Even our best case scenario in the next three months sucks. Our best case scenario is something, “In the end, after having nearly destroyed the Consutition in a rabid bid to stay in power, Trump pardons himself and flys AF1 to Pyongyang and quits.”
What I mean by this is, Trump has made it clear he’s going to exhaust every possible option before he leaves office. And it’s reasonable to assume that we have a Vote Certification Crisis and a Elector Intimidation Crisis ahead of us. Trump will use violence and the threat of violence make seem as though he has a chance of actually “legally” staying president, when, in fact, it’s simply the usual “autocrats never lose” situation.
This is all the lull before the storm, I’m afraid. Not only do we have to worry about Trump winning one of his bullshit lawsuits at SCOTUS, we have to worry about Trump starting a war to Wag The Dog or naming Rudy FBI director so he can frogwalk Joe Biden in an attempt to negotiate his own escape from justice.
And all that’s the best case scenario.
The worst case scenario is someone blows something up and TrumpBarr use that as excuse to invoke the Insurrection Act and take “total control.” In essence, there’s something akin to a coup and with that I simply can’t even map out an endgame.
Anything from Trump mysteriously staying power to a actual civil war / revolution could happen should such things happen. As I mentioned, it’s possible that Trump could really flip his lid and start a war with the DPRK or Iran for the sole purpose of making us so distracted that he can be a War President and mysteriously, again, never leave office.
I hope I’m wrong. I often am. But we have to take the possibility of such bullshit seriously.
It’s still early in the night, but I have a bad feeling about this. Something has to change for me not to assume Trump is going to win exactly the way he won in 2016 — he wins the electoral vote but loses the popular vote.
Unless there’s a coup, I’m going to tune out if that happens. As of tomorrow morning, I’m going to plunge head first into the novel. We have another four years of the Trump Era and there will be a built-in audience of angry liberals who will want to read it.
And I have to remind you that I have long believed that the Russians would never allow an asset as valuable as Trump to leave office. AND Trump rather randomly removed 1/3 of our troops from Germany. I know it’s still early, but that remains a significant fear for me right now.
What’s more the Trump Post Office gambit appears to be working as well — 300,000 votes aren’t going to be cast in swing states and the Post Office is lulzing a court order. They know they can ignore it with impunity because it matters is they help throw the election for the autocrat.
I don’t know if I’ll blog anymore tonight. I may be too depressed. If what I’ve been saying all along happens — autocrats never lose — the novel should begin to go very, very quickly as of tomorrow morning.
Two major historical events come to mind when I mull how the Trump Era — should it come to a close soon — will be viewed. One is Watergate. Not only was it the crucible through which America entered the modern era, it was all around a big old tragedy.
If anything, Trump has taught us a very crucial lesson about Watergate. We thought Watergate established a gameplan for how a president might actually be removed from office if his or her crimes were bad enough. In fact, Watergate was a very specific event with very specific characters that was not really any sort of gameplan at all. It was simply a fluke.
Or, put another way, it was a construct of the era in which it came out of. People in 1972 – 1974 had some sort of shame. Some sort of sense of honor. Two qualities that absolutely no one in the Trump Administration has.
The point is, however, that nothing was the same after Watergate. The Republican Party became the part of the people who were Nixon deadenders. That core group of people — in the guise of Reagan — would come roaring back in 1980 as part of the Reagan Revolution.
The Reagan Revolution is the other big event that the Trump Era gives us some insight into. The reason why Reagan’s election was so important was many of the problems that would lead to Trump first began to form. The Republican’s obsession with SCOTUS. It’s obsession with cutting taxes and social programs. It’s hatred of anyone voting. The list goes on.
The key issue of this moment in time, however, is how it was a psychological break from the past. The entire country began to take for granted a number of what were previously far Right concepts.
So, here we are in the Trump Era.
It will be the biggest shock of my adult life if not only the Russians let Trump lose, but Trump doesn’t somehow start a civil war just out of spite and a fear of going to prison should he leave office.
