Tag: Autocratic America

America, The Tinderbox


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I believe the United States, the most powerful country in the world is careening towards destroying itself. And if that doesn’t happen, then we will become illiberal democracy on a par with modern day Hungry if we’re lucky and Russia if we’re not. In other words, the United States between now and January 2025 is either going to implode (illiberal democracy) or explode (civil war.)

I believe this because by all macro metrics the United States’ Second Republic is running on fumes. The system can not and will not work. Trumplandia is above the law, just like the Nazis were above the law in 1920s Germany. I continue to read a huge tome on the rise of the Nazis in the Weimar Republic and the similarities are chilling.

I keep talking about 2024 – 2025, when in fact we may not have to wait that long. Several events could force the issue and bring the United States to its knees sooner than expected. If either Trump shuffled off this mortal coil peacefully, that might be enough for the conspiracy crackpots of the MAGA New Right to agitate for State Secessionist Conventions. I’m not joking. That’s really possible.

Meanwhile, if it was BIDEN who shuffled off this mortal coil peacefully, then you can sure as hell bet that Speaker Trump becomes a far more likely reality and THAT would definitely probably push us into civil war because Speaker Trump would then be one heartbeat away from being POTUS again I could totally see Trump being so stupid as to go transactional at last and demand MAGA bring the country to its knees to force the Senate to convict President Harris.

And, if you really wanted to get dark about it — if there was any type of major domestic terror attack between now and January 2025, we’re all fucked. There would be a civil war, or severe, rolling political violence of some sort. Everyone is primed and ready to go at it with guns and shit because they hate everybody for political reasons.

But, as I keep saying, it’s possible that we’ll just slip peacefully into illiberal democracy, to autocracy. If that happens, then initially, nothing will change. White Christian Traditionalists will continue to chuckle about how people like me are “hysterical” because their Red Line is strictly personal. They will be quite content that we’re not longer a democracy because they will finally get what they want –white minority rule.

It won’t be until their loud mouth crank family member — that would be me — gets drunk and won’t shut up about how President Pompeo is a fat fuck no matter how skinny he gets and ICE swoops in to take me away will they finally, finally, FINALLY want to do something about our transition from democracy to autocracy.

Of course, for me, at least, by that point it will be way too late.

The point is — we’re fucked. We’re totally, completely fucked. Gird your loins for a bumpy, dark few years ahead of us.

Cold Civil War: Why Americans Hate Each Other


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I saw a headline somewhere — I think it was Politico– which implied that the current cold civil war America is going through is about “nothing.” I totally disagree.

The reason Americans hate each other, at it’s core, is about a dearth of white babies. (I hope that doesn’t come across as racist. I just find it midly amusing to say “white babies” in this context. Also, do think that at its core, the reason Americans hate each other is Traditionalists, on a systemic basis, are afraid of losing power to POC.) America is a nation of immigrants and, as such, wave after wave of new types of people have refreshed the idea of what it means to be American over the years. Remember, Italians were not considered “white” until some point around the end of WW2.

Anyway, back to the white babies thing.

The writing on the wall is clear — white people are going to be in the minority within a few decades and that is freaking white Christian Traditionalists the fuck out. Throw in the huge, gaping differences in social views between urban and rural areas and the United States is ripe for collapse.

But the thing that is putting huge pressure on our political system is white Christian Traditionalists feeling a huge amount of insecurity about their place in American society. Ezra Klein’s book, “Why We’re Polarized” was a real eye opener about the origins of the current clusterfuck we find ourselves in.

So, far from being about “nothing” our cold civil war is definitely about something — power. This struggle over who has power in American politics because of the systemic racism of white Christian Traditionalists is bending our politics to a breaking point.

And, really, the Second American Republic is imploding so fast politically at the moment that I sometimes wonder if we’re going to even make it to the 2024 – 2025 timeframe. I believe America is an idea, not the autocratic concept of blood and soil. Yet people I know who should know better take it as gospel that the United States is not a democracy, but a “Constitutional Republic,” and, as such, fuck you lib.

Should Peter Navarro’s non-violent coup work in 2024, that really will be the moment our cold civil war may turn hot. When half the electorate thinks the United States is a democracy and half thinks its a Constitutional Republic and Trump becomes president via some of the more obscure elements of the Constitution, that’s a recipe for a hot civil war.

Or not. It could be that we slip peacefully into autocracy and that will be that. People like me will, inevitably, cross the autocrat and simply vanish. THEN the white Christian Traditionalists in my family will sit up and take notice because things will be personal for them.

But, by then, it will be too late for me.

