It definitely feels as though we’ve reached the end of the beginning when it comes to the Final Countdown. What’s it going to be, American history — autocracy or civil war? At the moment, there are too many known unknowns for me to be able to wargame that out.
So, for the moment, I’m at a loss to tell you what to think of Liz Cheney pretty obviously running for POTUS — as a Republican!
As it stands, people are beginning to wake up to the cold hard fact that we’re fucked. We’re totally, completely fucked. And the only unknown is if we get fucked via fascism or fucked via civil war. That’s it. Those are only two options at this point. (I guess, you could say that maybe, just maybe we might get a military junta, but I doubt it.)
Or, put another way, American politics is now very similar to that of around 1857. We all kinda of know that either Slave Power (MAGA) wins a final victory or we hash it out via a civil war that would be extremely high risk, high reward.
Having said all that, Liz Cheney probably has a better shot of becoming President Harris’ Unity Ticket Veep done out of desperation than she does winning the Republican nomination in 2024.
Republicans are so, on a systemic level, unmoored from the traditional concepts of a party that is associated with a liberal democracy that there is no way in hell she could possibly win the Republican nomination. And if Trump bows out for some reason, Republicans are more likely to pick Gen. Mike Flynn as his successor than Liz Cheney.
Let that sink in.
But for anyone paying attention, things are kind of dark right now. Maybe a lot dark. Because all the macro trends point to The Fourth Turning taking place in, as predicted 2025. We’re so totally fucked. Totally, completely, fucked.
We have to stop getting mad on Twitter. Or making fun of the dumb things that the MAGA New Right says or does. Things have gotten serious and existential if you think of yourself as a small-d democrat.
Ok, I’m in a writing mood at the moment and so here’s what the fucking MAGA New Right cocksuckers want — a scenario whereby we have some sort of “MAGA New Right Revolution” sooner rather than later.
First, we need to know what the conditions of the scenario will be. The fucking Bannonites want a “revolution” instead of a “civil war,” so to run the scenario we would have fit the definition of a “revolution.” In my view, a revolution tends to be spontaneous and the decision of a lot of individuals all at once. It’s not a government thing — that would be a civil war.
Steve Bannon, wargamer
But the Bannonites want a revolution, so let’s give them one in a scenario. They want it RIGHT NOW, too. They keep searching for “2021 revolution,” not “2024 revolution.” So, by “right now,” let’s say the end of the year.
I’m assuming that the MAGA New Right cocksuckers believe that since everyone THEY know wants to stop fucking their gun long enough to murder dem one of dem dar libtards, that everyone else in the country feels the same way, too. How do we get an actual “revolution” to take place before, say, the end of the year?
Well, a lot — and I mean — A LOT — would have to go wrong.
But one major data point might be the debt celling not being raised. That would be a gut punch to the US economy, which would be a pretty big step towards establishing the conditions for a “revolution.” Yet, still, I struggle the idea that good old boys would risk it all by taking up arms against the U.S. Government en mass to do an actual “revolution.”
I mean, fuck, the MAGA New Right cocksuckers who actually did something about how much they hate liberals — the January 6th Insurrectionists — have all turned out not to be hardened revolutionaries, but crybaby snowflakes who whine about having “anxiety.”
But, let’s press on. Let’s say we have something akin to an economic freefall in the United States starting in mid-October. The places I could maybe see something akin to a populist “revolution” happening would the more rural parts of Oregon and Idaho. Those guys already fuck their guns with their small dicks as it is — they’re chomping at the bit to take up arms.
So, I think maybe something that might be marketed as a “revolution” might start in the states of Oregon, Idaho and Montana. This is where I struggle. If really was a “revolution” you would, essentially, have new revolutionary governments spring up on a local basis that were popular enough that the Federal government couldn’t doing anything about them.
The hope of the MAGA New Right revolutionaries would be, I guess, that similar populist revolts would sweep through the country and Trump would start wearing a beret and Trumplandia would be established.
I guess, in the end, something I just can’t predict would have to happen in the near term for a MAGA New Right “revolution” to happen. Until then, we wait until the Fourth Turning of January 2025 to find out which direction we go.
