Tag: Fuck Neo-Confederates

Why Does Everyone Think America’s Going To Have A Civil War Soon?


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Almost all this blog’s traffic comes from people who think the United States is on the cusp of a modern civil war. The question is, of course, why is this? Why do a growing number of people think that American are going to start killing each other for political reasons?

There’s a lot going on with this subject. Some of it is the established glorification of violence found in the Far Right is becoming more and more mainstream. It’s drifting mainstream because MAGA is now a violent personality cult and they no longer see our traditional democracy as legitimate unless they win. Even though there are a lot of conservatives who don’t see themselves as either MAGA or fascist, they definitely know watered down versions of the talking points found within MAGA fascist circles. These conservatives can be so oblivious to this to the point that they get very offended if you reference the obvious source of this bullshit: Fox News.

Another thing going on is the abstract fears that a lot of conservatives have about what’s going on in the United States right now is so potent, so all powerful that a lot of them start to game out the endgame of Cancel Culture or Critical Race Theory or whatever bullshit of the month MAGA thought leaders have come up with.

This leads them to think, in abstract terms: civil war.

It’s the worst possible thing they can think of, but they don’t even know what it would mean in real terms. Now, obviously, there are some actual violent people within the MAGA movement who know damn well what a civil war would be like. But, for the average conservative in fear of going viral for some casual racially tone deaf statement, the idea of a “civil war” is something they think of when pressed by their buddies about what will happen if Cancel Culture isn’t outlawed. “Well, we’ll have a civil war.”

But all this civil war on the brain is definitely a bad sign in general because it gives a sense of the general direction of American politics. For a lot of people, even in abstract terms, to think of political violence as a viable option for solving the country’s problems Is Not A Good Sign.

Our fate in most of the scenarios I run in my mind about a civil war rests on MAGA state legislatures. If they take Trump both seriously and literally about being “reinstated” after Cyber Ninjas “prove” that he “won” the state, then, well, we’re pretty fucked. That would be the conditions for some sort of secession crisis between Trumplandia and the United States.

And, yet, I dunno.

For the moment, all of this civil war talk is just that — talk. It’s all very nebulous and I still don’t know which direction it will go.

Cyber Ninjas’ ‘Recount’ Of The Arizona Vote Is Extremely Unnerving


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Something smells in the state of Arizona. It definitely seems as though Cyber Ninjas is doing everything in its power to get to the result it wants with its “audit:” Trump really won the state.

Now, there’s a lot to unpack with this.

One one hand, the whole endeavor is obviously bullshit. It’s meaningless “gesture politics” meant to give the faithful a talking point on Twitter. That’s it. And, yet, there is a risk that one of two things will happen — either Trump demands other states that he lost fair and square do the same thing or he really goes nuts and doesn’t even wait for that to happen. Trump seizes upon his dubious Arizona “win” and demands he be “reinstated” ASAP.

Then we have the same dynamic as January 6th, but on a national scale. If the first option happens, then just around election day 2022, half of the country will think there is “proof” that Trump is really POTUS. He becomes Speaker when the House flips and Speaker Trump has one goal — impeaching of Biden and Harris. He goes transactional, there’s massive political violence in 2023 and, Democrats in the Senate buckle because they don’t want a civil war. Trump is back in office in 2023 and we become an autocracy.

The other option goes like this — Trump gets his “win” in Arizona and freaks the fuck out just because of that one state. He demands that MAGA state legislatures “nullify” the Biden Administration. This quickly turns into a secession crisis and we have a civil war at some point between about now and, say, January 2022.

And, yet, both of those options, on the face of it, sound rather fantastical even to me. There is a lot I just can’t game out. I have no idea if anyone would actually listen to Trump if he went transactional about being “reinstated.” At the moment, Trump definitely seems politically dead in the water outside of the entire Republican bullshit echo chamber. But given the fact that the Republican Party is now a violent personality cult and, well, lulz. Who knows.

I don’t have any answers on this front. Just unease.

