Be The Power
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
Something weird is going on at the Pentagon. Trump keeps firing people and filling seemingly obscure posts with his toadies. The most innocent explanation is he’s doing it all out of spite. He’s trying to establish some sort of Trump Deep State that will cause headaches for the incoming Biden Administration and that’s it.
The more ominous explanation is he’s keeping his options open.
In other words, Trump is thinking there might be some way for him to stage a real, honest-to-God-coup and he wants as many of his toadies at the Pentagon to see that it’s successful.
But, still, something pretty big would have to happen for him to feel he could actually pull that off. He’d have to get a war with Iran or the DPRK — or an American Reichstag fire — for him to have to cover necessary to fuck with the Constitution at this point.
It has to be noted that Trump obviously has autocratic inclinations but, to date, he simply either hasn’t had the guts or the focus to do what is necessary to turn himself into an American Putin, even though everything is there for him to pull it off but for one thing — himself.
Trump — to date — simply is too big a ding-dong to ram through the autocratic acts necessary to establish House Trump. It’s all very weird and surreal given how obvious it is what Trump would have to do — and could do — to facilitate just that.
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
I’m feeling a whole lot better now, but for a solid 24 hours, I had a big chunk of the COVID19 symptoms. I’m going to get tested tomorrow, but for the time being I’m going to assume I had it and lay low.
One thing I wonder is if my exposure to the Korean cold virus a few years ago gave me added defense. Maybe? The only reason why I even suggest that is it literally felt the same way as that cold did and it was as if my body was telling me, “Don’t worry, we got this. We’ve seen this before.”
Either that, or I have a lot stronger immune system than you might think despite how much I drink and / or I didn’t have it in the first place. But we’ll see.
I’m looking forward the chance to have two weeks alone to work on the novel. It may not be King Lear, but I should be able to knock out a lot — A LOT of it — simply because I’m in lock down.
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
It appears as though Trump is wildly vacillating between ranting about he didn’t lose to actively attempting to found his own Trump Deep State that will do everything in its power to screw over the incoming Biden Administration.
If Trump was who he thought he was, then I would be right that “autocrats never lose.” But in a surreal turn of events, the Trump Era may — may — go out not with the bang of a coup, but with the whimper of Trump appointing as many crazy MAGA people to positions in the government as he possibly can.
In fact, as I’ve often said, the Trump Deep State may be one of the biggest stories of the next four years because while Trump ranted about a Deep State that didn’t exist, by the time Biden becomes president, there REALLY WILL BE a Deep State — this time, however, it will be shithead cocksucker MAGA people.
We really can’t begin to predict how, exactly, all of this is going to play out. But I can tell you that because MAGA-Republicans have no fucking shame that any — and I mean ANY — attempt on the part of Biden to right this infection will cause them to demand a full investigation for this abuse of power.
Or, put another way — the moment the House flips in 2022, Republicans are going to plot how they can get revenge for the impeachment of Trump by doing the same damn thing to Biden.
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
The last 24 hours have been rough. I started crashing yesterday afternoon. And I have all the symptoms. I still don’t feel well. I would go get tested but there are some very specific practical problems in my way.
Hopefully, if I do have COVID19, it will just be like that bad Korean cold I had when I was in Incheon about a decade ago.
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
I often talk about how I want this novel to be for “woke Park Slope moms.” Someone told me I was being both “delusional and stupid” to say this and, I guess, I am. But I find it funny.
I guess what I’m saying is with the phrase is I’m really aware of what women in the audience might expect from the novel. I also know that people at Vox, with their received Tik-Tok English wouldn’t even give me a chance.
But my default prediction right now is I’m going to finish this novel, query it, be rejected and then have to self-publish. From the very beginning, I just wanted to go through the process of developing and writing a novel and, as such, that’s exactly what I’m doing.
The Trump Era just gave me the energy, the fucking white hot raged, necessary to do get pass the astonishing learning curve and get this far in the process. I’ve now given myself a very short deadline, so I have to bali bali, as a Korean might say.
But anyway, back to chicks.
I’m trying my hardest to be as empathetic as possible with my female characters. I have no special insight into women, but I am, like, cognizant. I understand that women have needs and wants just like men and the trick is to get close enough to describing those needs wants without making female readers roll their eyes at my cluelessness.
We’ll see, I guess.
