The chief reason why I feel we’re Weimar America is the people who should know better — political Traditionalists — will never make common cause against MAGA. So, in a sense, the die is cast. We’re fucked. There’s no turning back.
It was when political Traditionalists finally turned on Nixon that he lost the presidency. And, to date, there is absolutely no sign that Traditionalists will ever, finally turn their back on Trump and MAGA. If anything, even if they are inclined to stop supporting Trump for whatever reason, they are now even more attached the MAGA — despite growing signs that MAGA is real, honest-to-God fascism.
So, when the time comes in 2024 – 2025, Traditionalists will throw their lot with MAGA and it will really be nothing more than luck if we somehow manage to escape either a civil war or autocracy. I continue to struggle to figure out what could possibly prevent us from going one of those two routes.
From my Webstats I definitely get the sense that there is a core group of people — especially from the South — who seem to think a Second American Civil War would be SOOOO COOOL. If you think that, you’re a fucking fool. It would be horrific. Especially if you factor in how awash America is with WMD on military bases. Add to this how Red States would be likely to use WMD more than Blue States and things are likely to escalate quite quickly.
Throw in a race war and, lulz, that would be cool?
It’s tragic how poorly though any support for a Second American Civil War is. It’s little more than a political grunt. Anyway, the other option is autocracy, which I think is what is going to happen.
Traditionalists will be there, however, waiting with baited breath to follow MAGA down either path.
The Republicans Party is now fascist. By definition, the moment they gain power again, they’re never letting it go. Add to this cold hard fact the additional fact that Trump is turning the Republican Party into his own personal dream board and, well, lulz.
We’re fucked — democracy doesn’t die in the darkness in America, it dies in broad daylight because no one is willing to confront Republicans for the fascists they are.
Or, even more dark, there really isn’t anything we can do to fix this problem short of a civil war. MAGA New Right Republican voters want an autocracy so badly that every election is nothing more than yet another opportunity to lurch us closer and closer to autocracy.
I do not want a civil war — I really don’t! — but a civil war would be a high risk, high reward option to potentially re-found the USA. We could transition from Lincoln’s Second Republic, to a new American Covenant, based on, I dunno, California?
But I just don’t see that happening, at least at the moment.
What’s more likely to happen is around 2024 – 2025, there will be one last death spasm for democracy, and then that will be it. Wealthy center-Left people will leave the United States en masse until the autocratic (whoever that may be) makes that nearly impossible. America will be a shit hole country that continues to grow more inward looking, poorer, less creative and politically dark.
But.
While I don’t think there is going to be a civil war — the center-Left simply has no leadership at the moment — there is a small chance that Trump and the MAGA New Right might bungle the transition to autocracy (willfully?) for no other reason than they want the opportunity to murder people like me for political reasons. They might grow so blinded by their bloodlust that they fail to see that if they just cooled it and were patient, that they would get everything they wanted via political means.
So, I guess what I’m saying is I go in circles in my mind whenever I think about our 2024 – 2025 fate. Just about when I think there is no way we will have a civil war, I say to myself, “but……”
It could really go either way. It really could.
And, honestly, if history is any guide, usually the difference between civil war and autocracy is probably going to be a multitude of tactical decisions — and dumb mistakes one way or another — committed between Election Day 2024 and Certification Day 2025.
Also, as I keep saying — Trump is so stupid and lazy that by definition him running again increases the chances of civil war dramatically. If it’s DeSantis (or anyone else) who is the Republican nominee in 2024, then I can just shrug and start to figure out if I can get out of the country before ICE rounds me up and shoots me in the back of the head.
As best I can understand it, here’s the MAGA New Right’s media narrative on COVID19:
COVID19 was intentionally released by either the Chinese government or major pharmaceutical companies — or some combination of both — from a lab in Wuhan as part of a Deep State plot to prevent Trump from being re-elected. Along the way, Dr. Antony Fauci, despite spending his entire adult life trying to save lives, was somehow directly and personally involved in funding this research and directly benefited from it on a financial basis.
Though Trump should get endless amount of praise for his Operation Warp Speed, any form of mandate or mitigation requirement is illegal and should be proactively ignored on a personal basis by God fearing Christians. If necessary, one should take up arms to make your point.Even though there is a free, safe vaccine created by funding and organization by Trump, the average person should not take it, but rather risk getting sick and then taking any number of drugs and potions in an effort to mitigate the symptoms.
Because of the evil machinations of China, the Deep State and pharmaceutical companies, the United States should get reparations from the Chinese government equal to the amount of lost economic production that was caused by the pandemic. What’s more, Dr. Fauci should be arrested and put on trial for mass murder.
And, honestly, in all fairness, Trump should be re-instated because COVID19 was a plot to bring him down, after all. And if that doesn’t work, then Steve K. Bannon is going to work personally to ensure the administration of elections on a local level is so corrupted by his “spiritual shock troops” that it’s impossible for a Democrat to ever win any office ever again.
So, that’s what we’re up against right now with the MAGA New Right. Now, if they can actually back up any of these claims, then I’m willing to listen to them and readjust my thinking accordingly. I’m aware that this is new evidence to suggest that there was some Federal funding of the research going on at the Wuhan lab, but nothing that would indicate that Dr. Fauci was personally getting any monetary gain or that in any way he did anything that would require him being fired, forced to retire or, least of all, arrested.
Steve K. Bannon
But this lack of evidence has not stopped Steve K. Bannon from making it absolutely clear on his podcast that, at a minimum, the Chinese government owes the U.S. Government trillions in reparations, immediately.
All of this bullshit is another side that things are dark in the Untied States and only getting darker. We’re careening towards a breaking point, an existential choice — and none of the three options I think we’re going to be forced to choose from will be all that great.
And, really, the crux of the matter is we’re dealing with macro forces and we’ve gone pass the event horizon. There’s no going back. Something huge is going to happen domestically in the United States no later than around January 2025. It may be as subtle as the country peacefully transitioning into an autocracy. It could be something really dramatic like an epic civil war involving WMD. We might endup with a military junta, but that’s the lease likely of the outcomes I see before us.
It’s comical how Twitter liberals continue to struggle with — or are completely obviously to — the cold, hard reality that we’re on our own when it comes to our dark, dark future.
Who knows which future we’ll pick.
There will be no reform. There will be no “boom” that changes everything. We can no long simply “hope” that somehow, someway, the entire MAGA New Right edifice is going to magically come crashing down.
We have to admit that in the end, we may be forced into a corner by MAGA. Things are going to grow existential, especially if Steve Bannon’s administrative coup plan works. As early as 2022, we may be faced with the very real world of us either admitting that we’re going to be an autocracy or we have some sort of civil war.
I really, really don’t violence and I definitely don’t want a civil war. But the MAGA New Right is so full if itself, so bloodthirsty that they could very well force the issue, over and above the successful implementation of Bannon’s administrative coup.
The MAGA New Right could be on the cusp of peacefully getting everything they want, only to blow it because first, Trump always says the quiet part out loud and two, their own bloodlust gets the best of them.
