that person’s impeachment.
And there is, of course, the idea that Trump could demand to be Speaker. Why he doesn’t talk about doing that more, I don’t know. That seem so on-brand for him as a quasi-autocrat. Anyway. What do I know.
One of the strangest, most curious political developments in modern American history is the rise of the anti-FBI Right. Now, obviously, this is a quirk caused specifically by how the fucking cocksucker MAGA New Right hates that their Fuhrer is being held accountable, at last.
So, they get all squirrely and attack the source of the problem — the FBI. And, yet, in 2016, the FBI was described as “Trumplandia.” So, it’s all very strange. I suppose the point of all of this is, as MAGA grows more and more radical they are so determined to destroy anything that stands in their way that they don’t stop to think that most of the FBI agrees with them.
It’s one of those things where the FBI, by just doing its job, finds itself at loggerheads with a group it supports (in general.) This is a very unstable situation and it could be that once MAGA gains power again they will burn the whole thing to the ground and replace it with something a lot closer to the SS or SA than what you might think — the gestapo.
This whole situation is very surreal. And there’s no ready endgame. And, as such, we continued to be in a lingering, chronic crisis. The key issue is — there will be no “pivot” to DeSantis or anyone else for that matter. The MAGA base is enraged by the very legal, very justified raid on Mar-a-Lago and, as such, GQP elected officials are being dragged into a more and more absolute stance when it comes to Trump.
As such, there could very well come a point where the FBI, despite it all its empathy for the fucking MAGA New Right fascists, could, well, be “restructured” by the second Trump Administration to the point that it’s nothing more than an arm of the Republican Party.
America is far, far more unstable than we’re willing to admit to ourselves. Trump is so deranged and stupid that he could very well go transactional and tell his more and more radical followers to attack the FBI directly. The FBI HQ in DC, agents and various field offices across the country could be attacked by AR-15 welding MAGA nutjobs who want to martyr themselves for the Dear Leader.
I know that sounds very hysterical, but I also know that that is now at least within the realm of possibility.
The biggest question of the moment when it comes to Trump and all the fucking secrets he stole from the U.S. Government is, of course, “But why?” I struggle to imagine that Trump is smart enough to think of, in real time, any sort of sinister plot when he was leaving office.
So, here’s what I think happened.
Trump is both criminally incompetent and interested in our nuclear secrets for some reason and so, it’s very possible that as he was leaving the White House he just threw a bunch of shit into boxes. He didn’t have any idea what was in any of the boxes, other than he had, at some point, been interested in whatever was in them.
Now, let me be clear — this is both an extremely charitable explanation for what happened and no excuse for him to avoid prosecution. I said he was criminally incompetent. So, he should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. And it doesn’t give us a ready explanation as to why he would both delay, delay, delay giving the documents back AND lie about still having them. But the case could be made that once the documents became an issue, his natural asshole tendencies kicked in and he just refused to cooperate because that’s just who he is.
And, yet, if things really got violent when he was indicted, I would give Trump a deal — we won’t prosecute you if you promise not to ever run for president again for the rest of your life. And as part of the deal, he would have to make some sort of statement demanding that everyone calm down and stop killing each other.
There’s a lot wrong with all of this, of course. We still don’t know the fullest extent of what really happened. We still don’t know the “why.” What I proposed is just a theory. And Trump has so many people who hate what he stands for as much as I do, that it’s possible we’re past the Event Horizon.
No possible deal will be offered because that train has left the station. And Trup wouldn’t even agree to it, even if it was offered to him. He wants to be POTUS again and he’s willing to burn the most powerful nation in the world to the ground to achieve that goal.
Trump is not only growing more deranged of late, he’s also growing more and more angry and radical. And he’s not going anywhere. The FBI’s raid of Mar-a-Lago has caused the entire MAGA movement to lurch into a frothy radicalism that sometimes doesn’t seem to make any sense.
And, yet, at the moment, the center-Left in the United States is so weak that we have to take even this new, bonkers version of MAGA seriously as a political force.
