Tag: Deep State Radio

Watch Me Be An Internet Crank


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m not exactly in a situation where anyone will listen to me if I get upset over what I might hear on a liberal podcast, but I’m a devoted student of history and when I hear bullshit, I call it out.

So, there I was, listening to Deep State Radio when a historian they had on as a guest said some pretty weird things. I’m not questioning her credentials — I mean, she was on Deep State Radio, not me — but some her historical interpretations left me cold. I don’t remember her name and don’t care to spend the energy to look it up — which is probably for the best — but here’s what is eating away at me.

First, she said that Lincoln and Grant’s decision not to throw the book at the leaders of the Confederacy after the Civil War was a huge mistake because it led to the “Lost Cause” mythos. As a Southerner, I can tell you that is complete and total bullshit.

The Lost Cause was a macro trend that was inevitable given how ingrained slavery was in Southern culture and the lingering sense of nascent nationhood within the defeated CSA. By the end of the war, the North just wanted to put the whole thing behind it — enough blood had been shed — and so it was decided that in the name of mending the nation’s wounds that Jefferson Davis, Gen. Lee, et al would be given a pass.

And, remember, Lincoln’s Second Inaugural address was all about forgiveness and compassion. It would have been pretty weird for him to be in favor of prosecuting the leaders of the defeated Confederacy. What’s more, the United States was very, very lucky that once the CSA was defeated that everyone was so chill as Reconstruction changed everything.

A note on Reconstruction — one of my pet peeves is when someone talks about the missed opportunity of Reconstruction. This bothers me because at the time, nobody knew nothing about how to handle the situation, so there were a lot of mistakes, half-starts and dumb compromises. It just was not practical to fix 300 odd years of servitude within the two year period of time that Reconstruction really had to do anything.

And if Reconstruction had been as radical as it could have been, there’s a good chance that all the prosperity that the United States enjoyed in the latter part of the 19th century would not have happened. What I’m saying is — don’t superimpose the woke expectations of the 21 century on what was going on during Reconstruction. It was probably doomed to fail no matter what happened, because to fix the systemic problems left over from slavery, you probably would have had to kill a lot of people over and above the number of people who died in the Civil War itself.

Reconstruction was, in fact, a unique moment in American history because for a brief moment the ideals of America actually were done in a real, practical manner. But, like I said, there was a lot going on at the time and there came a point when the victorious North grew tired of the South and gave up. This was going to happen eventually, no matter what. Americans, by nature, aren’t very radical for great lengths of time and Southern whites were just way too fucking racist to do a yadda, yadda, yadda, we’re going to have a society without any systemic racism anymore. Race is called America’s original sin for a reason.

The other thing that really fucking annoys me about what the historian said was her statement that some big event happened in 1879 that was almost the death of American democracy. I know my American political history fairly well and there was nothing that happened that year that could have possibly be interpreted as some sort of autocratic path not taken.

She brought this year up and there was no follow up by anyone else on the postcast. Either she misspoke the year in question or her interpretation of something that happened that year is so off the wall that her wokeness has warped her historical perspective.

Like I said, no one is going to listen to me. I’m kind of in the same situation Twitter is in whenever we all collectively gang up on the Trump Whisperer Maggie Haberman — powerful liberals are always — and I mean always — going to circle the waggons around her because she’s a member of the elite and they look after their own.

Deep State Radio & My ‘Doom Shit’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I listened to the most recent Deep State Radio and, while I was pleased, I noticed something. While they kept talking the “doom shit” that some people on Twitter get mad at me about when it comes to MAGA, Trump and our coming decent into autocracy, there was an element of ignoring the pink MAGA elephant in the room.

That elephant is they are so concerned about the political problems we face when it comes to MAGA that they said not a word about the other option before us: civil war.

Now, I know why this is — they’re working with metrics that are real, not speculative and they don’t want to sound hysterical or like their doing “doom shit.” But I compare it to a fictional, anachronistic podcast in, say, 1859. They would be talking about the rise of Slave Power and how “these United States” risked being all slave under autocratic Slave Power rule. The idea that Lincoln would win and slave states would leave the Union in protest is probably something they would dare broach.

But not one listens to me, so I talk about it all the time.

As I keep saying, we have something of a spectrum ahead of us with a MAGA autocracy on one end and a civil war at the other. I vacillate wildly between these two possibilities in my mind. At the moment, I think we’re going to slip peacefully into autocracy because The Powers That Be have every reason to tell an enraged populace that Everything Is Fine.

It will only be if MAGA bungles the historical inevitable of America transitioning into an autocracy that there is any risk of the “doom shit” that I keep writing about here and on Twitter becoming a reality.

Before I go, let me explain my gratuitous use of “doom shit.” See, one of those well respect Resistance Twitter accounts who do a lot of yeoman work covering the Trump Era got mad a me for pretty much saying, “I simply don’t believe Trump is every going to be legally held account for anything he’s ever done.”

They yelled at me and said, “You have to stop it with the doom shit.”

