Tag: We Are So Fucked

An Obligatory Think Piece About ‘The Slap’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

In an age lacking both accountability, nuance and subtlety, it’s difficult to process the shocking events of the most recent Oscar telecast. We’re so accustomed to Trump being above the law and the absolute Singularity of crassness that is Trumplandia, that it’s almost impossible to figure out the long-term significance of Will Smith smacking the shit out of Chris Rock on live TV.

First, I guess I need to tell you what my personal view on this clusterfuck is. I think Rock’s joke was tone deaf, but nothing that merited getting smacked over. In fact, the worst part of the entire event wasn’t even the smack itself. It was how the Academy kept going with the night as if nothing had happened. I get that it was a live event and for basic logistical reasons they couldn’t do anything, but at least they could have done SOMETHING to tell the audience that they were aware of how surreal everything was that was going on.

Because that didn’t happen, it gave a lot of grist to the hysterical MAGA New Right. From what I can tell from YouTube, there are a fair number of far-Right podcasts spending a lot of time talking about the “hypocrisy” of liberal Hollywood because Smith was able to hit someone and nothing happened to him.

Let’s get something basic out of the way. A lot of the attack on Smith from the Right comes from a thinly desguied form of racist paternalism. They’re on an hair trigger to attack the African American community and because Joe Rogan loves Dave Chappelle, they, by extension, feel they have to take Chris Rock’s side for maximum racist effect.

But this is an example of how we need some sort of nuance about this situation. The key thing is — there were so many other ways Smith could have articulated his anger at the joke without destroying the evening with violence. And, that, I think is the most troubling thing about what happened — why did Smith do it in the first place?

He’s been in the public eye for 30 years and he freaks out just as he’s about to get an Academy Award. What the what? If there’s any kind of mop up of this clusterfuck, that’s the specific question an interviewer — Oprah? — needs to get answered.

That’s what makes the event so shocking. In real terms, nothing Rock did was out of the ordinary. It was Smith’s reaction that was fucking bonkers. And, to date, there still hasn’t been any real accountability.

Nothing has happened to Smith, nothing that might bite, and all he’s done is released a written apology. Being held accountable, at least in my opinion, means you suffer for your actions in a way that reminds you not to do them again.

I’ve been surprised by how quickly all of this has begun to fade. I thought there was a chance that The Slap would hit the zeitgeist in such a way that it might linger longer than one news cycle, but I guess I was wrong.

Pick A Side


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The center, at last, has not held. There is no middle ground. Either you’re with Them or Us. Either you’re MAGA or you’re not. I say this because I find myself growing annoyed with some of the center-Left orthodoxy and not really finding any options.

I know what I’m experiencing — negative polarization.

So, I guess it happens to people who anti-MAGA, too. As such, I don’t have much recourse when I grow alarmed at how some elements of the anti-MAGA movement take the most absolute extreme position and then I have to defend it because, well, there’s simply no room for nuance or subtly in American political discourse.

But I’ve picked my side and I’m holding to it. And the chief reason I fucking hate MAGA with a white hot rage is that to be MAGA is to deny reality. When you’re entire political world view is so fucked up that you ascribe superhuman qualities to a ding-dong like Trump, well, you got yourself a fucking problem.

Or, put another way, when “owning the libs” is, unto itself, the core of what you believe politically, that’s not something I can really get behind. In fact, it makes my skin crawl. That’s not a political philosophy, that’s a grunt.

And yet, here we are.

I know people like to say I peddle “hysterical doom shit,” but as we careening closer and closer to the existential choice of autocracy or civil war starting as early as January 2023, I don’t know what else to peddle. The United States is tearing itself apart and an alarming rate and for me, the only question at this point is when the crisis finally comes, do we just shrug and slip peacefully into autocracy or do we have a civil war.

At the moment, it definitely seems like we’re just going to slip peacefully into autocracy. Initially, nothing will change, but gradually, over the course of a few years, America will turn into a political clone of Russia and for a lot of conservative Traditionalists, the only line they have about it will be personal. They will only care about the change in American life when somehow, someway someone in their life crosses the autocrat and they have to deal with it.

Otherwise, lulz. The libs will finally be owned and there will, at last, be no risk of someone being “canceled” simply for being conservative.