I don’t think enough people appreciate how dire our striates are at the moment. We really are careening towards the existential decision of civil war or autocracy (or maybe military junta) and there will be no improvements to our lot. We pretty much have — on a political level — everything we’re going to have in the 2022 – 2024 timeframe.
We are so, totally fucked.
There are no easy answers. No easy solutions. And victory is the MAGA New Right’s to lose.
Given that they’re led by deranged lunatic Donald Trump, anything is possible.
Occasionally, the hot takes within my center-Left, anti-MAGA New Right echo chamber are so bad, so ill conceived that I get really angry. A prime example of this recently is all the laugher about Trump telling the MAGA New Right faithful “not to vote” if the Republican Establishment doesn’t “address” his Big Lie about the 2020 election.
Two reasons exist for this being very, very dangerous.
The first reason is, well, Trump is giving the Republican Establishment its marching orders for 2022 and 2024. If they don’t toe the line, he’s threatening them with destruction. Hence, how quiet they are about his threats on the matter. And, really, the case could be made that this is part of Steve Bannon’s broader efforts at an administrative coup going forward.
Steve K. Bannon
Here are some reasons why we won’t have a civil war:
It’s not in our nature to have a civil war. For all the hateful rhetoric on the part of the MAGA New Right, it’s possible that in the end, they manage to pull off a peaceful transition to autocracy. In fact, at first, at least, the chance from democracy to autocracy could be so subtle that only a few hysterical people like me even notice. For the average person, it will just be a replay of 2000, only worse: it will simply be accepted that the only way a Democrat can become POTUS is if that party also control Congress. People will say “the system worked” and move on.
Republicans have gamed the system. It could be that by 2024 – 2025 the actual administration of elections will be so corrupt that it will be a fact of life that people shrug and take for granted. It will be the first step towards Americans becoming Russians in that they will no longer feel as though the government expresses the will of the people. And that will be that.
Not Trump 2024 Another reason why we could slip peacefully into autocracy is it’s not Trump who is the Republican nominee, but someone other than Trump. If this is the case, when I honestly don’t see why we would have a civil war. Autocracy is so popular within the United States –and the opposition to it is so weak — that our transition to an actual autocracy will in the end be so easy to pull off that there will be no need to resort to violence. Blue States will get angry, but, lulz, they always get angry, right Mr. Eastman?
Autocracy is very popular in the United States A sizable portion of the United States’ electorate wants an autocracy. They want one so bad that they seem like a cult to people who aren’t all that thrilled at the prospect of one. So, it’s possible that they will wrap up the transition into autocracy without any violence at all. By the time people realize what they’ve lost, it will be way, way too late. The United States will be nothing more than a Russia clone with an identical political dynamic. There will be a MAGA-themed Constitutional Convention to “pass a balanced budget amendment” and we’ll still have President DeSantis (or whomever) 30 years from now.
Anti-MAGA forces are just too weak willed. Again, it could be that when push comes to shove, the whole thing will be over before it even starts. There will be a lot of angry tweets on Twitter, but in the end, because Twitter liberals aren’t willing to risk anything in the real world, we slip peacefully into autocracy and that, as they say, will be that.
But the second, darker reason is Trump is dangling the prospect of the MAGA New Right no longer participating in the democratic process en mass. If they don’t feel as though they have a vested interest in democracy — if they just stop voting — then all the glad handing and backslapping that people like Rachel Maddow will do when Democrats start to win will be interrupted rather dramatically.
Here are some reasons why we will have a civil war.
Republicans have come to glorify political violence Something you see a lot these days within the bullshit echo chamber of the MAGA New Right is the belief that because “liberals won’t leave us alone” that they are being “driven” to extremism. There’s a lot of leading not-so-vague talk as to what all this would ultimately mean. But it’s clear that for a number of “thought leaders” within the MAGA New Right that they have accepted that at some point in the future, they’re going to have to resort to violence to get what they want.
Republicans no longer believe in democracy It is now clear that like any good fascists, Republicans no longer believe in democracy unless it’s for the specific purpose of gaining and keeping power. This view of the system they’re supposed to a part of leads them do extremely distablizing things that help push the country to the brink.
Trump 2024 Just Trump being the 2024 nominee would, in itself, be enough to cause a civil war at some point in late 2024 – early 2025. He just has a special knack for “owning the libs” in such a way that if he stole in 2024 election and said the “quiet part outloud” that Blue States would grow so enraged that it would be they, not Red States, that left the Union and caused a Second Civil War. But Ron DeSantis is polling exceptionally well at the moment, so either Trump politically shivs him at some point, or he co-ops him, making him his VP, opening the door to DeSantis becoming America’s Putin at some point down the road a little bit.
Steve K Bannon. Bannon and his toadies are actively working to destroy the framework that weuse to administer free and fair elections. So, it’s very easy to imagine a situation where this gambit works in ways that Trump himself is too idiotic to pull off personally and it will be so egregious that, again, Blue States leave the Union and we have a Second American Civil War.
Extreme negative polarization We’re in for a bump four or so years, no matter what, because negative polarization, on a systemic level, has reached a critical mass. When one of your political parties is fascist and would rather crash the global economy instead of even appear to work for the good of the nation — you got a problem.
A lack of shared values As the big blow up on Twitter in the last 24 hours about a Stephen Colbert song and dance gag about getting vaccinated proves — we can’t even agree on what’s funny. A combination of this and negative polarization is leading to the United States being two nations, one Red, one Blue and when we get around to attempting to elect the next president, the system simply won’t be prepared for the passions it will stir up.
A potentially historic miscalculation on the part of Republicans It’s possible that, much like European powers in the lead up to WW1, when the time comes and Republicans have a choice between peacefully transitioning us into autocracy or fucking with us all so we want to take up arms, they will choose the latter not because they have to, but because they want to. It’s possible that by the 2024 — 2025 period, Republicans will see a civil war as their only choice to consolidate power, even if it’s clear that they could get everything they ever wanted within the system they so obviously loath.
You think we have it bad now, just wait until a huge swath of deranged MAGA New Right cocksuckers grow radicalized and see violence as their only option to get what they want in the country. That would not be cool.
I just don’t think a lot of liberal “thinkers” are taking the very dangerous future we face seriously enough. Something’s gotta give. We either turn into an autocracy, have a civil war or the military steps in and we have some sort of military junta.
But the current situation is just not stable. It can only last so long. The United States is running on fumes.
Macro trends are not on America’s side. As I keep saying, 2024 is going to be it. It’s the year when either the United States turns into a Russian-style “managed democracy” or there’s a civil war. Now, this isn’t going to be a complete list of the 50 states, but I am going to highlight some of the states that may be more problematic should a Second American Civil War erupt.
Oregon The state is really two states and, as such, is probably going to be a major flashpoint in any Second Civil War. What’s likely to happen is Portland will buck any attempt at a putsch on the part of bonkers Right wing nutjobs in the rest of the state and, as such, either there’s a really blood struggle in the state or there are a massive amount of political refugees from the Portland area as the rest of the state sides with MAGA.