They say you go bankrupt gradually, then all at once and as such, I suggest you begin some sort of worst case scenario survival strategy. It could be that I’m way overthinking things and it’s the “autocracy” option instead of civil war that happens. So you won’t have much to worry about in 2025 as long as you keep your head down. And don’t rant about what a fucking cocksucker our new autocrat overlord is like I will.
As I keep saying, autocracy is so popular in the United States at the moment that we’re an autocracy without an autocrat.
And, but for Trump running for office again in 2024, we probably will avoid any major bloodshed, other than the blood of Lady Liberty’s slit throat rushing around our legs as Josh Hawley (or whomever) is sworn in on January 20th, 2025.
But Trump definitely seems as though he’s running again and he is such a fucking human political catastrophe that the United States may very well bomb itself into the Stone Age because of him, specifically, being the guy tasked by history to end our Republic.
He’s so fucking bad at even the most basic elements of autocracy that when the time comes for him to push off the cliff, he figures out some way whereby we turn around a fight back because we realize, at last, that we have it within our power to do so.
As such, you need to think about packing a bug out bag. Start getting the lay of the land around where you live. Do you know your neighbors? How well? Which ones have guns? What are their political views? How vocal about those views are they? How difficult will it be to get any medicines you need? What’s your Red Line for a freak out? What do you do, specifically, when you cross it?
I go on walks around my neighborhood on a regular basis and I’ve begun to imagine what might happen if things grew, uh, existential.
At the moment, we have a long time — a few years — to prepare for such an epic clusterufuck. And, yet, it’s also easy to imagine things getting extremely existential extremely quickly if there was some sort of unexpected domestic 9/11 attack that gave the MAGA New Right cocksuckers the in they needed to attempt to enforce Trumplandia upon us.
But a lot is up in the air. There are too many known unknowns as about and when we make the choice of autocracy or civil war. All I know is I can feel the cold, dark waters of an existential choice beginning to lap over my feet. As such, I’ve decided — again — to start reading books on the Civil War era and the rise of the Nazis in 1930s Germany.
That way, at least, I can have some sense in my mind of knowing how and when things are so fucked that I’m going to have to make some pretty deep decisions one way or another. And, sadly, so will all of us.
I get really frustrated when people search for “Second American Revolution” and endup at this site because there’s a big difference between a “revolution” and a “civil war.” The two are similar and may happen in tandem, but we’re a whole lot more likely to have a civil war soon than we are a revolution. I think I may be overly pedantic with that pet peeve, but I still have it.
Anyway, I have long said that our political system is so fragile at the moment that Something Bad will happen if there’s just a little bit extra pressure applied on it.
Well, we’re careening towards that type of pressure being applied to it with the existential game of chicken that Congressional Republicans are now playing with our economy. This happens all the time, I know but this time is different because Republicans have grown so radicalized that they would rather destroy the economy than in any way work on a bi-partisan basis.
As such, there’s a pretty good chance that we won’t raise the debt ceiling because of Republican assholery and the US — and global — economy will take a significant blow to the gut.
Here’s where things get interesting — given how fucked up everything is in the United States otherwise, would a severe economic downturn caused by the Republicans being fucking assholes be enough to incite the glorious “2021 revolution” that so many fucking cocksucker New Right assholes seem to crave.
That is a very good question.
My first reaction is, no. It would probably cause a lot more instability in the United States, but the MAGA New Right, for all their bluster about how much they want to murder people like me in cold blood, are actually — to date — a bunch of fucking snowflake crybabies.
Sure, there is a small minority of them that actually are willing to engage in political violence, but, over all, their impotent cocksuckers with small dicks. They talk a good talk, but when push comes to shove, they retreat to their bullshit echo chamber and whine about cancel culture.
That’s on an individual basis. On a systemic basis, things are lot different. The Republican Establishment, a whole, is now so radicalized and fascist that when the opportunity comes, they may very well start a civil war by pulling states out of the Union. But I struggle to see how, even with a debt ceiling crisis, how we would have some sort of MAGA New Right “revolution” where good old boys grabbed their guns and murdered people like me en masse as part of a popular uprising.
The cocksuckers just don’t have it in them.
