I knew Trump's goose had been shoved into a deep frier and that said deep frier exploded once people moved the goalposts to 'the military will solve this'. Obama did a thorough job purging the officer corps during his presidency and the best case scenario with the grunts would have been fragmentation, meaning civil war rather than any smooth coup against the establishment.
That said, the populist right was around before Trump and despite the inevitable attempts at suppression, I fully expect it to remain long after he's gone, especially as Biden's promised policies amount to trying to put out their fire - stoked as it's been these past four months, much less the past four years - with napalm.
Attempting to impose large scale gun control alone would be a disastrous mistake for anyone who doesn't want to start mass uprisings and probably the 2ACW to make.
To say nothing of the exacerbated economic collapse that a nationwide lockdown will bring about...
Or the extra aggravation from attempting maximally-accelerated pushes on every culture war front the progs can think of. Or the blatant threats and moves to list, disenfranchise, 're-educate' and ultimately destroy every single MAGA supporter in existence.
Like, wow. Talk about realizing every single paranoid fantasy right-wing 2ACW fiction authors have been writing about for decades.
Tiberius Gracchus has been thrown in the Tiber, and now America's latter-day Optimates are no doubt gearing up to do the same with his supporters. But if yesterday was any indicator, I think this is just the beginning of the great American crisis' boiling-over stage (the pot having first been set to boil back in the 1960s), and not even close to its end.
That's the million dollar question. I'll be blunt, because this is way past time to pretend to not be a doomer: I don't think there is a Caesar right now. Trump was the best positioned to try and, obviously, that has not panned out. I cannot think of any other genuinely charismatic American politician or general who commanded a similar degree of loyalty among the general population at present.
But we have to remember that before Caesar, there was Marius Senior. Marius Junior. Cinna, Catiline, Quintus Sertorius, the Gracchi brothers and others. All failed to overthrow the elite, most paid for it with their lives and that of their loyal legionaries and supporters. But in the end, despite being much more blasé about the casual mass murder of their enemies than modern society, for all their efforts the Roman Optimates never could completely exterminate the Populares. And the bones of those they did kill formed the foundation for Caesar's rise.
Tl;dr this is certainly going to get much worse before it gets better and anyone who's expecting a last minute savior to gallantly ride in atop a white stallion on January 19 is deluding themselves. But the foundation for an American Caesar has been laid (not just with Trumpist populism, but also with mass disillusionment with every legal institution of order in America - would many have believed you if you said the American right would turn against cops, for example, in 2015 or even this past summer?) and if he does not manifest to use it in our lifetimes, he will before the end of this century.
I knew Trump's goose had been shoved into a deep frier and that said deep frier exploded once people moved the goalposts to 'the military will solve this'. Obama did a thorough job purging the officer corps during his presidency and the best case scenario with the grunts would have been fragmentation, meaning civil war rather than any smooth coup against the establishment.
That said, the populist right was around before Trump and despite the inevitable attempts at suppression, I fully expect it to remain long after he's gone, especially as Biden's promised policies amount to trying to put out their fire - stoked as it's been these past four months, much less the past four years - with napalm.
Attempting to impose large scale gun control alone would be a disastrous mistake for anyone who doesn't want to start mass uprisings and probably the 2ACW to make.
To say nothing of the exacerbated economic collapse that a nationwide lockdown will bring about...
Or the extra aggravation from attempting maximally-accelerated pushes on every culture war front the progs can think of. Or the blatant threats and moves to list, disenfranchise, 're-educate' and ultimately destroy every single MAGA supporter in existence.
Like, wow. Talk about realizing every single paranoid fantasy right-wing 2ACW fiction authors have been writing about for decades.
Tiberius Gracchus has been thrown in the Tiber, and now America's latter-day Optimates are no doubt gearing up to do the same with his supporters. But if yesterday was any indicator, I think this is just the beginning of the great American crisis' boiling-over stage (the pot having first been set to boil back in the 1960s), and not even close to its end.
Yeah, the populists are here, but the real question is, where is Caesar?
That's the million dollar question. I'll be blunt, because this is way past time to pretend to not be a doomer: I don't think there is a Caesar right now. Trump was the best positioned to try and, obviously, that has not panned out. I cannot think of any other genuinely charismatic American politician or general who commanded a similar degree of loyalty among the general population at present.
But we have to remember that before Caesar, there was Marius Senior. Marius Junior. Cinna, Catiline, Quintus Sertorius, the Gracchi brothers and others. All failed to overthrow the elite, most paid for it with their lives and that of their loyal legionaries and supporters. But in the end, despite being much more blasé about the casual mass murder of their enemies than modern society, for all their efforts the Roman Optimates never could completely exterminate the Populares. And the bones of those they did kill formed the foundation for Caesar's rise.
Tl;dr this is certainly going to get much worse before it gets better and anyone who's expecting a last minute savior to gallantly ride in atop a white stallion on January 19 is deluding themselves. But the foundation for an American Caesar has been laid (not just with Trumpist populism, but also with mass disillusionment with every legal institution of order in America - would many have believed you if you said the American right would turn against cops, for example, in 2015 or even this past summer?) and if he does not manifest to use it in our lifetimes, he will before the end of this century.