Things are going well with the novel. I’m just about to reach the point of the novel where there’s a huge hole in the outline, so things are going to slow down a little bit.
But my deadline is wrap up the first draft is still Election Day, so I’m going to think of something. I’m quite pleased with how smooth things are going as of right this moment. Things are really beginning to fall into place in a way I’m comfortable with.
I’ve figured out my own style of development and what I want to say. As such, things are moving at a pleasant clip.
Since I ABSOLUTELY believe Trump is going brazenly steal the 2020 Election, the themes of the novel should be quite popular should I ever manage to sell it. I do have a little bit of unease that fascist House Trump may crack down on free speech so much just about when I’m trying to sell the book that it won’t happen, even if I do a really good job otherwise.
But I believe in my heart that there is a little bit of a window of opportunity for this novel. There might be just enough time before the final boom falls on the First Amendment that I might find a modicum of success.
I have come to believe that on a political level, at least, there’s absolutely nothing stopping from Trump from his final consolidation of power. The great irony is, of course, that Trump is extremely bad at being an autocrat. This leads to a lot of people lulzing the process of America becoming an managed democracy like Russia.
But let’s talk about Trump’s taxes in this context.
There are a number of ways to look at all of this. On one hand, you could definitely posit that the whole thing is a sham. It’s not that there’s anything all that scandalous in them, it’s just Trump doesn’t want to release them and he’s willing to fight until the end of time to do it. Under this theory, the worst thing we might find in them is that Trump simply isn’t a very “liquid” billionaire. The whole thing is a facade. Some people think that would be a mortal political blow for House Trump, but now that we have Qanon people running around, I doubt this very much.
The other theory is that something REALLY BAD is in his taxes. Like, something that would prove something criminal or implicate Trump in having a fiduciary reason for loving Putin so much.
But, really, even that would be a lulz at this point.
I don’t think people appreciate how dark things are on an existential level in the United States. We’re a fascist state and have been since Trump was acquitted by the Senate. The usual political rules of a liberal democracy simply don’t exist anymore and Trump is going to brazenly steal the 2020 election no matter what, so lulz.
In a sense, you could even argue that if Trump really was the political genius that Maggie Haberman says he is, that he would release his taxes on his own and then laugh in everyone’s face as nothing, absolutely nothing, happen, no matter what is in them.
We’re simply too divided and too much of the electorate too apathetic for anyone’s minds to be changed by anything that happens between now and election day. The battle lines are drawn and Trump is going to use everything in his power to steal the election, anyway, so the entire thing is moot.
Everything is moot. Nothing matters. We’re a fascist state.
Since my recent creative existential crisis when I realized I needed a “Plan B,” I have decided to expose myself to screenwriting culture. The idea is, this process ends with me buying FinalDraft and actually writing a screenplay.
As part of this, I have started listening to the Scriptnotes podcast. It’s very educational, but also very, very depressing. I’m a middle-aged man who lives in the middle of nowhere. It definitely seems as though screenwriting is completely different than novel writing.
With novels, it is at least within the realm of possibility that one might write the ever-elusive “breakout hit” novel out of the blue. As far as I know, it’s almost unheard of for someone to write a “breakout hit”screenplay. So, to listen two professional screenwriters talk about their careers is pretty depressing to me.
But I definitely need a “Plan B.” I like the idea of bouncing back and forth between a novel and a screenplay.
And, as I’ve mentioned before, I have something of a “secret weapon:” my personality. I love to schmooze and I know myself well enough to know that if I “somehow” found myself at a Hollywood party that I would talk to everyone and be so conspicuous and interesting that everyone would want to know who I am.
The idea of writing a screenplay and then traveling to LA to see if I can weasel myself into a showbiz party is quite appealing on an existential level. Imagining having a conversation with some showbiz big wig at a party who is curious as to who I am and how I ended up talking to them.
Yet, I am well aware that all that is extremely delusional. But one man’s delusion is another man’s dream.
As I keep saying, autocrats never lose. The reason for this is they fight dirty and don’t give a shit about what you think. All they care about is still having power when the sun sets.
