Thinking the unthinkable

I don’t think it would be a stable foundation, which would make it all even more dangerous. The foundation of Trump’s power would be heavily gerrymandered legislatures in “red” states, the Supreme Court, and conservative media. He might be able to push that further if he tries to purge federal law enforcement and the top ranks of the military, but in the case where he’s stolen an election that could also backfire and lead to him being just outright deposed by the top military brass.

If him stealing an elections to aggressive counter-organizing and political violence that flouts the legal side of his regime, then they lose a lot of its power. They’re not like Modi in India, with a huge grassroots organization that can basically serve as street fighters and muscle in a conflict with liberals and the left.

That’s depressing as all hell, JQ.

I’m seventy now, but fairly healthy for an old codger, so I might manage to live through some of this crap (if it actually happens).*

Back in the day, I was a union officer and sometime Democratic activist. I didn’t do enough. I’m doing very little (donating a bit, and proselytizing) right now and starting to feel guilty about that.

I really need to get back in the fight, but one wants to make a meaningful contribution, and it just seems really hard to figure out where to start.

*Well, I have kids and lots of grandkids, so I guess I should try to hang around for as long as I can!

As Sophie J mentioned, things could get very bad for people who are people but not people according to the people in charge of the people who have guns. I expect race will be a major boogeyman of the future Trumpist Maladministration. But rather than the “purity” of one race being the obsession that gets people killed it will be the “impurity” of whatever group or groups Trumpists focus their bile on — and I’m pretty sure I can guess which main group that will be. This is because in modern America it will be necessary to have a brownshirt Coalition of what would have been considered “lesser races” in 1940s to get the numbers up. (But some elements of the Coalition of Oppression could always get long knifed as in Germany.)

#1 — Trumpers have a pretty significant cadre of thugs that would serve as “street fighters and muscle in a conflict with liberals and the left.” I don’t think the Law Enforcement will arrest anybody bashing leftists and POC heads.

The remaining democracies, like Australia and the EU would need to keep their heads down and avoid attracting too much attention.

Would they? As a Foreignanian myself, that’s the kind of question that runs through my head when I read American speculations about this kind of scenario: what would be the reactions from the governments of (say) Japan, Germany, Canada, South Africa, Chile, Ireland, Costa Rica, …

Sophie Jane: I would hope that any LGBTQ folks just hop on over to majority-minority states like CA. It’s a shit-ton cheaper than becoming an exile, and I cannot see the population here putting up with any sort of bullshit from stormtroopers.

The knowledge of how to find and doxx family members, make IEDs, etc, is widely-distributed.

JQ said “The remaining democracies, like Australia” until your scenario of Trump gets up.

JQ asks ” imagine what life would be like for people in the US and elsewhere in the event of a Trump Presidency for Life or hereditary rulership, and what, if any, responses would be possible.”

Very black for the ‘others’.

Life with “a Trump Presidency for Life” will be like global warming. Most frogs / sheeple won’t feel the heat until it is too late. They will squirm alot but have little except the Constitution to push back.

Can you see a ‘class (pun) acton’ taken by the have nots getting a win in the even more conservative “Trump Presidency for Life” Supreme Court? Or, just abolish the Supremes as Trumps would be The Supreme Leader.

Fiona Hill says of Trump;
‘If He Makes a Successful Return in 2024, Democracy’s Done’
… and …
“I’m not saying that every politician seeks office for personal gain or professional advancement, but certainly a lot of people do. I mean, Trump thinks of himself as a king and wants to create a new dynasty. I saw that firsthand.”

“Talking Trump, Russia and the wage gap with Fiona Hill.
…” as when the former president mistook her for a secretary and then-chief of staff Reince Priebus referred to her as “the Russia bitch.” In response to the book, Trump emailed an angry statement to supporters this week calling her “a Deep State stiff with a nice accent.”
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/10/08/fiona-hill-book-donald-trump-515660

Any thoughts on where this would leave the US’s “exorbitant privilege”?

” I’ve tried to think about the political options for resistance, both through electoral politics and through direct action, and concluded that there is no obvious prospect of success. “

Things don’t change – until they do. 2028 is another kettle of fish, but if the 2024 election is flat-out stolen by Trump I expect an outbreak of violence that may work up to a full-scale civil war. And I don’t expect much to be much of US civilization left after that, so don’t see any potential for ‘how would life go on’ scenario building.

I wasn’t particularly surprised by the collapse of the Soviet bloc, since Poland had already shown that the system was on its last legs.

Okay, that’s a fair point (although it does point in the direction of a further question about how surprising the rise of Solidarity was).

I suspect it will not be Trump in ’24. It will be someone competent in ’28 …

Far be it from me to suggest that such a scenario is unreasonable, but I’m still curious about how you’d join up the dots. Are you suggesting a scenario in which Donald Trump does not seek the Republican nomination in 2024, or one in which he seeks it but does not get it, or one in which he is nominated but not elected President? Any one of those would have to have significant effects of some kind on the Republican Party (I haven’t thought about what they might be, except that they’d be different for each of those three possibilities) and therefore on what happened in 2028.

“and what, if any, responses would be possible.”

One response is to become less governable. Not go to work. Or if you do go, just not do much of anything productive. Society can only handle a very small percentage of people who flout the laws openly.

I’d tell you the full plan but then the Maga people would come after me first.

In the UK, for example, Labour seems to have collapsed, and there’s no prospect of anything but Tory rule for a while.

