Unlike Paul Campos, I'm not terribly shocked that the Courts struck down Trump's bullshit conspiracy theories left, right and center. There's a popular take that the only reason the Courts have been so uniformly against Trump is that the election "wasn't close enough to steal this time." Maybe if it had come down to a Florida 2000 scenario it could have been stolen in the Courts. Of course, the margins in GA, PA, WI, AZ and NV are largely a product of nationwide trends that led to Biden winning by 4.5%. So, I never had much worry that the Courts might somehow throw this to Trump. They have lifetimes appointments. The few Republicans to stand up to Trump are usually those who have nothing to fear from a primary or are not running for re-election. The judges are similarly immune from the Trumpenproletariat.
However, the unhinged ranting from Cult 45 is bad and getting worse. As the magnitude of their loss becomes clear, they are reaching for bigger and bigger conspiracies and bigger and bigger delusions. They believe the agitprop from the Republicans/Fox/OANN/Newsmax. They believe that Joe Biden is a communist and his election will end America as we know it. When you believe that and that - somehow, someway - Democrats stole the elections in Republican controlled states...that's when you feel perfectly justified in engaging in political violence.
We were basically staring at two scenarios before the election. First, Trump loses badly - and yes, his current loss is a bigly loss - and Cult 45 are outraged. Second, Trump loses by a small amount and manages to either pull off his inside straight again or somehow they throw the election to Trump in the Courts or legislatures and the majority of Americans are outraged. In either scenario, our politics is so fundamentally broken that one side would likely start calling for secession.
Since the first scenario came to pass, it will be Cult 45 that begins wailing for secession. I'll cede the floor to Daniel Webster the last time this idea came up:
Peaceable secession! Peaceable secession! The concurrent agreement of all the members of this great republic to seperate! A voluntary separation, with alimony on one side and on the other. Why, what would be the result? Where is the line to be drawn? What States are to seceded? What is to remain American? What am I toe? An American no longer? Am I to become a sectional man, a local man, a separatist, with no country in common with the gentlemen who sit around me here, or who fill the other house of Congress? Heaven forbid! Where is the flag of the republic to remain? Where is the eagle still to tower? or ishe to cower, and shrink, and fall to the ground?
Webster went on to note that you couldn't divide the country in anyway that made sense, especially with the Mississippi flowing in the wrong direction. Let's limit the states seceding to the ones where Trump won 60% or more of the vote. That gives us a "country" of the Dakotas, Wyoming and Idaho and a "country" of Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia and Alabama. Yet, look at Wyoming. No state supported Trump more, giving him almost 70% of the vote(!), but its most prosperous county (Teton), where Jackson Hole is went for Biden with 67%. Alabama has its "Black Belt." Tennessee has Nashville and Memphis that both went over 60% to Biden.
So, division seems implausible, to put it mildly.
What I fear instead is something similar to what we saw in the early Clinton years: low levels of right wing terrorism punctuated by something truly horrific. There were batshit lunatics in the Clinton years, and Janet Reno took them on with unpleasant results. Obama largely left the Bundy-types alone, not wanting another Ruby Ridge or Waco, so that there would not be another Murrah building bombing. I fear that there is nothing Biden can do to prevent something like the Oklahoma City bombing. You don't need a prompt like Waco; this generation's Timothy McVeigh is already out there. We also know that the Trump administration hampered efforts by the FBI to keep track of these extremist groups, but it could be that PATRIOT Act legacies have made it easier to surveil the violent.
Regardless, I think we can count on some serious attempts at large scale violence. I don't really think we will see true secession. So much to Trump's cultists are "Keyboard Kommandos," willing to fulminate and rant, but not really interested in doing the actual work of launching civil war. The Texas GOP under certified lunatic Allen West has issued a statement calling to think about Secession, but I have a hunch that crap won't fly very far.
We are headed for a dangerous time, but not perhaps a perilous time. Most people are fine with Joe Biden, but I fear people will lose their lives, because Trump simply can't countenance letting go. He's going to get even more Americans killed.
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