It seems pretty clear to me what Star Wars fans want from the franchise. First, what they REALLY want is their youth back. They want that sense of wonder that came with seeing the Star Wars or Empire Strikes Back for the first time in theatres. All of their complaints about modern Star Wars says more about them and their angst about growing older than it does the art that is Star Wars.
Anyway, it occured to me today that there is a solution to the perplexing issue of how to make a good Star Wars movie — call it the Top Gun: Maverick option. This seems to me the only way to produce a good Star Wars movie and, yet, given Disney is fucking greedy and not run by people who aren’t fans of Star Wars….it’s highly unlikely that it will happen.
There are two reasons why gong the Top Gun: Maverick route for the next Star Wars movie won’t happen.
One, is Disney is greedy and wants to sell toys. So they will do anything to cram as many potential toys into the movies because they see any Star Wars movie is just one big add for the toys that go along with it.
Meanwhile, the other problem, call it the “woke” problem, isn’t going to go away for Star Wars because the franchise is so huge that Disney simply can not resist the temptation to throw in A Message to indoctrinate the little forming minds of all those tykes who will be looking for Star Wars action figures for Chrismas.
But if you somehow pry Disney away from these two issues and just give fans A Star Wars Movie just like Top Gun: Maverick is just A Movie, then I think it would be a huge success. You would have to do the “transgressive” act of having a male lead who saves a princess from the forces of evil using the force. Just be sure that you don’t fall into having to figure out how to blow up YET ANOTHER Death Star.
Please, Disney, be a little bit more original going forward.
Now, I’m well aware of the failed Google social media platform G+ and its concept of Circles. While it was a strong idea, it was really difficult for the average person to understand what the fuck a Circle was and how to practically use it. Meanwhile, there are also Reddit “reddits” and “subreddits” which are pretty much a ham-handed application of the Usenet newsgroup concept of yore.
But my Group concept is pretty easy to understand and it’s also feature rich and flexible. One thing that makes the Group concept really scalable is its redundancy. Each user could great as many public or private Groups as they wished about any subject with any name. They would also be able to manage who posted to any individual Group, which would also mitigate the risk that any specific group would grow too huge and unmanageable.
So, if there was some breaking news, there might be a dozen or more really good Groups devoted to the event where well known content creators from journalism would post full page posts on the subject that would create threads that people with the right posting rights could comment on via inline editing. Many more people could simply read these discussions without being able to post.
All these features would fix some of the horrific flaws in Twitter at the moment. You wouldn’t be limited to just 280 characters. You wouldn’t struggle to find good content and you wouldn’t feel like you were being overwhelmed with a torrent of content.
I think this is a far better mouse trap than Twitter at the moment. And I only bring this up because Elon Musk is so mercurial that he could very well kill the goose the lays the golden egg and there will be a window of opportunity for some spunky, aggressive startup to swoop in and eat Musk’s lunch. But it’s a very narrow window — it’s not like there’s any interest in social media anymore in Silicon Valley.
You would have to have some vision, some willingness to throw money at a problem that most people believe has already been solved. But, of course, it hasn’t — at least not very well. Twitter was just lucky. And it, seems, it’s luck may be about to run out.
I can tell from my Webstats that MAGA Republicans who want a National Divorce search for the term and endup at this Website, only to find me arguing that it should be Blues, not Reds who leave the Union.
This is so fucking bonkers.
MAGA is politically ascendant. They are on the cusp of seizing control of the United States and turning the country I love into a fascist, theocratic, autocratic ethnostate. And, yet, they still feel aggrieved and disenfranchised to the point that they think Reds states should leave the Union! It is a testament to what happens when you start taking your own bullshit at face value.
I keep telling the traditionalists that I know all they have to do is be patient and they’re going to get everything, and I mean EVERYTHING that they want politically and then some. But this doesn’t stop them from perceiving any and every slight as oppression.
MAGA Republicans, apparently, feel completely overwhelmed by the oppression of the “woke cancel culture mob” to the point that they are totally oblivious to how they are just a few short months from probably taking control of Congress and being well on their way to establishing a white, autocratic Christian ethno state in 2025 when a Republican — any Republican — is sworn in as POTUS.
It’s all very curious. It’s a testament to the power of Fox News and Right wing podcasts that the Right lives in some sort of la la land where they are the scrapy underdogs who have to fuck their guns to prevent the evil “woke cancel culture mob” from ruining their lives just for being conservative. They think this to the point that they totally and completely miss they are on the cusp of getting exactly what they want.