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
Let me begin by saying I never fucking let anything go. Maggie Haberman was weirdly mean to me on Twitter out of the blue and it still smarts. So, she’s become something of a running gag in my content. Anyway, for those of you playing the home game, for about four years, people like The New York Times‘ Maggie Haberman have told us in hushed tones what a fucking political mastermind Trump is.
Welp, as of right this second, I ain’t seeing it, Ms. Haberman.
I mean, if Internet crank me can think of six different ways RIGHT NOW whereby Trump could stay in office as long as he likes and that ding-dong can’t even figure out one, well, it looks like he was just a very lazy right guy at the right historical place.
Trump is a lot like Hitler in the sense that he simply didn’t really do anything other than use the existing rot in his country’s political system to get what he wanted. Hitler was notoriously lazy. And, if you just look around, you can tell that Trump is pretty lazy, too.
So, about selling your soul to House Trump for access — you got what you wanted, Ms. Haberman, but you will forever be the journalistic equivalent of Leni Riefenstahl…in a sense. What I mean by this is when History judges Trump, she is likely to judge YOU too.
And I’ll freely admit that Ms. Haberman is a far, far better journalist than me. But you’re supposed to have a least a thin veneer of conflict between yourself and the people you report on.
Regardless, I’m just an anonymous Internet crank. No one listens to me, and they probably shouldn’t.
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
1. Precursor To Civil War
This is the theory that the late 2010s will be seen as the same way as the late 1850s and we’re not about to have a cold civil war but a REAL civil war. It just hasn’t happened yet. And if it doesn’t happen it won’t happen for the specific reason that Trump, while a would be autocrat, simply doesn’t have the skillset necessary to force the issue and bring down the First Republic.
2. It WAS The Civil War (Cold)
Under this theory, the Trump Era WAS the civil war, it just was just a cold one. Once the Biden Era starts officially, we’ll snap back to about the 2000 era (with a huge amount of lingering resentment) and that’s it. We’re going to have a Roaring Twenties Redux and probably the rise of Neo-Luddites later in the decade as Elon Musk burns the trucking industry — with 3 million high paying blue collar jobs — to the ground.
3. Value Free
In this view, the Trump Era was completely value free. It doesn’t mean anything. In fact, the only thing that matters — to conservatives — are those sweet, sweet tax cuts and young hack MAGA judges. Nothing has changed from 2016 and Trump could very well come back in 2024 tan, ready and rested to do it all over again like zombie U.S. Grant and the Stalwarts.
4. A Fluke
With this one, Trump was simply the right guy at the right time and, in a sense, is a failed Hitler. He COULD have become an American Hitler but he was such a fucking empty suit that he couldn’t pull it off. (I really don’t ascribe to this one — yet.)
5. Fuck You, Lib
Lulz, nothing matters.
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
I had a something go wrong with my printer last night and as part of the process of fixing that problem, I stumbled across a way to be far more methodical about the writing of the novel.
It’s uncertain if I can use this new method for the whole thing, but I’m hoping it will allow me to get out of the infinite revision loop I found myself in. The only way to do that it seems is to print everything out and be really careful in my editing before I “lock it down” and go to the next few chapters.
I have given myself a pretty tight deadline to write the first draft, so this method simply may not be something I can use for all of it. I’m well aware that my writing ability is no where near as tight as Gillian Flynn and barely in the same ballpark as Stieg Larsson.
But it feels pretty great to actually not only be moving forward to knowing I’m a lot closer to locking down canon so the “just write” part of my mind can be placated.
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
It took 17 years for one of my more conservative relatives to admit that there were no WMD in Iraq. As such, I suspect there a good chance that should we escape the Trump Era with our lives, that the whole thing will be value free to 50% of the electorate.
They got their young hack judges, huge tax cut for plutocrats, and the libs were properly owned, but why are we even talking about it? We have to go back to ranting about Hunter Biden’s laptop or Kamala Harris wearing a tan suit.
So, what I’m saying is, spare me you trying to score points on Twitter against MAGA people because of their surreal hypocritical change in arguments and gears the moment Trump leaves office. They have no shame. Literally nothing matters to them but flipping the House so they can impeach Biden after the Durham Report comes out at some point in late 2022.
Or, to put another way — the very things that allowed Trump to escape justice and accountability will continue to do the same thing once he’s out of office. We should just be thankful that instead of a cold civil war a REAL civil war doesn’t break out.
It still could