Let me clear — all of this is just me spitballing. I’m not expert on such things, but I do have a more-than-casual interest in media M&As. So, the news that Paramount Global and Warner-Brothers Discovery have held merger talks made me sit up straight.
They key thing is this deal could happen in without the issue of selling a TV network or selling CNN. It could be a pretty simple turnkey solution to problems that both of these mega media companies have. And CBS News has long wanted to formally partner with CNN.
So, there you go.
All the other possible combinations would involve either selling a TV network or CNN. This proposed merger seems pretty cool to me.
There is something very curious about the reasoning of the anti-anti-Trump popinjays who blather on about how horrible it is that the Colorado Supreme Court took the wording of the 14th Amendment at face value and banned Trump from the ballot.
It really seems as though they think Trump should be above the law. They rather wanly use the fall back position of, “let the people decide,” and, yet Trump keeps breaking the law so they tie themselves into a logical pretzel to explain why what we all know to be true, isn’t true. Yes, Trump broke the law. And yes, Trump incited an Insurrection on January 6th.
But to according to anti-anti-Trump conservatives, holding Trump accountable is The End Times. All of this leads me to wonder if they have *any* red line. Is there *anything* Trump could possibly do that would make them side with small-d-democratic forces in opposition to Trump?
And it gets worse.
What happens should Trump be re-elected and he goes full-tyrant on Blues? Are they going to sit on their hands when Trump weaponizes the existing ICE infrastructure to put not only undocumented people in camps, but Jews, the mentally ill and gay people?
Will even that be acceptable? Will they just shrug and say, “Well, that’s what people voted for.” It’s all very sad because most anti-anti-Trump people are smart and well educated.
There is still a chance that Trump won’t be re-elected in 2024. I can’t predict the future, no one can. And it’s very, very possible that some sort of unexpected 2020-like “Third Way” will pop out of nowhere at some point in 2024 that allows us to avoid either MAGA autocracy or revolution / civil war in 2025.
But.
All signs as of late 2023 point to Trump being re-elected. And Trump has some pretty tyrannical things planned once he’s back in office. The key thing for me is Americans will still have agency. It’s not like Blues will just shrug and let Trump rule over them like a Red King.
I long thought it possible that it would be BLUES not REDS who started a civil war. Now I realize that’s just not what Blues would do. They are far more likely to essentially start some sort of “revolution” than pull states out of the Union in defiance of Tyrant Trump. (Of course, if that Glorious Revolution is successful that, unto itself, could cause a civil war because Red States would start to leave the Union.)
I have no idea how things would work out, but I do know that Trump is such a dingus that in all his tyrannical thrashing around in 2025, he would probably so piss Blues off that Something Would Happen In Response. It might be a General Strike. It might be that the U.S. Military would balk at being Red King Trump’s goons in Blue parts of the country — invoking the Insurrection Act is not some sort of magic fascist pixie dust.
All in all, if Trump is re-elected things will get…bumpy. And, in the end, it could be that any attempt to depose Trump will fail and we’ll endup like Hungary, Turkey and Russia. (I’m not advocating anything! I’m just musing about potential futures.)
No one in late 2019 could have predicted that a combination of a global pandemic and Joe Biden being the Democratic nominee would be enough to fell Trump. Also, people like me in late 2019 totally overestimated Trump’s willingness to use some pretty basic autocratic measures to steal the 2020 election.
Trump is so fucking lazy that he waited until the very, very, very last moment to try to steal the election, rather than, say, indict Joe Biden in the summer of 2020.
Anyway. All of this leads me to wonder if there is a similar “Third Way” possible in 2024 that doesn’t involve a transition into MAGA autocracy or some sort of descent into civil war / revolution.
Whatever the thing that evokes a “Third Way” is, it’s going to be stunning. It is going to have to be VERY BIG and totally unpredictable. There are two main scenarios I can think of.
The first one is that Trump loses and despite all his ranting about the need for National Divorce, no one listens to him and he, in fits and starts, drifts into political obscurity. Then we all wait another four years for MAGA fascists to try AGAIN to turn us into a white Christian ethnostate.
The other, far darker possible set of scenarios is Something Bad happens to either Biden or Trump which totally throws all of our basic assumptions about the 20204 race out the window. I don’t even like to think about what that Something Bad scenario might be, but both men are old as fuck and Trump, in particular, is a fat fuck.
Any type of dark scenario like that would so change the basic assumptions we have about the 2024 race that all my dystopian hellscapes for 2024 – 2025 would be very moot.
All I want is to live in a traditional liberal democracy. That shouldn’t be too much to ask.
Last night saw the usual suspects of the anti-anti-Trump Right out in force, bitching and moaning about the Colorado Supreme Court decision barring Trump from running for POTUS.
The key thing to remember is all of their arguments against the decision were non-sensical. They all boiled down to these nattering nabobs of negativism being annoyed that the center-Left had something to crow about for a night. That’s it. They really had nothing to say that made any sense.