Virginia Again, this is really two states. There’s the NOVA-Richmond-Hampton Roads urban corridor and everything else. It’s very easy to imagine a situation — especially with Virginia’s historic ties to the first Civil War — where the state implodes as we grow closer and closer to a Second Civil War. Too many good old boys in the rural areas of Virginia might get wrapped up in the “Lost Cause” mythos and decide to seize places like Danville (the last capitol of the Confederacy) or Richmond (another Confederate capitol.) If nothing else, simply because of the larger population of the “Blue” parts of the state, there will be significant violence and political refugees as the Blues consolidate power.
Michigan I don’t know as much about this state, but it definitely seems as though once the pre-war process of coups and political consolation begins that there will be at least a coup attempt on the part of the Far Right. Again, don’t underestimate how once you actually start murdering people that the dynamics of things change significantly. It’s very possible that there would be a coup in the state, it would fail, and there would be significant political violence as the state’s Blue population fought back and put the state firmly on the Blue side.
New York Yet again, we have a situation where once politics fails us that the otherwise banal regional differences in a state tears it apart. New York City is far more progressive than the rest of New York State and, depending on how things work out, it’s possible that New York City could become a revolutionary hotbed to the point that is tears itself away from the rest of the state and proclaims itself a Free City. This almost happen during the first Civil War. If nothing else, there will be a serious jiggling of the relationship between NYC and the rest of the state to the point where it aligns itself in any Second Civil War with New Jersey and Connecticut in a way that update New York does not. Or, again, there could be significant political consolidation as Blues from all over the northeast flee to New York and the MAGA-friendly natives of the state flee elsewhere.
Maine I really don’t know that much about this state other than a vague belief that the northern part of the state is far different than the southern part. It’s very easy to imagine significant consolation in the state one way or another as people flee to it as the rest of the country buckles. The state is big — if sparsely populated — and it’s strategic location near the Canadian border might be enough for it to be the home to large refugee camps.
Texas Texas would be in an odd situation as the country fell into civil war because its long-term political trend is shifting Blue, but it’s part of the South and a lot of people consider themselves Southern and MAGA. So either it simply buckles into its own intra-civil war or the MAGA cocksucker fucktards push out all the Blues who flee to Blue States nearby. The end result would be a lot of pissed off former Texans who would be of great benefit to the Blue cause.
California In a sense, the whole fate of the United States rests on what California does. If it simply bolts from the Union, then that significantly hobbles the Blue cause on the ground. California sitting on its hands and become its own nation in the event of a Second Civil War makes it far more likely that either Red states win or there is some sort of half-ass balkanization of the United States. But if California stays and fights, then they could provide not only the necessary economy and population for a Blue state victory — after many, many dead — but also something of a vision for what America would look like after we’re finished bombing ourselves into oblivion.
The Deep South It’s very easy to imagine at the onset of a Second American Civil War most of the old Confederacy on a political level getting extremely excited and having a massive amount of momentum to either leave the Union outright or support the Republican controlled Congress’ attempt to brazenly steal the election. Then reality would sink in — all of the Southern states have significant African American populations and once politics is no longer a viable method of solving problems then the far more brutal dynamics of realpolitik would kick in. I just can’t imagine millions of African Americans lulzing a return to the Confederacy, no matter how badly the white political establishment of those states may want it. So, even though the South has a lot of people and a big economy, it would be, on a regional basis, too busy fighting a race war to really help the Red cause all that much. If things really grew as radical as I fear they will — probably because WMD are stolen and cities start to get vaporized — it’s the Deep South where you’re most likely to see some WW2 level atrocities as radicalized whites begin to murder blacks en mass.
As for the rest of the states, their ability to pick one side or the other is probably far easier and their biggest problem would be dealing with political refugees.
Steve Bannon is staging a slow-moving administrative coup in the United States in broad daylight and, at the moment, nothing is happening in response. So, it’s very easy to imagine Bannon actually pulling it off — corrupting the administration of elections on the local level to the point that it becomes very clear to the average American that the whole system is rigged.
Steve K. Bannon
And that, my gentle reader, will be the moment of truth.
The natural inclination of the liberal media will be to calm everyone down. As a part of the Establishment, they have a vested interest in making sure the average person doesn’t freak the fuck out and burn everything to the ground in a rage.
In a functioning democracy, this is a good thing because it keeps people living their lives and only really thinking about politics when they have to. But, sadly, the centrifugal forces at work on the United States’ political system have reached a critical point — we’ve crossed the event horizon of autocracy, if you will.
So, should Bannon get what he wants, what will be the reaction.
My gut reaction is…I don’t know. It could go either way. It’s very possible that because of how ineffectual the center-Left is on a systemic basis, that such an administrative coup will be met with a collective shrug. There will be long, angry Twitter threads from the usual suspect Twitter liberals. Pod Save America, Pod Save The World and Deep State Radio would have enraged conversations about how the United States is no longer a democracy.
Here are some reasons why we won’t have a civil war:
It’s not in our nature to have a civil war. For all the hateful rhetoric on the part of the MAGA New Right, it’s possible that in the end, they manage to pull off a peaceful transition to autocracy. In fact, at first, at least, the chance from democracy to autocracy could be so subtle that only a few hysterical people like me even notice. For the average person, it will just be a replay of 2000, only worse: it will simply be accepted that the only way a Democrat can become POTUS is if that party also control Congress. People will say “the system worked” and move on.
Republicans have gamed the system. It could be that by 2024 – 2025 the actual administration of elections will be so corrupt that it will be a fact of life that people shrug and take for granted. It will be the first step towards Americans becoming Russians in that they will no longer feel as though the government expresses the will of the people. And that will be that.
Not Trump 2024 Another reason why we could slip peacefully into autocracy is it’s not Trump who is the Republican nominee, but someone other than Trump. If this is the case, when I honestly don’t see why we would have a civil war. Autocracy is so popular within the United States –and the opposition to it is so weak — that our transition to an actual autocracy will in the end be so easy to pull off that there will be no need to resort to violence. Blue States will get angry, but, lulz, they always get angry, right Mr. Eastman?
Autocracy is very popular in the United States A sizable portion of the United States’ electorate wants an autocracy. They want one so bad that they seem like a cult to people who aren’t all that thrilled at the prospect of one. So, it’s possible that they will wrap up the transition into autocracy without any violence at all. By the time people realize what they’ve lost, it will be way, way too late. The United States will be nothing more than a Russia clone with an identical political dynamic. There will be a MAGA-themed Constitutional Convention to “pass a balanced budget amendment” and we’ll still have President DeSantis (or whomever) 30 years from now.
Anti-MAGA forces are just too weak willed. Again, it could be that when push comes to shove, the whole thing will be over before it even starts. There will be a lot of angry tweets on Twitter, but in the end, because Twitter liberals aren’t willing to risk anything in the real world, we slip peacefully into autocracy and that, as they say, will be that.
But, lulz, the average person won’t even notice — at first — that things have changed.
People will gradually stop voting. A MAGA-themed Constitutional Convention will be held. And, soon enough, the United States and Russia will become autocratic brothers in arms. It will be like the end of Animal Farm — we will look back and forth between the United States and Russia and we won’t be able to see any difference.