The issue is, Democrats are STILL delusional about the lengths House Trump will go to to stay in power. So, it’s painfully clear that a civil war or military coup is in America’s near future.
Get used to it.
Let me put this in context.
It could very well be that for various reasons, House Trump cruises to an easy victory. We know election night or soon there after that House Trump is victorious and that’s that. The final consolidation of power will take place at a fast clip, only slowed by Trump’s innate incompetence. America’s final decent into tyranny will be gradual, culminating in a Constitutional Convention after House Trump has purged the media of all opposition voices.
But suppose that doesn’t happen.
Suppose things aren’t settled — then what happens?
Well, because House Trump controls the levers of power, they will win. If it takes Interior Minister Bill Barr really pulling some crazy legal interpretations out of his ass to do it, it will happen. And, really, in the end, if all else fails, House Trump will force the issue and start a civil war of some sort. This will happen because both sides will believe absolutely their their guy won the election and then people will start killing each other.
Then there is the absolute last moment before total darkness falls — what will the U.S. Military do?
I honestly don’t know. But there’s a chance that in a desperate last gasp effort to keep the tradition of peaceful transitions of power, there might be some sort of Unity Government forced upon us by a reluctant American Military.
But, as I’ve said, that’s probably wishful thinking.
More likely what will happen is the U.S. Military will follow Trump’s orders because there is, in their eyes, some legal justification for it. Depending on how bad things get, I could see a number of major Blue States being turned into military districts such as we had during Reconstruction.
Then things that were going to happen anyway, will still happen a lot quicker and in a far more jarring manner.
The whole point of this is, barring something completely unexpected that I can’t predict, the bad guys have won. On a macro level, House Trump has been established. The moment Trump is sworn into his stolen second term, he will have served his purpose.
Some younger, more focused fascist like Tom Cotton or Mike Pompeo will proceed to snatch people off the street, push them out of windows or send them to American Killing Fields.
This is our future.
This does make one wonder how long this dystopian hellscape will last.
I honestly don’t know. But it does seem that House Trump will have power for a solid 40 years. Once the last of the Baby Boomers drop dead, they’re demographic control over the country will begin to diminish. As things grow more unstable for them, it’s likely House Trump will grow ever more radical.
Then, really, it’s a matter of history simply being history and things like the Great Man theory kick in, or a fluke, or things I simply can’t predict.
The reason why I keep ranting about this is I want people to take our fate seriously. Stop trying to score points on Twitter and realize that for decades to come, your “resistance” to House Trump is going to involve risking things that are important to you in the real world, like your life, your family and your career.
Night has fallen on America. Our Republic is no more.
There’s only one thing that might, temporarily, end the reign of House Trump — Donald Trump. That’s it. I say this because there’s entire industry of sycophantic enablers, namely the Republican Party, that are all-in on defending and protecting the rule of The Thousand Year Trump. The Republican Party isn’t going anywhere, no matter how radical or insane it becomes. If anything, if Trump screws up and somehow is miraculously removed from office at some point, the party is going to grow even more radical and bonkers as a result.
But,simply to have some fun, let’s imagine there’s a House Trump Interregnum. What would it be like?
A lot depends, of course, on how it happens.
I’ve written about this before, but given how difficult it will be to ever remove Trump for office for any reason, we’re going to have to assume House Trump loses a short, but violent civil war of some sort. Or, something. Something I can’t predict would have to happen. But, the point is, House Trump will have taken a pound of flesh out of America’s psyche on its way out the door.
As an aside, the more I think about this subject, the more I realize how even contemplating this scenario is a ridiculous waste of time — House Trump has been established and is never going anywhere for any reason. America is Russia and Russia is America. We live in Trumplandia, not America.
But, let’s continue. I’ve gotten this far, I might as well finish the idea.
One of the many things Twitter Liberals are delusional about is the idea that somehow the Republican Party is going to “die” or deny Trump was ever president. This is crazytalk. The Republican Party is far more likely to embrace Trump as its new Ronald Reagan than anything else.
