Making Abstract Fears Concrete: Running Through Worse Case Biden Scenarios

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

One of my personality quirks is I like to make my many abstract fears concrete. As such, here are various absolute-worst-case-scenarios when it comes to Biden shuffling off this mortal coil.

  1. It happens after January 20th, 2025
    I don’t want it to happen at all, but if it DID happen, the best time for it happen for the country would be at some point during Biden’s second term. There is a specific set of events that would happen and after a proper amount of grief, the country could go back to tearing itself apart.
  2. It happens sooner rather than later
    If Biden shuffles off this mortal coil this late in the 2024 POTUS election cycle, then everything gets thrown up in the air. Chaos would descend upon the land. And, what’s worse, we STILL wouldn’t know if acting Speaker McHenry could become POTUS. And given how tense the country is, if there is some question as to if a Red Speaker of the House or a Blue Senate President Pro Temp was going to be POTUS, well, that’s a recipe for disaster. For that to happen, something really bad would have to happen, but the stakes would be so high that you know MAGA would figure out a way to force the issue one way or another.
  3. It happens later rather than sooner
    If such a horrible thing happens a lot later, but before, say, ballets are printed, then chaos would erupt. The key thing would be, such a horrible thing happening would make the 2024 Democratic Convention a sight to see because there would be a massive struggle over who the nominee would be.
  4. He lingers
    Another really bad scenario would be something happens such that the 25 Amendment has to be invoked. This horrible situation would also cause mass chaos because of how the country is tearing itself apart.
  5. It happens between Election Day and Certification Day
    The absolute worst situation would be Biden shuffles off this mortal coil between Election Day and Certification Day. It’s happened once — as part of the election of 1872 — and the solution they used, with the dearly departed’s Electoral votes being dispersed to the living candidates doesn’t seem like a viable option in the modern era. I just don’t know what to tell you in that situation. I don’t think it would cause a civil war, but it would definitely be a “Not great, Bob,” situation.

Mike Pence Needs A Political Intervention

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

When the history of this era of American history is written, the fate of one Mike Pence will be worth a few books. Given how “the Resistance” has accepted Liz Chaney with open arms, if Pence had a Road-to-Damascus moment and actually stood for some of the values he professes to believe and started hating on Trump, his life would be A LOT better.

I can’t promise you he’d ever be POTUS, but Pence’s political influence would increase dramatically if he became a Liz Chaney-like figure. If became something akin to a modern-day War Democrat, Pence would be on CNN and MSNBC a great deal. Hell, he might even get a show on one of those channels.

But, no. Pence is such a weak-willed weasel that he can not, will not do something so dramatic. It’s all sort of sad. The next speed bump that Pence is going to have to go over is what he’s going to do in late 2024, early 2025 should the country completely collapse.

Even if the country doesn’t collapse, given how Pence refused to do the one thing that might have kept Trump in office, you have to wonder if Trump goes full-tyrant on the American people that Pence might, at last, have his nuts descend and find his manhood.

I have my doubts, however. It definitively seems as though Pence has decided to simply fade away into political oblivion.

It Definitely Seems As Though We’re Careening Towards a ‘Her’ Future

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It seems as though within 18 months, we may very well literally live in the world of the movie “Her,” with the world of “Ex Machina” not being far behind. The issue, of course, is are we ready for both a political crisis and a technological “Petite Singularity” happening at about the same time.

It also makes me wonder if it’s inevitable for MAGA to transition into a neo-Luddite movement. It would make a lot of sense for this to happen because a lot of the people who would be the most disrupted by a sudden lurch into the future would be, well, MAGA people.

I also think that 2024 will be the first presidential cycle whereby a Universal Basic Income becomes a serious policy issue. Of course, to get it, we’re probably going to have to have a 30% VAT and tax the economic activity of non-human actors.

I can’t predict the future. I don’t know what is going to happen. But I am both concerned and intrigued. A part of me believes that much like a WW3 paused a lot of consumer technological development, so, too, will the Fourth Turning / WW3. We may be so busy bombing ourselves into oblivion that we just don’t have the mental energy to do anything with AI.