That’s one option.
The other option is we have a civil war that causes WW3 and billions die while the United States sorts out which vision of America has the better military. If we go down this path, then the “Fourth Turning” might happen not in 2025, but in 2023.
I still just can’t game out which one of these two options the United States will pick. Usually, if history is any guide, the Great Moments of History are very reliant on the tactical. Just look at the First Civil War itself — the case could be made that modern America exists because of some pretty specific, tactical events that took place at just the right time.
Here are some reasons why we will have a civil war.
Republicans have come to glorify political violence Something you see a lot these days within the bullshit echo chamber of the MAGA New Right is the belief that because “liberals won’t leave us alone” that they are being “driven” to extremism. There’s a lot of leading not-so-vague talk as to what all this would ultimately mean. But it’s clear that for a number of “thought leaders” within the MAGA New Right that they have accepted that at some point in the future, they’re going to have to resort to violence to get what they want.
Republicans no longer believe in democracy It is now clear that like any good fascists, Republicans no longer believe in democracy unless it’s for the specific purpose of gaining and keeping power. This view of the system they’re supposed to a part of leads them do extremely distablizing things that help push the country to the brink.
Trump 2024 Just Trump being the 2024 nominee would, in itself, be enough to cause a civil war at some point in late 2024 – early 2025. He just has a special knack for “owning the libs” in such a way that if he stole in 2024 election and said the “quiet part outloud” that Blue States would grow so enraged that it would be they, not Red States, that left the Union and caused a Second Civil War. But Ron DeSantis is polling exceptionally well at the moment, so either Trump politically shivs him at some point, or he co-ops him, making him his VP, opening the door to DeSantis becoming America’s Putin at some point down the road a little bit.
Steve K Bannon. Bannon and his toadies are actively working to destroy the framework that weuse to administer free and fair elections. So, it’s very easy to imagine a situation where this gambit works in ways that Trump himself is too idiotic to pull off personally and it will be so egregious that, again, Blue States leave the Union and we have a Second American Civil War.
Extreme negative polarization We’re in for a bump four or so years, no matter what, because negative polarization, on a systemic level, has reached a critical mass. When one of your political parties is fascist and would rather crash the global economy instead of even appear to work for the good of the nation — you got a problem.
A lack of shared values As the big blow up on Twitter in the last 24 hours about a Stephen Colbert song and dance gag about getting vaccinated proves — we can’t even agree on what’s funny. A combination of this and negative polarization is leading to the United States being two nations, one Red, one Blue and when we get around to attempting to elect the next president, the system simply won’t be prepared for the passions it will stir up.
A potentially historic miscalculation on the part of Republicans It’s possible that, much like European powers in the lead up to WW1, when the time comes and Republicans have a choice between peacefully transitioning us into autocracy or fucking with us all so we want to take up arms, they will choose the latter not because they have to, but because they want to. It’s possible that by the 2024 — 2025 period, Republicans will see a civil war as their only choice to consolidate power, even if it’s clear that they could get everything they ever wanted within the system they so obviously loath.
So, too, if there was a Second Civil War and things grew existential, the outcome of any such conflagration could be determined by things that would be impossible to predict at the moment.
All I know is, Bannon is setting up a very, very destabilizing situation by trying to pull a fast one on us. If he succeeds in 2022 with his administrative coup and nothing happens, then, well, the likelihood of a civil war grows far less. It will be clear by that point that the United States is going to slip peacefully into autocracy.
It will be in the 2023-2025 timeframe when there will begin a massive migration of center-Left Americans to other parts of the globe. Hollywood might relocate to, say Perth. Europe might see a huge influx of liberal-progressive expats not seen since The Lost Generation.
Who knows?
Or, to put it another way — I suggest you be grateful for this last year of democracy in America. No matter what, the death spiral that will either lead to autocracy or civil war will probably begin the moment we start to get results in Election Night 2022.
A few days after that, Trump will announce for 2024 and things will grow very, very unstable. Good luck. You’re going to need it.
Macro trends are not on America’s side. As I keep saying, 2024 is going to be it. It’s the year when either the United States turns into a Russian-style “managed democracy” or there’s a civil war. Now, this isn’t going to be a complete list of the 50 states, but I am going to highlight some of the states that may be more problematic should a Second American Civil War erupt.
Oregon The state is really two states and, as such, is probably going to be a major flashpoint in any Second Civil War. What’s likely to happen is Portland will buck any attempt at a putsch on the part of bonkers Right wing nutjobs in the rest of the state and, as such, either there’s a really blood struggle in the state or there are a massive amount of political refugees from the Portland area as the rest of the state sides with MAGA.
Virginia Again, this is really two states. There’s the NOVA-Richmond-Hampton Roads urban corridor and everything else. It’s very easy to imagine a situation — especially with Virginia’s historic ties to the first Civil War — where the state implodes as we grow closer and closer to a Second Civil War. Too many good old boys in the rural areas of Virginia might get wrapped up in the “Lost Cause” mythos and decide to seize places like Danville (the last capitol of the Confederacy) or Richmond (another Confederate capitol.) If nothing else, simply because of the larger population of the “Blue” parts of the state, there will be significant violence and political refugees as the Blues consolidate power.
Michigan I don’t know as much about this state, but it definitely seems as though once the pre-war process of coups and political consolation begins that there will be at least a coup attempt on the part of the Far Right. Again, don’t underestimate how once you actually start murdering people that the dynamics of things change significantly. It’s very possible that there would be a coup in the state, it would fail, and there would be significant political violence as the state’s Blue population fought back and put the state firmly on the Blue side.
New York Yet again, we have a situation where once politics fails us that the otherwise banal regional differences in a state tears it apart. New York City is far more progressive than the rest of New York State and, depending on how things work out, it’s possible that New York City could become a revolutionary hotbed to the point that is tears itself away from the rest of the state and proclaims itself a Free City. This almost happen during the first Civil War. If nothing else, there will be a serious jiggling of the relationship between NYC and the rest of the state to the point where it aligns itself in any Second Civil War with New Jersey and Connecticut in a way that update New York does not. Or, again, there could be significant political consolidation as Blues from all over the northeast flee to New York and the MAGA-friendly natives of the state flee elsewhere.
Maine I really don’t know that much about this state other than a vague belief that the northern part of the state is far different than the southern part. It’s very easy to imagine significant consolation in the state one way or another as people flee to it as the rest of the country buckles. The state is big — if sparsely populated — and it’s strategic location near the Canadian border might be enough for it to be the home to large refugee camps.
Texas Texas would be in an odd situation as the country fell into civil war because its long-term political trend is shifting Blue, but it’s part of the South and a lot of people consider themselves Southern and MAGA. So either it simply buckles into its own intra-civil war or the MAGA cocksucker fucktards push out all the Blues who flee to Blue States nearby. The end result would be a lot of pissed off former Texans who would be of great benefit to the Blue cause.