The 2024 Election Is Going To Be A Massive Clusterfuck


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I don’t think people are giving enough thought to how the United States is now an anocracy — between democracy and autocracy. Starting in 2023, when Republicans control Congress again, things are going to grow lit very quickly. Huge swaths of the government are going to be doing one thing and one thing only — being at some point in the process of impeaching both Biden and Harris.

There could even be multiple impeachments as Republicans try to make being impeached both a huge deal (for Biden and Harris) and no big deal (for Trump.) Republicans have no shame and wallow in hypocrisy at every turn, so the whole thing is going to be dangerous and idiotic at the same time.

But it’s the 2024 election that we really have to worry about. In all honesty, it doesn’t matter who the Republican nominee is. The entire edifice of the Republican Party is now bought in to the benefits of autocracy, of establishing a white Christian ethno state in the United States.

Now, given how fucked up everything is, Trump — or whomever — could very well win the 2024 election outright without any cheating. But it’s their nature to cheat, so they will, get caught and then nothing will happen since Republicans are above the law.

Steve K. Bannon

But the entire administration of the 2024 election from the local, to state to Federal level will be criminally corrupt. It could be that 2020 is looked backed upon as the last free and fair election in American history. We will know we’re in trouble the moment local election boards begin to certify their votes and all hell breaks loose. If that doesn’t work, then Republican controlled state legislatures will fuck around with things to make sure the Republican wins.

And if THAT doesn’t work they will figure out some way to throw the election into the House and Senate. The whole thing will be a catastrophe and a clusterfuck of historic proportions.

The only issue is if we slip peacefully into autocracy or if the whole thing collapses and we have a civil war. Even if somehow we somehow manage to avoid autocracy or civil war in 2024, we’ll just punt the existential problems we have down the road four more years and it’ll be 2028 when we have our existential choice.

The point is –we’re fucking doomed. This is it, the end. Call it the Great Reset or the Fourth Turning, it’s going to happen sooner rather than later. America is way too unstable at the moment for us to simply continue to drift through history like we have over the last few generations.

Everything Is So Dumb


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

While I know I’m being extremely paranoid to think fat fuck Mike Pompeo cares what I say about him on a very obscure blog, he IS very petty and autocratic so I would believe it if you said he did.

But, for the record any FBI agents looking this blog — I’m extremely harmless. It’s just whenever I think of America’s slip into autocracy, I think of smug fat fuck Mike Pompeo lurking in the wings to be Trump’s handpicked successor. I must note that it’s not like there’s anything particularly special about fat fuck Mike Pompeo — there are a dozen other people Trump could pick as his veep who would do exactly what Pompeo would do as POTUS.

The Man Who Would Be Autocrat

So, lulz.

But there are a few issues about Pompe that really fucking rub me the wrong way. They are issues that make me feel like getting drunk and ranting about how dangerous he is as possible autocrat.

One issue is what he did to the the State Department. Apparently, he was a horrific, corrupt Secretary of State who demeaned the the staff that he wasn’t able to drive out. Something about that really bothers me.

Another thing that bothers me is his hostile relationship to the Voice of America. All his dick moves towards reporters there is part of a broader effort on the part of the MAGA New Right to make the VOA official state media. They were working really hard to turn the VOA in a FOX News clone in the final days of the first Trump Administration.

Once Trump is POTUS again, they’re probably going to have at it again. They want the VOA to be the TASS of our coming Trumplandia autocracy. Something about that, too, really rubs me the wrong way. They’re just reporters trying to do their job, not need to make their lives and and careers pawns in the autocratic shenanigans of the MAGA New Right.

Anyway, remember, once the autocracy comes, things won’t change overnight. And, really, once Trump is president again, what will really be going on is we’re all going to be waiting to see when his veep becomes POTUS and, as such, becomes America’s Putin.

Ron DeSantis

Trump is so degranged that I find myself vacillating widely as to who he will pick to to be his veep. The logical choice is DeSantis. But Pompeo WAS really loyal to Trump in during the slow moving coup of late 2020, early 2021. But this is Trump we’re talking about, so it could be Gen. Mike Flynn that Trump picks.

Talk about a holy shit.