If you had written in 1979 that there would be nothing but Tory rule ‘for a while’, it would have been true, so long as what you meant by ‘a while’ was about eighteen years. If you had written in 1986 that there would be nothing but Tory rule ‘for a while’, it would have been true, so long as what you meant by ‘a while’ was about eleven years. If you had written in 1992 that there would be nothing but Tory rule ‘for a while’, it would have been true, so long as what you meant by ‘a while’ was about five years. If you had written in 1996 that there would be nothing but Tory rule ‘for a while’, it would have been true, so long as what you meant by ‘a while’ was about twelve months.

Cranky Observer, #17:

Who do you imagine organizing armed resistance to a Trumpist takeover? No one in the Democratic party would do this, and without a level of elite buy-in equal to Biden making a TV address calling on Democrats to take up arms, a large scale civil war is not realistic.

The US of 2024 is not the US of 1861, nor is it a variant of the former Yugoslavia. There are no ready-made armed groups ready to spring into action the moment a Trumpist tripwire is breached. At most, a Trumpist takeover could provoke disorganized violence by disaffected Democrats. Hhistory is clear that these kinds of revolts end with the insurgents being ignored, arrested, or executed.

When the Republican party drops the remaining pretexts and stops holding fair elections entirely, the party will take over without anyone firing a shot.

and –
‘For John’
https://youtu.be/RzpP8F5ELS0

If Trump REALLY will feel like having another… e…rection in 2024 –
WE seriously will have ‘QUEEN ANNE’ running against him –
and as so many our ‘conservative’ fellow Americans have told US – that they much rather vote for an ‘armoire’ – than for ‘trump’ –
(the worlds new word for: ‘Utmost Stupid’)
perhaps?
my beautiful homeland finally will turn into a monarchy and I can serve the Queeny until I’m as old as you guys.

And how is that about: Unsinkable?
UUUUps –
I meant:
‘Unsinkable’!

The US is close enough to being an authoritarian kleptocracy that putting a despot-for-life in the White House would make very little difference alone.

The idea that there is no significant difference between the Republicans and the Democrats is not novel; it is one that goes back over a century. It was the position, for example, of the Socialist Party when their candidate received 6% of the popular vote in 1912. There were probably people in 1936 who said that it made no significant difference whether Franklin Roosevelt or Alf Landon won: and, of course, there’s no definitive way of testing whether they were right, since there’s no way of demonstrating what a Landon Presidency would have been like (just as there is no way of demonstrating what Hillary Clinton’s Presidency would have been like and therefore no definitive way of testing whether it would have been significantly different from Donald Trump’s).

In the present instance, though, one obvious way of exploring your thinking is to ask ‘What kind of developments would you think likely if the Democrats win* the Presidency again at the next election?’

*For the avoidance of doubt, what I mean by this is not ‘if the Democratic ticket gets the most votes’, but rather ‘if a Democrat takes over the job of President on Inauguration Day in 2025’.

If the GOP believes it faces no substantive opposition (no, the Democratic Party does not count) …

The Republicans’ behaviour shows that they consider the Democrats to constitute a substantive opposition.

I think a key issue is if the dollar can remain the de facto world currency in any of these scenarios, and what will happen if it doesn’t. Not only the US economy may crash, but it might take much of the world with it. If no one trusts where USA is going, who are going to want to buy low interest US bonds that are used today because they are treated as the safest deposit possible?

It seems likely that some states would secede, or try to, under such a scenario. Which ones: California, Washington, Oregon, Massachussets, Vermont, New York all seem possible. Alternatively, there’s a kind of de facto secession in such places which the Trumpists choose to tolerate in return for a free hand elsewhere.

There are at least two really rather different scenarios in this:

A) Trump wins the Presidency fairly, following normal constitutional processes, because the voters like his opponent even less. Has happened before.
B) something really unconstitutional happens. Third Presidency; President for life; armed revolution by Trump supporters goes full French Revolution/last days of the Romanovs of the democrats

The OP has ruled out comments on the likelihood of any of this happening as out of scope, so we can just take them as read, and view this as a kind of Harry Turtledove novel.

A meta comment, though: this kind of SF is arguably part of what is wrong with current political discourse. Direly unpopular candidates who can only get elected by arguing that their opponent is even more terrible than they are, sometimes to an implausible extent,

SciEnce fiction option (a) probably also includes the idea that the POTUS is not an absolute monarch; and senior officers in the Department of Defense remember that their oath of allegiance is to the constitution, not the President; said senior officers have demonstrated that they will refuse orders that are blatantly illegal or unconstitutional. So you have a set up where the President suggests a bunch of crazy stuff, and the executive ignores him.

The way this can go wrong is if the President has a private army like the Sturmabteilung, who are loyal to him and not the constitution. In fiction (a), such private armies are too small to be able to overthrow the government of the United States.

You have to realize that a sizable and influential portion of Trump’s support comes from people who believe their reward for a virtuous life is eternity in a totalitarian Theocracy. And would be happy to institute one on Earth.

[typo in the last paragraph of 38: should be ARP (American Rescue Plan), not ARA]

@42
is ALL what’s wrong with THE homeland as
Nr.1
NOBODY has to be worried about the fact that Democrats believe that Republicans cannot be permitted to take power —
as the actually fact
IS –
that any Believer in Democracy –
(US Democrats or even European Conservatives) –
is worried that Crazy Undemocratic Right-Wingers cannot be permitted to take power in a Democracy –
AND that Crazy Undemocratic Right-Wingers believe that people who believe in Democracy cannot be permitted to take power is TRULY worrying.
And about some ‘conspiracy theories and using cultural fantasies’ there is absolutely NO comparison between the completely unhinged conspiracy theories and cultural fantasies of Crazy Right-Wingers (worldwide) and something which Crazy Right-Wingers like to call the ‘conspiracy theories and cultural fantasies’ of the so called left.