The State of The Union Is Not Strong


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Absolutely no one listens to me, so all of this is more about me struggling to figure out for myself how likely it is that the United States will have a Second Civil War. As I keep saying, I vacillate wildly between assuming that of course we’re going to have a civil war to thinking we’re just going to slip peacefully into autocracy.

The issue is — all the conditions are there for a civil war, the question is, will we finally reach the breaking point where one starts? And, that, at the moment is a known unknown. I just don’t know. It really could go either way. In the end, ultimately, the difference between civil war and a peaceful transition to autocracy probably will depend on some very specific tactical events that simply can’t be predicted.

Right now, it’s just as easy to imagine people just shrugging when Bannon’s “administrative coup” works in conjunction with Republicans playing the more obscure elements of the Constitution like a xylophone. And, honestly, as long as there’s no violence on their side, this particular coup will work. Remember, for Traditionalists, the issue was the violence associated with January 6th. If Peter Navarro’s peaceful coup had worked, then Traditionalists would have waved away my angry rants about a coup because it was don’t within the context of the “system working.”

So, I dunno. I will note that the United States is far less politically stable than you might think. I’m so busy assuming that 2024 – 2025 will be lit, I may be totally oblivious to some unexpected event happening between now and 2024. I mean, if, God forbid, Biden were to shuffle off this mortal coil, it’s very easy to imagine severe political instability if Speaker Trump impeached President Harris while she lacked a veep.

Trump is so fucking lazy and stupid, he could very well start a civil war early simply by ranting about how the Senate needs to convict President Harris so he can become POTUS again early. He could finally go transactional and then we would really be fucked. That would be a recipe for civil war.

And, yet, still, I don’t know. I think there’s a 50 / 50 chance at the moment of a civil war no later than 2025. The other option is autocracy. Though military junta is a potential factor as well. But everything is up in the air. I just don’t know.

For the time being, we’re all just going to have to wait until we’re a little closer to 2024 to have a better sense of which scenario is more viable. But, regardless, you need to gird your loin. Study up on the rise of Hitler and the beginnings of the first American Civil War. Knowledge of those two historical events may come in handy in the near future.

But the thing you absolutely need to do is figure out what you believe in the real world. What you’re willing to risk your life and scared honor for in the real world. Things are going to become rather chaotic, no matter which direction the country goes.

Post-Truth Is Pre-Fascist


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

We’ve reached the point where Red America believes that anything that doesn’t help them politically is, by definition, being used to hurt them politically. Everything is a zero sum political game with them now. You see this a lot today with the anniversary of January 6th.

MAGA New Right people know that what happened January 6th hurts them, so they dismiss the whole thing as just a politized attack against them. In other words, they just don’t want to talk about it. And if you do bring it up, you’re using the existance of what happened January 6th as a political tool against them. It’s a pure post-truth reaction to what happend.

In other words, they’re reaction to something that hurts them politically – the January 6th Insurrection — is fascist.

It’s times like these when I AGAIN have to note that I got blocked by Mueller, She Wrote for simply pointing out that things are not all rainbows and unicorn farts — the system can not, will not work at the moment. Trumplandia is above the law and we’re all very, very fucked.

We all need to gird our loins for a very bumpy 2022 – 2025. What, “Mueller, She Wrote” calls my “doom shit” is just reality. It’s like I looked out the window and said, “there’s a blizzard going on outside” and “Mueller, She Wrote” got so wrapped up in the idea that the snowplow was coming that she totally missed that the lights were out and we were all slowly freezing to death.

Being blocked my Mueller, She Wrote for essentially telling the truth really grates on my nerves for some reason. It hurts my inner child in some way. I want justice! (Wink.) But it’s typical — I get punished for simply stating the obvious and Mueller, She Wrote gets invited to Deep State Radio. It’s the story of my life.

Anyway, fuck Mueller, She wrote.

It’s surreal to me the lengths that the MAGA New Right will go to wrap anything to do with the January 6th Insurrection up in the idea of “it’s just politics.” It’s all so frightening because the next step of course, is for the MAGA New Right to embrace the Insurrection. Why they haven’t already done so is something of a mystery to me.

I guess it’s coming.

January 6th, One Year Later


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Jesus, this is a depressing topic. But here goes. We’ve all learned a lot about our fellow Americans over the last year. The key take away I’ve gotten from how our political system has — or hasn’t — processed January 6th is how shocking it is to me that even American democracy is seen through the lends of Blue and Red.

My Traditionalists relatives weren’t upset with the objects of Trump’s coup, they were upset with the violence. That’s it. They would have been fine if the coup was bloodless and simply a fucking with the law. Then they would shrug and say “the system worked” and shut up, libtard about “democracy,” the United States is a “constitutional republic.”

But they couldn’t stomach the violence. The actual goal of the event was a lulz to them.

