My related concern is that the 'race' between unpopularity, term limits and authoritarianism is not zero sum. There's a distressing and quite large 'grey zone' where the administration is entrenched enough to trigger mass violence but not entrenched enough to win the mass violence.
On the flipside, you can tell that the administration is not confident of their position because they keep doing impotent 'show of force' actions and going after people who can't vote anyway, rather than actually attempting to suppress dissent. If they could shoot LA protestors, they would have.
The quirk in all of this is that the people you need to reach do not read the NYT (or the WSJ) or watch MSNBC - they watch Fox, if anything. And Fox isn't ever going to help you. So you need changes in their material conditions to trigger reevaluation.
Which recontextualizes the 'race' discussed above to being really a race between authoritarian consolidation on the one hand and the administration being understood to have *caused* 1) an economic downturn or 2) social upheaval and chaos or 3) a foreign policy disaster.
In that grim calculus, there is no good news, but there is the recognition that the administration is 1) very bad at authoritarian consolidation and 2) actively producing the predicates for both an economic downturn and social upheaval and is being openly noted as doing both.
Don't sleep on #3, as well, between his attempts to exert force against Russia and Ukraine despite being unable to hold a consistent policy, the growing unpopularity of Israel, China, etc. Even the fact that the "no wars!" guy just might invade Venezuela for no real reason.
I read the list and thought, "I bet we'll end up having all three." The problem is, there is nothing that would move the needle on that third one which isn't even worse than the implications of the first two.
It would be very nice if these folks might notice (2) there and say, "Trump is *trying* to do the things I don't want" and recalculate, but in practice for all sorts of reasons of sunk costs and social pressures, they will only recalculate when he actually *does* tank the economy or start a riot.
Based on all of that, the ideal outcome is 'victory by term limits' followed by 'minor clarifying crisis' and in either case the best thing is to slow down authoritarian consolidation to give max time for the buzzer to go off while the administration can still be removed without mass violence.
I'm expecting attempts to arrest US citizens before the 2026 elections, using the military. In fact I think fascist CEOs want to automate the process, though I doubt they can do it by next November. I think you should be telling everyone CEOs want to replace God with AI, and must be stopped.
I don't remember if I've seen you discuss this, at least more than in passing, but what do you think is the likely outcome if he just keels over one day?
I think we are, unfortunately, well past this point. If there’s not major reform, worse is inevitable.
I'd give your best case as Trump dying of natural causes before the midterms. Without Trump putting the fear of MAGA into Republican politicians I suspect enough would come around and stop what's happening. If Trump is alive after the drubbing he'll take in the midterms... I fear for your Republic.
"Minor clarifying crisis." If any member of ICE, the Trump admin and whatever organizations support them(national guard, local police, etc.) isn't in jail after this shit, they'll have won.
[2028] Dear diary, I'm a rank-and-file member of police/NG. Trump is attempting a third presidency. I can't tell whether he will manage to get it. - If I side against him, I go to jail whether or not he wins. - If I side with him, I avoid jail if he wins, and me siding with him furthers that.
"Dear Diary, we decided to spare the wehrmacht because really, imagine the optics and how much they would have hated us if we didn't. This certainly would have no consequences down the road."
Whether/how big a "wehrmacht" comes into existence is the question here. "Small clarifying crisis" requires that the PWTG (people with the guns) stay out / side with you. You have to offer something: clemency. If you assume they will side against you ("wehrmacht"), and promise jail, they will!
I'm... not sure how many layers of irony you're operating on, but trying to jail every single wehrmacht member was never on the table (because the people on the winning side weren't stupid enough to even contemplate this) and history vindicated this decision in every way.
i.e. We can NOT have Reconstruction pt2
But Trump IS trying to do things they want: hurting minorities. A small section of Trump voters might be tricked, rubes or protest voters, but most of them are entirely willing to suffer personal hardship to hurt minorities.
Except a significant portion of the people who actually switched sides from 2020-2024 are part of the primary minority group he is targeting.
Maybe it makes me a bad person but it is DEEPLY funny to me when someone goes "I thought he'd just kick out the BAD minorities, not ALL the minorities! I'm one of the good ones!" Get fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucked.
The catch here is that the institutions which should be taking advantage of these weaknesses are instead largely trying to ignore the issue and/or contain the dissent they’d otherwise need to trigger an uprising.
In this framing -and I do think is the simplest accurate one- the question becomes how to make this information flow (what and whose fault) faster and more reliable. Things have to be very personally bad in very clearly attributable ways to vote against... 1/
... strong partisan and social affinities mediated by an actively disingenuous information environment. It's not hard to recast terrible outcomes as Those People's fault absent clear causal models, and anyway it does take a while to screw up that deeply a country as rich and powerful as the US. 2/2
They scroll short form video on fb, insta and TikTok! If something’s sensational enough you can reach them there. One of the reasons they aren’t gunning down protestors in LA and its where the Epstein shit has some traction.
Also true.
I think this is the key. Trump’s best performance was with people that claim the consume no news. If “culture” social media is showing bad things those voters are likely to turn against him
And of course, that's likely part of the reason for his unconstitutional refusal to enforce the TikTok ban. It is very easy for him to lean on them to nudge the algorithm/moderation in whatever direction he feels like on any particular day.
Asserting your rights with the brown shirts and peacefully baiting them into on camera blow ups (warning this may involved getting your arse kicked and arrested) is a great way to reach low info voters. Very patriotic thing to do and vital to film it.
Careful. I wouldn't be surprised in the least that a shooting happens soon.
Part of how we got here is that this gang is incapable of being satisfied, confident, or secure. They will keep pushing boundaries unless and until someone stops them.
I guess that 1/6 doesn't quite qualify as mass, but it's getting up there.
Unpopularity also has the issue that barring being so unpopular that you get torn apart by an angry mob, it only matters during election years, so for another year it'll be largely irrelevant as a factor.
I actually don't want the Administration to win at the mass violence phase.
I would prefer to remove the administration without a mass violence phase. Failing that, yes, I would prefer them to lose rather than win. But I'd much rather not have a violent convulsion.
I'm not sure our druthers are on offer.