But one thing is for sure — 2023 – 2025 is going to be fucking lit. Chaos will reign. Impeachments will happen repeatedly. There may be a Certification Crisis. There may be a civil war. Who knows. All I do know is a lot of America’s macro problems are going to be worked out one way or another starting in January 2023.

Good luck.

Anocracy In America: The Inevitable Return Of Trumplandia


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

We’re kind of in a political lull at the moment. These are the last few days of democracy in America. Or, put another way, the United States is an anocracy now and it’s just a few more months before we lurch ever closer to being on the edge of autocracy.

Barring something I can’t predict, Trump is going to be the next president of the United States. A combination of voter suppression and outright, brazen cheating makes this an inevitability. And, honestly, Trump could win outright the way things are going.

When autocracy is very, very popular with about 45% of the electorate, your democracy is on its last legs. And that’s where America stands at the moment. But the key thing we all have to remember is it’s not Trump we have to worry about — it’s his Republican successor.

At the moment, at least, Trump is the Republican primary. Everything about Republican presidential politics revolves around Trump. What he is — or isn’t — going to do going forward. So, logically, what happens is Trump gets the nomination and whomever he names as his veep will ultimately be America’s Putin.

The guy — or woman — will become president after Trump and 20 years from now he or she will still be in office. There will be a Constitutional Convention. ICE will be weaponized and we’re going to wake up to an America that politically is identical to Putin’s Russia at the moment.

Fat fuck and would be autocrat Mike Pompeo.

Of course, there is the OTHER option, which is civil war. Currently, I think we’re going to just slip peacefully into autocracy for various reasons. The system is designed to accept whatever happens, even if it’s fraudulent. The American center-Left would have to show the type of guts that, to date, it has not shown for there to be any type of secession crisis in the 2024 – 2025 timeframe.

There probably will be a lot of talk about it, but, the end, Trump and his handpicked successor will shepard the United States into a full blown autocracy. That’s when people like me who are loudmouth cranks, who, to date, have had the luxury of living in a Western democracy will suddenly find themselves in hot water with the government.

But, much to the happiness of the MAGA New Right, we will no longer have to deal with the annoyance of the “Woke Agenda” and everyone who wants to can be as racist and misogynistic as they like.

So, this is it. The end of the American experiment. Good luck.

The Case Against The ‘Woke’ Agenda


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Let me be clear — I still fucking hate the MAGA New Right with a white hot rage equal to the core of the sun. It’s just, at the moment, the center-Left (and the anti-MAGA movement in general) is doing itself no favors by being so fucking “woke.”

Let me explain.

Right now, the culture wars are all the MAGA New Right have. That’s it. They have a bunch of pithy slogans, racism, misogyny and a general hatred of the “Woke Agenda.” For all practical purposes, the Republican Party is running on fumes.

Republicans have no policies, no visioni and no agenda. So they turn to gerrymandering and voter suppression to win elections. And, when necessary, they wrap themselves up in a hatred of the misguided views of the Woke Agenda. Or, I won’t even call them “misguided.” Maybe “petty” and “hypersensitive” is a better way of putting it.

Whatever the exact nature of the Woke Agenda, the whole thing is corrosive. And that’s why the fucking Republicans love to wallow in their attacks of Critical Race Theory and “Cancel Culture.” They know it works. It works really well with the roughly 100,000 people across a few swing states that determine who is president every four years.

But it’s not like anything I say is going to change anything. The United States is tearing itself apart for a number of macro historical and political reasons and, in a sense, the “Woke Agenda” is the least of our worries. Autocracy is very, very popular within the Republican Party to the point that in 2024 – 2025 , we’re going to either slip peacefully unto autocracy or have a fucking civil war. A big one. A blood one. A nasty one.

Either way, autocracy or civil war, the Woke Era is going to come to a crashing in one way or another. And, honestly, I don’t even think that many people are “woke.” I think what’s going on in a lot of powerful people THINK that this or that woke thing will help them with young people when, in fact, I think if they just produced better content everyone would be happier.

There are no easy answers about any of this. The Right throws itself into the well of attacking wokness the moment it feels insecure about the possibility of winning an election through other, more overtly dubious means.