Around late 2024, early 2025, a least a million “libtards” are going to leave the United States, never to be seen again. Then the country begins to circle the drain and we grow more and more fascist. No need for Red states to leave the Union.
I have, since the beginning of this project a number of years ago, come up with some very strict, but very arbitrary rules of thumb when it comes to the structure of this novel I’m working on.
But a few things are beginning to wear away at my adherence to these rules to the point that I am beginning to want to ignore them for expediency. One is, this first draft is going to be way too long. But I’m reminded of how the first draft of The Blues Brothers that Dan Aykroyd wrote was a massive 300 pages. But he managed to pair it down to something a lot more manageable. And I think that’s what I’m going to ultimately do with this novel when the second draft is written.
Meanwhile, I’m also getting fed up with these dumb rules because I’m not getting any younger and I have to produce something, anything sooner rather than later. So, especially with the second draft, I think I’m going to put a priority on not only brevity but doing whatever is necessary to speed the process up some. I really — REALLY — want to wrap up the second draft of this novel at some point in spring 2023 so I will have the summer to get beta readers to look over the text and to, in general, prepare for the autumn 2023 querying season.
As such, my current plan is to just write crap for the first draft, no really thinking about word count then turning around and really focusing on word count — even if that means I break some of my rules of thumb. I simply can’t wallow in things that will delay me anymore. It’s put up or shut up time.
I really have been working on this novel way too long. But, in my defense, my writing and storytelling ability has improved significantly and, if nothing else, I’m not going to embarrass myself.
But for the fact that any National Divorce would mean a Second American Civil War, I would now say let’s do this — Blue States need to prepare seriously for secession. I never thought I would get this point, but here we are. MAGA Republicans are ascendant and their dream is my nightmare.
In the end, fascist MAGA Republicans are going to turn the United States into an autocracy, a Russia clone and maybe even a clone of Nazi Germany (if we’re really unlucky.) So, on paper, all things being equal, it’s time for Blue States to bounce, leave the Union and start their own nation where there is equal protection under the law.
And, yet, I don’t really want this. There is no practical way for Blue States to leave the Union without violence. What’s more, just because Blues left the Union with the idea of starting their own center-Left nation, doesn’t mean that ultimately their war aims wouldn’t change and we would endup with a massive battle to find who controls all of the current political territory of the United States.
What’s worse, WW3 would begin during any National Divorce / Second American Civil War — and there is always the risk that the DPRK might lob a few H-bombs our way simply out of spite.
So, we’re back to square one. Blues have to accept that the United States is going to turn into an autocracy in 2025 — baring something I really simply have no way of predicting. As such, I would suggest that if you’re a Blue that you get your affairs in order and begin to game out voting with your feet — leaving the country and never coming back.
Again, I have to stress that I just want to use this idea I’ve come up with — I have no skin in the game otherwise besides wanting credit for thinking it up. I can’t code and don’t have any money. So, lulz, have at it. But with that out of the way, I will note that there is more than one way to look at this Twitter replacement concept.
Instead of a direct Twitter replacement, you might use the concept to go after newspapers as an app. You would have the main domain name and then a subdomain for individual cities that you were going to cover. Each of the your editors would have a number of Groups under their control and their writers would post to the Groups and there could be discussions about whatever it is they posted.
So, instead of the passive user base of a print newspaper, you would have a very active audience that felt engaged in what the “virtual newspaper” was putting out during the course of the day. This is very Blue Sky and just something I’ve thought would be an interesting application.
Also, if you really wanted to be ambitious, this cherry picking of Usenet UX concepts could be used to go after Facebook. You do it this way — start the service as a Twitter replacement then gradually add features so it’s a direct Facebook replacement. Doing so, of course, would mean Facebook would either want to buy you or crush you before it was all over with. Or, if nothing else, clone all your features.
But I really do like the idea that the fundimental problem of how currently the various elements of your life are all smashed together in a very weird and awkward situation. The Group concept fixes this problem because everything about the service would be based on Groups. By definition, to use the service would be to have different interests, subjects, elements of your life all in a different Group devoted to them.
Anyway, lulz. This is really fun to write about, even if it’s completely pointless and no one cares.
One of the strongest parts of Usenet was you had an entire page to work with when you wanted to post something to the platform. Essentially, you wrote an email that was copied and distributed across the public UUCP network. This element would ultimately cause the decline and fall of Usenet because, lulz, it just could not scale.