And about (Social and Empathetic) New Deal politics –
COME ON DUDE!!!
(if you are a ‘dude’?)
If even so called ‘christ-conservatives’ like Angela Markel could do IT –
ALSO Americans can do it –
AGAIN!!!

And about accepting that ‘transgender people would have a worse time under a Republican administration than under a Democrat’ – you somehow forgot that EVERYBODY who isn’t a Crazy Right-Wing Science Denier has a worse time under any Republican administration too –
AND that includes ALL of my surfer friends in California who really LOVE the Ocean –
AND even if that amounts to just about one ten-thousandth of the population.
Surely it should be possible to campaign for the rights of a such a tiny minority without at the same time JOKING? that 95% of the population is under attack from both parties?

As the 95 percent of the Americans I know ONLY got attacked by the Crazy Right-Wing Racist Science Deniers – lately.

Right?
(Wingy-Winky?)

I think the short form of Russell Arben Fox’s contribution @16 is ‘Liberals etc. can buy guns too’ and this should be remembered as you all fantasize about the coming Trump dictatorship or whatever it is supposed to be. Not that a descent into Syrian conditions isn’t possible; but it’s not going to be simple or easy for whoever is trying to take over. The present ruling classes, incompetent and Weimarish as they may be, would have to make a lot of continual, serious, dumb mistakes to get themselves overthrown. You need at least two sides with armed forces, a supply, logistics, communications, and coherent command structure, and defensible bases for a serious civil war.

It’s hard not to see lazy parallels with Gibbons’ History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Capture of the state and economy by ruthless venal interests, bitterly contested religious (and cultural) distractions, and mass movement of “barbarian” (I dislike that word, but what can you do) peoples who through sheer numbers overwhelm the vitiated remains of imperial order.

It wasn’t a quick process: it took centuries of disorder and suffering. And there’s never a Hari Seldon around when you need one.

The difference between Democrats and Republicans is not as substantive as a lot of commenters here seem to assume. The difference is more in temperament than ideology and values. Wall Street en$ure$ enough balance that profits are not impacted.

There will be no antifa resistance to a right-wing coup because the temperament of liberals is to work things out civilly. Of course, the Republican party is not only uncivil, it is mindlessly amoral. In that regard, they look like Nazis just before the Reichstag fraud. Clearly, Trump had hoped that Jan 6 would be his Reichstag moment.

History taught us all what comes next. I had hoped that Vietnam would be the last time I would have to kill human beings to stay alive. In my mid 70’s, I might not be up to it anymore. Truth, Justice, and the American Way – our three frauds.

One thing to consider is that this particular movement is a cult of personality and a bona fide cult is essential for the numbers we’re seeing.

The bona fide cult is a bit out of control–i.e., willing to turn on Great Leader

Those opposed to it are vehemently opposed.

That doesn’t look like a great model for the institutionalization that you’d need for lasting hereditarian one party rule.

Also, various interests appear to be pulling the strings from the back.

It probably won’t be the Trumplings who rule in the end is my guess. Various would-be authoritarians are doing try-outs right now to see if they’ll be the ‘smart Trumpling.’

The question is will they be able to create a univocal movement with 1) a bunch of cultists 2) the corporations paying for the culty field trips and other accessories 3) any foreign powers in the mix.

To lead the cult we have a bunch of narcissists and various corrupt would-be rulers and their backing isn’t necessarily perfectly aligned but it still remains essential. Government overthrow is complicated. Then you have to rule the majority.

They’re going to fight amongst themselves quite a lot.

If they can iron out those wrinkles it will be seamless power. If not, there will be cracks and fissures and whatever regime results won’t last that long.

So we could also have chaos–but not one where we return to normal but one where authoritarian regimes come and go and things gradually devolve into sporadic or sweeping violence.

Either way, we’re sunk as far as I can tell. We should be able to beat them and I cannot understand why we don’t try. Is it that the people best in the position to do this are paralyzed because they ‘believe in the system’ and are so attached to norms they’d let anything happen even at the cost of breaking a norm? Is it simply a lack of courage?

To me, that’s the bigger question.

I am more concerned that the majority of White Americans want to destroy our current form of government. And the increasing number of Hispanic Americans who want to identify as “White” and will join them.

If Trump has a stoke tomorrow, the nightmare scenario is still in play.

John,

So, the trolls, the “not a dime’s worth of difference” idiots, the apologists-for-Fascism, are back. And since there’s no way to either shut them down or clearly mark them as such, your comment section will descend again into a cesspool of Trumpist and Trump-apologist slop. Ah, well.

SusanC at 37 touches upon an important point, the role of the military. Even if local police favor Trump and authoritarianism they are not capable of putting down significant protest or to stop local governments from refusing to comply with federal directives. State National Guards are made up of citizen soldiers and likely to be as divided in loyalty as the constituency they are drawn from.

At some point, Trump would certainly try to use the US military to put down resistance. Having grown up in a military family I would place more hope in the military refusing to follow illegal orders than I would in the courts declaring anything out of order. The military leadership also is aware that 42% of the troops are non-white. The entrance of the military into domestic politics would risk intra-service conflict.

Any measurement of distance depends on a frame of reference and is meaningless without that specification.

The answer to the question ‘Are the differences between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party significant or negligible?’ depends on the point (or points) of reference.

If somebody’s point of reference is a desire for the reintroduction of Prohibition of alcohol in the USA, then those differences are negligible. If somebody’s point of reference is a desire to crush the union movement, then those differences are significant.

In the absence of a point of reference, the question is meaningless.

I can’t tell what MFB’s points of reference are, or what nobody’s points of reference are.

I’m worried about the fact that Democrats believe that Republicans cannot be permitted to take power — the fact that Republicans believe that Democrats cannot be permitted to take power is also worrying, but I’ve never seen the Republicans as a source of beneficial ideas or policies.