So, as of now, my worst case scenario is we don’t raise the debt ceiling, the world economy crashes and the Republicans see huge gains in Congress in 2022. They turn around and impeach Biden and Harris and as we grow ever-closer to the beginning of the 2024 presidential election cycle, things really begin to grow more and more unstable.
To the point that by late 2024 – early 2025, we either slip peacefully into autocracy, or we bomb ourselves into oblivion by using WMD on ourselves as part of a Second American Civil War.
That, at least, is what I think may happen in the future as of right now.
I have long said that if The End comes, I’ll either be the first person to die on the first day or I’ll help bring back civilization. I made that joke for years, not thinking that maybe I might have to put it to the test in a deadly serious manner. Because, lulz, guess what — we’re in an existential crisis in the United States right now.
We’re careening towards a dark, dark future of either autocracy or civil war. At the moment, I still don’t know which one we’re going to end up with. But unless something Really Big happens and we have some sort of temporary military junta instead — we’re either going to slip peacefully into autocracy or bomb ourselves into the Stone Age.
If you don’t see this, you’re either willfully delusional, oblivious or in denial.
Thankfully, we have a few years to plot how freedom loving people are going to handle Steve Bannon’s tyrannical machinations. He’s doing it in the open and, honestly, he’s just playing a historical function — it could be anybody who was doing what he’s doing. He’s just the guy fate picked to have Trump’s ear.
One thing I have to stress is, a lot hinges on Trump running or not. If he doesn’t run, then we pick a peaceful slide into autocracy. And, for a lot of people who find autocracy appealing, once we live in an autocracy, they won’t even notice any difference. They can finally sleep soundly at night knowing the libs are, at last, owned for good and the Cancel Culture terror that “real” America has faced has ended.
I will survive.
It won’t be until much laters, when they, personally, have to deal with the downside of autocracy that they might grumble to those close to them that they regret being Good Germans. But by then, it will be way, way too late — especially for people like me.
But let’s say Trump does run in 2024. If he does, in my view, it won’t be so much that he runs as who he picks as his veep. His first decision will be, of course, does he co-op Ron DeSantis, or does he shiv him politically? If he shivs him politically, the case could be made that Gen. Mike Flynn would be exactly the type of wing nut that Trump would pick as his veep, because, well, Trump will be 80 or so in 2025 and who else to play America’s Putin, but a fucking traitor like Gen. Flynn?
Steve Bannon
And, yet, the real issue will be what a fucking catastrophe the 2024 presidential cycle is going to be. It’s not going to be a free and fair election because of fucking Steve Bannon and, as such, if we have Trump running around being an idiot, that, in itself, could be just the right amount of added pressure on our already rotting, fragile political system to cause us to buckle.
How do I plan to survive this?
Well, 2024 – 2025 is ways down the road and lot could change in my personal life by that point. But, in general, I’m probably follow the huge mass of humanity leave the South for the safer Northeastern states. I’m just going to follow them north to somewhere like NYC.
This is all very back-of-the-envelope, but I guess what I’m tell you, is either get a passport and leave the country or move to a state that fits your political views. Then hunkerdown and wait for the end of the United States as we know it.
Again — I don’t work for VOX, I don’t produce Tik-Toks with sharp received English vocal fry and I have no idea what you should do between now and 2024 to save yourself and the people you love.
Unfrozen Caveman Governor Ron DeSantis
You’re smart, you can figure it out.
But, for me, specifically, I’m on a hair trigger to start figuring out how, on a personal level, I can get out of where I live in Virginia. My sate is one of several that would likely collapse in the event of a severe Constitutional Crisis and my politics don’t fit the part of the state where I live.
And, yet, I won’t go anywhere unless something concrete has already happened. For instance, some sort of infrastructure designed to support domestic political refugees like me.
All I know is, I have a number of talents and when things grow existential, I might have an opportunity to shine.
It’s occured to me that I may be so wrapped up with my “hysterical doom shit” for what might happen in 2024-2025, that I’ve totally missed something: Steve Bannon’s plans to end free and fair elections in the United States will ready by 2022.
It could be that Bannon’s plan is to strike not in 2024, but in 2022.
I could see this making a lot of sense to Bannon because if he can pull it off and nothing of note happens because of it, then no matter how idiotic Trump is in 2024, our peaceful transition to autocracy will be a foregone conclusion.
