I have long said that the United States is currently an autocracy without an autocrat. The only thing stopping us from sliding peacefully into Hungary-like autocracy is, well, the fact that Democrats are in power.
Once that changes, that’s all she wrote. We become an autocracy.
This really hit home when I recently had one of my monthly political debates with a far more conservative relative — whom I love dearly. They’ve been completely radicalized because of the culture wars and a general sense of being put upon by the “woke cancel culture mob.”
They have an extensive permission structure built out in their minds for various reasons, but to put a fine point on it, they simply hate the vibes and are willing to vote for a fascist like Trump if that means white Christians can have some security in what they feel is a increasingly secular — and gay — America where not enough of those sweet, sweet white babies are being born.
I’m obviously joking and exaggerating, but that is, in a sense what is going on. White Christians don’t like the direction country is going so they latch on things like the price of groceries when what is really going on is they feel weirded out that some women aren’t ashamed of having abortions and gay people becoming more noticeable.
That’s the thing that is so interesting about what’s going on — I get the sense that a lot of white Christians don’t really have a problem with abortion or being gay, but they DO have a problem with having to talk about it. And, of course, they hate how they feel smug Twitter liberals look down on them.
All of this is the culmination of decades of macro trends all coming together at once — The Fourth Turning, if you will.
So here we are. Waiting around for autocracy to come to America. That’s the general trend at the moment — America is heading towards a white Christian ethnostate one way or another.
Of course, the great irony is that because Trump is the vessel for these macro trends that some pretty surreal, unprecended things MIGHT happen in late 2024, early 2025.
Maybe. I can’t predict the future. But the CONDITIONS are there for some pretty fucked up shit to happen. There is a non-zero chance that Trump gets elected and is so fucking bad at being the person responsible for transitioning us into autocracy that some sort of effort to depose him happens. And if that “Glorious Revolution” is successful, then the specter of a civil war is a real possibility because Red States will get mad and begin to leave the Union.
The 2024 election could very well give political historians a great deal more insight into Hitler’s democratic assumption of power in 1933. I say this because Trump is demonstrably a weak candidate at this point. And, barring some Black Swan event, he should be in line to lose to Biden in a pretty dramatic way.
But because of two issues, Trump could STILL become POTUS.
One is how fucked up our political system is. Even semi-functioning democracies like ours have a political ebb and flow to them on a macro basis and as such, Trump remains 60,000 votes in five swing states away from being POTUS, no matter what the fuck he does.
The man is above the laws of the state and of politics. He could eat someone. He could murder someone. He could marry Ivanka. He. Can. Do. Anything and STILL be 60,000 votes in five swing states away from being POTUS again.
The other issue is Trump’s supporters like the “idea” of Trump. They want a white Christian ethnostate where there those sweet, sweet white babies are plentiful and gay people know to be quiet and stay in the closet. Which makes you wonder if that’s what happened with Hitler as he rose to power. To this date, people continue to debate how inevitable it was that Hitler, specifically would become the leader of Germany.
And if Trump is re-elected this year, then the case could be made that the two men are a lot more similar than you might think. Both had a certain momentum to their rise to power and, as such, when the time came, History Found A Way to part the seas so they could take over their nations.
But we’re not there yet. It could go either way. On paper, at least, Trump should lose. But, then, on paper, there was no reason to believe Hitler would be named Chancellor in January 1933.
And yet he was.
As such, I think there is a 50 / 50 chance at the moment that Trump will become POTUS again and all hell will break loose. Some stunning events could happen starting in late 2024, early 2025. Things that we’ve simply never seen before in American political life.
Political opponents might be snatch off the street or flee the country. Thousands of wealthy, well educated people might vote with their feet and leave the country. The idea of “show your papers” might be the central issue of the day. A Constitutional Convention might be a very real possibility.
What’s more, it’s possible that Trump will be so bad at being a tyrant that the Poors in Blue States who don’t have the means to leave the country might actually pull of a General Strike the crashes the economy and forces the U.S. Military to do something about Trump. (Not that I’m advocating anything.)