California In a sense, the whole fate of the United States rests on what California does. If it simply bolts from the Union, then that significantly hobbles the Blue cause on the ground. California sitting on its hands and become its own nation in the event of a Second Civil War makes it far more likely that either Red states win or there is some sort of half-ass balkanization of the United States. But if California stays and fights, then they could provide not only the necessary economy and population for a Blue state victory — after many, many dead — but also something of a vision for what America would look like after we’re finished bombing ourselves into oblivion.
The Deep South It’s very easy to imagine at the onset of a Second American Civil War most of the old Confederacy on a political level getting extremely excited and having a massive amount of momentum to either leave the Union outright or support the Republican controlled Congress’ attempt to brazenly steal the election. Then reality would sink in — all of the Southern states have significant African American populations and once politics is no longer a viable method of solving problems then the far more brutal dynamics of realpolitik would kick in. I just can’t imagine millions of African Americans lulzing a return to the Confederacy, no matter how badly the white political establishment of those states may want it. So, even though the South has a lot of people and a big economy, it would be, on a regional basis, too busy fighting a race war to really help the Red cause all that much. If things really grew as radical as I fear they will — probably because WMD are stolen and cities start to get vaporized — it’s the Deep South where you’re most likely to see some WW2 level atrocities as radicalized whites begin to murder blacks en mass.
As for the rest of the states, their ability to pick one side or the other is probably far easier and their biggest problem would be dealing with political refugees.
Only because of a specific set of circumstances are we not in Trump’s second term. The combination of COVID, Biden and Trump being astonishingly lazy and stupid combined to tip the hand of fate. And, yet, the next year could likely be the last few months of the traditional America that we’ve come to assume we’d always live in.
Steve K. Bannon
It’s easy to imagine that Steve Bannon’s plot at an “administrative coup” is successful in 2022 and when we lulz it, he only grows more powerful and more brazen in the years leading up to 2024. I don’t think people really appricate how dire things are becoming.
The center-Left just is not prepared for what is going to happen between now and January 2025. Trump’s “Big Lie” is now the heart and soul of the Republican Party on a systemic basis and, honestly, the only thing stopped us from peacefully becoming a Russia clone is the momentum within the MAGA New Right to turn to violence simply out of bloodthirsty arrogance.
Here are some reasons why we will have a civil war.
Republicans have come to glorify political violence Something you see a lot these days within the bullshit echo chamber of the MAGA New Right is the belief that because “liberals won’t leave us alone” that they are being “driven” to extremism. There’s a lot of leading not-so-vague talk as to what all this would ultimately mean. But it’s clear that for a number of “thought leaders” within the MAGA New Right that they have accepted that at some point in the future, they’re going to have to resort to violence to get what they want.
Republicans no longer believe in democracy It is now clear that like any good fascists, Republicans no longer believe in democracy unless it’s for the specific purpose of gaining and keeping power. This view of the system they’re supposed to a part of leads them do extremely distablizing things that help push the country to the brink.
Trump 2024 Just Trump being the 2024 nominee would, in itself, be enough to cause a civil war at some point in late 2024 – early 2025. He just has a special knack for “owning the libs” in such a way that if he stole in 2024 election and said the “quiet part outloud” that Blue States would grow so enraged that it would be they, not Red States, that left the Union and caused a Second Civil War. But Ron DeSantis is polling exceptionally well at the moment, so either Trump politically shivs him at some point, or he co-ops him, making him his VP, opening the door to DeSantis becoming America’s Putin at some point down the road a little bit.
Steve K Bannon. Bannon and his toadies are actively working to destroy the framework that weuse to administer free and fair elections. So, it’s very easy to imagine a situation where this gambit works in ways that Trump himself is too idiotic to pull off personally and it will be so egregious that, again, Blue States leave the Union and we have a Second American Civil War.
Extreme negative polarization We’re in for a bump four or so years, no matter what, because negative polarization, on a systemic level, has reached a critical mass. When one of your political parties is fascist and would rather crash the global economy instead of even appear to work for the good of the nation — you got a problem.
A lack of shared values As the big blow up on Twitter in the last 24 hours about a Stephen Colbert song and dance gag about getting vaccinated proves — we can’t even agree on what’s funny. A combination of this and negative polarization is leading to the United States being two nations, one Red, one Blue and when we get around to attempting to elect the next president, the system simply won’t be prepared for the passions it will stir up.
A potentially historic miscalculation on the part of Republicans It’s possible that, much like European powers in the lead up to WW1, when the time comes and Republicans have a choice between peacefully transitioning us into autocracy or fucking with us all so we want to take up arms, they will choose the latter not because they have to, but because they want to. It’s possible that by the 2024 — 2025 period, Republicans will see a civil war as their only choice to consolidate power, even if it’s clear that they could get everything they ever wanted within the system they so obviously loath.
It’s also easy to imagine at some point in the 2024 – 2025 timeframe that everything is in place for us to slip peacefully into autocracy and Trump just by being himself causes a civil war. One thing we have to begin to think about is Trump could be, in his own way a “reverse Yeltsin” in the sense that both men specialized in destroying things but with the exact opposite objectives.
Yeltsin wanted to bring freedom to Russia, Trump wants to bring autocracy to the United States. So, it’s possible that for all my handwringing about the possibility of a civil war in the United States, in the end, we simply slip peacefully into autocracy, just as the Soviet Union peacefully ceased to exist.
Here are some reasons why we won’t have a civil war:
It’s not in our nature to have a civil war. For all the hateful rhetoric on the part of the MAGA New Right, it’s possible that in the end, they manage to pull off a peaceful transition to autocracy. In fact, at first, at least, the chance from democracy to autocracy could be so subtle that only a few hysterical people like me even notice. For the average person, it will just be a replay of 2000, only worse: it will simply be accepted that the only way a Democrat can become POTUS is if that party also control Congress. People will say “the system worked” and move on.
Republicans have gamed the system. It could be that by 2024 – 2025 the actual administration of elections will be so corrupt that it will be a fact of life that people shrug and take for granted. It will be the first step towards Americans becoming Russians in that they will no longer feel as though the government expresses the will of the people. And that will be that.
Not Trump 2024 Another reason why we could slip peacefully into autocracy is it’s not Trump who is the Republican nominee, but someone other than Trump. If this is the case, when I honestly don’t see why we would have a civil war. Autocracy is so popular within the United States –and the opposition to it is so weak — that our transition to an actual autocracy will in the end be so easy to pull off that there will be no need to resort to violence. Blue States will get angry, but, lulz, they always get angry, right Mr. Eastman?
Autocracy is very popular in the United States A sizable portion of the United States’ electorate wants an autocracy. They want one so bad that they seem like a cult to people who aren’t all that thrilled at the prospect of one. So, it’s possible that they will wrap up the transition into autocracy without any violence at all. By the time people realize what they’ve lost, it will be way, way too late. The United States will be nothing more than a Russia clone with an identical political dynamic. There will be a MAGA-themed Constitutional Convention to “pass a balanced budget amendment” and we’ll still have President DeSantis (or whomever) 30 years from now.
