It’s a testament to how God awful stupid American political discourse is these days that the MAGA New Right continues to spooge its pants over the idea that Bill Maher isn’t a liberal anymore.
This is a prime example of confirmation basis if ever there was one. Maher was never a liberal in the traditional sense and it’s a tell that MAGA New Right cocksuckers would get SOOOO FUCKING EXCITED that Maher might stray from the liberal media narrative.
Get a grip, assholes.
It’s not a sign that The Truth is With Fascism that someone like Maher might question the liberal media narrative. He’s always been a media infant terrible and pretty much a libertarian. He’s not liberal and never has been. The MAGA New Right confuses someone with media legitimacy as someone, by definition, being liberal.
It’s all very dumb. But, then, America is very dumb right now.
In a sense, all of this is a very dark commentary on how fucked up America is right now. The Right is chomping at the bit for any “proof” that anyone on the other side is losing faith so they can point to it as a sign that liberalism is corrupt and collapsing in on itself.
(By the way — fuck you, MAGA.)
The great irony of all of this is, of course, that the MAGA New Right is ascendant. They’re getting everything they want politically and through the courts to the point that the issue of Bill Maher being liberal or not is silly.
I have to accept that I’m an Old. I’m past the Even Horizon when it comes to any success I might have being done under the “normal” routine. This fact is so deep to me that it sometimes washing across my mind and stops me cold. Even if I eventually get the success I believe I’m capable of — which is debatable at this point — the context will be all out of whack.
I could be a fashion photographer, given the opportunity.
Instead of gradually paying my dues and becoming a success like a normal fucking person, I’ll seemingly “come out of nowhere” as an “Old.” If I become a such a success that I catch the eye of the press, that’s all they’ll want to know — “How does it feel being a sudden success as an Old.”
At the moment, there are two potential ways I might realistically become such a success — writing and photography.
I’ve spent the last few years working on a six novel project and it’s going really well. I’m pleased with where things stand and I feel I just have to be patient and there’s a reasonable chance that I will get within shouting distance of selling a novel. Or, put another way, I now know how I develop and write a novel and there’s a pretty good chance that I might sell a novel before I drop dead.
Meanwhile, there’s photography.
In a sense, I like photography more than writing because the reaction is instant and a good or great photograph is self-evident. But there is the problem of being able to afford buying the equipment. And that, to date, has been a real problem for me. I’ve been very poor for a very long time.
Great shot of mine.
The point is — I’ll put a move on you.
There’s a greater-than-zero chance that should something happen and my financial situation change rather abruptly that I’m going to suddenly have a career in photography. And given I love women and I love beauty, that would lead me to the sweetspot of fashion photography.
But, at the moment at least, all of that is just daydreaming. If you are using an sort of traditional metrics to judge my potential fate, well, lulz, you have every reason to ignore all of this and, I don’t know, be a smug successful liberal in a major urban area.
And, yet, people always underestimate me. Always. As long as there’s life, there’s hope.
Trump is such a dingus that I can’t root around in his mind to figure out what he wanted to do at the Capitol on January 6th. But I do have some educated guesses.
Given what was going on at the time, it seems as though what Trump wanted to do was just to delay, delay, delay. I don’t think he even had a clear idea of what he wanted to do if he actually go to the Capitol that fateful day. Relative to how Trump was thinking at the moment, every minute that Pence was not in a position to certify the vote was a win for him.
It was something akin to magical political thinking.
They had no idea what they were going to do other than just to delay things to the point that something, anything would break their way. Trump and his cronies knew they were playing a losing hand but they were so desperate to win that they felt as long as they hadn’t LOST, then they were winning.
I swear to God, if I win the lottery anytime soon I’m going to start a publication devoted, in part, to making snarky comments about Julia Fox’s every public twitch. She’s such a character, so of the moment, that it’s a shame that she keeping doing quirky, provocative things in NYC and LA and there’s no one central publication that makes note of what she’s up to.