My fear is that by late 2024, early 2025, MAGA’s agenda for the United States will have grown so radical that once they steal the 2024 election and begin the process of consolidating power that what they want to do will shock even Traditionalists and away we go. There really is something akin to a revolution, and a group I call “Radical Moderates” will pop up as they usually do in times of political distress in the United States.
Radical Moderates are people who are usually pretty laid back, but because of the crisis that the country is in, they sudden are willing to entertain concepts that were once considered radical. The most notable example of this was when Lincoln freed the slaves and, suddenly “everyone was an Abolitionist.” The same thing could happen if MAGA flips out and ties to, overnight, turn us into Fortress America.
Blue States will begin to leave the Union as the MAGA counter-revolution begins to happen in Trumplandia. There could be a race war in the Deep South and we might find the United States in a situation comparable to Revolutionary Russia as the Russian Empire began to implode.
This makes me want to read a book about the Russian Revolution.
Anyway. There is a greater-than-zero sum chance of mass chaos and unprecedented political upheaval in the United States starting in late 2024, early 2025. But I’m always wrong. Always. I mean, I can’t predict the future. So, it might ultimately get punted down the road a presidential cycle. Or DeSantis becomes president and our decent into autocracy is far more gradual that might happen with Trump.
It’s possible that we’ll look upon the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago as the moment the United States began the final sequence of events that either led to autocracy or civil war in late 2024, early 2025. The issue is, I keep hearing respected people within my center-Left echo chamber come so close to understanding the gravity of the situation, only to pull away at the last second.
I’ve heard people ranging from the participants of Deep State Radio podcast to the Pod Save America crew all sort of say, “Well, if this isn’t the end of MAGA, we’re all in a lot of trouble.”
And that’s the crux of the situation.
Barring a severe 9/11 type tragedy that can be directly pinned on MAGA, the rancid, racist MAGA movement isn’t going anywhere. As such, we have to prepare for something nothing short of a political apocalypse. I keep saying — we have a spectrum of things that may happen — on one end you have a civil war and on the other end you have A Very American Autocracy.
And the more the system tries to work, the more radical MAGA becomes and the more likely that whenever they do gain power again that our choice is going to be even more stark — autocracy or civil war.
Now, let’s talk about the Nazis. I’m reading a book about their rise to power in Germany and going into the early 1930s, the Nazis still had to work out exactly what their vision was for the German state. There was sort of the NATIONAL Socialists and the National SOCIALISTS. I haven’t gotten to this exact part of the book yet, but as I recall, the SA wanted a more radical interpretation of Nazism, while Hitler wanted something that could fit within the traditional conservative tradition in Germany.
Anyway, Hitler won this particular power struggle. And it makes me wonder if MAGA, in the end, is going to have a similar situation on its hands. The nightmare scenario is, of course, that Trump grows not only extremely toxic but extremely radicalized by the long arm of the law finally reaching him and when he has the opportunity again he burns the country to the ground. Or, once we become a MAGA autocracy, we lurch into autocratic state a lot closer to Nazi Germany far faster than I might otherwise predict.
But if something happens to Trump and it’s, say, Ron DeSantis who becomes our new MAGA overlord, I think it’s safe to say that our transition into A Very American Autocracy will be more gradual and gentle so there won’t be any chance for Blues to organize any real-world Antifa or secessionist drive.
Yet, like I said, Trump is so deranged and holds such absolute power over the MAGA base that there could very well be something akin to a MAGA counter-revolution around 2025. They literally could end the FBI as we know it and turn it not into the American gestapo, but something a lot closer to the SS. We would become Fortress America and some of Trump’s more radical foreign policy dreams would become a reality. Which, would, in turn, cause WW3.
Or, put another way, Trump is far, far more dangerous than we realize. Things are so uncertain at this point, though, that I can’t game things out. It really could go any number of different ways. The most radical is Trump is re-elected and pushes through a Hyper-MAGA agenda, which, in turn galvanizes the Blues to the point that there’s a civil war. Or there’s a civil war starting in late 2024 when it becomes clear MAGA is going to brazenly steal the election. Or someone like DeSantis is the Republican nominee and we just kind of gradually drift into autocracy.