In a way, I’m at peace now. I now know that for my Traditionalists relatives there is only one “red line” for Republicans that would make them sit up and take notice — if I, personally, ran afoul of the autocrat. That’s it, that’s the only red line they have. They’re willing to burn 240 years of American democratic tradition to the ground as long as they don’t have to worry about being “canceled” for being conservative.

And only if their center-Left relative is snatched off the street and “vanished” will they do anything about the United States becoming an autocracy. And, even then, it would be only for my specific instance. It’s not like they would become Molotov cocktail lobbing radicals. They just would want me safe. (Which is commendable, given how much of a clusterfuck everything else would be at that time.)

AS such, I know that there’s nothing I can possibly say to change my relatives minds. They have that one red line and that’s it. The end of American democracy will be barely a speed bump to them. Not until we’re a full fledged Russian-style autocracy and I get rounded by ICE will they notice or care. So, I’m wasting my breath to even talk politics with them.

How The ‘Woke’ Era Ends


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It’s self-evident that not enough people remember how much war really is hell. Over two generations of Americans have gone without the fear of a draft. As such, we’ve grown too fat and sassy.

We quibble about the stupidest shit. The Left, rather than making common cause with Liberals and NeverTrumpers to defeat the rise of fascism in America are willing to die on the hill of TERFs, pronouns and transgender kids. (Not that those aren’t all valid things to be concerned about in the modern world, but we do have honest-to-God fascists to deal with at the moment.)

My point is — woke culture is a luxury provided by decades of living in a stable, peaceful liberal democratic nation. The moment things grow existential for people in the center-Left, be it because we turn into a civil war or we transition into autocracy, all of the more annoying elements of being woke will simply burn off.

I keep thinking about how we seem to be at the end of an era. While I’m still not convinced that the Fourth Turning is a real thing — seems like a reversed engineered pseudoscience to me — we definitely are running on fumes as a nation. And that sense of running on fumes applies to both culture and politics. We’re at the end of one era (Turning?) and just about to begin another.

As such, it would make a lot of sense for everything to change one way or another between now and January 2025. If we turn into an autocracy, then there’s a good chance that Hollywood will decamp, en masse to Great Britain or Australia. I keep saying — Perth would be perfect for New Hollywood. It is in the middle of nowhere, but everyone I’ve ever met from Perth was extremely creative and interesting, just the type of creative pool of people that a moved Hollywood want to tap into.

And, God forbid we have a Second American Civil War, everything really would be thrown into the air. The nightmare endgame is the country doesn’t re-unite and we just bomb ourselves into the Stone Age for no damn reason other than Traditionalists are afraid of losing political power to secularists, scary brown people and economically liberated women.

Anyway. I just don’t see the Woke Era lasting beyond 2025. Something’s gotta give. When you’re worried about ICE blowing your head off or a race war because a civil war has broken out and WMD are being used, then, well, the issue of pronouns won’t be QUITE so urgent.

I See You, ‘Mueller, She Wrote’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I do my best writing when I have a perceived enemy to rant about. I’m not saying the fine folks of “Mueller, She Wrote” are my enemies, per say, but I do have beef. They blocked me for simply stating the obvious — no one is going to save us. No amount of Twitter threads with lookie lookie eye emojis or “booms” is going to change that the United States faces a systemic collapse at the moment with no ready endgame.

Anyway, the point is — lulz, I don’t really care. Whatever. I do like having a running gag where I harp on something over and over and over again for comic effect. At the moment, it’s Mueller, She Wrote because before they blocked me they seemed so…stuck in 2017? Like, when we thought Mueller was going to save us all from Trumplandia?

BOY, were we all naïve.

Anyway, I seem to recall from a Deep State Radio episode recently that Mueller, She Wrote is based out of Sacramento. And, I’ve started to get a weird uptick of hits from….someone in Sacramento.

I have no idea if it’s them or not, but it if it was it would be HILARIOUS. I just hate that I’m being pushed for stating the obvious — maybe no one is going to save us and we’re fucked? Maybe instead of pinning our hopes on a collapsing political system, we start to game out what we’re going to do when we either have a civil war, an autocracy or a military junta?

Anyway, it’s not personal, it’s more of a personal writing trope than anything else. Just like the guy who wrote Midnight Cowboy said when asked how he wrote screenplays, “I hate, A LOT.”

Wink.

Yes, Canada, Worry About America


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

There is a little bit of buzz in Canada at the moment about the potental transformation of the United States into a “Right wing dictatorship” by 2030. I don’t think it’s going to be that simple, but here are some reasons for the Great White North to seriously worry about their brothers and sisters to the South.