So, as I keep saying — we’re totally fucked. Enjoy these last few months of living in a semi-functioning Western democracy. In January 2023, everything is going to change. Things are going to get dark in the lead up to the complete clusterfuck of 2024 – 2025.

Is A ‘Soft Singularity’ About To End The United States?


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I really struggle with what, exactly, is the cause of the clusterfuck that is currently American politics. What is the exact source of how fucked up everything is? One of my more conservative relatives, whenever politics comes up, wants to talk about the influence of social media instead of the fact that the MAGA New Right is so extreme that we’re on the cusp of either a civil war or the establishment of an autocracy.

And, yet, the idea that social media — in essence, technology — is why the two sides alternately don’t understand or want to destroy each other has some merit. Is it possible that the rise of social media is, unto itself, going to be the ultimate demise of the United States?

Twitter and Facebook so allow extreme minority views on either side the ability to set the agenda at any particular moment that when we either fall to autocracy or have a civil war that our current “soft singularity” might be the reason?

This is a really difficult thing to parse. If you try to figure out what, specifically, has us in this horrific political situation, it seems as though there are some serious macro trends that are all coming a head at the same time. Social media has nothing to do with it, it just establishes the context, the parameters of our ultimate downfall.

Because one thing is clear — the United States is extremely unstable and the moment the Republicans take Congress in January 2023, an already bad situation is going to grow far, far worse. The reason why I say this is, barring something no one can expect or predict, Donald Trump is going to run and win in 2024. He could even run and win outright in 2024 without the need to cheat, even though he obviously will do so anyway.

And I freely admit that something could happen and we punt the problems I keep harping about down the road another election cycle. But we’re not going to fix them without Something Bad happening. Something really bad. You can’t have the Republican Party be as hysterical and bad faith as it currently is without something fucked up happening sooner rather than later.

So, the origins of America’s impeding downfall (or Third Republic if all goes well) has nothing to do with social media. All social media does is made a bad situation worse and maybe move faster than it might otherwise.

In a sense, America’s Second Civil War has already begun, at least in the minds of fucking the MAGA New Right. That’s all a lot of them fucking talk about! But I’m not prepared to lay our current crisis at the feat social media. Too many other things are going on at the same time for that to happen.

Anyway. Like I keep saying — we’re fucked. Enjoy this moment of living in a stable Western democracy as long as you can. It’s not going to last much longer.

God speed.

I Don’t ‘Hate’ Ron DeSantis


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

While I’ve pretty much given up discussing politics with my far more conservatives relatives — I mean, what’s the point if the only red line they have is me when ICE kills me under the Pompeo Administration — one of them said something recently that I caught my attention.

Ron DeSantis

“Why do you hate him,” one of them said in reference to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

I’ve found myself mulling this comment a lot lately. Here’s what’s really going on, I think.

I definitely don’t “hate” Ron DeSantis and I think the comment could be translated to mean more something along the lines of, “Why do you hate my politics?”

I can’t help that I fucking hate the MAGA New Right. But that’s not really the issue. If this was 30 years ago, Ron DeSantis would be just your standard ambitious Republican governor. He would probably be someone whose actual politics were more in line with George H.W. Bush than Trump.

But it’s not 30 years ago.

So, here we are. DeSantis knows that he’s extremely close to being the next president of the United States for various reasons. All he has to do is either get past Trump or become Trump’s veep and he’s going to be president sooner rather than later. As such, DeSantis wallows into the tropes and conceits of the MAGA New Right.

The thing I don’t think enough people appreciate is that by definition, to be a Republican is to hate democracy. It is Republican orthodoxy now that the United States is NOT a democracy, but rather a constitutional republic and, as such, fuck you lib. Rather than doing what political parties in the United States have done for generations, which is to review what makes their policies unpopular and then revising them so they win elections again, Republicans want to burn everything to the ground.

They see democracy as simply as a means to an end — to obtain and keep power. Otherwise, fuck you.

In other words, as I keep saying, the United States is careening towards the existential decision of autocracy or civil war in the general 2024 – 2025 time frame. Something pretty big, like, say, a limited nuclear exchange, would have to happen for this not to occur.

So, I don’t “hate” DeSantis, but I’m very cleared eye as to what will happen whenever he — or any other Republican — becomes POTUS.