Historical Determinism Suggests The United States Is Fucked One Way Or Another


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The United States is fucked. In the future, the events that led to Biden winning the presidency may be seen as having huge significance on the broad sweep of political history. The reason is — but for Biden winning in 2020, the United States was well on its way to becoming an autocracy. What would have likely happened is Trump wouldn’t have made it through his second term — he is old as fuck, you know — and after a caretaker Pence administration a real American autocrat would have taken power.

Or, put another way, at some point in his second term, Trump would have demanded a Constitutional Convention and would have been allowed to run for a third term. It would actually be his THIRD term that he wouldn’t make it through and Trump’s new veep Mike Flynn (or whomever) would be the one to seize “total control” and turn the United States into Trumplandia.

But none of that happened.

So, as I keep saying, the United States right now is an autocracy without an autocrat. All the conditions are there for an autocracy, but Biden is a pretty modern, norm-following president so he doesn’t flip a switch and get ICE to push me out of a window.

But this idyllic political situation isn’t going to last forever. There’s going to come a point where we face an existential choice of civil war or autocracy. When Mike Pompeo or Tom Cotton or Josh Hawley inevitably becomes president and we have one last gasp of traditional democracy in America do we “bow before lord Zod” or do we have a civil war?

For the moment, I think we’re just going to drift peacefully into autocracy. When it happens, a lot of thought leaders on the Left are going to scream bloody murder, but the average person won’t even notice any change in their every day life. Then, in fits an starts, it will become conventional wisdom that you have to be careful what you say or you’ll get snatched by ICE. Or whatever.

Within a generation, the United States will be a nation of “blood and soil” and Good Americans will keep their heads down and enjoy the tax cuts and really fucking conservative Federal bench that ensures that they will never, ever be “canceled.”

I think this because any kind of civil war in the United States would be so scary and horrific that the Powers That Be have every reason to just tell everyone to accept the New Normal of living in an autocracy. It would require MAGA somehow bungling the transition to autocracy for any civil war to happen.

I could see, maybe, this transition bungle happening sooner rather than later if Trump flips out should Cyber Ninjas “prove” he “won” Arizona. That might cause a mini-civil war that is quickly ended because, lulz, MAGA will have struck too soon.

Anyway. What do I know.

The Curious Appeal Of Joe Rogan


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Ah, Joe Rogan. The thing about Rogan is how he’s a representation of the hypermodern media landscape. Rogan believes he can say anything as long as he hides behind his earnest masculinity. He’s appealing to a lot of young men who feel unrepresented and disenfranchise.

For the most part he, himself, is harmless. He’s a decent interviewer and I do find him often interesting in what he has to say. But. And there’s a big but, there’s a meta element to his popularity that is downright sinister. And that meta element is he is a gateway to the Alt Right and Incel movements in the sense that a lot of young men start the path to radicalization by watching his show.

It’s not really Rogan’s fault that this is the case. And if the United States wasn’t tearing itself a part at the moment, the whole thing would be a lulz. What I find the most irritating about Rogan is often frames his arguments in such a way that you feel like an idiot if you don’t agree with what are essentially alt-Right talking points.

Thankfully, Rogan has no (apparent) desire to run for office. He, like Tucker Carlson have all the makings of a popular modern politician. The larger point is our democracy is undead. The era we live in is the last gasp of traditional American democracy before we either turn into an autocracy or we have a civil war.

There are no easy answers.

2012: The Year Everything Changed


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It used to be that there were all these predictions about how the Mayan calendar predicted the End Of The World in 2012 for some reason. Well, that obviously didn’t happen, but something did happen – 2012 was the year that white people in America began to reach a tipping point with their abstract fears about the changing nature of the country.

So, let’s think about what, exactly, happened in 2012 that caused the political hellscape that we currently enjoy. The most obvious thing is, duh, Obama won a second term. And I think the reason why there was a cascading effect from that event was a lot of Republicans thought Obama was some sort of political fluke caused by the perfect timing of the Great Recession right before the 2008 election.