  1. Form Follows Function
    If the United States becomes an illiberal democracy like Russia, we could be talking about “Little Blue Men” seizing a bit of Canada here and there at some point in the 2030s or 2040s. As it becomes more and more clear (in secret) to President Pompeo or DeSantis that the States will become too hot to live in, they will turn north. So, in the end, Canada might be attacked for its abstract “resource” of simply being easier to live in when the planet begins to boil.
  2. American Refugees
    If there’s a civil war in the United States, millions of Americans are going to become political refugees and they’re going to pour over the Canadian border looking for refuge. This could happen a lot sooner than you might think, depending on events. Anytime from now to as late as 2025 and America could go tits up, bomb itself into the Stone Age and people will plunge into Canada looking for succor. This would dramatically change Canada.
  3. A Major Redrawing of North American Borders
    Just as the US was nervous about being drawn into a Canadian civil war the last time Quebec wanted to leave Canada, so, too, will Canada be drawn into any American Civil War. Probably, the country will be used as a staging ground for EU forces who might want to help out Blue States. But if the Second American Civil War has a far more messy endgame, you could see Blue States swoop in and politely tell Canada to form the United States of Canada in reponse to the creation of Trumplandia.

America’s Systemic Collapse


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

America’s Second Republic is collapsing before our very eyes. We live in an era of political lawlessness, where Trump and his acolytes are above the law and free to think up continuing mischief.

I continue to read a book about the rise of Hitler and I’m struck by how the United States now is very much like the Weimar Republic of the 1920s. We’ve had our beerhall putsch and now we’re waiting to see if Trump (or some other autocrat) wins the presidency in 2024.

And, really, the key issue is we have to face is no one is going to save us. The United States is collapsing on a political basis. The question is, collapsing into what? We have three options — civil war, autocracy or military junta. And, at the moment, I just don’t know which of the three will be the final endgame. The most obvious is we simply slip peacefully into autocracy. That definitely seems the most logical outcome.

Yet, I can’t dismiss the idea that we may have a civil war and bomb ourselves into the Stone Age. That is a very real possibility. And, I would say, the thing that might prevent such a civil war is the total lack of Blue leadership. So, if there was a sudden rush out of the Union by Blue States after a stolen 2024 election, we would see some rather dramatic arrival of Blue leadership simply out of history’s desperate needs at the moment.

But it would be a really big shock.

The third option is a military junta. That’s very possible, too. I could see the United States come to the brink of civil war and there be a military junta formed specifically so we might have a Constitutional Convention that would fix the systemic issues the United States face at the moment. We might see a President James Mattis in that particular situation.

That seems unlikely, however. I continue to vacillate widely between thinking it’s obvious that we’re going to have a civil war to it being obvious that we’re going to slip peacefully into autocracy.

I just don’t know which one is going to happen at the moment.

Why America Will Fall


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

If America either has a civil war or becomes an autocracy, it will happen because of one element of its body politic — the Traditionalists. These are typically white Christians who, in the past, would not see the idea of America being a democracy as a partisan issue.

While they have always been the least progressive of the American body politic, they at least saw the United States as a democracy and would reluctantly, long after everyone has had, embrace change.

My conversations with my Traditionalist family, it is clear that they no longer see the United States as a democracy, in fact, they see us a “constitutional republic” for the specific purposes of protecting their collective power. The Constitution is no longer a venue for the will of the people, it is a firebreak against the encroachment of POC, secularists and feminists.

And that, my dear reader, is why the United States will fall. Because of an extensive permission structure and negative polarization the only “red line” that Traditionalists have is personal. In other words, not until they, specifically, have a personal problem with the new autocratic regime will they sit up and take notice. That will be the moment when they stop being Good Germans and become sudden believers in democracy again.

This is of great concern to ME, because *I* am that personal red line because I fucking refuse to fucking shut up. So, ultimately, when I get drunk at a bar in 2027 and rant about how I think President Pompeo may be skinny now, but he’s a fat fuck and always will be a fat fuck…and ICE swoops in and does God only what to me….THEN my Traditionalists family members will think about something other than how scary brown people or too-sensitive young people are fucking things up for them.

And, so, we have three options between now and January 2025 — autocracy, civil war or military junta. Or, put another way, we’re totally fucked. Nothing and no one will save us. We have to save ourselves. The system is not and will not working.

If you’re someone like the fine people behind the “Mueller, She Wrote” Twitter account and you STILL think somehow, or someway your latest Twitter “boom” will save us — you are a fool. You are a willful fucking fool.

We have some time. Figure out what you believe in and what you’re willing to suffer for in the real world. I don’t write for VOX, I don’t have a received vocal fry for my Tik-Tok, but I do know the truth — I believe in American democracy. That’s my true north. That’s what I’m willing to risk my life and scared honor for.