At the moment, at least, it’s not “doom shit” — it’s what really going on. Mad Kind Trump is politically above the law. And, even worse, even if we magically fell him on a political level, he’s always just been an avatar — there are a dozen would-be autocrats lurking in the shadows, waiting to finish the job he completed.

As such, we still face the choice of autocracy or civil war between now and January 2025.

Norm Ornstein On Deep State Radio Is Right: The Republican Party Is A Violent Cult


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

All the political metrics in the United States are pointing towards a very dark future between now and January 2025. In fact, it’s not so much a question of if, but when, we face a very stark choice: autocracy or civil war.

So when I heard Norm Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute lay out the same arguments that I have been ranting about on this blog for months now, it took me aback a little bit — I’m not the only one to thinks we better enjoy this quiet before the storm.

The only thing that continues to frustrate me is not enough Blue Check liberals on Twitter are taking these cold hard metrics and then asking what the implications of them are. I mean, what does it mean, as Ornstein says, that the Republican Party is now a “violent cult.” How do we prepare for that going forward.

Rather than just noting this ominous development in the public Twitter lyceum why don’t the nattering nabobs of negativism start to figure out what we are supposed to do about it.

This is when I wish I was smart enough to write for VOX, or New York Magazine or even The New Yorker. It would be nice if liberal-progressive thought leaders could come up with some sort of plan of action like they did before the 2020 election. The 2024 election has the potential to be far worse than the 2020 election because the likelihood of violence is significantly greater.

Tragically, just thinking off the top of my head, the only thing I can think of as to how to respond to the Republican “violent cult” is to be prepared to fight dirty just like they do. Or, put another way, we have to recalibrate our views of the Republican Party. They are no longer one of the two major parties in the United States, they are a violent cult hellbent on destroying our liberal democracy one way or another. We have to be prepared to call their bluff in a way we haven’t since 1861.

I hate even having to entertain such a drastic idea, but the only reason I am is, well, the Republican Party is a violent cult. We can’t pretend that they’re a normal political organization anymore. They’re equal to American Slave Power of the 19th Century.

God help us all.

Of Deep State Radio’s ‘From Stab In The Back To Stop The Steal’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I listened to some of my favorite podcast, Deep State Radio today and they proposed that essentially the “Stop The Steal” movement is a precursor a Germany post-World War 1 “Stab in the Back” type movement in the United States.

I totally agree with that assessment but for one thing — they’re assuming we’re going to make it through the next few weeks without the whole country imploding. If we manage to punt this crisis down the road a few years, that’s probably our best case scenario.

This crisis is going to go septic now, not later. As one of the people on Deep State Radio said, we’re one Trump tweet away from significant political violence in the United States. And, as I’ve written before, Trump is playing a very dangerous expectations game right now. So much so as to be seditious unto itself.

As such, it seems to me that Americans collectively have crossed the Rubicon. There’s going to be a second American Civil War very, very soon. Like NOW. If it doesn’t happen it will be amazing. It’s like America is holding its breath to see if it will be a rouge SCOTUS ruling, a transactional Trump tweet, a massive truckbomb in NYC or LA or some major political figured murdered in cold blood that does the trick.

It definitely seems as though the Republican Party has been consumed by its most extreme elements. And, yet, I don’t even understand what their war aims are. There doesn’t seem to be any particular point to MAGA wanting a civil war other than…they want to keep Trump president? And as I keep saying, such a dumb (in real terms) war aim only gets you so far.

Blue States have bigger economies, bigger populations and better educated people. So, in a sense, what MAGA SHOULD want is simply the opportunity to leave the Union peacefully. A simple division of the country between Blue and Red. And, yet, that doesn’t seem to be their war aim right now. Replace “whities” with “liberals” in this SNL sketch and that seems to be the MAGA civil war aim going into it.

They have no war aim because they haven’t really given it much thought — it’s just a violent political grunt.

So, at this point, we only escape a shooting war in the United States if we’re lucky. All the conditions are there for an rapid escalation to the point where states begin to secede no matter what happens. And then the issue rests with California — will they stay and fight to re-unite the country or will the bounce and simply enjoy their new status as an independent country.

Then you start to wonder about Texas and Florida. And the exact status of New York City. If there was significant Balkanization in the United States, I could see NYC becoming a Free State of some sort.

New York City, 2020

Remember, I can come up with all the liberal-progressive Turner Diaries I want, in the end there would be no narrative or value to such a thing. It could be in the end it won’t be an “alls well that ends well” story like the Civil War, but, well, just the Turner Diaries or The Hunger Games or The Handmaid’s Tale.

The key thing to remember, of course, is this clusterfuck wouldn’t happen in a vacuum — World War 3 would happen if the United States imploded. So, that’s something to think about going forward.

V-Log: Deep State Radio & The Trump Endgame

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

It appears that at least according to the Deep State Radio nerds, that it’s more likely that Republicans at some point in 2019 will decided for cold, hard political reasons that they’d rather have Mike Pence as the incumbent in 2020 than Trump and that, not any Blue Wave on the part of The Resistance is what will ultimately be Trump’s downfall.

In this video, I go into great length about this line of reasoning.