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What's going to be the big apocalyptic struggle this election?
I wrote a piece over at my blog about how at this time in 2020 we were already in "2 Weeks to slow the spread", were about 1 month out from the first anti-lockdown protests, and 2 months out from the Summer of Floyd.
It seems obvious to me that all the chaos in the wider American empire concentrates around election years and seems to have the oxygen sucked out of it on off years.. 2020 is obvious, 2016 was only slightly less history changing, and even the 2008 financial crisis was an election year event.
There's a lot of really obvious candidates: Ukraine could go south really catastrophically really quick; the middle-east is speculated to kick-off with a potential Israeli invasion of Lebanon; and going shearly off the numbers the US southern border is one of the largest population transfers in human history with few precedents since WW2 or the even the 4th and 5th century.
But I don't know, maybe it's my mind trying to fit things too neatly to the 2020 framework... it feels like the election hasn't started yet, it feels like there's some shoe to drop or issue I'm missing, something as far from public consciousness as Immunology in Jan 2020, or racial politics in March 2020...
I can feel this massive issue just behind my peripheral vision that's about to draw all my attention and require its own Motte containment thread, and that will devour the media and twitter, for months on end.
I feel like there's this huge world shattering issue that's about to explode and within the next few months I'll be lamenting that I only have 24 hours in the day to read enough about it, convinced that it DEMANDS every second of my attention.... And I have no idea what it is?
-Is Trump going to die?
-Will a Nuke Launch?
-Is China about to take Taiwan?
-Are all those Chinese and foreign nationals on the southern border about to start targeting power infrastructure?
-Is there about to be a financial crisis?
-An "Internet Lockdown"?
-Hot ethnic cleansing in Europe?
-Global food chain collapse? .
Give me your best guess.
What will be the major containment thread at the Motte between now and election day?
Alright, to start with I think the cathedral knows trump is going to win this round, doesn’t actually have a backup plan, and are mostly trying to insulate themselves, personally, from worst case scenario consequences.
But, there is a potential political earthquake coming up- the trials over SB 4. SB 4, if you don’t know, is a Texas state law which would allow Texas(the state) to deport illegals without the cooperation of the federal government- there’s other things there but that’s the main provision. It’s currently stayed pending a full hearing with the 5th circuit, but Mexico has already said it won’t accept any deportations under the law.
Now, Texas’ chances of getting the law to go into effect aren’t very good. Almost the exact same law got struck down in Arizona a while back. But the 5th circuit is in other matters frequently Texas’ bitch and the case thus far has gone better for Texas than I would have expected. It’s dimly possible that the 5th circuit allows it to temporarily go into effect and the Supreme Court eventually strikes it down.
It’s anybody’s guess what happens then if the law’s been in effect for a month or two. Probably there’s a foreign policy crisis and then a mega-version of the state-federal standoff we saw earlier this year. And keep in mind, Texas is the natural hegemon for the south central US by virtue of size and location and also by being phenomenally wealthier than the neighbors. A much weaker federal government benefits Texas more than it hurts and Abbott has no incentive to worry about the federal government’s legitimacy- his incentive is not to call bluffs if and only if he has strong reason to believe they aren’t bluffs. And he knows that.
A major rearrangement of federalism’s arrangement with particularly large and wealthy states is certainly in the cards even if it isn’t the most likely scenario.
I don't really foresee any scenario where this could turn into a foreign policy crisis. If the law is allowed to go into effect then the chances that the Feds would try to do something to prevent enforcement against a court order are approximately zero. It's also likely that this law is a purely performative attempt to score points with voters without actually doing anything. I doubt Texas is going to try to attempt to deport Guatemalans to Mexico against the wishes of the Mexican government, and imprisoning illegals on their own dime is going to get really expensive really fast if there's anything more than a few token enforcement actions. Consider the worst case scenario — Texas officials try to deport someone to Mexico and end up getting arrested and detained by Mexican authorities. Now Abbot has to go to Biden hat in hand to get the State Department to negotiate with Mexico, and that isn't happening without a guarantee that he'll leave immigration enforcement to the Feds, because he certainly isn't going to turn this into a regular thing. At worst, Biden has every incentive to stall, making it look like he's doing everything he can while making sure that no settlement is reached until after the election. If Trump wins, then it's pretty much lights out for the detainees, because Biden has no incentive to continue negotiations, and the Mexicans are going to be disinclined to negotiate with Trump. But I doubt this even happens because, as you said, Abbot isn't stupid enough to get hoisted by his own petard.
Honestly, it seems to me like it's in Abbot's best interest for this law to get shot down. If it's upheld and he does nothing to enforce it, then it's just campaign fodder for Biden, who can point out that Abbot is all hat and no cattle. Same even if he does enforce it, because it's unlikely that Texas has the resources to make a dent in the problem. But if it's shot down then he can continue to bitch about the Feds and blame the courts from preventing him from taking the bull by the horns.
Texas has substantial leverage over the governments of Mexican border states. Abbott’s first recourse is to use it to get the Noreste to side with him in ignoring the Mexican federal government. This can spiral into a foreign policy crisis.
I doubt that there's any universe where the Texas government collaborating with drug cartels is going to be electorally advantageous to Republicans.
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