Remember, the base of the Republican Party is made up of a bunch of fucking fascists who see Trump as the Dear Leader. As such, even if the main stream media doesn’t cover Trump’s ranting as much because he’s not president, the party faithful will continue to listen to all his batshit insane rantings and act accordingly.
Remember, for the base, Trump gave them two things that they absolutely wanted — a plutocrat tax cut and 30% of the Federal bench being young, hack MAGA judges. That’s not going anywhere.
As such, after the shock of Trump being physically removed from the Oval Office wears off, there’s going to be some reflection on the part of the Republicans. Some will see MAGA as “the lost cause” that was foiled only because of the COVID19 pandemic.
Meanwhile, most of the others will see the Biden Administration as illegitimate. They will see the Biden Era as simply a House Trump Interregnum. A pause in the reign in the rightful rulers of Trumplandia, House Trump.
One darkly amusing thing about any possible Biden Administration is because America has been so inward looking during the reign of Mad King Trump I, when the Biden Administration begins to re-engage with the world in a normal manner, the rest of the world is going to look at us like we’re crazy. It’s been proven that the world can function quite well without America and so we’re going to have to get used to no longer being viewed as the “indispensable nation.”
Or, put another way, any House Trump Interregnum is going to be extremely surreal for a number of reasons.
But none of this is going to happen. Trump would rather burn everything to the ground and establish himself as a military dictator than ever leave office. Autocrats never lose, not even criminally incompetent ones like Trump.
I beginning the process of writing a screenplay as something of a creative “Plan B” and I am using the original Star Wars screenplay as my “textbook.” The interesting thing is, I find myself worrying if I can use its character concepts and structure beat-for-beat now or not. Is it even possible to have a traditional Hero-saves-the-princess type story in the modern media environment?
This gets me thinking about the clusterfuck that is the state of the Star Wars franchise. Now, let me begin by saying, I honestly don’t know how much of this problem is “real” and how much of it is the Russians testing out new ratfucking strategies. I say this because I’m not really the fanbase of the franchise. I love the first two original movies and all the rest of them I can take or leave.
It is easy to accept the narrative that the Star Wars fanbase is male and the executives at Disney — specifically Kathleen Kennedy — are all woke feminists who want to cram their ideology down the throats of the misogynistic fanboys.
I simply don’t think things are that cut and dried.
The whole thing, in fact, is extremely murky and and open to a whole lot of different interpretations. The reason for this is Star Wars is such a potent cultural force — and a lucrative one to boot — that the whole thing is being torn in a number of different directions for a number of different reasons.
I’m not going to play Joe Rogan and try to square the circle in some hyper masculine, yet earnest way. Sometimes, you have to actually have an opinion and own it.
With that in mind, I would say, the problem with Star Wars is, at its core, an issue with storytelling. If Disney would simply go back to storytelling basics, then a lot of the problems the franchise has would be solved. Of course, even the “basics” of storytelling are loaded in this era of Woke Hollywood. I’m of the opinion that if you simply tell a good story, the audience will follow.
As such, maybe Disney needs to lay off trying to sell toys or use the culture significance of Star Wars to change the world. Maybe start a new Star Wars trilogy that is all fan service.
Though, I will note that the more I think about it, the more there’s one specific issue that is causing all these problems for Disney when it comes to Star Wars — they don’t have one, specific visionary to guide it into the future. They have J.J. Abrams, but he just doesn’t seem like a fan of the series.
If I could wave a magic wand, I would give Kevin Smith a three picture deal to fix Star Wars. He’s a huge fan and probably has a good sense of what the fanbase is looking for.
Anyway, I don’t really have any skin in this battle. Star Wars has always suffered from a problem with a consistency of tone. It’s just sad that the problems — be they real or not — are apparently intractable and unlikely to be solved any time soon, if ever.
I don’t know for a fact that this is going to happen, but all signs point towards it — the Russians are going to hack directly into our election systems at the behest of the Trump campaign.
The reason why I say this is two fold.
