America's Existential Choice

Will it be military junta, autocracy or civil war?

The arrival of the Biden Era has caused a lot of people who were alarmed by Donald Trump’s autocratic leanings to believe there are now pat answers to our lingering political problems. Within “Resistance Twitter” you continue to see people who believe somehow we, as a nation, will magically summon the political will to end Trump’s power over us. This, despite absolutely no evidence to back this belief -- hope -- up.

I get accused of, essentially, being something of a defeatist. People who are wrapped up in this or that potential criminal Trump-related “boom” -- be it his long absent taxes, or this or that corrupt family member -- are the delusional ones in my view, not me. 

The reason why I think this is that Trump while in office was not a Great Man in a traditional sense. He is, and has always been, nothing more than an avatar for some deep seated, existential and structural problems in our modern political system. A Great Man in Trump’s position would have easily stolen the 2020 election and would be enjoying an autocratic second term with an eye towards a third or four.  And that’s the thing that a lot of Resistance Twitter people miss -- autocracy is popular in the United States right now.

I would go so far, in fact, to propose that the United States is currently an autocracy without an autocrat. 

With all of this in mind, here are the three options that the United States will likely face at some point between now (September 2021) and around January 2025. 

Military Junta

I think a lot about how fragile the American political system is right now. It would not take much additional pressure for it to all come crashing down. And, yet, what exactly does that abstract statement mean? It means that there will come a point when Blue and Red no longer believe they can get what they want through politics, but rather only through the force of arms.

I just don’t see this happening in the form of some sort of “MAGA Revolution” no matter how much the MAGA fascists on Twitter may think this is the case. It’s not going to be a popular MAGA revolt, but rather one of the two major parties deciding to on the state level what exactly happened in 1860 -- leave the Union. Or, at a minimum, “nullify” any presidential result they do not feel is legitimate. But this line of thinking makes a fundamental assumption -- that the U.S. Military would let things get that bad.

America’s military leadership has time and again made it clear that they are not going to step in to fix any severe domestic political crisis that might breakout in the United States. And, yet, that’s what they say publicly to make themselves feel better. While the United States has a tradition since its conception of the military staying out of politics, if we were faced with another civil war, the case could be made that they would feel their hand was forced and they would step in somehow.

But what exactly would they do?

This is, at the moment, a known unknown. It would be so unprecedented that it’s difficult for me to sketch out the specifics potentially close to four years in advance. The most obvious situation where the United States might find itself with a temporary military junta of some sort is a series of events to force the issue. The two sides can not agree on who the president is. Or it’s obvious who won the election, but one side -- read, MAGA New Right Republicans -- on a state level balk and begin to form nullification or even secessionist conventions.

With the events leading up to the first Civil War at the forefront of their minds, the leadership of the American military might step in specifically for the purpose of there being some leadership, any leadership guiding the country while the whole issue of who won the 2024 election is sorted out. If things got bad enough, say there were rival administrations that were beginning to be formed and it was clear that the population had lost faith in the Constitution itself, any military junta that might exist could be created specifically for the purpose of holding a Constitutional Convention that would sort things out on a structural basis. 

But that is extremely speculative. It would be so out of nature for the U.S. Military to concern itself with such issues that someone, somewhere (Donald Trump)  would have to be flinging around illegal orders that so aggravated the American Military brass that they staged a coup of some sort. 

Autocracy 

Just looking at macro political trends in the United States at the moment, the United States peacefully transitioning into an autocracy seems a pretty safe bet. The American power elite is either clueless, oblivious or complicit tot the rise of autocracy in the country. Should a young, competent MAGA New Right Republican President in 2025 begin to use the levers of government to, say, weaponize the existing ICE infrastructure or purge the media it probably would be met with minimal opposition. 

As such, it is easy to imagine the years 2025 - 2029 being years of transition into a full fledged, Russian-style autocracy in the United States. It would start off as something of a “lite touch” autocracy where things, on a practical basis, did not change for the average person. But since form follows function, this process would accelerate as the years passed to the point where the idea of the United States being some bastion of liberal democracy will be seen as quaint. 

It will simply become conventional wisdom that for a Democrat to win the presidency, the Democrats have to control Congress, too. But given that voter suppression and gerrymandering will grow more and more severe at the same time, then the entire tradition of an ebb and flow to our politics will become moot. Republicans will have free reign to implement their vision for the United States without any fear of political consequences. 