Or, Trump becomes POTUS again in 2025, but it’s not until his successor that we really see an attempt to establish Trumplandia. I still think Gen. Mike Flynn might be Trump’s veep choice.
Anyway, we’re officially in the political danger zone. Anything could happen at this point, and probably will.
I fear that our anocracy has officially entered its “Stochastic Terrorism” phase. Such violence is when a powerful group in your society goes after another group so much and so publicly that it’s inevitable that someone, somewhere is going to hurt them. Think violence against Jews right before the Nazis actually had the levers of state at their disposal.
So, it seems pretty clear to me that at any moment we’re going to have a significant uptick in political violence. But not just general political violence, violence directed at trans people. Or Jews. Or pick a group that the MAGA New Right doesn’t like. And it could be that they go after FBI agents and judges.
But the point is — our anocracy is growing ever more unstable. And as I keep saying, it’s all going to come to a head in late 2024, early 2025. We’re either going to have a civil war at that point, or we’re going to become an autocracy. At the moment, I honestly don’t know which direction we’re going to go.
I have several conservatives in my immediate family. I love them dearly on a personal level and they’ve been very, very gracious to me over the years. They aren’t really MAGA people but they love, love, LOVE Trump’s policies and so any debate with them on a political level is rather moot. They will concede that the Dear Leader is, in fact, fallible, but that’s about it.
They either feign political indifference or they say “they don’t know who to believe.” Both of these statements are extremely unacceptable to me because they’re pretty much just a modern, American version of the “Good Germans” of Nazi Germany. In other words, as we careen towards an American Reich their unwillingness to take a stand against the rise of American fascism is growing ever more alarming. This is because their willingness to act on a personal level to help me from dying in a weaponized ICE camp is growing less by the day.
A conversation tonight was very troubling. My conservative relative simply waved away my concerns that once Trump is inevitably acquitted by the Senate that he will turn around and run on a plank of calling a Constitutional Convention to “pass a balanced budget amendment.” What is so troubling him equating my fears with InfoWars rhetoric during the Obama Administration is I’m not pulling this out of my butt. Trump is notorious for cherry picking concepts from the loony far Right and doing just as I suggest fits his MO perfectly. He already jokes about running for a third term and the groundwork is lain for Trump to do exactly as I suggest — we’re already just a few states away from a Constitutional Convention as it stands.
So once Trump wins re-election — through whatever illegal or corrupt means — he will babble about the need for a Constitutional Convention to balance the budget. The fact that Republicans gave a huge windfall to plutocrats doesn’t matter. MAGA has no shame and all they care about is power and cold hard cash. As best I can tell, members of the Constitional Convention would be named by members of individual state legislatures. As it stands, the vast majority these bodies are Republican. As such, the members of the newly convened Constitutional Convention would have a huge amount of incentive to codified the “American Carnage” of MAGA into the Constitution itself. This series of events is not InfoWars level bonkers. This is actually extremely likely given Trump’s autocratic leanings.
I would go so far as to say all MAGA needs is to get Trump into his second term. It doesn’t matter how. Trump could dox or brazenly bribe individual Electors. As long as they vote for him and get him into a second term, Trump’s new veep — be it The Kooch, Tom Cotton, Tucker Carlson or Kris Kobach will be the person who uses Trump’s blood-lust for Constitutional-level Enabling Acts to establish an American Fourth Reich.
Once they are successful, then we’ll enter about 1935-1937 in the Nazi takeover of Germany. And, I hate to break it to some people, but I don’t care how much Trump wants to fuck his Jewish daughter, once Trump’s peacefully shuffled off this mortal coil, some of the nastier aspects of MAGA will take over the whole movement and history will, in fact, repeat itself.
I would suggest you leave the country immediately if you have the means.
The only thing that may delay — but not stop — the rise of the American Fourth Reich would be Trump abruptly losing his fucking mind in a very, very dramatic fashion at some point between now and Election Day 2020.Here are some extended thoughts on that.