One, Trump has removed 1/3 of our troops from Germany. It’s a direct quid pro quo. Two, Trump is absolutely desperate to meet Putin in person before the election. It definitely sounds as though if they haven’t agreed to such a quid pro quo, Trump is going to beg in person to make it a reality.
It’s easy to imagine a situation where, much to our surprise, Trump wins on Election Night in pretty much the same way he did in 2016 — he loses the popular vote, but wins the Electoral College. There might be some isolated protests and a lot of gnashing of teeth, but we’ll all begin to process that American democracy has been murdered.
Then, gradually, after a few weeks, we start to hear rumblings about how some of the voter numbers don’t make any sense. Of course, Trump will do everything in his power to obstruct any investigation until after the Electors vote, so, lulz.
And that will be that.
I guess there are a few ways this pretty much perfect plot might go wrong for those involved. They might get greedy and fuck with the results in New York State in such a way that it begins to raise questions. Or Trump, who absolutely can’t keep a secret, might begin to allude to things that while they don’t make any sense because we don’t know the context, gradually people realize he’s confessing to stealing the election.
But there are some things to keep in mind, even if we realize the plot exists. One, autocrats always win. They don’t care about anything but power, so fuck you. No amount of protesting or pressure on social media will change the verdict. Also, there would be a pretty tight deadline for any of it to matter. Even if we found absolute proof that it happened, the same mechanisms that have saved Trump to date will be used yet again.
Really, the only teeny-tiny obstacle to Trump’s success in stealing the election this way is the Electors. And, even then, a lot of things would have to go wrong for House Trump in quick succession for that even to be an issue. And, as we all know, that never happens. Any problems Trump ever gets into are of his own making. There are no institutions strong enough to stop him at this point.
Of course, there is one last thing that might be an obstacle to House Trump’s final consolidation of power — a civil war. I don’t know how it would all work out, but we had absolute proof that Trump got the Russians to hack into our election systems, pretty much the only way it would matter is if there was significant violence. Not only would it have to be severe violence across the country, the U.S. Military would have to, in essence, stage a coup of sorts. I’m not in any way advocating that, I’m simply stating a cold hard fact. Also, there’s every reason to believe that if the American military was forced to get involved, they would take House Trump’s side.
A million people could protest peacefully for weeks across America and, just like the protests associated with the Women’s March and BLM, after the initial shock wore off, the protests would not get much media attention. And what media attention they did get would be about how Trump’s Little Green Men were beating the shit out of people.
So, in short, we’re doomed. It’s over. America is nothing more than a Russian vassal state at this point. America is Russia. Russia is America.
If I was a Blue Check Liberal writing for Vox, I would at this point tell you some woke way that you, as an individual could fix this problem and, lulz, who am I kidding. There’s no hope, only Zuul.
It is growing more and more apparent that it just makes no sense politically for Mike Pence to stay as Trump’s veep for his stolen second term. While I know Nikki Haley thinks if she just sucks up to House Trump enough she’ll get the job, I am reluctant to agree with her.
Given how deranged Mad King Trump is and how everything revolves around House Trump maintaining power, it would make so much more sense if Crown Princess Ivanka was Trump’s second term veep.
I have said repeatedly that Ivanka makes so much sense because she’s a moderate Jewish woman who’s a Trump. Trump would to “keep it in the family,” if you will. Since the entire point of House Trump is to “own the libs,” what better way to do it than to throw everything up in the air by naming Ivanka as veep?
I guess Ms. Haley could serve the same purpose — she HAS been sucking up to House Trump to a surreal level — but if there’s one thing House Trump has shown us is no matter how much you suck up to them, you’ll never be a Trump.
And what better way to square the circle of succession than to have Ivanka as veep, so should something happen to Trump himself, she could name Tom Cotton or Mike Pompeo as HER veep. Either one of those would-be strong men could rule behind the throne in her name. They would be in a position to serve eight years in that position and then rule in their own name another eight years. This is how autocrats think — just look at what Putin did for much of his reign before he changed the Russian Constitutions.