This if that was his plan, it’s high risk, high reward.
It’s high risk because it would be something of a sucker punch, and, as such, it’s possible not even the corporate shills of Morning Joe (or whatever) would be able to calm the populace down should it become clear that the will of the people has been obstructed through extremely brazen corruption of the system.
I don’t know how exactly it would play out, but Bannon gets his way and on a systemic level there is wide spread nullification of Democrat wins because of “corruption” then…oh boy. That would really up the ante on political violence which would, in turn, be something the new MAGA GQP New Right Congress could use to go after the Biden / Harris Adminstration.
Or something.
The point is — we have to stop assuming it will be 2024-2025 that we have to worry about. The Fourth Turning might happen a lot sooner than we think.
I got a lot wrong about the COVID19 pandemic when COVID was first reported in Wuhan. The biggest thing I got wrong was how deadly it would be. Given the first reports of how much of a freakout the Chinese government was going through, I assumed we were in for The Stand levels of death ahead of us. I remember going to the grocery story and imagining what it would be like to rummage for food there in some sort of post-apocalyptic, COVID ravaged world.
Things turned out to be bad, but not that bad.
The worst we had was a run on toilet paper, of all things.
I went to the grocery store today and it wasn’t COVID I was worried about, it was a Second American Civil War.
I looked at the bountiful shelves of food and products and wondered if one day — probably at some point after January 2025 — I would walk into the same grocery story and there….just wouldn’t be anything there because the country had imploded into civil war.
This particular dark vision isn’t months away, but years away. And it’s only one of several potential options ahead of us. But for Trump running again, it’s easy to imagine my fears of political violence around January 2025 being way, way overblown.
All things being equal, if Trump isn’t the Republican nominee in 2024, it’s very easy to see us simply slipping peacefully into autocracy. The trains will continue to run on time, if you will.
But Trump definitely seems like he’s going to run again and, as such, the likelihood that he, through sheer idiotic incompetence will push the United States into civil war grows to at least 50 /50, if not more. And, what’s worse, the case could be made that it won’t even be the 2024 presidential cycle that does it, but the 2022 mid-term cycle.
I say this because Steve Bannon et al are aggressively working to corrupt the institutions associated with what we take for granted in the United States — the administration of free and fair elections. It’s at least possible that if it’s widely believed that the 2022 midterms were corrupt that a civil war could break out then, not as part of the 2024-2025 post-election day shenanigans that I fear.
Steve Bannon
And all of this is largely being planned in broad daylight. Bannon is organizing the staffing of election boards across the nation with insane, bonkers Big Lie advocates who might get a little bit too big for their britches in 2022 and push us into a civil war two years earlier than I currently expect.
Because, make no mistake, Bannon and his toadies are recalibrating from the failure of the January 6th Insurrection. It’s possible that they might concluded that if there’s no sexxy TV footage of people going nuts and storming the Capitol, that the talking heads of MSM will lulz things.
This seems dubious to me, but it’s that type of miscalculation that starts wars — civil or otherwise.
But there are too many known unknowns right now. Things could go a lot of different ways. I would suggest you start to think about 2022, and not 2024-2025 being the Fourth Turning, however.
For all their talk about “don’t mess with Texas,” it sure looks like Texas Republicans are letting Trump grab them by the pussy. Hell, maybe even do some butt stuff before it’s over with.
I once read a great book about how Huey Long (who was a far better autocrat than Trump has ever been) had near-dictatorial control over the politics of Louisiana during the Great Depression. In modern day Texas, it seems when Trump says “jump,” Texas Republicans are already jumping like they’re Trump’s bitch.
Here’s what I believe is going on — Texas has all the problems of the United States in micro. Texas is shifting blue because of changes in demographics and this is causing a great deal of existential insecurity on the part of Texas Republicans. In short — there is no such thing as a moderate Texas Republican now. The entire Texas Republican Party, on a systemic basis, has radicalized to the point that Trump has absolute power over them.
This is a prime example of how we need to start doing triage. Just write Texas off on a political level. There are a number of states across the Union that we just have to write off in the context of, well, politics. Texas is the biggest of them because we’ve reached an autocratic critical mass. Going into whatever happens in January 2025 — Texas is a lost cause.