Anyway, I’m waiting for some future historian to write “Hitler And Trump, a Dual Biography.”
If Trump wins the popular vote, he will also almost inevitably win the Electoral College, given how much it favors Republican candidates. If he wins this way, it will remove most discussion of whether his presidency is legitimate, when it clearly is based on the rules set forth by law and the Constitution. Certainly, his actions will be highly unpopular, but this outcome minimizes the antibodies raised against his administration. Certainly there will be protests, but as long as he doesn’t massacre protesters, it will be hard to convince anyone in Democratic leadership to reject the legitimacy of the federal government. Even most Democratic voters are likely to grudgingly admit the legitimacy of his second term, and this will dampen willingness to resist, even as Christian nationalism seeps in and democracy dies.
Perhaps the best modern example of a dictator riding out postelection protests is Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus, who arrested only protest leaders and just waited for the anger to subside. Trump would be wise to follow this model. Given Trump’s ties to Russia and respect for all things in the Russkiy Mir, he might be convinced to ignore his first instincts to crush protesters violently.
Trump will almost certainly do the things he promises regarding women’s rights, immigrants, LGBTQ people, the environment, and weaponizing the Department of Justice and FBI against Muslims, Dreamers, and anyone else against whom he’s promised vengeance. His government will absolutely spread this to all 50 states, but the perceived legitimacy of the regime, and the belief that “we’ll get ’em in 2028,” will prevent any real resistance. Republicans will pretend that free and fair elections in 2028 will absolutely happen, until they don’t. The government functionally becomes a competitive autocracy, much the same as Russia’s or Hungary’s. Elections are meaningless, other than serving as an anesthetic to public grievances.
For most people, life will be boring and tolerable. For the people targeted by the regime, it will not be easy to survive in the U.S. It will also lead to a wave of people (particularly trans individuals) attempting to flee to other countries. Corruption and graft will run rampant. The government will primarily serve the interests of Christian nationalists, and a tiered system of justice will become more and more apparent. Most people will decide that getting ahead in life (or keeping your head down) is better than asking pesky questions about where your transgender neighbor went. The result is a mix of the modern Hungarian political system, Russia-like apathy, and Nazi-esque zeal for creating a pure culture. As happened in all three of those countries, democracy dies with barely a whimper in this scenario.
By Shelt Garner @sheltgarner
It seems as though the author is really going out of their way to avoid addressing the obvious — if Trump wins re-election there is a really good chance we’re going to have a revolution / civil war.
I say this only because Trump is such a chaos agent that it’s difficult to imagine that he would be able to peacefully transition us into autocracy. He’s just too dumb and lazy — and impatient — and he’s far more likely to thrash around as tyrant than he is to allow history to work its course and have us drift peacefully into autocracy.
Any other Republican in Trump’s position would do exactly as propose in this scenario. But this is Trump we’re talking about — he’s a complete idiot.
Here are my own thoughts on this general scenario.
The issue is, the United States is at the moment a huge nation that has a strong democratic tradition and is pretty decentralized. Many — many — people have some pretty basic assumptions about their relationship to the government and if as we transition into an autocracy that were to change in a quick, dramatic fashion….holy shit.
It could be, however, that I’m over thinking things. The core group of people who would otherwise be the ideological tip of the spear against autocratic “Magdonia” will slip out of the country and move to the south of France where they will continue to the smug liberal celebrity podcast grift without blinking an eye. Those “Smartless” episodes aren’t going to produce themselves, you know.
So, at the moment, I think Trump wins re-election and that’s that — America begins its transition into an autocracy. And, in the end, it will be not Trump but his successor who is our “Augustus.”
In fact, I will be quite stunned if Blues can get their act together enough to really try to put a stake through the heart of the autocracy that is beginning to grow within the American political system. In short, we’re fucked.