Anyway, it definitely seems as though Pence isn’t going anywhere. Trump can’t keep a secret, so we would have heard rumblings of his replacement by this point.
Autocrats never lose. As such, let’s think about the consequences of House Trump stealing — in a rather brazen fashion — the 2020 Election. The key thing we simply don’t know is how difficult it will be for them to seal the deal.
It could be that the economy is going to come roaring back in the fall and Trump will get what he wants — he loses the popular vote, but wins the Electoral College. If that happens, then we will continue to drift into a more conspicuous form of autocracy. And, really, the only thing stopping House Trump from totally consolidating power is Trump himself. He’s a complete goober when it comes to actual politics and, as such, he is likely to keep crashing through norms in fits and starts.
If this happens, we also have to consider how Trump apparently thinks he can run for a third term because of the “Russia Hoax” that deprived him of being able to destroy the country in his first term in peace. Or something.
This is a very curious thing.
For Trump to simply run for a third term because, lulz, he’s Trump, would be so outrageous to most Republican member of the Senate that it would not be happening in the America we know today. The only way he could pull something like that off is either he’s completely purged the media of anyone he doesn’t like or there’s be a Constitutional Convention that has passed, among other things, a change to the Constitution that allows him to run for as many terms as he likes.
Either one of those is a very real possibility at this point.
But all that is working under the assumption Trump stays within the bounds of the Constitutions to steal the election. The more he has to force the issue, the more likely he and his supporters are going to do some pretty radical things. Or, put another way, the more likely Trump being a complete idiot will, without thinking about it, radically change our form of government simply because he doesn’t want to go to jail.
So, if after everything Trump STILL doesn’t manage to steal the election, he may simply say fuck it, I’m burning everything down. He holds up in the White House and says he’s still president, fuck you. And Barr will have pulled just enough of a legal justification for this out of his butt to the extent that both sides will think their guy is president and then the U.S.. Military has to pick a side.
I honestly can’t tell you what they will decide.
But, again, autocrats never lose, so I believe House Trump will end up on top.
In this scenario, House Trump’s consolidation of power will happen in days and weeks, not years. After a brief, violent civil war, Trump will rule as a military dictator and make vague promises about new elections. He will demand a Constitutional Convention and he’ll get it.
Then people like Tom Cotton and Mike Pompeo will have to figure out a way to ingratiate their way into the good graces of House Trump to the extent that they can maybe be a veep for Crown Princess Ivanka or Crown Prince Don Jr. Or, if you really wanted to be ironic, Trump could turn on both Cotton and Pompeo because he sees them as threats and they endup in an ICE camp like me.
If you look back over the last few decades on a macro scale, the post-9/11 era in Hollywood has been a collective effort to “fix” that fateful day. Audiences want heroes. They want to see worlds where a superhero could have saved prevented that tragic day.
And, yet, it seems as though now that we’re just a generation away from that fateful day, that it’s at least possible that we’re entering a new era. Now, obviously, there are some economic issues at work that aren’t going to change. But on a creative level, it’s at least possible that we’re one unexpected hit movie away from a Hollywood Renaissance.
For instance, we’re overdue for that one-a-generation romantic comedy that sets the tone for the genre for a decade. Right now, it goes Annie Hall, When Harry Met Sally, The Enternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind and (500) Days of Summer. (Or something like that.)
Maybe Phoebe Waller-Bridge has a new romcom floating around in her mind, waiting to be produced?
Anyway, Hollywood’s fate really rests on the outcome of the 2020 Election, in some respects. If Trump wins, people may simply want to escape to theatres, whenever they happen to open again. Slowly, as people wake up to living in a fascist state, the number of gritty 70s-like dramas may slowly begin to increase as people want some catharsis.
In the extremely unlikely event that Biden wins, I think we’re going to see a new Golden Age of Hollywood comedies because everyone is going to want to laugh and laugh and laugh.
Regardless, because of the side-effects of COVID19 on Hollywood, it’s going to take a few years for things to go back to “normal.”
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