One theory floating around Twitter is Putin is about to engage in a massive, risky war against Ukraine because he wants to stop the country from joining NATO.
I struggle to imagine this being true, for a lot of reasons.
The biggest is — if all Putin wants to do is ensure that Ukraine doesn’t join NATO, all he has to do is a modest smash-and-grab operation connecting Donbass to Odessa. Have enough of a lingering “frozen conflict” endgame to it that NATO just doesn’t want to risk letting Ukraine join.
And all of the other metrics presented to me can be swatted away. Putin is old, they say. And I say, so what. Putin is an autocrat and all autocrats think they’re going to live forever. The list goes on.
You can’t escape some cold hard facts. It’s sexy to think of a big war between Ukraine and Russia, but you can’t escape how small Russia’s economy is. You can’t escape the stress such a huge, potentially long-term, war against Ukraine that has a fair sized population would have on Russia’s economy and overall stability.
The point is — what metrics is Putin using that would cause him to believe a general war against Ukraine would be a good idea? What the hell is he thinking? Because it would make a lot more sense if this was all just a very expensive bit of saber rattling meant to get a face-to-face sit down IRL with Biden.
And he can do that because he’s an autocrat. So, for the time being, that’s what I think is happening. When something changes, I’ll revise my assessment.
This is really bonkers. But it’s entertaining to mull this possibility, so here we go. We all know how much Trump loves to suck Putin’s cock, so it would make a lot of sense if those two guys continue to chat like school girls. And we know that Trump never met a quid pro quo that he didn’t like.
So, what if Putin told Trump — hey, it’s not the House flipping you have to slow walk January 6th things in the courts to, it’s a point this December.
Trump wouldn’t know when, exactly, but he would know that the eyes of the world would turn rather abruptly to Ukraine soon. So much so, that we would wake up in six months and look at each other, shocked that Congress’ January 6th investigation has mysteriously faded into nothingness.
Now, obviously, this kooky idea falls part after this because the Republican Party could very well collapse into two waring camps if Putin misjudges the willingness of Ukrainians to fight for their nation. The longer the war lasts, the more Putin-loving Trump will begin to tear away from the rest of the Republican Party.
But Trump, obviously, doesn’t have the mental ability to do that second and third level political thinking — he’s more of a grunt kind of guy –so, it’s possible this informal quid pro quo might happen.
Or not. I have no proof and it sounds kind of bonkers even to me.
I note that The Washington Post is reporting that evidence suggests that Russia may attack Ukraine early next year with 175,000 troops.
So, if there is any discussion between TrumpWorld and Putin that would mean the there are any number of other, less nefarious explanations for why they’re slow walking everything — that’s just Trump people do. The whole Russia thing could very well be happening totally independent of what’s going on in the States with Trump and January 6th.
But the war starts early, like, say between now and Dec. 16, then, that would be really spook, because December 16th is the date TrumpWorld lawyer Jeff Clark pushed his Congressional testimony to.
Putin is up to something curious around Ukraine. The one thing I’ve noticed lately is someone has blocked the troop movement Websites that a lot of armature observers of this developing situation have been using to date. Which definitely seems to suggest that Putin wants as much leeway to strike when and where of his own choosing.
At this point I would like to point out that Stalin was a paranoid motherfucker with a lot of foresight — almost all of the capitals of the Soviet Republics were originally placed in geographic locations that are very close to the border of a sister of republic. I’m assuming his thinking was by doing so, if one of the two was in rebellion, the other one could at least be near the capital of the rebellious Republic.
So, if you look at the map of Belarus, the only thing that separates its border to in the south to Ukraine’s capital of Kiev is a large, long lake. So, if there was some sort of crazy huge war between Russia and Belarus against Ukraine, it’s easy to imagine a one two punch pincer movement by Belarus and Russia to strike Kiev.
If Putin really is preparing a open, general war against Ukraine it’s going to come a huge fucking shock to Americans. And, it has to be noted that in some ways a major regional war in Europe would help Trump a great deal and in another way would hurt him.
It would help Trump for the basic reason that it would crowd out all other news in the domestic news echo chamber to the point that a lot of his defeats about the investigation into January 6th could be pushed off the front page. And, the argument could be made that in the minds of most Republicans the fact that Putin waited until AFTER Trump was president to attack Ukraine would “prove’ that the TrumpRussia imbroglio was a “hoax.”
And, yet, such a war could also fuck Trump over for two reasons. One reason would that for a lot of the smarter center-Left thought leaders like those at Crooked Media and Deep State Radio, the logic of Putin waiting until AFTER Trump was in office to invade would be obvious — why invade Ukraine while your stooge is in office and devastate him politically, when you can just be patient and wait until he’s out of office and do the same thing?
