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.
If Biden wins the election but Republicans maintain control of the House of Representatives, it is very likely that Speaker Mike Johnson will refuse to certify the election, invoking the Twelfth Amendment to decide the election. This lets the House of Representatives—the one elected in November—determine the outcome, and each state gets one vote. That vote is decided by which party controls the majority of House seats elected by that state. Using that method, Republicans are virtually guaranteed to have 26 votes, and Trump becomes president. The only thing that might stop this is a few moderate Republicans in the House being unwilling to go along with such a plan, but most of them have already left. Remember: Two-thirds of Republicans in the House refused to vote to certify the election in 2020.
It’s also unlikely that the Supreme Court (which is already seen as illegitimate by a large percentage of the public after the shenanigans Republicans used to get a 6–3 majority, and after the Dobbs decision) will overturn this scheme, since it technically follows the rules. As a result, most people in blue states are likely to reject the legitimacy of the (gerrymandered) House Republican majority, the president, and the Supreme Court. Governors in blue states will be under intense pressure from their constituents, particularly those who fear for their lives if Trump takes power again, to reject the legitimacy of a Trump administration, much less give in to its extreme agenda.
This outcome results in the most intense “antibodies” being generated at the fastest rate possible. The immune system generates antibodies in response to a perceived viral or bacterial threat, and the greater the threat it perceives, the more vigorous the response is. So it is with political resistance: The more people perceive a second Trump administration to be an existential threat to their lives, the more they will resist.
Trump’s response will likely be to invoke the Insurrection Act and put down any resistance to his administration with the military. If this results in fatalities and mass detentions, it will probably only exacerbate the situation, leading to many people on both the left and right concluding that violence is the only viable option for change, resistance, or as a response to resistance. Right-wing elements have long been itching to use violence to put “those people” in their place. But the missing ingredient for a civil war is people on the left concluding that the only possible way to preserve themselves is violence. The outcome tilts toward the civil war scenario more than any of the other election outcomes.
By Shelt garner @sheltgarner I clearly think that civil war is a lot more possible than the author of these scenarios. In fact, I think it’s not civil war we have to worry about so much as a revolution then a civil war. If Trump wins and goes full tyrant on us, all bets are off. Trump is such a unique figure in American political history that he could, unto himself, cause a revolution and then a civil war.
If he starts to round up 20 million people and use the National Guard of Red States in Blue States….oh boy. That is a recipe for disaster. If people in Blue States begin to feel like they’re being lorded over by Trump and MAGA like he’s some sort of fucking Mad Red King his actions could prompt what would otherwise be impossible – a successful Blue General Strike.
If that happened and the U.S. Military somehow, magically decided to depose Trump and his Veep, then that, unto itself, would cause a civil war because Red States would then leave the Union in protest.
It all sounds very hysterical event to me, but, lulz, who knows.
This is the best-case scenario for Democrats, and probably the country, and it looks like a repeat of 2020. Trump and Republicans will allege fraud and rigged elections. They’ll try to block certification at the county, state, and federal levels, resulting in court cases that generally go nowhere. Trump followers will be incited to violence, which is likely to be more successfully put down than January 6, 2021 (which had the element of surprise and a supportive president). Even if the Senate is controlled by Republicans, there are still enough institutionalists who will vote to certify when Congress meets in joint session on January 6, 2025, to certify the results. Minority Leader Mike Johnson may try to stop the incoming Democratic majority from being seated on January 3, but he probably won’t be able to because the Constitution doesn’t allow for him to refuse to do that.
Thus, after chaos that looks a lot like 2020 (only more intense, widespread, and gaining more support from state-level Republicans), Biden gets sworn in on January 20, 2025, to govern a nation where over half the states don’t accept his legitimacy. Red states will flout federal authority at every turn, daring a crackdown, much as Texas has done over Eagle Pass and immigration. The Supreme Court won’t do much to thwart Christian nationalists, who are increasingly calling for “dual sovereignty” and implementation of “a Scripture-based system of government whereby Christ-ordained ‘civil magistrates’ exercise authority over the American public.” Even if the Supreme Court rules against states that resist the federal government, they are likely to dare the Biden administration to actually enforce those rulings. Right-wing violence, like that described by Stephen Marche and Barbara F. Walter, is likely. The result is a United States that is one country in name only.
By Shelt Garner @sheltgarner This is a pretty good scenario. But I have long proposed that even under this “rosy” scenario, there could be a civil war because, well, Trump and MAGA could very well just steal the election even if Biden wins.
Here is my own scenario, similar to the one above that I wrote some time ago.
