I’m afraid we have a dead shark, guys. Our political system is dead. When you have otherwise well educated, normal conservatives quoting the pretty surreal lies that MAGA Republicans say about anyone who’s not MAGA….shrug emoji. You’re totally, completely fucked.
The bad guys have won and now the issue is how do we mitigate things going forward, rather than having any sort of political system. I suppose our best case scenario at this moment is anyone who wants to get out of the country, can. That may be 10 million people, but, like, I said, that’s the best case scenario.
Since we can’t have that, I guess just being able to avoid a civil war and maybe having a military junta is our second best option? Then there’s a tie between civil war and fascist MAGA autocracy.
The Traditionalists in my family are all-in with fascism. They don’t really know that they are, but the policies they support are pure cut fascist in nature. They are squeamish about the threat of violence element of fascism….but everything else….all systems go.
So, I don’t know what to tell you. If you can get out the country, then do so.
I wrote a post called, “I Was Famous Once, And Young” and it’s been getting an unusual amount of traffic for a site that gets, well, gets almost no traffic. All the post is about is my lingering grief — way too many years after the fact — over a failed “English journal” in Seoul called ROKon Magazine.
My favorite ROKon Magazine cover.
Now, I have a very — VERY active imagination, so obviously I think someone is going to use that fleshed out outline I gave a manuscript consultant who ghosted me as the basis of a screenplay. Or something dark and dire like that. Or, I don’t know…maybe Jennifer 8. Lee is somehow interested in what happened with the magazine and that is generating chatter in her huge friend group and they look for “ROKon Magazine” and find that specific post which a “ROKon Magazine” tag attached to it?
It’s all very curious.
If someone is actually interested in that bonkers story, well, that would be great. Just don’t steal the story so much that I can’t use it as the basis of my six novel thriller project I’ve been working on for years now.
Only time will tell, I guess. But, as I keep saying — make decisions on what you do know, not on what you don’t know.
I’m growing tired with arguing with people who aren’t alarmed with the rise of American fascism. Either you see it or you don’t. Either you realize that just after Election Day 2024 we’re going to be faced with the existential choice of MAGA fascist autocracy, military junta or civil war or you don’t.
While I continue to believe we’re not going to have a civil war — that doesn’t stop me from worrying about that possibility a lot. A whole lot.
If, for no other reason, ding-dong Trump forcing the matter. He could, unto himself, force us to confront that issue of autocracy or civil war one way or another.
And if there is a civil war, it’s going to be Blues who start it. But maybe I am being hysterical. Maybe we’re going to just muddle through this existential crisis just like we muddle through everything else.
As I approach 50, I have to come to grips with how even if I get what I want — I’m not going to get what I want. It’s not like if I become any sort of traditional success in the next few years that I can magically hang out with 24 year olds in Dimes Square.
Even if I become a huge “success,” I’m still going to a) be coming out of nowhere relative to my peers b) old as hell relative to the people I going to naturally want to hang out with because I missed out being “young in the city.”
So, I feel a bit forlorn.
I’m not going to solve any problems by becoming a success of any sort, other than I might — might– hang out with cooler people and get to, finally live in a big city with a proper subway system.
But…that’s it.
And, yet, that’s, in a sense, why successful creative people act the way they do. They go through all this struggle, dreaming their big dreams, only to realize that the reality kind of sucks.
Having said all that, I am fucking determined to write and sell my first novel within the next few years. I SHOULD be done with first draft by, say, the end of the year and the second draft by around some point in spring 2023.
I just have to believe. Believe. Believe. Believe.
For the sheer value-free, fun-interesting element to it all, you can’t do better than the current mad dash to be Dua Lipa’s next boyfriend. This story has everything — Trevor Noah, Jack Harlow…and Kid Cudi? All you need is Pete Davidson to swoop in and play spoiler at some point — she is a brunette, after all — and you have a very fun celebrity story.
The happy couple?
So, as I understand it, Dua Lipa is living the dream of every single, gorgeous multi-millionaire, multi-million album selling artist. But she is single and ready to mingle. And she can’t just hang out with any broke ass writer who is a good conversationalist. Or, maybe she can? (Dua: call me.)
Anyway, she’s single, having just broken up with Anwar Hadid. The first person who shot his shot was Jack Harlow who wrote a song about her in a very conspicuous manner. Her response was….tepid. Then there are all these reports about various people who have had projects with Lipa the last year or so who have also shot their shot, only to fail.
Apparently, Miley Cyrus wanted to bump uglies with Lipa and got shot down. I’m starting to think that in person, Lipa is a regular Helen of Troy.
Then, recently, there were two major developments on the potential Dua Lipa hookup front. One is, she was seen canoodling in New York City with Trevor Noah. And THEN, Kid Cudi said in an interview, “Oh, by the way, Dua, if you want to work on something together this fall, call me up.” wink wink.
So, we’ll see. In a not-unrelated-noted, I still think that Ari Grande is working hard to get pregnant now that she’s married.
I have given up trying to do anything about access journalist and “Trump Whisperer” Maggie Haberman. She’s got a very high profile coterie of Blue Checks willing to circle the wagons around her whenever she does something like wait a year to break a huge Trump story.
I heard this on the latest Pod Save America where they had a guest host on the pod with the other guys and he was throwing pretty basic truth bombs about Haberman…and there was awkward silence whenever it happened. Twitter liberals can not, will not, address the problems of access that blemish an otherwise stellar journalist career.
Then ding-dong Trump posted this and now I feel bad for Haberman.