It’s always been true that Democrats don’t want Republicans to take power, just as it’s always been true that Republicans don’t want Democrats to take power (by ‘always’ I mean ‘as long as the Republican Party has existed’). It’s also true that many Democrats (and many other people as well, like John Quiggin and like me) think that the Republicans taking power now would be much worse than Republicans taking power in earlier periods. It’s not clear what MFB means by suggesting that Democrats believe that Republicans ‘cannot be permitted’ to take power. The evidence does not support the conclusion that the Democratic Party is prepared to break the law to prevent the Republican Party from taking office. On the other hand, there is strong evidence that significant elements within the Republican Party (including Donald Trump) are prepared to contemplate breaking the law to prevent the Democratic Party from taking office (that is, after future elections). It would be ludicrous and pernicious to suggest that a high standard should be set for judging the conduct of the Democratic Party and that they should be judged harshly for falling short of it, while the Republican Party should be judged less harshly because the bar should be set lower for them.

However, the Democrats seem to have adopted almost all of the bad political policies of Republicans (such as conspiracy theories and using cultural fantasies to trump economic realities).

I accept MFB’s assertion that this is the way it seems to MFB. It does not seem that way to me. If the way it seems to me and the way it seems to MFB are different, how can the discussion proceed from there?

The Democrats control the Presidency and Congress. If they are actually doing anything beneficial with this control, then they deserve support. If they aren’t, then they deserve to be opposed. And if you say “But that is inconceivable, for it means allowing the Republicans in!” then you are calling for a one-party plutocratic state under the dominion of the rulers whom you adore as they kick you in the teeth.

So, what course of action are you calling for?

However, we should at least avoid to conflate the Electoral College, hands down the worst electoral system in the world …

Have you checked the other electoral systems of the world to be sure of this? In Iran, the mullahs effectively have the power to disqualify in advance any candidate they don’t like: isn’t what worse than the electoral college? The electoral college is a bad idea, but I’m not sure it’s the worst.

The two parties are fighting over spoils, while neither party really gives AF about the American worker. This is easily surmised by the recent failure of the Democrats to pass the “Build Back Better” bills without gutting them to the point where they are meaningless. Most of the policies in the bill are very popular among the American people but our politicians work for their donors, not for the people who elect them.

I do not think the word ‘surmised’ means what you think it means.

It’s a strange position to praise the Build Back Better bill and then to deny all credit to the people who wrote it and the people who are pushing for it to be passed.

There will be no antifa resistance to a right-wing coup because the temperament of liberals is to work things out civilly.

Antifa are not liberals and it is not the temperament of antif to work things out civilly.

The only point I disagree with is the personalisation of this conversation around Trump. It wouldn’t matter if he and his entire family left politics tomorrow; with support from the relevant media, the next proto-autocrat can be popularised sufficiently to replace him within months. There are enough of them waiting for their chance in the ranks just behind him.

It would make a lot of difference how they left politics. For example, the effect if they all left politics as a result of a family gathering being wiped out by something like the Tunguska impact event would be different from the effect if they all left politics as convicted felons.

I am afraid because the conditions that allowed for the emergence of democracy, which had a lot to do with the affordability and possibility of a bunch of people just buying a gun and forming an army, are gone.

It’s not clear that the conditions that allowed for emergence of democracy in those countries where it has emerged are correctly summarised as ‘the possibility of people just buying a gun and forming an army’. Whatever plausibility this may have as an account of US history, what other countries does it apply to?

We should be able to beat them and I cannot understand why we don’t try. Is it that the people best in the position to do this are paralyzed because they ‘believe in the system’ and are so attached to norms they’d let anything happen even at the cost of breaking a norm?

It sure looks that way to me. In the words of a great American poet, they respect and prize the covenant; they respect the process, they respect the rules.

On the weird notion that Trump may ignore the constitution and somehow get himself a third term in 2032, you might care to note that if he is still alive then he would be aged 86. As he is already showing distinct early signs of Alzheimer’s I don’t think he’d even know his own name then.

My own bet is that Trump is some chance to get elected in 2024, but by 2028 the decline of the US generally, and its middle class in particular, will be clear even to the stupidest Jesus freak. I think he would have no chance of reelection, even if compis mentis, which he probably won’t be.

J-D 63 You have a point, as usual ;-) Although it has to be said that the election procedure as such in Iran is pretty fair. The US is to my knowledge the only country where a candidate with a majority of votes can still “lose” the election. The British system has a similar problem but it doesn’t pretend to be a direct election.

Anyway more re SusanC. I think it is important to understand that while an open coup in the US is definitely on the table and there has already been a test run, an authoritarian power grab could well happen by pseudo constitutional means, as has happened before in several countries. The many anti-majoritarian mechanisms in the US constitution, reinforced by gerrymandering, unrestrained voter disenfranchisement, and a judiciary dominated by the Extreme Right, offer plenty of opportunity for such a takeover.

I reiterate that Trump never been popular, has never won and likely never will win a popular majority. He and his policies are unpopular. The GOP is unpopular, has lost the popular vote 7 of the last 8 presidential elections. Without gerrymandering and the Senate, they would have very little power on the national level and be restricted to a handful of backward states.

Really their only chance to win or keep power is by subverting democracy, and that is what they do and will continue to do. It’s their only game and they are gonna play it.

Merrick Garland today is resisting Trump’s attempt to seize power. We don’t need to speculate, we can see now what the resistance will look like.