Spam and porn became so bad with Usenet that it just faded away into the oblivion that in now exists in.
But the Twitter replacement I daydream about would harken back to those Usenet days of having a full page Post. What’s so interesting about this is if you update the Usenet post into the Web world on a single dedicated Website instead of a distributed network, you have a huge amount of potential.
One thing that I find fanciating is imagine, say, The New York Times pushing its formatted content into the system and individual users were given the ability to inline edit that content in a threaded discussion. Instead of just seeing the headline of a New York Times article and a blurb, you could see — and edit — the entire article in a threaded discussion.
And, what’s more, you could give the average user the ability to create a mulit-media, formated full-page post themselves that they could post to the system in a Group. I think that’s really cool. And given that you’re dealing with a fullpage post, there is at least the possibility that you could have some sort of Zoom-like video conferencing in that Post as well that people could comment under in real time.
I fear, of course, that I’m getting ahead of myself. I would suggest anyone who might take me up on this concept to probably keep things simple at first before getting to elaborate. You would have to ease people into a whole different way of looking at content creation.
At the moment, the only thing specifically that I’m concerned about with this first novel in what is planned to be a six novel project is word count. I’m just about at the midpoint of this first novel I really risk blowing past the ~100,000 word count sweet spot that I need to shoot for.
But this is the first draft. And I’ve come up with really interesting character and a really interesting conceit that can be the cornerstone of a six novel project that hopefully — hopefully — will ultimately be open-ended. That’s why starting this novel at the very beginning of 25 years ago gives me a lot of room to work with.
You, the audience, will get to see the ebb and flow of these characters and how they interact with each other over the course of a quarter century. I’ve come up with a really interesting heroine for the first novel — Mare of Easttown if she looked like Olivia Munn — and the novel, even as a first draft, flows really well.
But the issue of it being too long.
I’m just going to write the damn thing the way I want to for the first draft, then turn around and re-write it will an eye to trimming as many words as possible. And when I finally get around to having beta readers in summer 2023, I will also direct them to think of as many different ways to cut word count as possible.
My fear, of course, is a combination of the limits of my writing ability combined with the nature of the story will make the word count an existential problem that I am going to have to just work with.
And, yet, I am really pleased with what I’ve come up with. I’m really excited about starting the next novel in the series, as well. Though I will admit that there is a chance that something will happen and I’ll have to reduce the number of books to something a bit more manageable because, well, lulz, I’m not going to live forever.
At the moment, there is a dog that hasn’t barked when it comes to MAGA and that is Trump demanding a Constitutional Convention. It’s my impression that his “brain,” Steve Bannon is on board with the idea and, as such, it would make a lot of sense that at some point Trump is going to start ranting about the need for one.
I would suggest that the issue is now just a matter of timing.
Either Trump makes a Constitutional Convention the focal point of his 2024 campaign, or he waits until he’s in office to demand one for various idiotic reasons. But given how dark America’s future is, I could totally see one being called a lot sooner than even that — maybe even in the 2023 – 2024 timeframe. That’s definitely something that would juice the base.
The fact that Trump is a lazy idiot has spared us a lot of pain. If Trump was a “Great Man” of history, then he would now be an autocratic president for life. But Trump’s abstract thinking ability is so limited that he just can’t process something like the benefits to MAGA of calling a Constitutional Convention.
It may eventually come around to the idea, but if Trump was anything like Hitler, he would have already stolen the 2020 election and demanded MAGA “enabling acts” be enshrined in a new, MAGA-themed Constitution.
I see the term “constitutional republic” is trending again on Twitter so let’s talk about what that means in the context of the United States continuing to careen towards the existential choice of autocracy, civil war or military junta. Being so absolute in your belief that the United States is a “constitutional republic” is a tell.
What you’re really saying is you’re tired of the constant hand wringing on the part of Twitter liberals about the imminent demise of America’s democracy to the point that you want to nullify the debate altogether. You generally have a series of talking points that have been fed to you by Right wing podcasts to the point that you don’t even listen to anyone who disagrees with you.
The idea that the United States can be both a constitutional republic AND a democracy at the same time simply does not enter your mind. You dismiss all the democratic traditions and norms that have developed around our constitutional republic over the years and focus on the least democratic elements of it in hopes that you can get your dream of a white autocratic Christian ethnostate.
First of all — fuck you, you autocratic peice of shit.