Remember, there are occasional huge protests in Putin’s autocratic managed democracy of Russia and nothing changes. If we go the autocratic route, there’s no reason to think our version of autocracy will be any different to what is found in modern Russia. The huge national Women’s Marches of the Trump era were eventually surprisingly ineffectual. 

Gradually, Hollywood will, en mass decamp somewhere outside the United States, like, say Perth, and there will be a huge flow of liberal-control capital out of the country as the autocratic squeeze grows more intense. 

And there’s one key thing that a lot of Resistance Twitter does not realize. The United States is far closer to a Constitutional Convention being called than you might think. In fact, I would propose the only thing that separates a MAGA-themed Constitutional Convention is Trump has not gotten around to ranting about it. He would sell it as a way to pass a balanced budget amendment, but the point would be to give MAGA an opportunity to root around our basic law.  Should Trump make calling such a convention the centerpiece of his 2024 campaign,  it would be a foregone conclusion. As of 2019, we were six states away from a Constitutional Convention being held. Let that sink in for a moment. 

This brings us to a huge wildcard -- Donald Trump.

The likelihood that we will slip peacefully into autocracy is inversely proportional to how close Trump is to be president at the time we’re in the process of slipping peacefully into it. If Trump is involved, all bet of a peaceful death to our democracy are off.

This brings us to our third option: a Second American Civil War.

Civil War

As it stands, the idea of a second civil war in the United States is an abstract that is the go-to for MAGA New Right tweeters when they get frustrated. Though, the usually apparently think it will be more of a populist MAGA revolution than a state-organized civil war. 

But looking out in the future of late 2024 -- early 2025, it definitely seems as though should Trump be the Republican nominee that it’s almost inevitable that we will have a civil war. Trump has repeatedly shown that he is simply too incomptent. He had a number of opportunities to shepherd us through the process of becoming an autocracy and he was just too lazy and idotic to pull it off. 

Throw in Attorney General Bill Barr and Vice President Mike Pence strangely refusing to help Trump become an autocrat and you have a situation where we’ve been granted roughly four years to peacefully figure out what America’s fate will be.

But, alas, we’re squandering these precious years of peace we were accidentally given.

So, how exactly might a civil war erupt in the United States?

Most likely, it would be exactly what happened in 2020, only far more severe. As with 2020, opportunists would pop out of the woodwork once it became obvious that the 2024 was going to be contested. And here’s where Trump, personality, comes in. While Trump could likely have a lot more leverage the second time he attempted to steal an election, he’s overall so incompetent and ill focused that he would bungle the whole experience. And he could force a civil war either way,  be it Blue States leaving or Red States leaving. He really is that incomptent. 

It’s easy to imagine a situation in January 2025 where states (be they Blue or Red) begin to leave the Union and there is a huge wave of political refugees as Red people in Blue states and Blue people in Red states flee to states that better fit their personal politics. At the same time, New York City could convulse with such political fervor that Trump Tower could be taken and gutted, as could the headquarters of FOX News and The Wall Street Journal.  

Once things have gotten that bad, then the very people who thought they wanted a civil war -- the MAGA New Right -- might be in for a rude awakening. California might, single-handedly, become a Blue State arsenal of democracy. While a Red State like Texas might simply implode because of how on a demographic basis it’s shifting Blue long-term. 

Even more surprising, there’s a chance that it will be Never Trump leaders who will serve as the core of the leadership that will lead Blue States to victory -- if they’re lucky. On paper, Blue States should win any Second American Civil War if it’s fought on a state level and Never Trumpers would be ideal leadership for any Blue State Unity government.

But that last bit is very, very speculative. If you throw in the almost inevitable use of WMD by both sides in any Second American Civil War and the whole idea is something none of us want to contemplate. 

So, after having said all that, which of these three outcomes do I believe will happen? I don’t know right now. Trump running again would definitely make a civil war significantly more likely. But it’s very possible that we’ll simply continue to drift through history and there won’t be any official transition into autocracy that we can point to.

It will just become conventional wisdom that Republicans, through aggressive use of voter suppression and gerrymandering combined with creative exploitation of the quirkier aspects of the Constitution will always be in power for generations to come.

But, in the end, no fate but what we make, as they say at the end of Terminator 2.