The other reason why a major war between Russia and Ukraine could seriously hurt Trump is if there was a long term regional war between Ukraine and Russia then there would come a point where Trump’s absolute fidelity to Putin would bump up against the Republican’s historical hostility to Russians. And, that, might be the setup for a massive civil war between MAGA and the Republican Establishment to the point that Trump’s Patriot Party eats the Republican Party or the center-Right is simply hobbled for a few presidential cycles until they get their shit together.
In fact, sad to say, that’s one of the ways we could both avoid autocracy and civil war in the United States because if the Republican Party is too busy strangling itself, it can’t very well kill American democracy or start a civil war, now can it?
The above YouTube video pretty much lays out what’s going on with Ukraine and Russia right now. The only difference in opinion between his hot take and mine is he seems to assume a war is a lot more likely than I do. I’m still on the seeing’s believing fence. I’ve been through this too many times to think Putin is going to risk it all.
But I do agree that the conditions are right for a major or “open” war to happen in Ukraine at any moment. And I agree with him that what Putin’s war aims end up being will depend a lot on the initial reaction of Ukrainian forces. If they do really well, then Russia will back off. If Ukrainians do really poorly, then Russians might make a drive for Kiev.
Yet, as I keep saying, if Putin is too successfully, he’s going to open Pandora’s box. If the central Ukrainian government collapses, there is no telling where things could go. If Ukraine has a fascist government hell bent on taking back all the territory lost to the Russians, then that’s a whole different ball game.
We’re not there yet. A lot would have to go wrong for everyone. I’m still mulling the situation. I haven’t made up my mind yet as to what is going to happen.
First, let me be clear, I’m only even continuing to talk about this because I’m smarting over being so wrong over 2020. It seemed a political absolute in the fall of 2019 that Trump was going to win re-election through hook or through crook. When he didn’t I was in shock and struggled to figure out how I could have possibly gotten things so wrong.
But I’m being too hard on myself — no one could have predicted that a combination of Trump being a lazy idiot, the COVID19 pandemic and Biden being a lucky, good candidate would happen all in quick succession.
As such, I scramble for what could make me look like a fool again. What could possibly stop Trump and MAGA from wining in 2022 and 2024 outright because autocracy is popular? Well, it seems as though at the moment, Trump’s love of Russia might be it.
It could be that both Putin miscalculates and Trump miscalculates and not only does any war between Russia and Ukraine escalate, but the war lingers and captures the imagination of American public such that two factions would be established.
Trump’s pro-Russia MAGA faction and everyone else.
But a LOT would have to go wrong for both Trump and Putin for things to get that bad. More likely, everything will be very muddled and, lulz, the United States will become an autocracy as predicted on schedule.
I’ve grown fascinated with the dynamic at work now between Putin, Ukraine and Trump. The reason is — ostensibly, it would make no sense for Putin to wait until AFTER Trump was out of office to invade Ukraine in a big way. In fact, one might say that leans into the Republican narrative Trump’s love of Russia is just a big “hoax” given this fact.
Then Trump opened his big mouth about where he stands on Ukraine and it all made a lot more sense to me.
Trump being in office in the United States — unless it was after a Constitutional Convention that made him a true autocrat — babbling about how great Putin was in the middle of a war between Ukraine and Russia would prove that the TrumpRussia scandal was real. That it wasn’t a hoax.
What’s more, Putin also has to deal with the possibility that there would be a Republican Civil War between a pro-Trump, pro-Russia faction and a anti-Russia faction. This, in turn, would potentially be a political bodyblow to the Russia-loving MAGA movement for at least an election cycle.
As such, it would make a lot of sense for Putin — if he’s going to do it — to make his move on Ukraine sooner rather than later. The reason — if Putin is going to attack Ukraine, it may be doing so under the assumption that he’s going to do something of a smash and grab operation.
The whole war would be so brief that by the time the 2022 and 2024 American elections rolled around, it would be like the Russo-Ukrainian Winter War was a long, long time ago.
But, as of the moment, it appears as though Putin may not even attack Ukraine in the first place. We’ll see.
The more I think about it, the more I realize that Putin’s relationship to Trump is not nearly as easy to figure out as any objective observer might want. We know that Putin wanted Trump to win in 2016. And we know that Putin probably early on made a political calculation that it would be dumb to invade, say, Ukraine in Trump’s first term given what a suck up Trump would be to Russia if it happened.
And, yet, when we turn to the present day, we encounter a conundrum.
It’s very possible that by definition, if Putin invades Ukraine in some sort of “general war” that he would severely damage the Republican Party by splitting it into the Pro-Russia MAGA faction and the more traditional anti-Russian faction. Depending on how bloody the war became, you could even see Trump finally getting a worthy primary opponent, one who would run specifically on being tough on the Russians who were destroying eastern Ukraine.