This is a repeat of the 2016 election. It will highlight the ongoing weaknesses of the Electoral College, having put Republicans who lost the popular vote in office again for the third time in three out of the last seven elections, and three out of the four total times that a Republican has won in that span. But it is a win without cheating or deliberately breaking the system. This will blunt the resistance to Trump, along with the belief that the government is illegitimate. There will be protests, to be sure, but so long as Trump doesn’t choose to have protesters massacred, they will fizzle out as they did in 2017.
This outcome is the hardest to predict. Trump will absolutely let his team attempt to implement Christian nationalism across the U.S. and use every means available to achieve its vision of an America with no immigrants, no trans people, no Muslims, no abortion, no birth control, Russian-style “Don’t Say Gay laws,” license to discriminate based on religion, and all government education funding going to religious schools. Blue states will try to resist this and invoke the same states’ rights and “dual sovereignty” arguments as red staters in scenario one, but it’s unlikely they will succeed due to conservative bias on the Supreme Court and the Trump administration’s willingness to blow off court rulings it doesn’t like.
If Trump goes straight to a massacre via the Insurrection Act, civil war is on the table. It’s highly unlikely that Trump and his Christian nationalist allies will allow a “soft secession,” but it’s possible that the U.S. balkanizes along many of the same lines that happen in scenario one, if blue state resistance is sufficiently strong and the federal government is unwilling to take steps that lead to the civil war outcome. If Trump manages to bring blue states to heel via legal means, and resistance is insufficient to compel blue state governors to refuse to comply, then we end up with option four: fascist, theocratic, hereditary dictatorship.
By Shelt Garner @sheltgarner
This is where I really disagree with The New Republic. The author is making some assumptions that make no sense. Remember, only half the country wants a white Christian ethnostate. There are millions of people in the the most economic productive parts of the country who would balk at the idea of Trump ruling them as a Mad Red King.
As such, here’s my own prediction of how things might go down.
If Mad King Trump really tries to rule the Blue parts of the US a tyrant as it seems clear that he does, then…oh boy. It just makes absolutely no sense to me that Mad King Trump could do all the tyrannical things he plans to do without any SA-like stormtroopers.
That is the key element of Hitler’s consolidation of power.
All these people who are aghast that I think there might be some reaction to Trump going full tyrant are making a basic mistake — they are assuming that if Trump starts to corrupt the administration of law and of justice that Blues are just going to roll over and let it happen.
As I always say at this point — I’m not advocating anything. I just believe in freedom loving Americans to refuse to live as slaves under MAGA tyranny. That doesn’t mean that a lot — A LOT — of smug Twitter liberals won’t flee the country.
They will.
But simply invoking the Insurrection Act isn’t some sort of MAGA fascist magic pixie dust. Rather than having “optimism bias” by proposing all of this, I think I’m being rather radical, clear minded and realistic.
I’m proposing that when pushed into a corner by MAGA fascists that Americans, en mass might rise up against the MAGA Trump regime in a stunning, historic way.
Just broaching this type of radical proposal is rather ironic coming from me, someone who hates any form of violence at all. But even the Constitution enshrines the right of the populace to revolt if need be. It’s weird that that particular provision of our founding document hasn’t gotten more attention of late, given all the bullshit that’s going on at the moment.
I have no idea of the specific of such a dire situation, but you, gentle reader, have to remember that not only is Trump NOT Hitler, but he also doesn’t have the SA to do his bidding. AND, what’s more, the US is far bigger, far more decentralized than Germany in 1933 and it would take time for ding-dong to build out the infrastructure necessary to knock heads the way Hitler did in early 1933.
That would be a window of opportunity for Blue forces to fight back against Mad King Trump. If we are VERY LUCKY, we might be able to co-ordinate some sort of General Strike that might cause such chaos in the country that the U.S. Military might step in and depose Trump in some way.
I know, I know, that’s pretty crazy sounding at the moment, but stranger things and all that.
The key thing for me is Traditionalists. These are people who are MAGA-friendly and they just want to see brown children torn from their families and put back in cages. When things get personal for them — say, when Trump uses a weaponized ICE to snatch their (white) relatives (like me) off the street then all bets are off.