It’s because of such bullshit that I think our best course of action is “strategic retreat” for the time being. Instead of wasting time, energy and cash attempting to do traditional politics with Republicans that are hell bent on establishing an autocratic white Christian ethno state, pull back and start to figure out long-term goals.
Chief among them, sad to say, would be: what should Blue State civil war war aims be? At this point that really sounds like some of the “hysterical doom shit” that I’ve been accused of peddling by “Mueller, She Wrote,” but I honestly don’t know what else to tell you.
The fact that ding-dong Trump has absolute political control over the Great State of Texas is a “not great, Bob” type of realization. We have to stop deluding ourselves as to what is about to happen. Steve Bannon is actively working to serve as “doula” to American tyranny and we’re letting him pull it off in broad daylight.
So — we pull back, use these last few years of peace and quiet to figure out our strengths. I hate to talk like this because, lulz, I sound like Steve Bannon. Maybe he can adopt me like Bill the Butcher.
I’ve come to believe that the very existence of American billionaires is a travesty and they should be taxed at such a rate that they no longer exist.
And I say this as someone who loves capitalism and thinks everyone should strive to make an honest living a best they can. It’s just, if your economy has billionaires, something is out of whack. Or, if you want to be even more nuanced about it — if your economy is producing billionaires that pay little or no taxes, something is seriously wrong. Wrong to the point that it’s immoral.
But this is simply an impossible idea in modern, peaceful America. But if there was a civil war, ahh, then you could probably pull it off. So, given a Second Civil War is the high risk, high reward option (with autocracy being the other) I would propose that if we have to have a civil war (which I hope we won’t) that we simply seize the assists of billionaires to fund the war effort.
And, yet, all of that is very fantastical. Any war — civil or otherwise — is not something anyone controls. And, let me be clear, there is a good chance that your side won’t win if there is a civil war. So — don’t start a civil war.
If the only other option we had wasn’t autocracy, but, say, a new Progressive Era, then that would be a peaceful way to soak the rich to the point that the U.S. Government could be solvent and we could go about our business without lurching from crisis to crisis.
But, obviously, Republicans like all that instability and they don’t want to fund the government unless it helps them get re-elected. To the point that they vote against popular laws, then take credit for them!
The point is — the United States is probably careening towards a massive political reset caused by a Second American Civil War. If we’re going to bomb ourselves into oblivion, we might as well start thinking about how we’re going to fund it.
I have a close, dear conservative relative, who, upon me making it clear that I felt Trump would run in 2024, engaged in debate nullification. “No, he won’t,” he said, giving no explanation other than just hope.
At the moment, it definitely seems as though Trump is not only running, but is acting as something of a “shadow president” among the faithful. He definitely seems to be the shadow Dear Leader of Texas, that’s for sure. He’s got a vice grip on the levers of power in Texas not seen since Huey Long in Louisiana during the Great Depression.
A lot — and I mean A LOT — could change between now and 2024, Trump will be about 80 then, after all, but at the moment it definitely seems as though Trump is running again. All signs point in that direction, at least. And, as I’ve said before — if Trump runs again we’re probably going to have a civil war.
A civil war that we would otherwise not have because DeSantis (or whomever) would have the basic intelligence necessary to allow the United States to drift peacefully into autocracy. Because, to be clear, autocracy is extremely popular in the United States right now. So much so, that we’re an autocracy without an autocrat.
As such, all you need is someone who isn’t a complete idiot as the Republican nominee in 2024 and the United States becomes an autocracy without a shot being fired. Gradually, the basics of any autocracy would be implemented and those with the means to get out, will. Over a generation, millions of Left leaning Americans could flee to nations like Australia, New Zealand, Great Britain and various European nations that would have them.
And that’s the best case scenario!
The worse case scenario is the most powerful nation in the world bombs itself into the stone age of its own volition because Trump is healthy enough to be the Republican nominee in 2024.
I can’t predict the future — I have no idea what may, or may not, happen. But all metrics point to the Fourth Turning happening in January 2025. We’re going to pick a path, the question is, which one?
You must be logged in to post a comment.