Anti-MAGA forces are just too weak willed. Again, it could be that when push comes to shove, the whole thing will be over before it even starts. There will be a lot of angry tweets on Twitter, but in the end, because Twitter liberals aren’t willing to risk anything in the real world, we slip peacefully into autocracy and that, as they say, will be that.
But there is one thing I can not stress enough: stop laughing at the MAGA New Right. They just aren’t funny anymore. We’re dealing with a lingering existential crisis that is going to come to a head one way or another. We’re still too far out for me to figure out if it’s going to be autocracy, civil war or military junta.
Yet, what I do know is the current status quo is so unstable that something pretty dramatic is going to happen. Again — all the conditions exist for us to slip peacefully into autocracy and that will be that. The average American is so complacent that if Bannon gets what he wants, the liberal media will tell everyone that “the system worked” and it’s just a fact of life now that one, the administration of elections is corrupt and two, even if Democrats get past that obstacle, the only way they can gain the presidency is if they also control Congress.
Then comes the MAGA-themed Constitutional Convention. In about 20 years, we’ll wake up and realize an entire generation of Americans has only known DeSantis (or whomever) as president. We’ll also learn that the Trump family is now one of the wealthiest in the world, rivaling Putin. We’ll hear isolated reports of well known anti-MAGA people mysteriously dying, but strangely nothing will ever come of it.
All of our media will avoid talking about politics and News Corp will own The New York Times AND CNN. Who knows, MSNBC might be sold off and merged with OANN or NewsMax at some cut rate price. We’ll also here the occasional story from the BBC about the burgeoning ICE camps with political prisoners, but most people who are Good Americans won’t really care or notice.
That is, of course, until they get drunk in a bar one night and rant about how much President Flynn sucks. They vanish within a few days.
The reason why this agitates me so much is this dystopian scenario of an American future under autocracy is not an abstract to me. I’ve enjoyed the luxury of being a loud mouth kook in a free nation my entire life. I’m just not someone who could even exist in a country like Russia.
So, I feel, in a very concrete way, that if we do slip peacefully into autocracy that my life is in danger.
The main reason why I don’t think the United States will have a Second Civil War is how weak anti-MAGA forces are in real terms. Or, put another way, if there is some sort of civil war in the United States around the time I predict it may happen, a lot of heroes are going to burst onto the scene in ways none of us — least of all me — can predict.
And, remember, if we did have a second civil war, it would not happen in a vacuum. The entire world would go up in flames at the same time. Any number of regional wars would flare up — some of them resulting in limited nuclear exchanges — and the world we woke up to on the other end of the conflict would be greatly reshaped.
But again, I just don’t know which choice we’re going to make. At the moment, you can make the case for either autocracy or civil war. You can even make the case for some sort of military junta.
In a sense, this option makes a lot more sense than either autocracy or civil war because it could be just the temporary fix to our problems. The scenario I’m thinking of is rather than what the Reds want, which is autocracy or what the Blues might want out of desperation, which is civil war, we would simply turn the reigns of power over to the military.
Once we did that, it’s easy to imagine the whole point of the exercise would be a convening of a Constitutional Convention that would address the concerns of both sides. This would be a way to take the existential issues of 2025 out of the hands of our undead politics and turn it over to a hopefully objective existential body that would help us become a more perfect Union.
There, unfortunately, so many problems with this on-paper ideal solution that it’s highly unlikely it would happen. What’s more likely to happen is either we slip peacefully into a MAGA New Right autocracy or Blue States grow so enraged that they leave the Union and all hell breaks loose.
The biggest problem is, of course, the U.S. Military on a systemic basis will do everything in its power to avoid this very solution, even to the point that the whole country collapses into anarchy. This would happen when the military simply refuses to pick a side when Trump fucks everything up like he always does and we just don’t know who the “real” POTUS is and Blue and Red States go for each others throats.
Another problem might be, that the not even the military will be able to withstand the forces tearing the country apart and the largely MAGA enlisted men pick the opposite side as the brass. So, instead of a unified military being able to step in for a few crucial months, everything collapses in on itself and we bomb ourselves into oblivion using illicitly seized caches of WMD.
Yet, all I can tell you is something’s gotta give.
The moment Congress flips and Republicans are in control of Congress again, things are going to get very dark and even more unstable. You really need to enjoy these last few months of peace and quiet, of traditional America, while you can.
Macro trends are not on America’s side. As I keep saying, 2024 is going to be it. It’s the year when either the United States turns into a Russian-style “managed democracy” or there’s a civil war. Now, this isn’t going to be a complete list of the 50 states, but I am going to highlight some of the states that may be more problematic should a Second American Civil War erupt.
Oregon The state is really two states and, as such, is probably going to be a major flashpoint in any Second Civil War. What’s likely to happen is Portland will buck any attempt at a putsch on the part of bonkers Right wing nutjobs in the rest of the state and, as such, either there’s a really blood struggle in the state or there are a massive amount of political refugees from the Portland area as the rest of the state sides with MAGA.
Virginia Again, this is really two states. There’s the NOVA-Richmond-Hampton Roads urban corridor and everything else. It’s very easy to imagine a situation — especially with Virginia’s historic ties to the first Civil War — where the state implodes as we grow closer and closer to a Second Civil War. Too many good old boys in the rural areas of Virginia might get wrapped up in the “Lost Cause” mythos and decide to seize places like Danville (the last capitol of the Confederacy) or Richmond (another Confederate capitol.) If nothing else, simply because of the larger population of the “Blue” parts of the state, there will be significant violence and political refugees as the Blues consolidate power.
Michigan I don’t know as much about this state, but it definitely seems as though once the pre-war process of coups and political consolation begins that there will be at least a coup attempt on the part of the Far Right. Again, don’t underestimate how once you actually start murdering people that the dynamics of things change significantly. It’s very possible that there would be a coup in the state, it would fail, and there would be significant political violence as the state’s Blue population fought back and put the state firmly on the Blue side.
New York Yet again, we have a situation where once politics fails us that the otherwise banal regional differences in a state tears it apart. New York City is far more progressive than the rest of New York State and, depending on how things work out, it’s possible that New York City could become a revolutionary hotbed to the point that is tears itself away from the rest of the state and proclaims itself a Free City. This almost happen during the first Civil War. If nothing else, there will be a serious jiggling of the relationship between NYC and the rest of the state to the point where it aligns itself in any Second Civil War with New Jersey and Connecticut in a way that update New York does not. Or, again, there could be significant political consolidation as Blues from all over the northeast flee to New York and the MAGA-friendly natives of the state flee elsewhere.
Maine I really don’t know that much about this state other than a vague belief that the northern part of the state is far different than the southern part. It’s very easy to imagine significant consolation in the state one way or another as people flee to it as the rest of the country buckles. The state is big — if sparsely populated — and it’s strategic location near the Canadian border might be enough for it to be the home to large refugee camps.
Texas Texas would be in an odd situation as the country fell into civil war because its long-term political trend is shifting Blue, but it’s part of the South and a lot of people consider themselves Southern and MAGA. So either it simply buckles into its own intra-civil war or the MAGA cocksucker fucktards push out all the Blues who flee to Blue States nearby. The end result would be a lot of pissed off former Texans who would be of great benefit to the Blue cause.