When it became clear that Obama was actually the first wave of what everyone knew was coming — the advent of America being a minority majority nation, a lot of white people freaked the fuck out. It was the 2012 election that was the last election where Republicans were willing to work within the democratic norms that we all have come to enjoy for the last 240 odd years.

Something about what happened in Obama’s second term facilitated the rise of Trump, MAGA and the Republican Party becoming fascist. It was the high speed social transformation of Obama’s second term that really caused the Republican Party to pretty much be accurately represented by Trump.

If I was, like, smart and stuff, I would be able to give you a itemized deep dive of the specific events that caused conservative white people to freak out and fall into the arms of ding-dong Trump. But, I’m not that smart — and, as such, will never write for VOX, natch.

But it is curious. I think what may have happened is at some point between 2012 and 2016 Republicans realized they had lost the culture wars and, as such, they had to strike back with someone who was a “fighter.” After that happened, the rest took care of itself. Trump was a deranged lunatic, but the Establishment eventually realized he was not only hugely popular with the base, but he could win the 2016 election. So they lulzed everything for young hack MAGA judges and a plutocrat tax cut.

I love alternative history, so I often struggle to think up a way whereby we could have avoided the rise of MAGA and Trump. All I can think up is Al Gore winning the 2000 election. Even then, Obama is such a singular figure in our nation’s political history that it’s easy to imagine him winning anyway and causing MAGA to arise in response.

If you read the book The Fourth Turning, you would say that Someone Like Trump was going to pop up at some point between 2016 and, say, 2024. The demographic trends were going to cause someone like Obama to get elected and then, in turn, someone like Trump would get elected in reaction.

One last thing I think we don’t really appricate is how the introduction of the iPhone may have also sealed our fate. Once social media was no longer tied to our PCs, then things like “cancel culture” and the mainlining of things once seen as freaky was going to happen one way or another.

Anyway, the ultimate end game of this clusterfuck is a complete mystery to me. I have no idea what happens. I do know, however, that we’re going to face a choice of either MAGA autocracy or a civil war. Which one we will pick, I don’t know for the time being.

If Tucker Carlson Is So Worried About People Reading His Personal Shit — Wait Until He Hears About Tik-Tok


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

In a surreal turn of events, Tucker Carlson is now ranting about how the Biden Administration through the NSA is reading his “private emails.” Add this to how Fox News has turned on the U.S. Military in a rather abrupt fashion and it’s all very bonkers.

I think Carlson is spooked by something. A reporter somewhere is asking questions about something that makes him look bad and he’s freaking out, looking for some explanation for how they know what they know. So he’s blaming the NSA out of desperation, if nothing else. Or, the whole thing is just bad faith bullshit and he’s trying to recon something that is about to pop out in the near term.

Anyway, if Carlson is going to be all paranoid, he should at least be interesting about the idea that Tik-Tok, and Big Tech in general, may have the technology to read our fucking minds. While I don’t seriously think Big Tech can read our minds, they definitely have a spooky ability to figure me out in a very specific manner. Specific enough that I’d like bonkers Tucker Carlson to at least look into it and see what HE finds.

But, in the end, meh.

Twitter Chatter: Something ‘Big’ Is About To Happen (Lulz?)


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Here and there these days, you see cryptic Tweets from major “resistance” people on Twitter saying something about how something “big” is about to happen. I’ve grown extremely jaded about such things — Trump is politically above the law — so I pretty much think any such talk is either bullshit, delusional or something that should evoke a lulz.

But, for the sake of argument, let’s pretend something “big” is about to happen. What could it be?

First, I don’t know. Second, there’s only one thing that I would consider “big” at this point — concrete evidence that some big names in MAGA, including Trump, actively worked with the January 6th insurrectionists with the specific goal of a successful violent coup.

But even absolute, rock hard evidence of this would only last one Twitter news cycle at this point. Historical determinism — the dead hand of history — has kicked in. There simply is now no escaping the existential choice of autocracy or civil war. Something’s gotta give.