The moment Mad King Trump loses the Traditionalists, then the lock is ticking. If we’re absolutely lucky, then Trump is successfully impeached because of the pressure of a General Strike. If we’re NOT lucky, then there is some sort of “Glorious Revolution” that doesn’t involve much violence, but does result in Trump and his veep being forceably deposed from power.
Now, obviously, this is the point where you say, “But won’t Traditionalists just become modern day Good Germans?”
That is very possible. But, remember, as I mentioned, Trump won’t have any SA shock troops as he enters power again. He’s dealing with 335 million Americans, most of whom have a basic assumption that the rule of law will be fairly and equitably administered.
Without an SA to remind Traditionalists to keep their heads down, there is a chance that their principles might kick in and they might, if nothing else, kind of look the other way as the more radical elements of the center-Left take charge.
I don’t want any of this to happen. But this is kind of personal for me because I’m a loudmouth drunk crank who simply will not, can not shut the fuck up about what a fucking cocksucker Trump is.
I will never, ever fucking shut up.
I would rather die on my feet than live on my knees a slave.
I used to compare Trump to The Mule character in The Foundation books. But I don’t think that anymore. I think if you had done a back-of-the-envelope projection of America’s future in the late 1980s, you would come to the realization that someone like Trump was going to pop out of the political woodwork.
The reason is — angry white conservative Christians feel aggrieved and put upon to the point that they see someone like Trump as an avatar for all their fears about changing America. And it all really boils down to a lack of those sweet, sweet white babies that such people want so bad — even though they don’t give a shit what happens to them once they’re born.
And, what’s more, Trump isn’t a Great Man of history. He’s not Hitler. He’s just too lazy and dumb to be such a person. He doesn’t bend history to his will, he just rides it to its logical conclusion. As such, he may very well force the issue one way or another in late 2024, early 2025.
It could be that if he becomes POTUS again, he will thrash around in such a ham-handed, tyrannical way that he will force Americans to make a decision — are we prepared to live in an autocratic state or not? If Trump was out of the picture, I think the US would simply gradually become a MAGA-themed autocracy because a Republican President — ANY Republican President other than Trump — would be able to transition us into such a state without people taking off their Apple Vision Pros.
But ding-dong Trump is so dumb and lazy that he might force Traditionalists to make a decision if, say, their vocal center-Left relative is snatched off the street for refusing to shut up about what a cocksucker Tyrant Trump is.
Anyway. What do I know. I can’t predict the future. But I am worried.
Given how we’re careening towards what seems like the inevitable fate of Trump winning a second term, we have to start gaming out what the fuck we’re going to do. We can’t just put all our chips in the “vote harder” gambit and assume that will be enough.
As of now, early February 2024, it seems as though Trump is going to win and attempt to establish some sort of white Christian ethnostate the moment he’s in office. As such, we have to game out what the fuck we’re going to do.
A lot depends on Traditionalists. If Trump goes full tyrant and traditionalist conservatives just keep their head down and become good Germans then, well, we’re totally and completely fucked.
But if they actually show some of that principle that they’re so well known for, then, well, we’re going to the show. While they may not participate in any sort of Direct Action against Trump if he goes full tyrant, they MIGHT look the other way if there was a massive General or Women’s Strike specifically designed to cripple the government so Trump is deposed.
I have my doubts. No matter what, late 2024, early 2025 could be one of the most historic eras in America history.
I just refuse to believe that our only option at this point is to “vote harder.” Everything I’ve read about what happened in Germany indicates there is no historical 1-to-1 between Germany 1933 and America 2025. And it’s not just beyond the obvious, “there’s never a 1-to-1” between historical events.
The reasons why about 38% of the electorate wants a white Christian ethnostate instead of a democracy are just really, really different from why the Nazis — barely — took power in January 1933. Where is the MAGA SA to knock the heads of Blues who don’t want to abide by fascism? The list goes on.