I hate to break it to you, folks, but if impeachment really does reach a tipping point we’ve entered the darkest timeline. It won’t be impeachment, it will be Trump’s reaction to it that we’ll be talking about.
Trump has long had some sort of chronic mental problem. The stress of simply an impeachment investigation — which would likely take months — would, in it self, potentially cause him to decompensate. It’s would make a lot of sense if Trump found himself in something of a logic trap. He would absolutely feel as though he would survive an Senate vote. But he would also absolutely feel paranoid that he might not.
So he goes bonkers.
I therefore propose that in the end, it won’t even be impeachment that is Trump’s downfall — it will be his reaction to it. If Trump finally goes off the deep end, some astonishing surreal thing will happen. The first will be MAGA Stalwarts will find themselves defending ever-more demonstrably indefensible things on Trump’s part. First they will simply say he was “joking.” But there will come a point when they take the final plunge into their own destruction. Trump will tweet out a dick pic. Trump will begin to tweet out the N-word to Obama. And they will defend it, thinking that Trump, like always, will stay in control of the narrative.
And so, in the end, Trump’s tendency to self-own will get so absolutely bad that there might be an intervention, of sorts. They might propose to Trump that he gets to choose Pence’s replacement as veep. And maybe a promise of a full pardon after Pence wins re-election in 2020. Trump accepting such an offer would be the best case scenario for Republicans.
The worse case scenario is he won’t accept it. And in the end, Trump so far gone mentally that the Senate finally does, in fact, convict him not so much because of any particular crime, but for the complete failure of the 25th Amendment to work.
And then, I’m afraid, we have a once-in-generation event. Young people won’t reference 9/11, they’ll reference Trump’s downfall. It will probably play out a lot like the OJ’s slow motion police chase in a white Bronco. It will last days, even weeks. The entire country will grind to a halt as we attempt to lure Trump out of The White House.
It will be a dark day in our history.
Here is how it may play out. I wrote this some time ago, but the premise is the same.
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.
I love to wallow in the absolute worst case scenario. My mom was the same way. I used to call this “opposite-positive thinking” when I was a kid — you think off the absolute worst thing that could possibly happen and when it didn’t happen, you felt better than you might otherwise.
Let’s go through some of the absolutely bonkers — and dark — Trump impeachment scenarios.
‘Trump Bit Bonkers” Trump becomes completely unhinged. He goes transactional in his Twitter offense. He outs the Whistleblower while doxxing him. He incites anti-impeachment violence. This is the ultimate cause of his downfall, not anything he did on a political level. Trump is sane enough, however, to campaign for his hand-picked successor.
The Thousand Year Trump Trump is acquitted, turns around and does the exact same thing again and wins. His second terms focused on calling a Constitutional Convention to “pass a balanced budget amendment.” It immediately goes rouge and codifies American Carnage in the Constitution. Darkness falls and I die in an ICE Concentration Camp.
Princess President Ivanka Trump is somehow forced out of office. Somehow Pence is, too. But Ivanka is named Pence’s replacement at lightening speed. She becomes president and does such a bad job — topping even her father — that the conventional wisdom is we’ll never have a woman president.
Sometimes, They Come Back Trump is convicted in the Senate, but only on the condition that he can run for president again. He promptly does so and either wins, refuses to concede or brazenly meddles in the election with the Russians, et al, and the 2020 Election is American Brexit in the sheer scope of its clusterfuckness.
Barr’s Big Day Out The other shoe drops, Barr does sweeping criminal referrals as the impeachment process progresses. This is enough of a change in the media narrative that Trump survives and thrives.
President Pelosi Pandemonium Somehow, magically, both Trump and Pence are force out of office politically with such speed that we get President Pelosi. Unfortunately, the economy tanks, Democrats are blamed and President Kris Kobach is sworn in on Jan. 20, 2021.
Endgame Endgame As it becomes obvious that Trump will be convicted in the Senate, he lashes out and starts a war with the DPRK. It goes nuclear. Millions of Koreans and Americans die. What happens after that is anyone’s guess.
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