In all seriousness though, good post.
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Thank you.
I have waivered back and forth in favor of civil unrest / civil war, but I think the end regardless looks similar with potentially another rebirth some point down the line. It isn’t like this is new.
Just my 2 cents.
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Given the marriage difficulties you expressed due to political opinion differences, yes, you do.
My general goal has been to process the world around me with factual observation and consider any challenges to my line of thinking. I’ve actively avoided trying to broaden my influence, with the overwhelming majority of my writing taking place here and nowhere else. I’ve recently begun writing essays and doing citizen journalism in Lewiston on a page that’s also designed to not go viral. If I someday finish a book and it gets published, great. If not, writing has never been my plan A to make a living in the world.
I’ve already got most of my desired audience reading my local writing - politicians and journalists. Like it or not, we’ve reached a point in history where people need to line up and pick a side, accept the parts they don’t like, or sit the conflict out.
I generally agree with your assessment, especially regarding the debt, but I don’t foresee widespread violence in the USA unless foreign terror cells are activated, or perhaps some other coordinated violence.
Everything I can observe indicates that MAGA is an independent political movement that is unlikely to begin following establishment Republican playbook. Whether that’s enough to avoid a major financial crisis remains to be seen, as does the degree to which the movement can be corrupted, but it is no coincidence that Cheney endorsed Harris and many establishment Republicans are “never-Trumpers”.
So far I’m remarkably surprised by what it has achieved and by how different it has functioned compared to the old establishment Republicans.
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I would love to be able to call you crazy or overwrought. But I can’t argue that this seems an entirely possible scenario.
Musk hasn’t talked much about his third party since threatening it. Sure would love that as an alternative way forward, as much as I distrust him.
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I agree, but I also think this could happen if we have total economic collapse - which is a very real possibility with our debt and complete lack of fiscal responsibility. And I use “lack” very lightly because it simply does not exist.
I have held this belief for many years now and I have been called crazy and overwrought on many occasions. But, I don’t wish for any of this because I have children. It sure does not look good though from any angle.
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Oh for sure, economic collapse would do it. Maine is a debtor state and if funds stopped coming in, it wouldn’t take long for a LOT of people to start looting everything in sight.
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As far as a third party in the USA goes, whether Elon Musk bankrolls it or someone else does, I see it as likely within the next decade. I don’t see how the Democrats can re-invent themselves this time, not after convincing their base that Democratic Socialist policies of immigration, transgenderism, race-based public policy, collectivism and government interventionism are matters of life and death, and that opposing them is the same thing as being a Nazi.
The thing with Democratic Socialism is that it doesn’t allow for any “middle ground” on most of its core ideas. You can’t open the border or enforce immigration law every other week, for instance. Similarly, it is either true that we can transcend our bodies in a way that the government and all of society should legally recognize us as members of the opposite sex, or not. There’s no middle ground with an idea like that. Similarly, you either have equal protection under the law, or you can have race-based public policy and spending priorities.
Socialists want you to believe that they invented social programs and compassion in government, which couldn’t be further from the truth. You can have public schools without socialism, along with police, fire, public works, and even funding nonprofit enterprises.
If a third party is to be successful, it will have to reject DEI, transgenderism, and open borders, then distinguish itself from MAGA on spending priorities, foreign policy, taxation, and the rest of the stuff we argued about in the 1990’s.
Democrats are all-in on Democratic Socialism in 2025. They created a golem, and there is no easy way to get rid of it now.
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About economic collapse; it’s very much possible, and it might happen globally. And that’ll be disastrous.
When global distribution system starts to shut down hundreds of millions of people will find themselves without proper nutrition, medication etc… That won’t be pretty.
And considering how people act, it won’t be a time of great solidarity.
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I have a theory based on this.
Democrats do a good job on the federal level, Republicans do a good job on a local level. Extrapolating local politics doesn’t work as it scales.
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I attribute those difficulties to his reduced amiability and increased sense of threat from the left. We rarely talk about specific policies, though I’m quick to note that I agree with something or find a policy hopeful if I do. I’ve stopped asking “what’s funny” when he’s scrolling his phone, because it’s generally that something horrible has happened - a dem has lied or misstepped or been attacked in some way. This upsets me, and we’re both aware when he’s in that headspace, which I can only label (admittedly mild) malicious glee. I don’t mind it here at TN (well, I do, but not enough to call people out) (because once a user I really liked left after I lectured him for being mean) but at my house it’s hard for me.