But should Trump miraculously leave office and a Biden Administration start, I just don’t see how things snap back into place. Trump isn’t going anywhere. He’s still going to be an ex-president. He’s still going to demand a spotlight and he’s still going to have a Twitter account. What’s more, he’s probably going to salt the earth on the way out the door.
One subtle change, however, the thing that we’re all going to have to deal with, is Trump single handedly radicalized much of the center-Left the way the Obama’s second term radicalized the entire fucking Republican Party. We were sucker punched by Trump’s time in office and so a lot of the native goodwill that many center-Left people might give Republicans simply doesn’t exist anymore.
In a way, both sides are now equally radicalized and suspicious of each other. The only real difference between Republicans and Democrats is the latter actually believes in liberal democrats norms. And Democrats have some sense of shame. Republicans, meanwhile, don’t give a shit. They are so fucking craven, so blinded by ideology that they were more than willing to fucking destroy the whole country if they think it might give them just one more young hack MAGA judge.
But I still just don’t believe Trump is going to lose. He’s an autocrat and autocrats never lose. Never. It’s going to be the Russians. Or SCOTUS. Or some combination of both that allow Trump to “not lose.”
And I just don’t see Americans having it in them to do what would be necessary to force the issue and drive Trump out of office — a General Strike. I believe TrumpBarr will simply grow more radical as necessary, invoke the Insurrection Act and that will be that.
As I keep saying, on a strictly political level, Biden is doing quite well. But Trump is an autocrat — if a very incompetent one — and, as such, will never fucking leave office. And if he does leave office, you had better be sure he’s going to demand a pound of political flesh.
So, in the end, even if Trump is out of office, everything will be different. Our expectations have changed. There’s likely to be a Trump Deep State that will aggressively work to bring down the Biden Administration at every turn. The Fox News faux outrage machine will constantly be looking for different ways to recapture the glory of the Trump Era.
Trump will be the Republican Party’s new Reagan. Everything they do, everything they say, everything they believe in will be relative to Trump. They hate democracy and see it only as a means to an end. About half a dozen would-be younger, brighter, more focused autocrats are already chomping at the bit to finish the job Trump has begun.
Remember — even after the disgrace of Watergate, the Republicans just barely lost to Carter in 1976. Barely. It was one of the tightest elections in history. And they came roaring back just six years after Nixon left office in disgrace.
Should Trump physically leave office, we’re probably going to have three to six months to enjoy it before Republicans will shit on it all.
But I still, still will be completely flabbergasted if Trump loses. Too many powerful people — including Trump himself — will fight dirty to ensure Trump stays in power as long as he likes.
As I have said before, the biggest screw ups in history occur when one side makes a strategic miscalculation. Be it the American South in 1860 or the Germans in 1914, time and again history has shown that major historical events occur when one side believes that after a cost-benefit-analysis that the cost of achieving their goals is worth it.
With the American Civil war in particular, the South was probably — in the beginning — safe in their assumption that the North would say “wayward sisters, part in peace” and that would be that. It was only because of the leadership of Lincoln and his decision in late 1862 to make freeing the slaves a war aim that the tide turned.
So, if you look at America 2020, at the moment, MAGA-Qanon is reasonably safe in assuming that they can stage something akin to a coup in the courts and, lulz, nothing of note will happen. In fact, even I, at this point, believe they are right. I just don’t see “Blue America” being willing to risk “their lives and scared honor” in the real world in the manner necessary to save the Union as currently conceived. If all else fails, TrumpBarr will used the Insurrection Act and that, as they say, will be that.
And, yet, that hasn’t happened yet. It’s at least possible that while MAGA-Qanon will initially succeed in their efforts to steal the 2020 election via some sort of Very American Coup, that the conditions are such that the country implodes in a rather unexpected fashion. But let me be very clear — only in hindsight would we give The Big Ugly value or a narrative. While any putative “Second American Civil War” or “Second American Revolution” was taking place it would suck on a day-to-day basis and be a huge fucking tragedy that we will ultimately all regret we had to go through, no matter the ultimate endgame.