No one has mentioned Napoleon III’s 2nd empire as a potential analogy. Basically an authoritarian political regime imposed on top of a civic culture that was increasingly democratic–in the sense of 19th century liberalism–whose base of support even by the 1860s is beginning to rot from within and, my sense, would have collapsed in the 1870s and been replaced by a version of the 3rd Republican even without the Franco-Prussian war. That seems to me the most likely tendency for a right-wing regime beginning with Trump returning to power in 2024. Not pleasant, not anything I want to live with, but not the end of politics or in the broader sense democratization.

„Hungary and Poland can dismantle the EU from within“

Dismantle or sabotage? Dismantling the EU is not in their interest, they want the billions. The EU now seems intent on withholding the money until they comply with the rules, and that will work.

Some thoughts:

(1) A few years back, I read a column arguing that “once you move up, you can’t go back down”. This was in the context of high tech — that basically you can’t go back down to older-era technology, b/c all the easily-extracted energy and minerals are gone: you need high-tech to survive at that point. An example was energy: more and more, the EROEI (energy return on energy invested) of fossil fuels is lower and lower, so you need solar, wind, etc. But those require massive energy investment to create. So you’re stuck in this high-energy equilibrium.
(2) One might make the same observation about globalization and about industrialization within the US. Others have observed that what’s happening to Kansas (for example) is just the same thing that’s happening in every other factory in America: modern industrial methods and economy-of-scale are being applied to further improve the labor productivity of agriculture. But that requires high-tech machinery, seeds, chemistry, biology, surveillance, etc. Sure, Kansas may think that they produce the stuff that feeds California. But if California breaks down, if trade with China breaks down, then pretty quickly Kansas will stop producing food. And this repeats itself everywhere, at every level. Undoing this interdependence — both at the global and continental level — will take a lot of time and a lot of care. In a way, it’s what the UK is finding out with “hard Brexit”: you can’t rip it down quickly.
(3) Here in California, we’re majority-minority. And there are areas that are very majority-minority. A significant percentage of citizens are related to undocumented immigrants, and lots of us are indistinguishable from undocumented immigrants, aside from a stamp on a piece of paper in a book (a passport).
(4) I remember reading (in Gellately’s Backing Hitler) that he tried a nationwide boycott of all Jewish-owned businesses in 1933: it didn’t work, b/c the German population wasn’t ready for that kind of hatred. But eventually he succeeded, and by the end, Germans were pretty much all-in on hating Jewish people and blaming everything that happened on them. Hitler started off with power and educated his base to hate.
(5) By contrast, the GrOPers and Trump have (because their grasp on power was so weak, but also because that’s their method at this point) been educating their base to hatred more and more. By the time the GrOPers regain power, their base will want significant oppression of the people they hate — the untermenschen like me, Sophie Jane, and a lot of others. They’ll demand it, and won’t take “hey, wait a bit” for an answer, not to speak of “no”.
(6) Look at the antivaxx/maskers. Look at the anger and the racial and homophobic content of their screeching. The GrOPers are turning everything toward their central message, which is that “those people”, (((those people)), and Teh Ghey [sic] are all conspiring to rob “real Americans” of their lives and livelihoods, rob their children of their educations.
(7) Everything that happens, everything, is being used to drum up more and more anger, more and more obstruction of the proper function of government. And then the malfunction of government is used to drum up even more anger.

You don’t light such a fuse, and then expect it to just gutter out.

What’s my point? If the GrOPers take power, there’s a good chance that their base starts pogroms and serious physical oppression everywhere they can. And there is no way that people in majority-minority areas will stand for that. Sure, maybe the po-po/Sturmabteilung will try to put down the protests; that’ll just produce real violence, and the knowledge of how to make IEDs is widely-distributed. Once that starts to happen, intercontinental trade will cease, and within weeks, food supplies will be exhausted. At that point, it’ll just become war for survival.

And now, I want to write specifically about the prospects for trans Americans, because, as our President said, “rights for trans Americans is the great civil rights issue of our time.” But also b/c I remember Father Niemoller’s confession. I live over the hill from the Castro here in SF. Let’s suppose that the po-po start arresting trans SFans; how long do you think that’ll be allowed to happen, before we invade and destroy the Mission police station, before people start making molotov cocktails ? Yes, California is expensive. But in this timeline where the GrOPers retake power, money simply isn’t the issue: survival will be, and vulnerable people will need to GTFO Dodge. And the more of them (of US) there are in California, the harder it will be for the po-po/Sturmabteilung to succeed.

Just for numbers: we’re 39m here in CA. And over half nonwhite. In the big cities, the disproportion is much greater. 2.6m of those people are undocumented immigrants. 11m immigrants. These are massive populations, and large numbers of them are indistinguishable from undocumented, not that the MAGAts will care either way — they’ll attack anybody who looks brown, or Asian, or whatever.

OK, to sum up: I think that if the GrOPers retake power, it will be impossible to resist overreach, and they will start a campaign of oppression everywhere they can. And that will produce the inevitable counter-reaction, and it will be bloody. The best thing truly vulnerable people can do, is to gather together in places where they can be safe, and where there will be supply lines overseas. B/c things can and will get very messy, as majority-minority states areas literally disconnect from Red states and areas.

P.S. Let’s suppose that I’m being overly dour. That majority-minority areas will not experience physical oppression of vulnerable populations. The Red states most certainly will: we have sufficiently many incidents already in Red areas to know where things are heading. All the anger and madness you see from covidiots will be directed at vulnerable people in their areas. This is still a good reason to GTFO Dodge, and to an area where you’ll be safe.

P.P.S. At the very least, make sure to vote early/absentee and be in a Blue area of a Blue state, for the week-or-two around the 2024 election. B/c the MAGAts will not feel restrained from driving into Dallas and finding [epithet for some minority] to beat up or worse.