It’s really a matter of increased darkness in him, his occasional treatment of me, despite my almost across-the-board rightward local voting, as “one of them,” and my reactivity to moodiness, as I spent a long time with an angry, depressed guy because we had children together. I am not prepared to live in tension again. It destabilizes me, and that’s problematic for my work and the people who rely on me to stabilize them. It would be very different if there was anything either of us could do about any of it, but there isn’t, and if it all went down I know we’d stand together with our politically mixed kids, but yes, absolutely, it’s a stressor. For him, and as a result, for me.
The president of the US should not be in my bed, particularly as I’m pretty easy going about policy, but this is where we are as a nation.
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I’m not sure what you could possibly be basing that theory on, and I’ve never been a member of the Republican party, either.
Open borders, redefining Title IX to include transgenderism, a federal spending orgy, state sponsored propaganda, state sponsored censorship, and DEI were all Democratic Socialist ideas aggressively promoted by the Biden Administration, who lied to us the entire way about their policy intent and it’s true scale. They also lied about Biden’s fitness for the job the entire time, and Kamala Harris was the most carefully-curated Democratic nominee in history, who ran on a Democratic Socialist platform, even though she didn’t call it that. Tim Walz has a long list of ties to the Chicoms, and openly espouses Democratic Socialist ideology.
It’s also looking like indictments are coming down that are backed up by a lot more facts than the unsupported Russian Collusion narrative the public was fed nonstop for years.
Matt Taibbi has done a great job of covering that story, like he has for every other story of my adult life. It is no coincidence he’s being accused of fascism today.
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That’s a good phrase. I’ve had to tell family members that they are fighting for a future I don’t want.
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You’re MAGA as fuck, come on man.
Dark humor has a way of springing up when the government puts it boot down on people, which is very stressful unless you’re one of the beneficiaries of whatever scam the government is running. This has been true in all places throughout history.
I don’t think it is a coincidence that such a massive divide exists between sexes in today’s political landscape. Women are much more receptive to the “inclusion” aspect of DEI, seemingly averse to any behaviors that may cause short-term social disruptions, not realizing that long-term social disruption is the entire goal of Democratic Socialism.
Most men cannot explain politics at the same level I can, but most don’t need to to arrive at the same basic positions I do. Most men can look around and sense the danger without explaining it all in detail.
It’s no coincidence that a viscous demonization campaign has been underway to label that as “toxic” for a long time, which has now morphed into calling anyone who disagrees with Democratic Socialism a “fascist”.
This is true, but that has very little to do with the policies and rhetoric of the Republican party during my lifetime. Had MAGA turned up in the Democratic party with the same rhetoric and policies, I’d be voting Democrat, but that’s obviously not what happened.
Anyway, Trump is giving Heather Cox Richardson some red meat to chew on with her appallingly ahistorical narrative that Donald Trump is a fascist. National Guard is being deployed to DC, which I am grateful for. I wish the feds would take over Lewiston and Portland, too, which is something I never imagined myself saying when I moved to Maine.
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Did you think that through before posting that?
I think anyone who has read my posting history knows I don’t do that.
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Yes, it must be that. Because what other explanation could there be? 
I’m sure a lot of explanations can be dreamed up for why that is, but whatever those explanations are, it still is.
It is no coincidence that the Democrats have a major lack of masculinity in their ranks, either. Gavin Newsome is probably the most masculine Democrat of any prominence I can think of, and he’s only masculine in his cunning and ruthlessness, which you have to give him some level of credit for.
For whatever reason, women are much more likely to go along with Democratic Socialism in the USA. They don’t always see the same danger in things like mass migration, transgenderism, social welfare spending, or any number of other policies that prey on emotions like empathy. We’ve also got the most conservative generation of young men in American history presently graduating high school, attending college, and entering the workforce. By some measures, an average 18 year-old man is more conservative than an average 70 year-old man. This is unusual, at least in my lifetime.
Maine students have been being fed a steady diet of Social and Emotional Learning by mostly women educators since 2019, with related concepts being laid down even sooner. Somehow, men are rejecting the political corollaries while women are much more likely to embrace them.
I think a lot of this boils down to basic differences in sexes that modern feminists have told us don’t really exist.
Malignant indifference.
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The people with blinders on simply do not understand this aspect. It’s puzzling, but that’s human nature -tribal to the core imo.
And I know I have. Tulsi Gabbard and RFK Jr. are now team fascist. LOL at no one remembers now that Tulsi ran for President as a Dem, and RFK Jr. tried but got DemBlocked. Now that they’re on DJT’s Team, that memory pathway has been wiped. Tribal, period. The only true “inclusion” guy in politics is Trump, oh the irony.
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