Such is the nature of such events.
I too often fall into the trap of giving The Big Ugly some sort of narrative. The reason why events like the Civil War, or WW1 or WW2 have such potency for millions of people is they’re scary as hell and pose an existential threat to how people view themselves and their nation.
So, in the end MAGA-Qanon could win and we devolve into something rather dystopian. There would be no assurances as events unfolded that the good guys will win. If you asked a person in 1942 what the outcome of the war was going to be, they probably would say the Axis Powers were going to win.
No person under the age of, say, 80 or so, has lived during through a prolonged crisis where there are battles that are won or lost that don’t really give you any immediate indication of how the war itself is going to endup. Put that same dynamic not in Europe or Asia but in the United States itself and we’re all in for a situation we definitely don’t want to go through.
All I’m saying is — the conditions are there for something not seen in the United States since the Civil War. Good luck.
It seems to me this is going to happen — record anti-Trump voting is equaled by Election Day voting by MAGA-Qanon. The race is extremely tight. So tight that Russian hacking into our election systems makes a big difference in key states.
Amy Coney Barrett votes repeatedly to narrow the scope of votes that will be counted and Trump wins.
That definitely seems to be what Republicans are thinking they can pull off as of right now. Autocrats — even incompetent ones like Trump — never lose.
All signs point to Trump simply never leaving office, no matter what. I say this because of Bill Barr. Even if Trump loses in a massive landslide, Barr is going to be Trump’s hatchet man and make sure all Trump’s troubles go away. In the end, it all endsup at SCOTUS and Trump wins 5-4 or 6-3.
And, yet, it has to be noted that this isn’t going to happen in a political vacuum. This is not 2000. The reason why the Republicans were able to steal that election was the country wasn’t as polarized and it was something of a sucker punch. It took us years to process what happened and why.
While I absolutely believe at this point that TrumpBarr will “not lose” the 2020 election, there is at least small possibility that I’m wrong. In the end Trump’s incompetence will finally, at last be his downfall. But the nation will have to go through a traumatic experience to get rid of him.
Here’s the idea — it soon becomes apparent that TrumpBarr has lost “the mandate of heaven.” So much so that even Senate Republicans, sated by a huge tax cut and hundreds of young, hack MAGA judges might begin to distance themselves from The Dear Leader.
One metric to look at is Sen. Lindsey Graham. If Graham starts to make it clear that Trump should leave office because, lulz, he lost the election, then that’s a good indication that even though Trump is using the full weight of the U.S. Government to stay in power, that the political ground has shifted subtly beneath him.
But the biggest metric to look at his Trump himself. If Trump’s insanity and political criminality fuse — which they will — then it’s possible we enter a gotterdammerung situation where Trump, using Barr, sort of forces the issue. He forces EVERYONE to take a side on an existential level. So much so that the Republican Establishment itself begins to fragment.
I guess you could call this the “Very American Coup” scenario. In this situation, TrumpBarr’s attempt to “not lose” the election is nothing short of a political 9/11 attack. Everyone knows what’s going on. Everyone is on the same page. And it all boils down to if you’re a Trump “true believer” or not.
So, even though even Senate Republicans don’t want Trump to take everything to SCOTUS, he does anyway. He wins there and the country is so fucking enraged at what has happened, that the fucking bolts finally pop off and the United States implodes along the lines of the Soviet Union in 1991. But probably in a far more messy, violent manner — The Big Ugly.
It just seems like 2020 is it. This is the election where 50-odd years of macro trends all crest at the same moment and all of our nightmares and dystopian fears happen at the same time.
I honestly don’t know the endgame. I honestly don’t know if TrumpBarr wins or if such a brazen extra-political attempt to stay in power will be enough to get conservatives-who-are-not-MAGA to get woke or not. If we can’t get that crucial part of the electorate to finally show some backbone, then on a political level, at least, the United States in 2021 will be identical to Belarus in 2021.