Which makes one wonder — why?
Why risk destroying the political career of one of the biggest geopolitical patsies in modern history when you could just sit back, wait for Trump to win re-election in 2024, get his Constitutional Convention and THEN strike Ukraine. Putin is a very patient man, he could very well do that and get everything he ever wanted with Ukraine and more.
So, there are a lot of contradictions in Putin and Trump’s relationship that don’t make any sense because we don’t know all that’s going on. But the case could be made, I guess, that something like this is going on — Trump was a combination Manchurian Candidate, Manhattan Project and very, very lucky asymmetrical political attack against the United States.
Even though Trump was a Russian toady and the most powerful man in the world in the palm of Putin’s hand for four years, now that he’s out of office, Putin sees a big chunk of Eastern Ukraine being something he craves so much that he’s willing to destroy the Operation Trump to obtain it.
Putin has made the geopolitical decision to strike now, even though doing so would be a make or break event for the Republican Party for at least one political cycle. And, yet, maybe I’m not giving Putin enough credit.
Maybe Putin is going into his winter war against Ukraine knowing that he intends to wrap it up by spring. If that’s the case, then by fall 2022, everything will be back to where it was. Trump will be the most powerful man in the Republican Party and Putin’s toady.
Meanwhile, Putin will control a huge swath of Ukraine.
But, at the same time, Putin is potentially making a pretty huge miscalculation. If Russia’s involvement in Ukraine lingers long enough to really catch the attention of the domestic American imagination then….things could get interesting for all involved.
When it came to predicting the ultimate effects of COVI19, I did a fairly good job of predicting things. Where I made the biggest mistake was on how severe I thought it would be. Given how the Chinese government freaked the fuck out when it was first reported, I assumed it was far more deadly than it ultimately turned out to be.
Anyway.
Let’s look at why, specifically, I think we have three options — autocracy, civil war or military junta — before us between now and January, 2025.
The United States is far less politically stable than we appear. The MAGA New Right talks openly about how liberals are “forcing” them to become radical fascists. They talk in sometimes not-so-vague terms about how soon enough they’re going to embrace fascism once and for all and it will be all liberals’ fault.
When you begin to accept that the Republican Party is now nothing more than a modern version of Slave Power that will stop at nothing to protect its interests, then, lulz, you have a recipe for disaster on your hands. The Republican Party has officially embraced autocracy and minority rule as its path to perpetual power from here on out.
What did you do to defend democracy, daddy?
What bothers me the most about Twitter liberals is they continue to frame the behavior of notable MAGA New Right elected as if we had a functioning liberal democracy. This, sadly, is not the case. The very thuggish, autocratic things that people like Ron DeSantis advocate are the very things that make them popular with the anti-democratic Trumplandia base.
Now, the ironic thing about all of this is Trump is such an idiot moron that he could very well, simply by existing be the thing that prevents us from peacefully transitioning into an autocracy in all but name. He’s so popular — and yet such a fucking idiot — that what should otherwise be a very easy political transition to autocracy on America’s part may turn into one of the other two options I keep thinking about: civil war or military junta.
The United States has been so stable for so long that it’s difficult to wrap one’s mind around the idea that there might be a civil war here. A lot of people simply can’t grok it as a possibly at all. And, yet, according to all the metrics I keep in my mind about such things a civil war is definitely among the three options we face.
And now, we come to the great irony of all of this — the very same macro trends that could lead us to civil war, autocracy or a military junta — could very well simply give the MAGA New Right everything it wants without destroying our democracy.
For the moment, the center-Left is divided, fractious and ineffectual. America has been drifting towards a more conservative political center for about 50 years now. There’s every reason to believe that the Republican Party — even with the browning of America — could dominate American politics within the context of American political tradition for at least another generation if not more.
But they’re fucking greedy and want an autocracy because they lost the culture wars and they want to “own” the libs once and for all.
And, yet, once the MAGA New Right make shit existential for Leftist soyboys, they could very well have a lot more kick in them than expected. It’s human nature. Let me repeat that: IT’S FUCKING HUMAN NATURE.
The MAGA New Right Red States could very well make the same mistake about the Blue States that the Axis Powers made about the United States in late 1941. Red States think Blue States are “degenerates” who will collapse the moment there’s any political violence.
Surprise! That’s not true!
And, yet, this all raises the issue — why am I so certain that one of three unthinkable options will happen between now and around January 2025.
Besides the glorification of political violence on the Right, the hardening of the political divide and the death of politics in general, I would point to the coordinated efforts on the part of the Republican Party at the state and local level to highjack any election result they don’t like.
Sorry for the shitty quality.