John, also, I think this might be of interest to readers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOjJtEkKMX4

12min SLYT from Timothy Snyder about “sadopopulism”. His thesis is that the demonstrated inability of oligarchies to govern is not a problem for them; indeed, it leads directly to their picking scapegoats to point their base at — to blame for the incompetence and failures of government. We can see this play out in real-time around covid: the Branch Covidians and their electeds are acting to further the pandemic, to sicken and kill more people, and then directing their base to blame Democrats, people of color, gay people, etc, for the obvious sickness and death.

I also remember a 2018 comment here from commenter Glen Tomkins, about the progressive degradation of the souls of their base: https://crookedtimber.org/2018/06/20/not-in-our-name-2/#comment-734309

I’m not going to quote bits; it’s worth reading in full.

There have been a number of posts in this thread on US financial hegemony. I will submit two things. #1, if the dollar loses its exorbitant privilege because of some Trump-for-life scenario, it will be one of the lesser problems America will face. #2, The last 70 years of US policy have done their best to subvert US financial hegemony, and have not succeeded. I’m thinking of the decline of Bretton Woods because the US continually softened its currency, the weaponization of financial hegemony (i.e., unilateral sanctions), and the fine folks who brought you 2008. The renminbi will not displace the dollar because China is even less trusted than the US. The Euro–well, maybe, but I kind of doubt it.

That said, I saw an interesting – and rather terrifying – talk by Kim Lane Scheppele about how Hungary and Poland can dismantle the EU from within legally given how the system is set up. (Don’t ask me for details, I don’t understand enough of it to restate, but it was scary and depressing.)

My reaction on reading that was that the governments of the other EU countries can stop the Hungarian and Polish governments if they want to. Then I searched and found this–
https://reeec.illinois.edu/news/2021-03-17/kim-lane-scheppele-europes-new-democracy-deficit-creeping-autocracy-hungary-and
–and read this–

Scheppele argued that Hungary and Poland have been left unpunished largely because of a lack of political will and …

Well, exactly! It is evident even to this casual observer that the EU has made rules about human rights which the Hungarian and Polish governments have defied the EU to enforce, and so far the response of other EU governments has been ‘Oh, we don’t want to make any trouble …’

… because of the deep economic entanglement between Hungary, Poland, and Germany. The fact that individual Member States have taken it upon themselves to sanction Hungary and Poland’s behavior threatens a possible dissolution of the EU because the states are not acting as a unified body. Scheppele concluded the talk with an urgent call for the EU to recognize that it is “a community of fate and that it is everyone’s business what happens inside each Member State.”

The question about what is possible legally is underlain (as perhaps all such questions are to some extent) by a question about what is possible politically.

Chetan Murthy @80

From the draft version of Delong’s chapter on Nazism 12.3:

“Once Adolf Hitler had seized power in 1933 and consolidated it in 1934, Hitler was
by and large popular. Germany had recovered from the Great Depression relatively
rapidly once Hitler had taken power and broken adherence to monetary and fiscal
orthodoxy. With the Gestapo in the background to suppress agitation for higher
wages, better working conditions, or the right to strike, and with strong demand
from the government for public works and military programs, unemployment fell
rapidly in Germany in the 1930s.”
https://delong.typepad.com/teaching_economics/20th-c.html

Is something like that what you think our future will bring?

@79
‘P.S. Let’s suppose that I’m being overly dour’.

Yes you are – as you write yourself ‘That majority-minority areas will not experience physical oppression of vulnerable populations’ – as any society which is as openminded divers and openminded multiracial as the Californian one does not suffer the Reactionary Racism and/or oppression in some Red States and as it has been proven with ‘the insurrection trial’ my fellow Americans are in general just not ‘organisiert’ or ‘diszipliniert’ enough to produce some ‘Horrific Type of Fascism as ONCE – ‘Made in Germany’.

Like my favourite country Italy – my homeland the US is in a constant state of –
COMPLETE CONTRADICTING CHAOS –
and each time when I’m in CA –
and together with all my (multiracial) friends –
where even the utmost ‘conservative’ of them – is as ‘climate conscious’ as an Arnie Schwarzenegger I’m sooooo far away from any type of Red State Science Denying or standard silly US politics – that I never could ultimately believe that a country with a State like California –
EVER –
FINALLY –
could fall for ‘trump’
(the worlds new word for: ‘Utmost narrow-minded Idiocy’)

nastywoman: [separately] “I never could ultimately believe that a country with a State like California – EVER – FINALLY – could fall for ‘trump’”

TL;DR it’s not the population; it’s the po-po, b/c they’re a home-grown-and-paid-for Sturmabteilung.

The population wouldn’t fall for Trump, sure. We’re too many brown and Asian people, too many undocumented. And I’d hope, too many women who aren’t gonna take it. But do you remember the 2020 Sturmabteilung Summer Exercises ? [aka “the 2020 Police Riot” aka “the police response to the George Floyd proests”] ? The po-po went wilding here in the Bay Area too, and nothing, nothing happened to them. They went wilding in every major city, and nobody’s been fired/punished/indicted/convicted/imprisoned.

The danger isn’t that the population falls in line behind the GrOPers. Rather, the danger is that the po-po decide to execute a coup (they’re already pretty much immune to control by civil authority) and “make sure that local governments fall in line”, enforce the edicts of the GrOPer Feds, etc.

And, as I said, then when they start oppressing various vulnerable populations, the shit hits the fan.

In the last three financial crises the US Reserve Bank has saved the system by acting as lender of last resort on a massive scale (Adam Tooze has the numbers). The crises have come along around once per decade. Would a Trumpist administration do so again – and do so without trying to favour their supporters and punish their opponents? I really doubt it. The global economic consequences would be dire.

As Umberto Eco observed, the right is very keen on starting wars, but very bad at running them. We could see a few Iraqs – to compound the economic problems.