The latest weird thing she’s done is walk around with pants cut so low that we can see her…uhhh…mons veneris. Any lower and she’d be giving us lip, if you know what I mean.
But I find it all very weirdly amusing. So what. We have a fascist ding-dong well on his way to destroying America as we’ve known it for 250 years, what’s a little bit of apparel cut too low between friends?
I do find Ms. Fox very interesting, which, I guess, is the point.
So, with the news of Trump’s Schedule F idea for his second term rolling around in my mind these days, I have decided to finish a great political biography of Hitler. It’s the first part of a two book series and deals with Hitler’s ascent. Ironically enough, I’ve just gotten to the part about Hitler’s failed Beerhall Putsch.
I find myself thinking about what I’m learning about the Beerhall Putsch and what happened with the January 6th Insurrection. I was shocked when I learned that if you do a direct comparison between the two events, Trump came a lot closer to getting what he wanted than Hitler did. Which leads me to believe maybe I’m underestimating Trump.
Is it possible that it could actually be Trump and not DeSantis who pushes America into fascist autocracy? Could it be that we’ll look back on Trump not as the idiotic dingus we see him as now but as a 1-to-1 with Hitler? Is Trump America’s Hitler?
Even though Trump definitely has elements of being America’s Hitler in his personality, there are some things that definitely seem to make him more of a bridge between democracy — > anocracy –> autocracy as opposed to the he, himself being the endgame.
First, is Trump’s age. He’s just too old. He definitely has it in him, with ideas like Schedule F, to be the person who completes America’s transition into fascist autocracy. And, yet…
Another element of this clusterfuck is I’m still not convinced that Trump is a Great Man. He continues to play the part of American Autocrat, very poorly. I stand by my belief that Trump is, unlike Hitler, just a vessel, an avatar for white Christian rage generated over the swift changes in American demographics and politics since about 2012.
But, as I keep saying, it’s has hand picked successor who will be America’s Putin — or Hitler. So, Trump’s second term could very well be the final transition to A Very American Autocracy, but it won’t be the complete picture. All the things I keep talking about when it comes to A Very American Autocracy will happen — ICE being weaponized, Schedule F, 1 million liberals leaving the country. All of that will happen in a second Trump Administration, but it will be President DeSantis, or Flynn, or Cotton or Hawley or Pompeo who uses Trump’s establishment of Trumplandia to cruise to a lifetime, autocratic presidential reign.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) gestures toward a crowd of supporters of President Donald Trump gathered outside the U.S. Capitol to protest the certification of President-elect Joe Biden’s electoral college victory Jan. 6, 2021 at the US Capitol in Washington, DC. Some demonstrators later breached security and stormed the Capitol. (Francis Chung/E&E News and Politico via AP Images)
Of course, there is a chance that if it is Trump who “wins” the 2024 election that he, unto himself, will be enough to provoke a civil war when Blue States get fed up and leave the Union en masse. I continue to be amazed at the minor trickle of people who come to this Website looking for my dystopian hellscape speculation as to what a Second American Civil War would look like.
Anyway, the point is — Trump is a very dangerous historical figure. In fact, we could look back upon Trump has ultimately being worst than Hitler. If we managed to get through the transition into Trumplandia without a civil war breaking out — which would prompt WW3 — the United States could implode into Fortress America which could also…prompt WW3.
Or, put another way, the United States is far, far more politically unstable than we’re willing to admit. So, is Trump America’s Hitler? Only time will tell. But definitely could potentially be America’s Hitler. But he remains way too stupid and lazy for me to think he could pull off the final transformation of the United States into a white Christian ethnostate.
Right before Trump left office, he signed an Executive Order that would allow him to pretty much just fire any civil servant because he wanted to. This was eventually rescinded by President Biden, but Trump is still actively plotting how to bring the idea back when he becomes POTUS again.