Florida’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ Bill Is A Setup


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The more I learn about Florida’s now-notorious “Don’t Say Gay Bill” I realize the whole thing was a trap — that the center-Left gleefully fell into. The whole thing is designed to provide the MAGA New Right yet ANOTHER budgen in the pitched battle that is the culture wars.

As I understand it, the bill deals with prohibiting discussion of being gay and gender reassignment with the very, very young — kindergarteners to third grade. This is so obviously a setup on the part of Florida Republicans eager to give Ron DeSantis yet more material for his efforts to be POTUS.

Here’s what’s happening. In my echo chamber, all I’m saying is simply “Don’t Say Gay” without any additional information about what’s going on. So, my first impression was it was about simply not talking about being gay in, I don’t know, high school or something.

Meanwhile, in the far more conservative echo chamber of my Traditionalist relatives, all they hear about is the ages involved.

That this is even an issue is so monumentally dumb indicates to me that there was plotting involved in the bill’s conception in the first place. The MAGA New Right knows damn well what the media narrative is about anything to do with being gay and so they decided to pull out of their butts something that was easy for both sides to get upset about.

The center-Left is mad because of the name, while the center-Right is mad because they’re hysterical about the possibility of children so young even having such things discussed with them in the first place. So, in a sense, both sides are both right and wrong.

And, in the end, all that happens is both sides hate each other more than already did and Ron DeSantis is one step closer to being our first autocratic president. (He’s going to have to either get passed Trump or be Trump’s veep to get this honor, but lulz.)

The point is — the United States grows more and more unstable every day as we lurch towards the “Fourth Turning” of 2024 – 2025.

America Is So Fucked


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Because America is doomed and we’re probably going to have a civil war around 2024 – 2025 or turn into a full fledged autocracy, the fact that Justice Thomas’ wife is a Qanon kook is huge lulz.

Absolutely nothing matters. We’re fucked.

I say this because even without asking, I know what my Traditionalist relatives would say if I mentioned the current clusterfuck around Ginni Thomas. Both sides — what about Hunter Biden?

This is an example of how my “hysterical doom shit” is just fucking pragmatic realism at this point. People like to dismiss my real talk as “hysterical doom shit” because they don’t want to have to process the implications of how fucked we really are.

I supposed that they believe to accept how fucked we are is to give up hope. I’m not saying give up hope! But to pin all your hope on something that isn’t going to happen — any kind of accountability for a huge swath of a group of people actively working to destroy American democracy is idiotic.

My advice is to gird your loins. Accept that Trump is not only above the law, but, barring something unexpected is going to run again in 2024 and win. He may even cheat to win, even though he would win outright otherwise. Ginni Thomas will never be held accountable and her husband isn’t going resign or recuse himself.

The January 6th Committee is going to lay out some pretty shocking things between now and election day 2022 — and Republicans will still sweep to victory in both the House and Senate.

We. Are. Fucking. Doomed. This is it, the end of the United States as we’ve known it since the beginning. Or a civil war breaks out and we have the high risk, high reward possibility of some sort of Third Republic being established. But not without the death of millions of Americans when WMD are used by both sides.

You’re an idiot if you think the system is ever going to work at this point. We just don’t have the political will to do anything about the systemic criminal behavior of the MAGA New Right.

Rather than have any expectation of being “saved” by the system, I would recommend you figure out what you’re willing suffer — even die — for. And then be prepared to not know if you’re side is going to win in the end. It probably is going to get that bad starting around 2024 – 2025. The United States is very unstable and growing more so every day.

Like I said WE ARE FUCKED.

No amount of voting or organizing is going to save us. Knowing what you believe in on a personal basis is all you got at this point. Once you know that, you can grab your bug out bag and head to a part of the country that is in better tune with your own political views.

Then get ready for the air raid siren — not just a Second American Civil War is coming, but WW3, too.

Or, if we’re “lucky,” we slip peacefully into autocracy and your biggest concern won’t be the soft power of “woke cancel culture” but the very real hard power of something like ICE knocking the heads of people who are willing to say what everyone knows is true — Mike Pompeo is a fat fuck.

Anyway. Good luck.