By 2030 climate change will be further along, and probably accelerating. Again, would a Trumpist administration mitigate the worst effectively? Think a Katrina a year, maybe two.

The GOP base is old, and shrinking. Efforts to hold control would have to become ever more blatant and harsher – with the attendant risk of backlash.

Put all of the above together, and it could be a real shit-show.

J-D 87 The European Court of Justice has declared Poland in contempt of its ruling regarding the Polish Justice Reforms and fined them one million a day until they comply.
But the EU commission also has important pressure points: Poland is entitled to some 40 billion in COVID relief funds that the Commission seems intent on withholding. The EU has recently adopted rules that tie all E.U. funds to rule of law standards like independence of the judiciary and anticorruption measures. These rules were after long debate adopted against opposition by Poland and Hungary. EU processes can be slow but unanimity is not required any more. The union can and does assert its interests against rogue members. Poland’s reaction has been talk of a Third World War. That sounds rather desperate.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/24/world/europe/hungary-poland-eu.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/26/world/europe/poland-eu-aid.html

Neville Morley: It’s difficult to keep track of all the ways in which a former world hegemon, now in the clutches of incompetent Fascists, can wreak harm on such a country, and the world. Very difficult to keep up. For sure, they might do that. I suspect that it’s unlikely, if only because everybody realizes that the minute you start nuking productive areas of the country, you’re doomed.

But OTOH, one could easily imagine a confrontation with China spiraling out-of-control, or with NorK. Lots of ways for things to to pear-shaped.

@99 “I suspect that it’s unlikely, if only because everybody realizes that the minute you start nuking productive areas of the country, you’re doomed.”

The problem is that the race of shape-shifting alien reptilians also known as ‘Trumpists’ thrive on radiation. We’re doomed, DOOMED, I tell ya!

@
‘The problem is that the race of shape-shifting alien reptilians also known as ‘Trumpists’ thrive on radiation’.

Really?
As I found out that they are NOT ‘shape-shifting’ at all and they just ‘thrive’ on
‘Owning Some Libs’.
(whoever they think must be ‘a lip’)

Regarding Gorgonzola Petrovna’s gaslighting: https://crookedtimber.org/2021/10/06/hierarchy-of-the-grift/#comment-813712

As they say, “Campus PC has never been more out of control”. Also “Time for a blogger ethics panel”.

Forget specifying x person.

You have to account for;

The Meta Rudder
[politicians don’t need to physically touch the social media rudder, yet use it actively].

Great line: ” it has become too technologically easy to steer the ship of the culture with the rudder of social media, and putting a hand on the rudder is irresistible for political parties.”
*

“Futurists have their heads in the clouds
On making good predictions for 2050

Erik Hoel
…
16. Soft totalitarianism will make the West more like China.
…
” Quite simply, it has become too technologically easy to steer the ship of the culture with the rudder of social media, and putting a hand on the rudder is irresistible for political parties. So there is nowhere to go but toward China, toward stricter speech laws and codes, toward state observation and censorship and policing of debate and ideas. Western political parties are like two people in a fight who have both seen a gun lying on the floor and are in the process of leaping to wrestle for it. There is now no chance it does not go off.”…
https://erikhoel.substack.com/p/futurists-have-their-heads-in-the

We should think of the 2020 election and it’s aftermath as a kind of penetration test which the Trumpist GOP used to identify the weak points of the political system. While the test ostensibly failed, the GOP list no time at all, went to work to attack those weak points and get hurdles out of the way. I don’t mean this in the sense that it was consciously planned this way – that seems unlikely. But they quickly learned how vulnerable the US political system is and are intent on exploiting those vulnerabilities. After all, despite Biden winning 7 million more votes, a few tens of thousand more suppressed or uncounted votes, a few Secretaries of State, a few rogue judges, a handful of Senators could have overturned Biden’s clear victory.

The even more depressing part is that while the enemies of democracy have learned important lessons about the weakness of the system, part of the Center left have learned nothing and still won’t lift a finger to save democracy.

are working round the clock,

Tm: “part of the Center left have learned nothing”

We watch as months pass, and people caught on TV committing sedition are allowed to get away with it. We watch as people like Steve Bannon are allowed to skate on ignoring subpoenas — again, caught on TV (as in: he didn’t show up). We keep on getting told “Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small” and yet, none of these perps get ground up — none of them.

And so yes, it does seem that the center-left doesn’t have it in itself, to even defend democracy (by which I mean, whatever amount of democracy that we have in the US, which isn’t great, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise).

This is a harbinger of the future (in that the future is already here; it’s just unevenly distributed): https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2021/10/campus-cancel-culture-is-suppressing-dissent

Oklahoma: Guy joins a Floyd protest. Driver of a big-ass truck with a horse trailer runs him over (pushing thru the crowd of protestors) and he’s permanently paralyzed (spinal injury). The po-po neither charge the driver, nor even release his name, b/c hey, he and his family are endangered.

To be fair, it’s not just part of the center left that is in denial. Do I need to mention CTs own political nihilist? https://crookedtimber.org/2021/03/13/what-was-the-is-trump-a-fascist-debate-ultimately-about/

I know my share of right leaning people and none of them wish any harm on trans folks at all.

Or they do but they haven’t told you about it; but even if they don’t, the only conclusion you would be justified in drawing is that the harm which certainly is being done to trans people is being done by some of the 300 million Americans you don’t know. I can’t think of a good reason for you to dismiss this possibility. I suggest you reason more carefully. You could try asking yourself whether there might be information from outside the domain of your own personal experience which is relevant to assessing how afraid trans people are, and why.

Anonymous@114 “’There’s no obvious reason why they couldn’t rule for decades as Putin and others have done.’