I’ve been half-heartedly reading a great book on the rise of Hitler in Germany and when I learned of Trump’s plans for Schedule F, I grabbed it out of my personal library and positioned it in my house so I can remind myself to read it. Because it’s things like Schedule F which are concrete signs of how shitty it will be in the United States once Trump (or whomever happens to be our first autocrat) comes into power.
Remember, it’s unlikely that things will change all that much initially. But they will change. And if we’re lucky, we’ll endup somewhere around Hungary or Turkey politically. If we’re not lucky, we’re going to endup closer to being a Russia — or even Nazi Germany — clone.
The only reason why I dread that we might endup closer to Nazi Germany is race. Once we really accelerate our decline into fascist autocracy, form follows function and it would make a lot of sense for the more extreme elements of the fucking fascist Republican Party to open ICE camps to some sort of “Final Solution” for POC.
But such a nightmarish situation would begin with things like Schedule F.
“You have potential,” the late Annie Shapiro told me in her last email to me before she died some time later. I find myself thinking a lot about those words as I careening towards my…gulp…50th birthday.
The late Annie Shapiro and me, back when I was young and cute and people cared.
I also find myself thinking of two people. One is U.S. Grant. He was a big old loser for a number of the years leading up to the Civil War. It was only because of the crisis of the Civil War that he was able to rise to the occasion and not just lead the nation to victory, but to become president.
The other person I find myself thinking of at this moment in my life is Stieg Larsson. As I understand it, he was 50 when he sold three thriller novels only to promptly drop dead of a heart attack.
I continue to work on a project that is planned to be six novels. I hope to wrap up at least the first novel at least during the year of my 50th birthday. I had hoped to have something sold BY my 50th birthday, but that, sadly, is not going to happen.
Anyway, what have I learned in my nearly half-century of existance?
This could have been me.
One of the key things I’ve learned is that I’m not only a late bloomer, but I’m far more creative than I imagined for much of my younger life. It took me going to South Korea to realize that I have a number of talents that I could have exploited had I realized I had them when I was 20 years younger. But, in a sense, some pretty dramatic changes would have to be made to my personal history for that to happen.
So, here we are.
Almost 50 and living in oblivion.
I suppose there’s still time pull things through. And, yet, if you’re a single man like me without kids you don’t really have any initiation rights for the different, new stages of your life. You just wake up one day, go to a bar and realize the cute female bartender you’re talking is old enough to be your daughter. Then you grimace and try to extricate yourself from the situation without embarrassing yourself anymore than you already have.
Emma Chamberlain is so young.
What do I think my chances are of living up to my “potential?” Good question. There is one talent I have over and above writing that I could probably leverage into success later in life: photography.
I’m a damn good photographer.
I’m an excellent photographer, good enough that I could become a professional fashion photographer under the right circumstances. I would have to fall into a little bit of money to be able to afford the equipment, but other than that, I have the innate talent necessary to get a lot farther down that creative path than you might think.
The key issue is, of course, that whatever success I might get at this point will be framed in the context of how old I am. The sweetspot for success is somewhere around your early 30s. If you’re 20 years older than that, every news story about you will be frame in the context of how fucking old you are because that’s the obvious hook — look at the old dude who managed to become a success later in life when everyone else is thinking of retiring.
Ugh.
But I’ve always been a late bloomer. Always. But something about what happened to me in South Korea blew out an emotional knee in my mind and it’s taken me way, way, way, way too long to get past it.
And, yet, in a sense, I finally have. But I’m still broke as hell and drifting through life, even if the seeds of potential success have been sown.
The United States, the most powerful nation the world has ever seen, is careening towards a dark and unstable fate. I can’t predict the future, so I don’t know what that fate is, but you are a fool if you don’t think things are about to come to a head.
America faces a spectrum of scenarios, with autocracy being at one end and civil war being at the other. The recipe for A Very American Autocracy is simple — a Republican becomes president. That’s it. You don’t even have to add water. The Republican Party hates democracy, doesn’t believe in it and actively says the United States ISN’T a democracy, but rather a “constitutional republic.”