Let me be clear from the beginning that I’m a nobody. I’m an anonymous rando. I could literally drop off the face of the earth at this point and my absence wouldn’t be noticed by anyone outside of my immediate family.
And, yet, I often say that if the apocalypse happened, I’d either be the first person to die or the person who brought back civilization. Well, I hate to break it to you, but we’re on the precipice of a fucking political apocalypse. The reason why I say this is TrumpBarr — even in the face of a landslide at the polls — will never, ever, EVER FUCKING LEAVE OFFICE.
So, therein lies the makings of a historic clusterfuck.
I hope I’m wrong. I really do hope I’m wrong. And, really, it’s not like I have any credibility to lose if I am. But there’s a greater-than-zero-sum chance that not only will the United States implode in a matter of months, I’m going to be driven from my home because of my politics.
I’m going to become just another of the thousands of Blue citizens in Red areas that have to flee in the wake of political violence. If that tragically does happen to me, I’m heading north to NYC. I often say if could crash on a couch in NYC in a home with access to the subway system that within six months I’d be a minor celebrity in the city.
Throw me into what would be, essentially, revolutionary NYC, and I’d have a pretty good chance of finding myself in some rather surreal situations for no other reason than I have the skillset of someone who thrives in the chaos of a country on the brink. I’m good at abstract thought. I’m good in a crisis. And I’m good at the strategic thought associated with mapping out scenarios.
Let me be very clear — I’m a man of peace. A man of ideas. But if things have gotten so bad that I’m driven from my home because I’m a libtard, well, my fate my be foisted upon me. You can’t be a hero unless fate gives you the opportunity to be one.
But, again, all that sounds “delusional and stupid.” And it is. And, yet, I also know that about 90% of the people who should take the lead in such a situation don’t because they’re scared of the risk associated with such a dramatic situation or they have too much to lose.
I really hope I can just finish this novel I’m working on. That’s all I want. I have no desire to do anything but that at this point. But I’m not going to sit on my hands if The Big Ugly comes. I’m going to do something, anything to make the lives of my fellow Americans better.
I just want the liberal democracy of my youth back. That’s all I want.
The United States, the most powerful and prosperous nation in the world,has two possible fates ahead of it: despotism or collapse. When I’m in a good mood, I say there’s something of a spectrum with one of these two possible futures at either end. But, it could be a lot more extreme than that. It could be there are just two fates with little in the way of granulation.
Or, if you really want to be more specific about things, the dead hand of history has already decided that the United States is going to slip into autocracy. All of the momentum and “logic” is on Trumplandia’s side. The nattering nabobs of negativism of Blue Check Twitter liberals won’t know what hit them.
And, yet, it hasn’t happened yet.
The argument could be made that the absolute last gasp of liberal democracy in the United States, which would happen at some point between November 2020 and about January 2021, would be the thing that prompted the United States to completely implode. Trump and Barr, realizing the “soft power” of managing the media narrative isn’t going to work, decide to get rather thuggish in an attempt to maintain power. This would like be something akin to a political 9/11.
It would be something, done either by House Trump or MAGA-Qanon, that was so brazen, so outrageous, that no amount of talking heads trying to calm everyone down will work. It could be, on a political level, something that is obviously a coup — or is, at least, to everyone but MAGA-Qanon.
I’m thinking there could also be a sort coordinated attack on the leadership of the opposition to Trump or an Oklahoma City-type explosion somewhere. Or, if you really wanted to go full Nazi — some sort of major false flag operation so Trump could take “total control” as we got closer to January 20th.
I say this because of the number of people who have already voted –an estimated 800,000, compared to 10,000 four years ago. As such, a lot — a lot — of things go wrong for Trump / Barr and their absolute last attempt at staying in power is a 5-4 vote at SCOTUS, things may not go the way they did in 2000. Maybe. It’s possible that any real world opposition to Trump’s final consolidation of power will be little more than a death rattle, just like the August Coup of 1991 was little more than a death rattle for the Soviet Union.