Why give the Republican dominated legislature the right to take over local election certification if you don’t intend to use it? Why make it so fucking hard to vote if you don’t intend to abuse your ability to dissuade people from voting in general. I’m simply taking Republican anti-democratic moves both seriously and literally and then extrapolating from that.
A lot of the people who poo-poo my “doom shit” about our political future either refuse to realize that we’re no longer a functioning democracy or they would be the people who tuned out entirely once we become an autocracy and it becomes clear that it’s pointless to vote.
I’m beginning to think that maybe — just maybe — when we finally face the options of civil war or autocracy the U.S. Military will step in and tell everyone to cool it. We may live under military rule for a few months — years? — but in the end all that will happen is there will be a Constitutional Convention that sorts out all our structural issues and then we move on without a lot of bloodshed.
Doom Shit
But, in general, the macro trends are definitely drifting towards Something Big happening no later than January 2025. At this point, in my mind, the biggest known unknown is if Trump will still be politically viable enough to fuck everything up so we start killing each other for political reasons.
Donald Trump is a cold, hard criminal. And an idiot. And very lazy. And, tragically, a still-popular ex-president. So, what are we going to do about him?
Well, there’s a pretty wide spectrum out endgames for this particular orange ding-dong. On one end, we have him finally meeting some sort of reckoning. In its most extreme, Trump would be “locked up” and we wouldn’t have to worry about him anymore.
Lulz. Then, on the OTHER end of the spectrum is reality — civil war or autocracy.
Now what.
Despite his best efforts, Trump was not able to destroy the United States. But as long as he’s got breath in his lungs and greed in his heart, he’s going to keep trying. So, I just don’t see anything ever happening to Trump, no matter what we learn about him.
We could have absolute proof that he coordinated the January 6th Insurrection with Congressional Republican leadership. We could have proof that he literally was using American foreign policy as a cash cow. The fucking list goes on. Once Mueller chocked at the behest of Barr and gave Trump a political pardon, that was it. Trump is now politically above the law. We just don’t have the political will to do anything about the fucking asshole.
America has reached a singularity of derp when it comes to dipshit Trump. The Republican Party is now a fascist, violent personality cult and there’s no going back. Because of a combination of racism, misogyny, and macro historical trends that are severely warping our politics, Trump is now something of the God King of Dune of American politics. We just don’t have any political will when it comes to him.
Look at it this way — in my personal experience, my relatives who are far more conservative than I am hate, in an abstract manner, liberal progressives so fucking much that they are prepared to let me be throw into a Trump branded ICE camp rather than form a united front with me and people like me to defeat Trumpism — even though they don’t like Trump!
The inability to get conservatives-who-aren’t-MAGA to put aside abstract negative polarization long enough to destroy the cancer that is MAGA is very depressing on a political basis. It’s because of this that we continue to careen towards civil war or autocracy.
Those are our choices by no later than January 2025: autocracy or civil war.
MAGA has gone septic. Our political system is warped. The country is far more unstable than Twitter liberals are willing to admit
The long answer is…oh boy. The thing about Trump is he shares a huge number of qualities that Hitler had but — at least to date — one: he’s all talk. He talks and talks about very Hitler-like in 1933 type things…but so far a combination of his laziness and the strength of our democratic institutions have managed to keep him check.
Me, 2025?
In fact, that’s the thing I — and a lot of other people in the anti-MAGA movement got wrong about Trump. We were so busy being hysterical about how much Trump in the 2015 – 2017 timeframe was similar to Hitler that we were oblivious to the crucial ways Trump was NOT like Hitler. Hitler had an organic bloodthirsty quality that popped out early with how he got rid of the more radical SA soon after he gained power in Germany.
Meanwhile, Trump often says violent things out of frustration or ignorance, but his actual violent actions have — again, to date — been few and far between. What’s more, while Hitler in 1933 was actively knocking heads in his quest to gain power….in 2020 Trump sat on his hands for months. He wasted a huge window of opportunity between Biden was the nominee to when the election was called by FOX.
So, like I said, Trump isn’t an American Hitler.
But, he is kind of the bridge to an autocratic America that if it went off the rails could lead to very Nazi-like crimes against humanity — especially in the South. It may not be Trump who sets up the conditions for America’s “Final Solution” for black and brown people, but it damn well is going to be a MAGA New Right Republican.
Or, put another way, our current liberal democracy is so fucking hanging on that the moment we get a MAGA New Right president it’s over. All the conditions and all the metrics are there for American democracy to be snuffed out for good. The whole system is so fragile that a President Pompeo or Hawley or Cotton or DeSantis could easily establish themselves an autocrat without blinking an eye.
Probably via some sort of Koch Brother inspired Constitutional Convention.
So, like I said, Trump hasn’t proven to be the American Hitler I, and others, feared.
But the danger of the Untied States slipping into a Nazi-like autocracy is a clear and present danger.
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