There’s a real chance that our transition from liberal democracy to autocracy won’t be as smooth as I think — there could be a civil war. One side — or the other — won’t accept the results of the election and the country will finally buckle. All the nightmare scenarios that I came up with in 2020-2021, will just happen in 2024-2025.
If what happened in 2020 is any indication, the first sign that we would have that something was amiss would be on the local level. Instead of people who simply do their job as Americans and do the rather perfunctory duty of certifying the win of A Democrat, this doesn’t happen. In crucial voting districts all across swing states, Bannon’s “spiritual shock troops” either refuse to certify the win of A Democrat, or they go so far as to YOLO things and switch the win to Trump.
As this happens, the tension in United States escalates day by day. The very rallying cry of MAGA in 2020 — “Stop The Steal” will be adopted by the center-Left when it becomes clear that the MAGA New Right is hell bent on brazenly stealing the 2024 election in broad daylight.
But remember, the center-Left has a very different personality than the MAGA New Right. The center-Left, for all it’s problems with “cancel culture” and being “woke” is still actually connected to reality. So, there would be a struggle between the natural inclination of centrist Liberals to let the “process work” and Leftists who would want to burn everything to the ground given how corrupted everything had become.
All of this turmoil on the local level would find elections in crucial states thrown into the political realm where MAGA state legislatures and Secretary’s of State would begin to actively ensure that A Democrat is prevented from winning. Every day between Election Day 2024 and Certification Day 2025 things would grow more and more unstable in the United States as it became clear that Bannon’s long-planned “administrative coup” was actually going to work.
There would be mass confusion. Lots of lawsuits
And, remember, if Trump is involved, as all of this is going on, he would do everything in his personal power to rile up both sides. If his ongoing, progressive cognitive decline has gotten bad enough, he might even go transactional.
It would be around this point that I could see Blue governors begin to make serious plans to leave the Union. A lot would depend on what California was willing to do. But it would definitely make sense that California would be the first state to call a Secessionist Convention in preparation of leaving the Union if the 2024 election is, in fact, stolen.
But by some point between Thanksgiving and Christmas, you could see some sort of summit of Blue Governors where they debate their plans to leave the Union if the very thing that the MAGA New Right wants — to turn the United States into an autocracy — actually happens.
And as we approached Certification Day in January 2025, the last step in the crisis would happen. If you thought Certification Day 2021 was bad, just wait until Republicans are actively going over and above what they did then when it rolls around in 2025. So, the system will have been corrupted at both the local and state level. And then if that doesn’t work, Republicans will again try to throw the election into the House and Senate to buy time, if nothing else.
So, let me be clear — anyone who thinks we’re going to have some sort of MAGA New Right revolution a la The Turner Diaries — is a fool. Any Second American Civil War we have is probably going to be started by Blue States leaving the Union out of disgust that the fix is in.
Therefore, by the time Certification Day 2025 rolls around, it could very well be a foregone conclusion that we’re going to have a pretty organized civil war. Republicans have no shame and don’t apparently care about the consequences of their actions, so, lulz, we could find ourselves in the absolute worst of worlds because not only are states actively thinking about leaving the Union around this time, but the whole process of figuring out who is POTUS will be languishing in Congress. Republicans, because they are politically blood thirsty and will cheat, will win the power struggle, but there’s a chance states will begin leaving the Union.
It won’t be deranged, individual MAGA New Right blowing stuff up in some sort of rearguard action. It’s going to be a Blue Nation verses a Red Nation. A lot of the same things that happened in the First American Civil War will happen in the second. The U.S. Military will implode as people from Blue States leave it to establish a new Blue State military.
But one thing we have to expect in late 2024 to early 2025 is a mass migration of people across the country as people no longer feel safe living in an area of the country that doesn’t fit their politics. It could be rather frightening.
If it were, God forbid, to happen, I would guess that a Second American Civil War will begin between Certification Day 2025 and Inauguration Day 2025. In other words, as Trump is being sworn in, mass chaos will have erupted across the United States.
Once the hollowed out American military turns it attention to the Blue rebellion at the behest of Trump, it won’t be too long before WMD are sized and used by both sides. Not only would America bomb itself into oblivion with its eyes wide open, but it will be done in the context of WW3 definitely breaking out across the globe because the US will be too busy imploding to ensure the continuation of the post WW2 global order.
How’s that for a New World Order.
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.
Or, put another way, we’re fucked. We’re totally, completely fucked one way or another. Either we turn into an autocracy or Red and Blue begin to murder each other in cold political blood. The usual outcome of all this bullshit that we have come to expect — simply muddling along until we come to some solution one way or another — is not longer a valid option.
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