California In a sense, the whole fate of the United States rests on what California does. If it simply bolts from the Union, then that significantly hobbles the Blue cause on the ground. California sitting on its hands and become its own nation in the event of a Second Civil War makes it far more likely that either Red states win or there is some sort of half-ass balkanization of the United States. But if California stays and fights, then they could provide not only the necessary economy and population for a Blue state victory — after many, many dead — but also something of a vision for what America would look like after we’re finished bombing ourselves into oblivion.
The Deep South It’s very easy to imagine at the onset of a Second American Civil War most of the old Confederacy on a political level getting extremely excited and having a massive amount of momentum to either leave the Union outright or support the Republican controlled Congress’ attempt to brazenly steal the election. Then reality would sink in — all of the Southern states have significant African American populations and once politics is no longer a viable method of solving problems then the far more brutal dynamics of realpolitik would kick in. I just can’t imagine millions of African Americans lulzing a return to the Confederacy, no matter how badly the white political establishment of those states may want it. So, even though the South has a lot of people and a big economy, it would be, on a regional basis, too busy fighting a race war to really help the Red cause all that much. If things really grew as radical as I fear they will — probably because WMD are stolen and cities start to get vaporized — it’s the Deep South where you’re most likely to see some WW2 level atrocities as radicalized whites begin to murder blacks en mass.
As for the rest of the states, their ability to pick one side or the other is probably far easier and their biggest problem would be dealing with political refugees.
Fuck Steve K. Bannon. That piece of shit. Having said that, I have to respect him for actively organizing in the real world the destruction of American democracy at its weakest link; the local level.
As I’ve written before, the thing about Bannon is, the jury is still out if he’s just an avatar for how fucked up the United State is — like Trump — or if he’s a potential Great Man who actually puts his own will on the course of history. I’m leaning towards him just being an avatar because even though he’s putting in the hard work in the real world that Twitter liberals refuse to do, it’s still pretty easy work.
Steve K. Bannon
He’s able to do it in broad daylight and there are plenty of crazed MAGA New Right cocksuckers who are primed and ready to go — all they need is a bit of direction at Bannon’s behest.
So, I dunno.
Bannon and I are a lot alike in our ability to take abstract concepts and make them concrete. We’re at exact opposite ends of the political spectrum, however. And I’m not nearly the suck-my-own-cock-ideolog that Bannon is. So, I feel as though he’s so wrapped up in his dream of being a modern day Lenin that he is missing some key problems with his plan.
What Bannon wants to do is a replay of 2000. He wants to steal the 2022 and 2024 elections in broad daylight, but in such a way that the very thing he thinks is so evil — the liberal press media narrative — will cause a collective shrug from the population when it all happens. He’s betting that the can smother democracy in broad daylight and because the neoliberal shills of corporate media have a vested interest in keeping everyone placid he’ll get away with it.
By January 2025, the administration of elections in the United States will be so corrupted by Bannon’s “shock troops” that it will be taken for granted that we’re no longer a democracy and, lulz, why did we even care in the first place. And, I have to Bannon credit, at the moment, I think he’s probably going to pull it off.
The MAGA New Right will gently transition us from liberal democracy to autocratic managed democracy and within a generation CNN will be owned by FOX and singing the praises of our system which is just like the perfect system found in Russia.
And, yet.
This has not happened yet. This is also a possibility that everything will be going fine for Bannon until he gets what he wants. Then, instead of everyone just shrugging and letting him get away with it, there’s a massive fucking freak out and the country descends into an actual hot, fighting civil war.
But it’s one of those things that you can’t predict. The entire system is designed to keep Americans believing they live in a democracy and that there’s no need to turn to violence should that no longer be the case. So, at the moment, Bannon’s totally logical to think he can pull of a stunt like I just described.
And, yet, if Bannon get what he wants, well, he might just get what he wants. It could be that the moment it becomes clear that his effort at nullifying any Democratic win at the local level has been successful, the average non-MAGA person may grow so enraged that, well, some pretty dark shit happens.
Or, to put it another way, the moment Bannon succeeds, may be the moment he fails. Political historical events like the type Bannon is plotting don’t happen in a vacuum. There would be some sort of consequence and potentially a lot of unintended consequences.
It’s very easy for Twitter liberals to get really worked up and to place on the blame America’s impending political clusterfuck solely on the shoulders of this or that person, as if we could somehow magically get rid of them then all of our problems would be solved.
This is so dumb because everyone from Trump to Bannon to DeJoy isn’t the problem, but, rather a symptom of our problems.
That someone like Trump could become president with the help of someone like Bannon is simply the practical application of severe macro problems in our politics. A prime example of what I’m talking about is what happened post-election day in 2020.
All these people who popped up to help Trump’s slow moving attempt to illegally stay in power were simply opportunists. Someone, somewhere, was going to pop up to do the very same thing. Who did it specifically did not really matter.
But let’s talk about Steve K. Bannon.
Steve K. Bannon
He likes to see himself as Lord Zod, destroyer of the administrative state. I think, in fact, he may have even compared himself to Lenin. Such suck-your-own-cock self-aggrandizement is pushing it, but not by much. Here’s what happened last time, with John Eastman trying to end our democracy.
While it’s highly like that someone like Bannon would have sprung up as we careened towards the Fourth Turning, the verdict is still out if he is A Great Man like Lenin who not just was a part of history, but MADE history. But even Lenin needed the conditions for him to strike.
This is the point in this post when I point out that I know myself well enough to know that if we really did have something as horrific as a civil war that *I* might just find myself in a historic situation. That sounds really fucking delusional — and it is. But I know myself well enough to know that either I’m going to die the first day of any civil war or I’m going to somehow weasel myself into some kind of leadership position in Blue State forces…somewhere. It may not be much, but would be a shit ton more than what I’m doing with my life right now.
But that is really fucking delusional thing for me to say at the moment.
The reason Bannon is so dangerous is he is attacking the very fiber of our liberal democracy. He’s attack it at the local level where it is its weakest because the requirements for participation are so low. These are usually filled with just average people off the street who believe in civil society and want to help out.
Bannon, meanwhile, wants to do to these otherwise pretty mundane offices what Trump has done to SCOTUS — fil it with a bunch of MAGA New Right ideologs who will come through for Trump (or DeSantis, or whomever) when the time comes in the 2024 – 2025 time frame (or the 2022 mid-terms.)
And, yet, the best laid plans of mice and human tumors often go awry. Bannon is probably going to be successful in destroying our democracy, but he also might be successful in destroying our democracy. There will come a moment at some point between now and January 2025 when Bannon’s plot will just about to succeed and, yet, it will not have totally succeeded. Here’s why we migtht have a civil war instead.
