Ugh. Steve Bannon is a fascist bad penny. I see elements of my own personality in his, even if we’re on the exact opposite ends of the political continuum. He fancies himself some sort of Big Thinker or “Trump’s Brain,” but, in the end, he’s just a bunch of fucking hot air.
Steve Bannon But he is dangerous, to an extent, because there is a lot — A LOT — of slack in the system for Trump should he decide to go full tyrant. The issue is, that I think even Bannon might be taken aback at how tyrannical Trump can become at his behest before there are any consequences.
But there will be consequences if Trump takes Bannon’s rhetorical advice and goes full tyrant. (I AM NOT ADVOCATING ANYTHING.) At the moment, at least MAGA doesn’t have a paramilitary arm like the Nazi SA. Two, the United States is a huge nation with a diverse population that has the self-perception of being a “free country.” If Bannon gets his way and, I don’t know, a weaponized ICE starts to snatch Trump opponents — like me! — off the streets…that might cause even Traditionalists who otherwise love Trump to sit up and take notice.
Or not. What do I know. It could be that Trump really can go full tyrant and no one will care. There might be some protests here and there, but it will be too late because the press will be so scared by Tyrant Trump that they won’t report them taking place.
All I know is — buckle up. On a macro basis, the times they are (about) to change.
Shelt Garner @sheltgarner I’m on one of my regular writer’s retreats and I went to a nearby bar for dinner. The bartender was very vocal about everything he thought was wrong with America.
It soon became obvious to me that in 2016, he was the guy who supported Trump and Bernie Sanders equally. He was just angry in general about “the Deep State” and felt everything would be fixed with term limits and tort reform.
Once I got over my shock at what I was encountering, I decided to use him as an “in” to the the angry mob that elected Trump president in 2016. I’ve been toying with the idea of if I was Steve Bannon, who would I pick at the next Trump. The only person I can think of at the moment is Chris Pratt. He’s personable, conservative (for Hollywood) and would be easy to use as the type of Trump-like empty vessel that Bannon loves.
Now, there are a few problems.
The biggest problem is much of the nation is once bitten twice shy when it comes to that type of candidate. So, it makes sense that that gambit is no longer viable. From a political operative perspective, you probably need to spend your energy on Pompeo, or Hawley or Cotton or DeSantis. You just can’t get away with running a Trump-like dingus again.
Anyway, the fact that I actually talked to a guy who in April 2016 would have been equally interested in Trump and Bernie kind of blows my mind. All I know is, he fit the bill of that type of mythical voter.
Apparently, Steve Bannon’s favorite book is The Fourth Turning, so some time ago I bought it to figure out if I could understand what made that motherfucker tick.
What I’ve read of it so far is quite good and — here’s the spooky thing — all the ranting I’ve been doing of late about how we’re fucked in about 2024-2025 is also found in The Fourth Turning. In fact, I keep reading the book and getting chills at how accurate I believe their predictions are relative to what I’ve come to assume to be true about our fate.
They aren’t perfect — the book was written in the 1990s — so they don’t get what’s going on right now perfectly right. I think the thing that happened that they could have have predicted is the election of a black president in 2008. They said that things would get fucked up about 2005. So I guess they weren’t too far off. But I’m a big believer in my own form of “psychohistory” in the sense that I think about macro trends a lot and it’s just that Obama was kind of a Great Man who sped up some problems in the country because his election scared the shit out of racists.
So here we are.
When the United States either buckles into civil war or becomes an autocratic “managed democracy” like they have in Russia it’s not going to be pretty. Either way, the entire world order will grow so destabilized that there might be a number of limited nuclear exchanges. If the United States isn’t there to keep India and Pakistan from blowing themselves up, for instance, that’s maybe 300 million dead right there (at least.) Then there’s China and Taiwan. The list goes on.
And, right now at least, our decent into either civil war or autocracy seems rather implacable. There’s nothing we can do to stop it. We can delay it, like we did in 2020 because of the pandemic and Trump being a complete fucking lazy idiot, but we can’t stop it. What The Fourth Turning does it give people like me some sort of underlining historical explanation for why we think what we think.
But let me be clear — there’s no reveled truth. No fate but what we make, as they say. Yet there are just too many things that are coming to a head for, essentially, WW3 not to happen in about four years. Too many Americans are tired of Empire and want to “bring the boys home” so we can become Fortress America and become a white Christian ethno state.
As I said, the issue is, how peaceful is our transition from liberal democracy into an autocracy? That’s pretty much the crux of our fate at this point from a prediction standpoint. There are specific things I simply can’t game out at this point. A lot will be decided which of the half dozen would-be autocrats wins the Republican nomination in 2024 and how popular they are with people who didn’t vote for Trump in 2020 or 2016.
I have a feeling the next autocrat is going to be a lot smoother and the siren call of autocracy will be far to strong in the end. I keep encountering too many people who are obviously autocrat-friendly who didn’t support Trump personally but obviously want some sort of autocratic rule.
In the end, of course, I’ll just be a minority of one if need be. I will never support any fucking autocracy. That’s never going to change, regardless of the year.
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