I got burned with impeachment, so it seems the most likely outcome is so subtle that we barely even realize what is really happened — Trump and Barr using the Muller Report strategy of controlling the media narrative. They go to SCOTUS and get a 5-4 vote in their favor.
For about 18 months, a lot of liberals on TV and Twitter rant about how America is “turning into” an autocracy. As we get closer to the 2022 mid-terms, it will be pretty obvious that we already are an autocracy, it’s just liberals aren’t willing to risk what’s important to them in the real world to do anything about it. So House Trump wins.
Or, put another way — either Trump consolidates power peacefully by fucking with the law post-election or the entire American Ancient Regime collapses into Blue and Red and may the best man (or woman) win. Things really are that dire.
Trump is absolutely never leaving office for any reason. He would rather destroy the United States than leave office and risk personal criminal liability. He and Barr believe they can simply message the post-election media narrative and use soft power to win.
If that doesn’t happen, they will grow more radical and more thuggish in their efforts to stay in power. This, in turn, might get a lot of people you don’t expect woke and the whole edifice collapses in on itself.
Before I begin, let’s put things in context. I’m a big old nobody in the rural portion of a flyover state. Absolutely nobody gives me any mind for any reason. I could literally vanish off the face of the earth and it would take a few days for anyone to notice. And, in general, I’m a pretty copacetic, easy going guy. And I’m definitely NOT a “loner who keeps to himself.”
Power To The People
I’m actually quite extroverted and honest, to a fault. Generally, if I’m thinking about it, you’ll hear about it if you’re paying attention to me.
I say all that to make it clear that this is nothing more than a thought experiment. It’s not like this is meant to be some sort of liberal-progressive Turner Diaries. It’s just interesting to look at the State of the Union with a critical eye. That’s it. That’s all that’s going on. If this was 10 years ago and I was living in NYC, this the type of thing that might pop up on the old Gawker blog.
The Case America’s Ancien Regime is, at least on the surface, rock solid. It’s been around for about 240 years. The very idea that it might rather suddenly grow extremely unstable to the point of collapse is not something that the average person even contemplates as possible.
And, yet, something is existentially wrong with the American Ancien Regime. There is now an enormous disconnect between people and the government. Because they’re the most vocal, we often see this disconnect through the lens of the Far Right. But the argument can be made that, if anything, the rise of Trump gives us an indication that we’ve reached the stage where the rot inside the ostensibly stable American Ancien Regime has grown so severe that something truly astonishing might happen far, far sooner than anyone could possibly imagine.
But what, exactly is wrong with the current American system? I would suggest that a number of major macro trends are all coming to a head at the same time. The United States is no longer a liberal democracy that represents the people, it is a plutocracy that is one election away from turning into something akin to an autocratic semi-monarchal managed democracy. In fact, I would suggest that the dead hand of history has made its decision.
Trump’s “Spaghetti Strategy” for “winning” the 2020 election is going to work. It’s all over but the shouting. We’re not the United States anymore, we’re nothing more than Trumplandia. My fidelity is to the United States, not Trumplandia, and, as such, at least on an abstract thought-experiment basis, I am prepared to mull how to, uhhh, make America great again, if you will.
When You Come To A Fork In The Road, Take It So, we have before us two options — let Trumplandia consolidate or we renew the American Covenant. Let me be clear — this is meant to be a very abstract text. I’m not advocating anything. I’m simply saying — should the moment arise when we’re actually given the opportunity to do something about Trumplandia we can’t be afraid. We have to stand and fight.
That opportunity may never come. We may slip rather quietly into Trumplandia and not look back for decades. This is a very real possibility.
But while Trumplandia probably started the moment Trump was aquitted, the case could be made that American self-perception hasn’t realize it yet. And, as such, there is a window of opportunity. Again, not advocating anything. This is more about pointing out opportunities than it is telling anyone to do anything about it.