Maybe the obvious reason that they have no power base? Putin has the oligarchs but big business has abandoned the Republicans and is overtly and loudly left-wing. By the way, Putin has majority public support in Russia, something Trump has never had.”

The assertion that big business is left-wing is more stupefying than any worries about the physical safety of transgender people. The notion that politics is about a culture war, where the “left” is defined by tolerating personal behavior found horrifying and totally irrelevant to normal people, is a right-wing principle. It is a false-framing that disorients everyone who falls for it.

The fact that in practice many self-proclaimed leftists turn out to agree, just reversing the plus and minus signs, really only shows that many people are confused. Manners are not policies, and real politics is about policy and personnel. Big business may have no problem with advertising and concessions on social mores. It’s not just because hysteria about such things is ignorant and mean. It’s because none of it really threatens the social fabric, not like rises in workers’ wages. And it may even help sales.

Perhaps our best hope is the secession of states that lean progressive.

Stj: „Putin has the oligarchs but big business has abandoned the Republicans and is overtly and loudly left-wing“

Please, let’s agree on the space lizards as the most plausible theory.

Btw you omitted to accuse our friends at LGM of supporting big business against the workers.

Contra SusanC (if explicitly put off-topic here), I think a Republican attempt to put Trump in office illegally in 2024 is pretty likely: more than three-quarters of Republicans are willing to claim to believe the Big Lie, and Republican officials unwilling to pay tribute to Trump and genuflect to the Big Lie are being purged. All it will likely take in 2024 is the Republican secretaries of state in a few swing states refusing to accept Democratic victories, and Trump is back in office.

To hew closer to the OP, I wonder about the extrapolation of the Trump administration’s actions on various federal agencies that keep the larger machine running smoothly. The USDA agencies rusticated from DC to Kansas City lost about half their specialized workforce, losing their experience even as they struggle to rehire:

https://federalnewsnetwork.com/workforce/2021/02/after-the-relocation-gutted-its-workforces-usda-research-agencies-struggle-to-rebuild/

The EPA and Dept. of Interior sound like they have also likely lost people willing to put up with it all.

With Frum’s observations about Trumpists being better prepared this time around <worst_person_you_know.jpg>, one has to wonder how much more undermining institutions can endure. NOAA, as I put it, largely escaped the Eye of Sauron last time around, the last-minute installation of low-key climate denialists notwithstanding. But I can’t help wonder if he holds a grudge over sharpiegate (his impromptu hurricane forecast). The weather and climate end of the agency leans hard on satellite (read defense), high-performance computing, and contracting companies, which may protect it somewhat from outright devolution, but at the same time looks like ripe pickings for commercialization. This was the fear at the attempt at appointing the Accuweather guy as director. Like the USDA, much of NOAA depends on people with years of knowledge that is difficult to rebuild – it takes a year or two just to understand how the modeling systems work – and the prospect of chaos imposed by people whose natural habitat is bullshit might scare off the sort of people who also happen to get recruited to work as quants for a lot more money.

Afeman: “To hew closer to the OP, I wonder about the extrapolation of the Trump administration’s actions on various federal agencies that keep the larger machine running smoothly.”

It’s clear that the only thing which the right needs to function smoothly is looting.

I was talking with a former colleague whose entire childhood was lived during the Sri Lankan civil war. He is a Tamil. He’s also quite technically well-educated, and didn’t involve himself in the war. Indeed, the first chance he got, he and his entire cousin-group emigrated.

He told me a lot of things that happened, and it was all a little disturbing to listen to, but one little snippet jumped-out: he described how one had to be careful where one went, esp. at night, b/c kids were getting picked-up by unidentified men in unmarked vans (death squads), and never seen again. Stuff like that. And this reminded me of how in Portland, unmarked vans with unidentified men were picking up protestors on the streets, holding them, and later releasing them. It’s not hard to get from there to the “rough ride” that Freddie Gray (Baltimore, murdered by the po-po) endured, and …. well, one can see how a racist reign of terror could easily begin.

As William Gibson once said: “the future is already here; it’s just unevenly distributed”.

It seems to me that there’s a very significant difference between being able to win an election, and being able to govern.

I can’t recall any worries on the broad liberal-left in 2008 that there was a huge risk to democracy from the left. But in two terms, Obama and the democrats managed to lock in government control of an additional 10% of the economy (Obamacare) and a huge culture-war win (homosexuality) …

Neither of those things are examples of not ‘being able to govern’, and neither of them are examples of a ‘risk to democracy’. They are both examples of governments doing things that large numbers of people were strongly opposed to, but governments all over the world, including democratic governments, have for a long time been doing things that large numbers of people were strongly opposed to, and that didn’t mean that they weren’t able to govern or that democracy was at risk. Governments of my own country, in my own lifetime, have done things that large numbers of people, including me, were strongly opposed to, but that didn’t mean they weren’t able to govern or that democracy was at risk.

I have a very hard time imagining that Trump, even if he had majorities in the House and Senate and the current Supreme Court, could make as much change in 4 years in a way that got the kind of state government, non-profit, and corporate support.

Do you find it easier to imagine that he could make as much change in a way that doesn’t get the same kind of state government, non-profit, and corporate support? If the changes are made without the same kind of support, they are still made, so it’s not clear why you’re including that qualification as relevant.

@TM 40
Thanks, that is hopeful. Of course, you’re right that the fortunes of political parties ebb and flow, and the data is a very helpful reminder. I feel as though Labour has hit a horrible slump at the moment, as they don’t seem to be offering any alternative to the Tories’ disastrous mismanagement, so until some kind of renewal happens, we’re just doomed to a string of Boris-shaped buffoons. But renewal will surely come.