Second, all this talk on the part of Reds about the United States being a constitutional republic is dangerous because Blues still believe we’re a democracy and, as such, when the final Red power grab happens and they finally extinguish American democracy, there is a greater-than-zero sum possibility of a National Divorce with Blue states being the ones serving the papers. This will, in turn cause a civil war that probably will not only bomb the United States into oblivion but start WW3 along the way, too.
I don’t think that will happen — Blues just don’t have it in them. I think the United States is going to become an illiberal democracy as Reds lean into the idea that our government is a constitutional republic not a democracy to the point that we’re not even a republic anymore, but rather an autocracy.
And that will be that. Wealthy Blues who still believe in American democracy will flee the country en masse, voting with their feet. And for all the glee that Reds will have for finally winning the idiotic argument about constitutional republic versus democracy, there is going to come a moment at some point in the future when they’re going to regret it.
It’s the nature of autocracy to go to extremes. Anyway, good luck, I guess. And fuck MAGA.
Here’s how a National Divorce — a civil war — might play out, staring in late 2024, early 2025.
So, here goes. Here’s how the individual states would handle A Second American Civil War, probably starting in late 2024 when it becomes clear that Reds are going to brazenly steal the election. I don’t think this is going to happen — I think we’re just going to slip peacefully into autocracy — but it is at least possible. I’m NOT going to do every state because, lulz, I don’t know the internal politics of each state well enough to do it right.
California If Blues really decide to have a National Divorce, it will be California that probably is at the forefront serving the papers. And the key issue is — war aims. I think at first the war aims of the Blues will be to simply start, say, the United States of Canada. It will only be much later in any conflict that Blues get sucked into fighting the longer-term goal of maybe establishing the United States of North America. And that would happen because Trumplandia could possible begin a Final Solution for POC within its territory and, as such, the second phase of the civil war would be one of liberation. But that’s extremely speculative on my part.
Everything will hinge on what California wants to do. If it simply wants independence for itself, that’s a lot different war than if it joins with other Blue States to establish a new, larger state. But whatever happens once the 2ACW starts, California will be the “Arsenal of Democracy.” If they want to establish a Blue Union, then California would put itself on a war footing. It would call up a few million young men and women into a new Blue Army and away we go. A lot would depend on the state of the US Military, but the case could be made that it might implode, leaving the individual states with the ability to fend for themselves.
California would quickly secure Oregon and Washington then swoop through the plains states to link up with major Blue States in the old Upper Midwest. They would crash into Texas in the south and that would be a Battle Royale, though it’s possible because Texas is shifting blue that Texas might simply implode into an intra-state civil war and Blues could secure the state a lot easier than one might otherwise expect.
But the point is — as goes California, so goes the Blue Union cause.
Texas Texas is a state that is really difficult to game out because while MAGA has turned into a Red stronghold, on the ground, the state is shifting Blue long term. As such, when our national politics finally collapses and we’re dealing with the existential it’s possible that Texas will simply implode. There could be a massive intra-state civil war that leaves it open to Blue Union forces from the West to swoop in and take it over. Or, at least, a lot of it over. But between when the civil war starts and when Blue Union troops come to the rescue, we could all be talking about the Siege of Austin as MAGA surrounds that particular blue dot in a purple state and want to wipe it off the face of the earth.
In a sense, Texas probably has the most to loose from a 2ACW. Texas would probably be the site of a huge amount of fighting as the difference between the Blue shift in the state’s practical politics slams up against the autocratic state government. Or, put another way, Texas is a lot less stable than you might think. It will likely be the source of a huge amount of domestic political refugees who will either endup in camps, or simply flee the state altogether, only to return when (hopefully) Blues win the civil war and there’s a Second Reconstruction.
Oregon The thing about this state is it’s ripe for a huge clusterfuck. Of all the places in the Union in the lead up to any potential 2ACW, Oregon is the state I could most likely see some sort of “Troubles” taking place. There could be a pretty bloody Battle of Portland as all the crazed Far Right Militia’s swoop down on the city and decide to end the “Antifa Problem” once and for all. Then, of course, there’s pretty good chance that all of that will be for naught when California troops come from the south and consolidate Blue control over the state. Not that it won’t come at a very, very blood cost. But California is just too powerful not to be able to seize both Oregon and Washington in the early stages of any 2ACW. Even if California simply wants to go it alone, the mass chaos of Oregon might pull them into the state for some sort of peacekeeping mission.