The issue for me is that too many people think that if Trump comes to power again and he goes full tyrant on us that all the Blues in the USA will simply shrug let him consolidate power and fucking snatch people off the street because he doesn’t like them.
These people are being extremely short sighed and simplistic. Trump has already caused some pretty unprecedented things to happen, there may come a point where his corruption of the administration of the leavers of power grows so bad that, on principle, the populace might rise up and depose him. (I’m not advocating anything, just musing. It really grates on my nerves when people refuse to contemplate how we might combat MAGA autocracy if Trump becomes POTUS again.)
Anyway, in general, we’re fucked going forward. There is a chance that Trump will get re-elected and that will be that. We’ll become a white Christian ethnostate and I’ll die in a Trump-branded ICE concentration camp because I won’t shut the fuck up about how I think Trump is a fucking cocksucker.
I’m still smarting over some fucking Twitter liberal putting me on blast for simply believing that it won’t be the of the story if Trump wins re-election in the fall. This nattering nabob of negativism seems to think that our only choice is to “vote harder” and it’s a foregone conclusion that we’ll turn into German 1933 the moment Trump has power again.
I find this extremely aggravating. I don’t think it’s “optimistic” to suggest that SOME SORT of severe reaction will happen within Blue parts of the USA if Trump goes full tyrant. Seems pretty dark to me. Now, obviously, if Trump goes full tyrant, there’s a chance that about 1 million smug Twitter liberals will leave the country.
But that still leaves a shit ton of very angry Blues spread across the third largest nation by geography and population. I don’t want to have to depose the POTUS in a revolution then have to worry about a civil war when Red States leave the Union in protest.
That would not be fun or cool or “optimistic.”
Anyway. I am not prepared to give up if Trump wins. For me, it won’t be the end of the story, it will be a new beginning in which we will all be tested and forced to figure out what we will risk our lives and scared honor IN THE REAL WORLD to protect.
A number of things are coming together at the same time to destabilize the United States. Everything from negative polarization to income inequality is eating away at the very fabric of the greatest nation in world history.
I just don’t know if we’re going to make it through the 2024 presidential silly season.
There is every reason to believe we will, but even if we do, we could very well peacefully slide into autocracy under a second Trump Administration. They key thing for me is the Republican Party wants an autocratic white Christian ethnostate sooooo fucking bad that, in a sense, Trump is all that stands in the way of the getting their goal.
Not because he’ll lose, but because if he wins, he could very well rile everyone up so much in the ham-handed manner in which he tries to establish that autocratic white Christian ethnostate that there’s a “Glorious Revolution” by Blues and he’s deposed — not that I’m advocating anything!
Anyway. A lot is going wrong in the US right now. But for my worst fears to come true — that the US would collapse into revolution and / or civil war — a lot more shit would have to go wrong.
Hopefully, at a minimum, we’ll just peacefully turn into an autocracy and I’ll figure out some way to leave the country.
For health reasons, I’ve decided to stop drinking full stop immediately. It seems this is example of a ping from my successful future — something is going to happen to make me a success just as I’m both too old to party with 24-year-olds AND I can’t even drink.
So, if that’s not a sign that I’m going to break out with my DJ (novel) money soon enough, I don’t know what is. I won’t be able to get wasted and go home with some smoking hot babe.
Any dating with be done sober and with women who are too old to have babies. Sigh.
It’s all very deep. I have to accept that I’m going to be 20 to 30 years too old to have the type of success I feel I should have. Any “success” I have will be that of a very late bloomer who is frantically doing everything in his power to cram in as many colorful and cool things into the twilight of his life.
It’s going to both suck and be great (if surreal.)
So, that fits the way my life has been to date so obviously it’s going to happen. Barring my becoming a Blue Revolution leader in late 2024, early 2025, even if I stick the landing with my novel, I’m not going to be published author until I’m in my mid-50s.
As such, I will have a very limited amount of time to do all the cool shit I feel I deserve to do. And, even then, it won’t be in the way I always dream it would be.
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