But once we sort out what post WW3 world order will be, the, yeah, I could see us zooming towards some pretty cool, pretty exotic technological developments.

Contemplating My ‘Hysterical Doom Shit’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

One thing that is looming large in my mind is the idea that by framing the future of the United States the way I do, that I’m in, in essence, making it more likely that my fears will come true.

The option that I don’t think about very much is the one advocated by “Mueller, She Wrote.” She posits that lulz, a combination of the weight of the courts and Trump losing all the time politically will somehow “save us” from ourselves. Given that I can’t predict the future, I suppose that’s a real possibilty.

It could be that that is exactly what is going to happen and I’ve been worried over nothing.

Someone on Bluesky went so far as to suggest that by me navel gazing in such a hysterical doom shit way, that I am actually making it MORE LIKELY that my fears will come true.

This has given me pause for thought.

I can’t predict the future. I just don’t know. I really don’t. I’m just extremely uneasy about the next 18 months.

Casually Mulling WW3

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

One of my favorite novels growing up was Tom Clancy’s Red Storm Rising. The biggest problem I had with it — even as a young man — was the scenario totally glossed over what the domestic reaction to WW3 would be. With that in mind, let’s imagine that the wars going on at the moment fused together and became WW3.

The nation that connects Ukraine and Israel is Russia. If what’s going on between Israel and Hamas escalates, it would be Russia that could potentially link the two wars.

It would go something like this. Hezbollah strikes Israel from the north at the direction of Iran. Things grow so bad that Israel feels an existential threat and the nuke the capital of Hezbollah’s patron, Iran. Once Teheran is rubble, the 75-year old taboo against using nukes would end and Russia might feel emboldened to nuke Ukraine.

Once this happens, it is easy to imagine China going after Taiwan and the DPRK going after the ROK. Throw in India and Pakistan nuking each other while central Africa goes at it and you have WW3.

It makes you wonder if WW3 would be enough to unite the extremely divided United States. I have my doubts. The problems with the United States at the moment are macro and existential. I don’t even think a world war could unite America at this point.

We are very, very fucked.

It’s really just a matter of what bad thing happens.

Anyway, I don’t know if the American press would be able to handle an actual WW3. It would be a very interesting situation, however. Once the initial freak out faded, I think America would probably go back to the same old Blue-Vs-Red political war that we’ve been experiencing for some time now.

One issue would be if the Draft came back or not. That would be something that would catch the attention of the average person to the point that WW3 wouldn’t just be “over there.”

Why The Good Money Is On Trump Winning Re-Election

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I have a very conservative relative — whom I love dearly — who is a part of the non-MAGA conservative base of the Republican Party. He hates Trump, even though he voted for him the second time. The last time I talked to him, he made it clear that he hates the “liberal agenda” so much that he will vote for Trump AGAIN if he wins the nomination in 2024.

Another interesting element to our discussion is how angry he still is over what happened with COVID. I keep telling him that the average person just doesn’t care anymore, but that doesn’t stop him from ranting about how the government lied and did a lot of unnecessary damage. He is very curious in the candidacy of RFK, Jr. because of this.

Just from my conversation with him, it seems clear that Trump is going to win in 2024. At least it seems so at the moment. The differences between Red and Blue have grown so extreme that people like my relative — who in the past were strong believers in traditional American democracy — now are willing to sell their birthright to a malignant fascist ding-dong like Trump just so they can “own the libs.”

As such, I think we need to start to prepare for a rather dystopian future starting in late 2024, early 2025. It could be that Trump is so astonishingly tyrannical starting in 2025 that the U.S. Military does the unimaginable — it steps in and deposes Trump.

Or maybe not. I just can’t predict the future. But it definitely SEEMS like we’re heading towards some rather major historic event within the next 18 months.

Is The United States A Modern Austro-Hungarian Empire….Or The Ancien Regime?

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

America is an unsettled place at the moment. We all sense that we’re careening towards a dark future, a momentous event of some sort that would start within the next 18 months.

But there are a lot of theories about what we should compare modern American to. Some people point to the collapse of the multi-ethnic Austro-Hungarian Empire at the end of WW1, while people like me see a closer analogy to the state of affairs with the French Ancien Regime in the days leading up to the French Revolution.