I will agree with their general sentiment, however, that no one is going to save us from Trump. We have to save ourselves. But the issue for me is even if we defeat Trump at the ballot box like the Good Lawd intended, there’s a good chance that we’ll have a National Divorce, and as such, a civil war, because Trump will start to scream about how we need one to keep him, specifically, out of prison.
So, I don’t know what to tell you. The United States continues to careen towards autocracy or civil war / revolution. I suppose there’s a chance, like what happened in 2020, that we’ll avoid such a dire outcome, but….whatever it is that happens to cause that to be the case would be jaw dropping and extremely historic in a jarring way.
I’m allowing myself to gloat for a few minutes at the news that the Colorado Supreme Court has banned Trump from running for office. Obviously, SCOTUS will overturn this ruling, but I’ll allow myself a bit of “hopeum” for an evening, if nothing else.
But, for me, the point is — the 14th Amendment says what it says. And if you look at it strictly from the point of view of the words in the Constitution, then Trump is banned.
And, yet, we live in extremely polarized times. So, lulz. I continue to believe that we’re careening towards a very dark future. Late 2024, early 2025 could be the most momentous era in our nation’s history since the end of the civil war. It’s like we’ve collectively made a decision to either descend into tyranny, or have some sort of civil war / revolution.
And whatever happens, it will happen really quick and in a shocking way that leaves everyone flabbergasted.
I have added back some scenes to the first act. But instead of 65 scenes, I now have just 40. That’s still a little bit too much, but it’s a lot better than what I had. Now I can have ~60 scenes in the second act and it not be that big a deal.
The new first act is far, far more focused on the heroine and goes by at a faster clip. And there is a lot — a lot — that I will allude to that won’t be seen on the page like before.
But only time will tell. It will be interesting to see how long it takes me to revamp the new version of the first act to accommodate all the changes I’ve made.
March, 2025 NEW YORK CITY — A radical resistance group calling themselves “the Blue Meanies” continued their occupation of Trump Tower, with no end in sight. The group’s long-term seizure of the NYC landmark was made possible in large part by the support of not just of the population of the city, but the city government.
There continue to be rumblings at City Hall that if the Trump Administration attempted to recapture the tower that a “free state” would be declared. These events happen as the Trump Administration’s long-term viability continues to be questioned.
The U.S. Military has all but halted its operations in major Blue portions of the nation as a Women’s Strike called 48 hours ago has now expanded into a General Strike. Millions of Blues across the United States have simply not gone into work, causing a brutal slowdown in national economic activity.
“This is far worse than what happened briefly during COVID,” Morning Joe economic analyst Steve Rattner said. “We risk a long-term global depression if this continues just a few more days. The economic pressure on the part of the Blue Meanies to do something about the Trump Administration is real.”
All indications point to the Blue Meanies leader Jon Stewart — who has been repeatedly photographed in various comic poses within what was once Donald Trump’s inner sanctum — is at the center of the growing national opposition to the Trump Administration.
“I think we need to take a long, hard look at the 14 Amendment,” Stewart said in a late night press conference deep inside Trump Tower. “It is clear that Trump isn’t even legally president and, as such, can legally be removed from office. In fact, I believe the office of POTUS to be vacant.”
Stewart denied rumors that he expected to be installed as acting president by the U.S. Military if Trump was forcibly removed from office.
“We, and everyone else, just want the Constitutional process to be followed,” Stewart said.
Meanwhile, the president has made it clear that the seizure of his beloved Trump Tower “will not stand.” Given the reluctance of the U.S. Military to follow his orders, he has put out a call for “MAGA shocktroops” to flood Blue areas of the country which are currently resisting his rule.
The governors of several major Red States have called a conference to co-ordinate what their response might be if the goals of the Blue Meanies are met and Trump is deposed.
“Secession is not off the table,” Florida Governor Ron DeSantis tweeted.
The chaos in the United States has not gone unnoticed by the outside world (see related stories). All evidence suggests that the DPRK may invade South Korea at any moment. The rumors that Trump may be using his “special relationship” with Kim Jung Un to start a distraction on the Korean peninsula were vehemently denied by a White House spokesman.
I have a great, great scifi concept rolling around in my head, but there is one problem with it — if I don’t do it right, it might come across as racist. This is ironic, given that the entire point of the concept is to attack, well, racism in modern America.
But it’s one of those things where given how fucked up everything is in America these days, if I’m not careful, the logline might doom the story. But the idea is very intriguing to me because it addresses the biggest problem with all the apocalyptic pandemic fiction that is out there today.
That particular issue is enough of a pet peeve of mine for me to be willing to throw myself into writing a novel that hinges on the specific weakness such pandemic stories typically have.
But who knows. I have a lot on my plate at the moment. And I can be kind of unfocused, so I may just keep doing what I’m doing, which is futzing with the mystery-thriller I’ve been working on for years now.
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