Trump is totally losing his mind, it seems. And he’s getting worse. And, yet, we’ve been saying shit like that for ages now and…nothing. So, I don’t know. There just nothing we can do about Trump.
He has the means, motive and opportunity to cheat his way to victory in 2024…and that’s when Blue States either bend a knee to autocratic MAGA fascism…or they don’t and we have a “National Divorce.”
See you on the ramparts? (I hope not. I hate violence.)
It seems pretty clear that we have a sense of what the next few years will be like. Starting around 2024 — 2025, the United States, and the globe, will go through some sort of massive political transformation. There’s either a civil war in the United States which will cause WW3, or there’s a MAGA autocracy….which will cause WW3.
But what happens after that? What happens to the globe once the dust settles.
I think the 2030s will be a lot like the 1950s. A lot of technological innovation that was either held back because of WW2 or started in WW2 came to the fore during that decade. And I think the same thing will happen in the 2030s. A lot of the things that Elon Musk is working on now will take off in a big way in the 2030s.
The key thing I think we have to keep an eye on is AI and automation. There are about 3 million high paying blue collar jobs in transportation that could go “poof!” if Musk’s dream of AI-powered self-driving cars become a reality. Meanwhile, on the other end other end of the spectrum, there is the possibility that much of lower-end fast food preperation will be done by androids.
All that could cause a massive shift in the economics and politics of either war torn America or a MAGA autocracy. The rise of neo-Luddites could be a real possibility in the 2030s.
No one listens to me and I’m always wrong, so lulz.
I’m a nobody. I live in the middle of nowhere. And, really, at the moment, the most interesting thing about me is I have a lot of opinions about a lot of things. I have a crush on a few celebrities — don’t we all — but, in general, while I may be a “delusional jerk with a good heart,” in general, I’m EXTREMELY HARMELESS.
But sometimes I grow worried that even if I got out of my way to hide that I’m writing about someone like, say, Emily Ratajkowski, The Powers That Be track it down and judge me, think I’m sort of crazed fan or something.
Please. Come on. I just find her the best looking woman in the world at the moment. That’s it. That’s the extent of my interest in her. I only even bring any of this up because of a very, very dumb misunderstanding between myself and Alexa Chung’s “people” when I was writing a lot about HER in the past.
Hopefully I’m jumping to conclusions. Please. I hope I’m right that I’m just assuming something about this particular potentially non-situation. It all goes against my self-perception. That’s why it bothers me.
*I* know I’m just a harmless nobody in the middle of nowhere. Why is it so hard for other people to give me the benefit of the doubt?
Let’s do yet ANOTHER deep dive in to what might happen to me if I found myself able to live in New York City or Los Angles for a few weeks (months) with a job of some sort and ready access to transportation.
New York City The thing about New York City is, from my experience, the city is so brutal on an social basis that the argument can me made that I’m full of shit whenever I talk about what a success I might be there. There’s a reason why the song says, if you can make it here you can make it “anywhere.” The metrics for success in NYC are very cold and clinical. Do you have a lot of money? Are you tall and traditionally good looking? Do you have a huge cock? (For women….were you a model in your youth?)
If you don’t have any of those, then, well, you’re not really very successful in New York City.
So, I probably am being pretty delusional — maybe a lot delusional — to think I could curry any favor, find any success just by living in New York City any duration of time. It’s really fun to think about, given what happened to me in Seoul….but my sell-by date is probably a sold 10 years in the past. I’m old and just not as cute as I used to be. I might prompt some interesting discussions once I leave the bar but….that would be it. I would be just another really interesting person in a sea of really interesting people floating around New York City and that would be that.
Los Angles I would probably have a minor better chance of success because, well, Los Angles is a storytelling town. And it’s within the realm of possibility that I would cruise into a bar have a really great conversation with some random person and the next thing I know I’m explaining in vivid detail my vision for a movie the movie “11” staring Emily Ratajkowski who at that moment will be looking at me with wide eyes, hoping that I might get a three picture deal from my new best friend elsewhere at the cocktail party.
Or something like that.
The stuff of Hollywood dreams — La La Land and all that.
But even that movie is pretty much just a bunch of bullshit. I can schmooze with the best of them. And because of all the writing I’ve been doing with these six novels…I’m pretty primed to write some screenplays.
And…yet…there continues to be the issue of my age. I’m just not as cute as I used to be. I’m old, old, old. And, well that’s it. If I find any success it is probably going to be because of one of two things — I sell my first novel and it’s some sort of success, or I fall into some money and I buy the photographic equipment I need to start that career.
Anyway. I’m not getting any younger. It’s put up or shut up time.
I’ve reached the age where I can have a very long conversation with a couple of strangers….and just leave. There is something very liberating about having a great conversation and it being value free.
As I’ve gotten older, this has started to happen to me more often.
And, I think, if I was in, say, New York City, it would happen so often that I would be something of a legend in bars across the city as someone who had really long, really interesting conversations then just…vanished.
There is something to be said for not having to get involved in someone else’s life. It might be different if I was, like, successful and stuff, but as it stands, I have such strong opinions on a wide range of controversial subjects that it’s probably for the best that I have brief, intense conversations with random strangers at bars and then that’s it.
I’ve been to NYC on occasion and I’ve done this and it was a lot of fun. Though I do think if I was in LA and I did this that I would inevitably run into some producer and leave the bar with a three picture screenwriting deal or something. I definitely “give good mind” when it comes to such things.
But, during my extended loser phase, I think just I am just going to swoop into bars, “give good mind” and then vanish into the night. I just don’t want to have to worry about explaining my loser life and how I got myself into this particular situation.
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