In fact, I would go so far as to suggest that for those “opportunity” to arise, it wouldn’t even be in the hands of the governed — it would happen because of a historic miscalculation on the part of Trump and Barr. And, honestly, it might not even be an actual miscalculation.
They know that relative to all the metrics they have at their disposal that should Trump not win outright on Election Night that everything after the election is simple media narrative management. They got away with it with the Mueller Report, they have every reason to believe they can do it again with the 2020 Election.
And, at this point, there’s absolutely no reason not to think they aren’t right.
Trump won in the Senate. He’s going to “win” the 2020 election and, later, he’s going to win with the Constitutional Convention he inevitably demands.
So, really, all I got is Trump’s a massive self-own artist. A fish rots from its head, as they say. Therefore it is, at least possible that Trump is going to screw up on such a massive level at some point between November and January that the country implodes. (Not something I want. Just a possibility.)
The Goals So what if my worst nightmare happens and the United States implodes? Then what? Well, the key thing to remember is should the American Ancien Regime collapse, the Fourth Estate is probably going with it. The American media has been so complicit, timid and oblivious to the rise of Trumplandia that I honestly don’t see how it, as an institution, would survive any sort of theoretical “Second American Revolution.”
As an aside, I think it really would be a revolution instead of civil war. I say this because a lot of Twitter liberals are so full of themselves that they seem to think some sort of utopia (with Canada?) will happen if only Blue States can leave the Union. The issue is, outside of some chunks of California, I just don’t see actual secession taking hold in most Blue States. This would be a revolution against the moronic tyranny of one man — Donald J. Trump. As such, it makes a lot more sense on a number of strategic levels to stay and fight rather than attempt to leave the Union altogether. All of this is extremely difficult for me to pace out because of how speculative it is. So, it’s very possible I might get a lot of things wrong.
One thing I spend a lot of time thinking about is how, exactly, this so-called “Second American Revolution” might begin. There are a number of scenarios. But one might be that Trump simply screws up. He does something so outrageous that even conservative-but-not-MAGA people get woke. If that happened, then Trumplandia will be stillborn.
The goals of any Second American Revolution would likely be to “renew the vows,” shall we say, of the American Covenant. There are a lot — a lot — of popular ideas and policies that have not been implemented because of the extreme corruption, and lack of representation found with American Ancien Regime.
I might suggest codifying some sort of protection for reproductive rights in a new Constitution. A re-imagined Senate would also be a goal for any Renewed American Covenant. And, some sort of addressing of systemic racism in the United States as well.
For my part, if I had any say in the matter — which I obviously never will — I would codify the nullification of Trumplandia with extreme legal prejudice. Everything Trump did while in office would be vacated. Just thinking about that makes me feel smile.
This is just a rough back-of-the-envelope sketch of what the aims of any Second American Revolution might be.
Like I keep saying, I fear I’m being both “delusional and stupid” to even broach the subject. Trumplandia is here and we’re just going to have to get used to it.
Even though it is extremely painful and difficult for me to do so, I’m going to have to accept that the United States is going to slip in a rather prosaic fashion into autocracy.
I may continue to write a lot about that process for no other reason than it makes me feel better, but I’ve finally — finally — achieved acceptance. There’s just no reason to believe the thing we need — the average American not on Twitter to be willing to risk their “lives and sacred honor” in the real world will pull through when we need them.
It’s over.
Something pretty spectacular that I can’t predict would have to happen for me to change that assessment. It didn’t happen with impeachment. So I feel comfortable to assume it won’t happen with the very fate, the very existence of the Republic, either.
As such, I’m going to throw myself back into the novel. It’s a real struggle not to doomscroll Twitter all day, but I have to. By every available metric, when I am in a position to try to sell this novel at some point in early-to-mid 2021, we’re going to be an autocracy and, as such, a lot of angry liberals will be interested in reading the type of novel I’m currently working on.
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