I say this because even if you knock out Mad King Trump as a viable political force, a dozen other would-be autocrats are lurking in the shadows to finish the job he started. And all it takes in one of them winning one presidential election and that’s it, that’s all she wrote — we become a white Christian ethno state. The center-Left has been proven to be completely ineffectual in protecting liberal democratic norms and a President Pompeo or President Cotton (etc, etc, etc) will flip a switch and turn us into an autocracy.

The media will be purged, one way or another, the ICE infrastructure will then be weaponized and people like me will mysteriously begin to fall out of windows. At this point, it’s just an issue of how long things stay “normal” before we wake up in a dystopian autocracy hellscape. Though, given how MAGA dark money craves a Constitutional Convention, it may that which is our absolute last gasp of freedom.

Having said all that, the other option is MAGA will bungle our inevitable transition into an autocracy and we have a civil war. A very nasty, very bloody mess of a civil war that will involve WMD domestically and WW3 abroad. It will be so horrific that everyone — even, hopefully the “good guys” who win — will regret it happen and in desperation will give it some sort of narrative and value after the fact. (Like what happened after the end of the First American Civil War.)

The key takeaway from all of this is nothing is going to save us. Even if we knock Trump out politically, the same rot that caused him in the first place is still there and someone else will use what they learned from Trump and finish the job. Or we have a civil war.

Tucker Carlson: The Most Dangerous Man In America


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I don’t think we appricate how easy it would be for Tucker Carlson to become president. A huge swath of the Right’s media echo chamber listens to his personal form of White Nationalism Lite with rapt attention.

Because make no mistake, that’s what Tucker Carlson is: a White Nationalist.

In fact, it’s because of him, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingram that the United States is careening towards a near future where we are no longer a nation-state based on the idea of the Constitution, but rather one based on the “blood and soil” of a white Christian ethno state. There are a dozen would-be autocratic successors to Trump who will flip the switch — with Carlson being at the head of the pack.

And, yet, from what I’ve heard, Carlson isn’t interested in the gig. Which, in itself, is interesting.

Carlson is similar to Trump in a lot of ways as a would-be candidate — he has no government experience, for one. But would have at least a few strengths that Trump doesn’t have — he’s young, bright, articulate and focused. All of those things that Trump obviously doesn’t possess. But there’s another thing that Carlson has that Trump doesn’t: an ideology.

Trump is so deranged and idiotic that he just goes from the gut about what he believes and why. There’s no over arching ideology other than, “own the libs,” even to the point where that’s more important than making any sense whatsoever. Carlson, meanwhile, knows exactly what he believes and is able to articulate it in a way that the average (white) person can get into.

But there are a number of obstacles to Carlson, besides his own self-avowed uninterest in the job. He has to figure out a way to eliminate Trump as a political force. Then he would have to get past the maw of the dozen other would-be autocrats who want the gig far more than he apparently does.

Anyway, don’t sleep on Tucker Carlson.

Revisiting Ezra Klein’s ‘Why We’re Polerized’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The United States definitely has a late-stage Republic vibe to it these days. Something is warping our politics in surreal ways to the point that on an individual basis one can find oneself having some pretty bonkers conversations. At the core of this, of course, is America’s third historical rail: race.

I read Ezra Klein’s Why We’re Polarized and it was very illumining, but for one thing — he went into all this detail as to why we’re polarized, but could not figure out what to do about it. He offered no solutions, probably because there are none at the moment.

It would be like someone writing a similar book in the late 1850s — there just was no solution to the division America faced within the construct of traditional American democracy. Something was going to give.

Just within my own family, I’m the political red headed step child. Everyone in my immediate family is bed rock, old school conservative. If the issues behind the rise of MAGA were not fucking with our politics, they would be pretty much just your regular very conservative people — they only flirt with MAGA because of negative polarization. They simply feel they have no other choice but to go wherever MAGA takes the Republican Party.