The Plains States Outside of Texas, the Plaines states may see their fates during a 2ACW largly out of their hands. They could shift from Blue to Red and back again as the two sides fight it out. They have small populations and economies and if California wants to link up with Blue States in the old Upper Midwest, then, they may see their extremely Red politics change in a rather abrupt, violent manner. These states are an example of why it would be so dumb for Red States to want a civil war — the values of small plains states are being forced upon Blue States and Blues aren’t really doing anything about it. But if there was a civil war, the Red Plains States would be forced to change their ways rather quickly.
The Old CSA (At least some of it.) At first, a number of states of the old CSA would explode into joy if there was a 2ACW. States like Mississippi, Alabama and South Carolina would have you believe they are already half way out of the Union as it is because of the evil libtard “groomers” and, as such, if Blue States left the Union the populations of the old CSA states would be very, very happy. But. And this is a big but, as the war progressed and everything went to shit there would be a natural inclination on the part of white Christians in these states to make POC scape goats. There would be a rapid radicalization of the politics of these states to the point that something akin to a race war might break out. Or, if not that, then at least Nazi-style concentration camps would be established with the aim of enacting a Final Solution once and for all. This would, in turn freak the Blue States out to the point that even if they were free of the United States, they might rejoin the battle simply to stop the Final Solution from happening. This is all extremely speculative, of course, but I’m simply gaming out what already exists and then assume the worse.
Florida I used to think that Florida would break up into about three states, given how diverse it is, but no more. I think it would be a fully autocratic state under DeSantis — even if he was POTUS at this point — and a lot of young men from Florida would face up against young men (and women) from California as the war progressed and got worse and worse for everyone concerned. The already fucked up politics of Florida would grow significantly more radical to the point that it was a one party fascist state.
Georgia The thing about Georgia is Atlanta. If there was a 2ACW, then it’s possible that within the state it would be Atlanta versus everyone else. Atlanta would be a very Blue stronghold and the rest of the state would be so Red that it could all get very bloody. Of course, Blue forces from outside the state could swoop in at some point and help take stabilize the situation.
Virginia As I’ve said the last time I wrote this scenario up, Virginia is two states that hate each other. Of all the states of the Union that might find destruction as part of a 2ACW, Virginia is at the top of the list — even more so than Texas. The state would collapse into coups and counter coups. The rural Red parts of the state would go all Pol Pot on the Blue parts of the state and there would be a lot of political scores settled by extremely radicalized rural Reds who wanted to make sure drag queens of the woke cancel culture mob could never teach their kids critical race theory again. I wish I was joking or exaggerating, but I’m not.
Heartland The so-called “American Heartland” is where the worst fighting of any 2ACW would take place. States like Ohio and Indiana would be diehard supporters of Trumplandia and they just would not go down without a fight. It would be the type of fighting not seen since the end of WW2. And it would be happening in what was once the most stable country in the world. As I’ve mentioned, a lot would depend on what Blue war aims were. If they just wanted to start the USoC, then my dark fears probably won’t happen. But if, for some reason, those war aims change and the issue becomes bringing the US back together again (probably with Canada by this point) then, well, all bets are off. It would be a very bloody pitched battle.
New York City
A 2ACW might be a tale of two cities for NYC. On one hand, there’s a chance NYC could become something akin to a Free City and on the other it could get nuked by Trumplandia. Any 2ACW would probably see the city flooded with refugees, maybe even including yours truly. But one thing is for sure — the long term tension between Upstate New York and NYC will grow in the event of a 2ACW to the point that NYC may break away politically in some way. Update New York has a lot of room for political refugees and, as such, you could see the population of some of the Update New York cities might balloon as a result.
New England I think in the even of a 2ACW that New England would be flooded with political refugees to an unprecedented extent. People fleeing all parts of Trumplandia would go to New England, potentially in hopes of getting across the border to Canada. Should the Blue Union unite with Canada, then, of course, that dynamic would change.
In closing, I would note three things. There’s not going to be a 2ACW if Blues don’t have any leadership. They currently have no effective leadership, so a lot of abrupt heroes would have to bubble up to the surface once it became clear that Blues had to leave the Union. Also, all of what I’ve described above has to be taken into the context of very real possibility that WMD would be used by both sides as the war progressed. And, remember, if the United States is too busy bombing itself into oblivion, then the prospect of a “Great Reset” in the guise of WW3 is a very, very real possibility.
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