Republicans have come to glorify political violence Something you see a lot these days within the bullshit echo chamber of the MAGA New Right is the belief that because “liberals won’t leave us alone” that they are being “driven” to extremism. There’s a lot of leading not-so-vague talk as to what all this would ultimately mean. But it’s clear that for a number of “thought leaders” within the MAGA New Right that they have accepted that at some point in the future, they’re going to have to resort to violence to get what they want.
Republicans no longer believe in democracy It is now clear that like any good fascists, Republicans no longer believe in democracy unless it’s for the specific purpose of gaining and keeping power. This view of the system they’re supposed to a part of leads them do extremely distablizing things that help push the country to the brink.
Trump 2024 Just Trump being the 2024 nominee would, in itself, be enough to cause a civil war at some point in late 2024 – early 2025. He just has a special knack for “owning the libs” in such a way that if he stole in 2024 election and said the “quiet part outloud” that Blue States would grow so enraged that it would be they, not Red States, that left the Union and caused a Second Civil War. But Ron DeSantis is polling exceptionally well at the moment, so either Trump politically shivs him at some point, or he co-ops him, making him his VP, opening the door to DeSantis becoming America’s Putin at some point down the road a little bit.
Steve K Bannon. Bannon and his toadies are actively working to destroy the framework that we use to administer free and fair elections. So, it’s very easy to imagine a situation where this gambit works in ways that Trump himself is too idiotic to pull off personally and it will be so egregious that, again, Blue States leave the Union and we have a Second American Civil War.
Extreme negative polarization We’re in for a bump four or so years, no matter what, because negative polarization, on a systemic level, has reached a critical mass. When one of your political parties is fascist and would rather crash the global economy instead of even appear to work for the good of the nation — you got a problem.
A lack of shared values As the big blow up on Twitter in the last 24 hours about a Stephen Colbert song and dance gag about getting vaccinated proves — we can’t even agree on what’s funny. A combination of this and negative polarization is leading to the United States being two nations, one Red, one Blue and when we get around to attempting to elect the next president, the system simply won’t be prepared for the passions it will stir up.
A potentially historic miscalculation on the part of Republicans It’s possible that, much like European powers in the lead up to WW1, when the time comes and Republicans have a choice between peacefully transitioning us into autocracy or fucking with us all so we want to take up arms, they will choose the latter not because they have to, but because they want to. It’s possible that by the 2024 — 2025 period, Republicans will see a civil war as their only choice to consolidate power, even if it’s clear that they could get everything they ever wanted within the system they so obviously loath.
There will be one last death struggle for our democracy and either, like in 1861, we manage to crawl ourselves back from being dominated by Slave Power or, lulz, we don’t and Bannon is named reichsfuhrer.
One thing that is key to understand about Bannon. He is doing the one thing that so many so-called “Resistors” on Twitter can not or will not do — he’s doing real shit in the real world. He’s doing the hard work of effectuating his personal vision in the real world.
The popularity of people asking the Internet about the possibility of an impending civil war in the United States says a lot about modern America. I say this because it’s easy to bandy about the abstract of a “civil war” in the most powerful, ostensibly most stable nation in the world without really thinking about what it means.
It seems as though America, collectively, has begun to worry about its fate on an existential level.
In the immediate future, there are two points in the future when a civil car is a possibility. In the near term, something to do with the 2022 mid-terms might be enough to push us over the edge. If, say, Steve K. Bannon’s plot to corrupt election boards is successful in 2022 to the point that one side or the other makes a major political miscalculation, it’s possible the country would begin to split between Blue and Red.
The time, of course, is the 2024 presidential cycle.
This is what the book The Fourth Turning would have us believe. And it makes sense. Republicans are, on a systemic level, autocratic and anti-democratic to the point that if they have it within their power to deny Biden re-election in 2024, they will. And, in fact, things are so bad that Biden could lose fair and square and we could still have a Second Civil War.
But I still think around late 2024 — early 2025, the United States will face three existential choices — autocracy, civil war or military junta.
At the moment, I still don’t know which one of those three choices we will pick. Usually, if history is any guide, when things grow existential, the actual path of history is selected because of very specific tactical events that no one can predict in advance. That’s why Foundation-like “psychohistory” is so difficult to do in any practical form.
But, yes, I would say the United States at the moment is, in fact, careening towards a situation where a civil war is a very real possibility. All the macro metrics, at least, are pointing in that direction. Here are the reasons:
Republicans have come to glorify political violence Something you see a lot these days within the bullshit echo chamber of the MAGA New Right is the belief that because “liberals won’t leave us alone” that they are being “driven” to extremism. There’s a lot of leading not-so-vague talk as to what all this would ultimately mean. But it’s clear that for a number of “thought leaders” within the MAGA New Right that they have accepted that at some point in the future, they’re going to have to resort to violence to get what they want.
Republicans no longer believe in democracy It is now clear that like any good fascists, Republicans no longer believe in democracy unless it’s for the specific purpose of gaining and keeping power. This view of the system they’re supposed to a part of leads them do extremely distablizing things that help push the country to the brink.
Trump 2024 Just Trump being the 2024 nominee would, in itself, be enough to cause a civil war at some point in late 2024 – early 2025. He just has a special knack for “owning the libs” in such a way that if he stole in 2024 election and said the “quiet part outloud” that Blue States would grow so enraged that it would be they, not Red States, that left the Union and caused a Second Civil War. But Ron DeSantis is polling exceptionally well at the moment, so either Trump politically shivs him at some point, or he co-ops him, making him his VP, opening the door to DeSantis becoming America’s Putin at some point down the road a little bit.
Steve K Bannon. Bannon and his toadies are actively working to destroy the framework that we use to administer free and fair elections. So, it’s very easy to imagine a situation where this gambit works in ways that Trump himself is too idiotic to pull off personally and it will be so egregious that, again, Blue States leave the Union and we have a Second American Civil War.
Extreme negative polarization We’re in for a bump four or so years, no matter what, because negative polarization, on a systemic level, has reached a critical mass. When one of your political parties is fascist and would rather crash the global economy instead of even appear to work for the good of the nation — you got a problem.
A lack of shared values As the big blow up on Twitter in the last 24 hours about a Stephen Colbert song and dance gag about getting vaccinated proves — we can’t even agree on what’s funny. A combination of this and negative polarization is leading to the United States being two nations, one Red, one Blue and when we get around to attempting to elect the next president, the system simply won’t be prepared for the passions it will stir up.
A potentially historic miscalculation on the part of Republicans It’s possible that, much like European powers in the lead up to WW1, when the time comes and Republicans have a choice between peacefully transitioning us into autocracy or fucking with us all so we want to take up arms, they will choose the latter not because they have to, but because they want to. It’s possible that by the 2024 — 2025 period, Republicans will see a civil war as their only choice to consolidate power, even if it’s clear that they could get everything they ever wanted within the system they so obviously loath.
And, yet, it’s also possible that we’ll slip peacefully into a Russian-style autocracy and only a few more “woke” people like me will scream at the top of our lungs that we’re no longer a democracy.
But because for the average person nothing will have changed — at least in the near term — it will all be a lulz and it won’t be until 20 years of uninterrupted MAGA New Right rule that growing numbers of people might notice that something, at some point, changed.
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