The macro bending of our political system warps individual political conversations in some pretty bonkers ways. I have a very conservative relative who is upset about the Virginia police official who lost his job after an online leak showed he gave about $20 to the Kyle Rittenhouse defense fund. This relative was upset that the officer got in trouble both because of a leak and because of the small size of the donation. To my relative, this is just another example of “cancel culture run amuck.”

Meanwhile, to me, I’m flabbergasted that my relative wouldn’t see what I see — you deserve to lose your job (especially if your in law enforcement) if you support a political murderer. It doesn’t matter how much you donated or how we found out. No one with such fascist political views should be in law enforcement, period.

It’s small things like that that trouble me a great deal. Fascism is ascendant in the United States in a rather conspicuous manner and one day we’re either going to slip into an autocratic managed democracy or we’re going to have a civil war.

At the moment, I think there is a historical determinism to the United States becoming a white Christian ethno state of “blood and soil.” The Establishment Powers That Be have a vested interest in keeping everyone calm and so when we’re absolutely forced to make a decision, they’re going to tell everyone that living in a fascist state is just The New Normal.

In fact, I would go so far as to say that on a macro historical level, America’s fate rests more on how likely it is that Trump or any number of his potential successors is deft at shepherding us into autocracy or if they bungle it. Only if things get out of their control will we go the other high risk, high reward route: civil war.

I don’t want a civil war, but I also don’t really want to live in a MAGA-themed autocratic state where I have to worry about ICE pushing me out a window. In a strictly rhetorical manner, I would rather risk dying on my feet a free man than living a slave in an autocratic state.

But that’s just me doing my usual “doom shit.” It’s possible that things will endup being far more subtle than I keep sketching out. We’ll drift into autocracy, but it will be a “light touch” autocracy for a long time until someone realizes that they can get away with anything they want on a political level and they overreach. Americans get woke to living in an autocracy…..and I don’t know.

Anyway, I would advise you to get a passport or make sure you live in a part of the country that aligns with your political views. Good luck.

Why Does MAGA Want A Second American Civil War So Bad?


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Much like the lead up to WW1, MAGA has glorified political violence to the point where they think all their fucking problems will be solved if we just have a civil war and settle the “liberal problem” once and for all.

Besides the obvious — war is hell, is never pretty and never goes the way you plan it — there’s the issue of MAGA not being nearly in the pole position to win any civil war once they finally get what they’re lusting after so badly right now. They would be much better off just being patient and letting the existing drift of macro political history forces give them the autocracy they want peacefully.

But they’re idiots who can’t understand that — so they want a civil war.

And, yet, why?

I struggle with this a lot these days. One idea is MAGA sees “civil war” as a kind of short hand, much like the “Insurrection Act” was around January 6th. They’re sitting on the back porch of the cabin with their buddies smoking pot and drinking Miller Lite and they start talking about how dem dar lib’rals “won’t leave them alone.” Then get all riled up and start taking their anger to its logical extreme — a civil war.

But the vast majority of these fucking cocksuckers haven’t gamed this idea out in any practical fashion. All they know is the hate liberals and in some sort of vague manner think if only the United States was more like modern Russia that they wouldn’t have to worry about “cancel culture” or their children being forced to learn Critical Race Theory. There’s no logic to any of what they believe. They just have a general sense that “things ain’t right” and, as such, Something Bad should happen to liberals. But I doubt they really have any concrete ideas about a civil war other than that’s the worst thing they can think of.

So, in a sense, MAGA’s political stance is completely recursive — they believe what they believe because they believe it, and fuck you lib. But this is a very dangerous dynamic because it gives a general historical determinism to a general drift towards SOMETHING bad, be it a civil war, or something else.

I have no idea what is going to happen, but I am growing aggravated with how wrapped up in the idea of a civil war MAGA has become. If nothing else, it means the United States is growing far more politically unstable than one might otherwise think.

But as I keep saying, it wouldn’t just magically happen. Just as MAGA thought Trump invoking the Insurrection Act was magic pixie dust that would solve all their liberal problems, so, too, has “civil war” become some sort of abstract cure-all.

What any of this means in practical terms, I still don’t know. Only time will tell, I guess.