I just don’t see a comparison to the Austro-Hungarian Empire being adequate to explain what’s going on in the United States at the moment. The Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed because it was a bunch of small nations fused together. The United States, meanwhile, has a very clear sense of national unified national identity that is being frayed by a combination of a growing sense of white nationalism and more economic agency for women.

I do think that we face not one, but three main possible futures starting in late 2024, early 2025.

The first, most obvious, option is we peacefully slide into some sort of MAGA-themed autocracy. About 1 million smug, wealthy liberals leave the country and there is a total re-alignment of the post WW2 liberal global order as the United States leaves NATO and South Korea and forms an alliance with Russia, Turkey and Hungary.

The second, less likely option is Biden wins and Trump, in an effort to avoid going to prison, freaks the fuck out and starts to rant about the need for a National Divorce. The country implodes into civil war. WW3 happens in conjunction with this and about 1 billion people die.

The third, far less likely option is a French Revolution type situation when Trump’s tyrannical, erratic behavior grows so unbearable to enough people that there is some sort of collective uprising against MAGA. The country breaks apart, but only in conjunction with the broader effort on the part of Blues to re-unite the country under a Third Republic. All of this might happen in the context of the U.S. Military stepping in at some point, as well.

But, in general, the issue is a number of macro trends are all heading to a conclusion around the same point in the future. What’s more it’s possible that we may be heading towards something akin to a “Petite Singularity” that would involve AI eliminating an unpreceded number of jobs a very short amount of time.

All of this is, of course, very speculative. Anything can happen in the future. I totally misjudged what happend with Trump in 2020. I can’t predict the future, but that doesn’t stop me from being….alarmed.

Ugh. Word Count

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The rule of thumb is the sweet spot for your first novel is somewhere between 80,000 and 100,000 words. There is a chance that I may FINALLY have figured out a suitable beginning to the third draft of this novel and yet the first act has ballooned to about 48 scenes. In general, each scene is 1,000 words and so that’s potentially 50,000 of my 100,000 allotted words right there.

My novel has a Barry-esque element to it.
The first step is to just write the thing and see what happens. There is a chance that the whole novel is going to be about 140,000 words, which is about what The Girl On The Train is, as I understand it.

At that point, I have two options.

One, I could theoretically figure out a way to split the novel into two, self-contained novels. This would be difficult, but not impossible. This is what happened to my first serious attempt to write a novel in this universe. Those two novels are now the last two novels in what is projected to be a six novel project. If I did split this novel into two, that would really help me keep it being a six novel project while eliminating what is now the second novel because I’ve been struggling to figure out what to do with it.

The last option is to say fuck it and just try to sell a novel that is 140,000 words. The success of The Girl On The Train proves that it’s not impossible to sell a novel that is a little bit longer, as long as it’s good.

I think the solution to this problem is to just finish the third draft and then pause to take stock as to what I’m going to do.

Idle Rambling About ‘The Fourth Turning’

Mulling An American Military Junta Starting In Late 2024, Early 2025

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It is definitely hysterical doom shit on my part to suggest that the United States might find itself with a military junta starting in late 2024, early 2025. It would be the first time in our history when such a thing had happen. It goes against everything the U.S. Military believes in even do such a thing in the first place.

As such, it definitely seems as though we’re going to peacefully side into a MAGA-themed autocratic state. Not a shot fired. We just shrug and give up. About 1 million smug Twitter liberals leave the country, leaving Poors like me to fend for themselves.

If such an unlikely thing DID happen, I could see Gen. James “MadDog” Mattis being acting POTUS while we had a Constitutional Convention to push through some MUCH needed structural reforms to our political system.

I think that is specifically what would happen. The crisis of late 2024, early 2025 grows so dire that the there’s a coup, a military junta is established that runs the country for the specific amount of time necessary to hold a Constitutional Convention.

I have to say when that’s your best case scenario for your country, you’re definitely in a “Not great, Bob,” situation. We can only hope that this is just yet more hysterical doom shit on my part.