Our transition into autocracy may not even be very dramatic. We’ll just wake up with a Republican president one day and that will be that. Initially, not much will changed but the procession into autocracy will have officially begun and if we’re lucky we settle somewhere around Hungary and if we’re not, we end up a political clone of Russia.
Now, this is not an abstract for me. I’m a loudmouth crank — often drunk — who is known to rant in a very public way at bars about issues of the day. I know it sounds hysterical now to suggest that I might get in trouble doing that in the United States in the future, but form follows function. Once we’re an autocracy, there’s every reason to believe that ICE will become our FSB and there will be a severe chilling affect on freedom of speech in the United States one way or another.
And that means me getting arrested and sent to a camp for calling President DeSantis a cocksucker.
All of this is happening in broad daylight. We see it happening all around us and we’re not doing anything to stop it. Things are so dumb that we all know exactly what might save us — Mike Pence going John Dean on MAGA — and there is absolutely no way it’s going to happen.
Meanwhile, there is a reasonable chance that we might have a civil war. That, too, sounds pretty bonkers. The idea that a United States, which is ostensibly the most stable nation in the world, imploding into civil war seems very difficult to believe is possible.
But it is.
You have the MAGA New Right which is actively chomping at the bit to start a civil war, even though they have no reason to want one. They’re getting everything they want peacefully via the courts and politics, why would they want a civil war?
Anyway, I have no idea which direction we’re going to go. Given how meh the reaction to the Dobbs decision has been, I have every reason to believe that there won’t be any reaction to us becoming an autocracy. I keep thinking it’s possible that in the process of transitioning into autocracy that people will rise to the occasion they will be the people that lead Blue States out of the Union.
Because it will be Blue States that leave the Union if there’s a National Divorce. It’s all very dumb.
All I can say is, figure out what you believe in and what you’re willing to risk in the real world. Good luck.
So, the new vibe shift-ish dance song “Stay With Me” opens really great. Halsey sings a chorus that is interesting and is a great hook…and then the song gets really traditional and dull really quick.
It’s all very frustrating.
Instead of teasing us with what could have been a really, really great pop rock song song entirely by Halsey with the vibe that the song starts off with, why not release a new remix of the song which is sung exclusively by Halsey?
Alas, everything sucks and I can’t get what I want.
We live in a post-truth, post-accountability era. In other words — we’re on the verge of becoming a fascist state. Or having a civil war. At the moment, it definitely seems as though we’re just going to slouch into autocracy. And, as I keep saying, the first thing that’s going to happen when it becomes clear this is the case is about 1 million wealthy, well-educated American liberals will bounce.
Vibe shift.
It will get so bad that President DeSantis will go on Fox News all the time to complain about how America is suffering a “brain drain” at the hands of unpatriotic liberals who need to stay and help make America great again. Then, of course, he’ll push for laws making it far, far more difficult for people to leave the country.
Form follows function.
There doesn’t seem to be anything we can do about any of this. The American Republic is on its last legs. Either we destroy ourselves and maybe, just may renew the Republic after bombing ourselves into oblivion, or transition into an autocratic empire and that will be that.
I continue vacillate wildly between thinking we’re going to have a civil war and thinking we’re going to become an autocracy. But, for the time being, I’ve decided that autocracy is what’s going to happen to us. The center-Left is too busy canceling Dave Chappelle to do the hard work in the real world of defending democracy or, if all else fails, seceding from the Union.
The thing that so many Twitter liberals miss is how popular autocracy is right now in the United States. And a lot of that popularity comes from unforced errors on the part of the center-Left. They really can come across as the “woke cancel culture mob” at times — especially when they “cancel” people like Dave Chappelle.
Anyway, things are dire. Really dire. And we’re going into a massive, historic disaster with our eyes wide open. We’re doing nothing constructive to stop either autocracy or civil war. It’s like, as I’ve written before, we’ve just given up.
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