Month: October 2020

The Big Ugly: What I Might Be Getting Wrong About Trump’s Coming ‘Very American Coup’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

My hysterical, dystopian predictions are almost always wrong. And, yet, given that Trump is fucking bonkers and a caged rat at this point, I have a feeling I’m not going to be too far off — Trump is never leaving office for any reason because autocrats never “lose.”

But, for the sake of argument, let’s think about what I might be getting wrong. Is it possible Trump might actually be a normal human being and leave office should he lose the 2020 election?

First — no. This is never happening.

But, again, I’m not perfect. I keep getting things wrong. So, what could possibly happen that might cause Trump to actually not do A Very American Coup with the help his hatchet man Barr?

Well, I think one thing that would have to happen is the result be massive. Trump would really have to fucking lose in such a massive landslide that it was obvious he had lost the Mandate of Heaven. I just don’t see this happening because the Russians are going to hack directly into our election systems as part of a quid pro quo for Trump removing 1/3 of our troops from Germany.

And, yet, I don’t know that that is going to happen — even though all evidence suggests it will.

So, let’s assume for some weird reason Trump actually does, in fact, lose the election. Then what? I think TrumpBarr will do exactly what they would do, anyway — sue. They will sue any obstacle to them staying in power, even to the point of causing the country to implode (The Big Ugly.) The more difficult it is for them to stay in power, the more radical they will become. The only difference might be the context — if it’s a real blowout, it might be a teeny-tiny bit more difficult for SCOTUS to rule in his favor or Republicans to suck his cock. Lulz, who am I kidding. Of course, even if the country is about to fucking implode, SCOTUS will rule in Trump’s favor and Republicans will cling as tight to House Trump as they absolutely can. I wish I was wrong on that one. But I’m note. The Big Ugly would happen in that case, no matter what.

But am I being too dystopian? I don’t think so, but maybe? I guess if Trump actually does lose — and admits it — what he’ll do is go completely bonkers for three months. He will fire anyone he doesn’t like just out of spite. The lame duck Senate will approve any number of surreal nominations. Trump will pardon Jared’s dad, Flynn, and who knows, maybe himself.

The thing about Trump is he’s so unstable and unpredictable that I have a tendency to assume the absolute worst. It could be that Trump will just continue to be his usual bonkers self and any “salting the earth” will be in his usual half-assed incompetent fashion. That really is our best case scenario at this point.

Also of note is it’s not like Trump won’t still have a Twitter account and a golden Rolodex to flip through whenever he wants to cause mischief. He knows all our secrets and he’s going to be desperate for cash.

Or, put another way, even under the best of scenarios, we’re absolutely fucked as long as Trump is alive and in debt. Good luck, folks.

The Big Ugly: TrumpBarr Will Have To Be Physically Dragged From The White House If They Lose


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The old Benjamin Wittes quip is Trump is “malevolence mitigated by incompetence.” Another saw is “autocrats never lose.” By every possible metric, it seems as though Trump, through Barr, is going to stay in power by any means necessary even if there is a Biden landslide.

TrumpBarr would rather destroy the whole country than have Trump risk criminal exposure once he is out of office. Or, put another way, the only way Trump is leaving office should he lose is not only will he salt the earth on his way out, he’s going to demand some sort of promise about not being prosecuted once he’s no longer president.

I would even suggest he might frogwalk Obama between November and January to drive the point across — if you think me indicting Obama was bad, just wait until you try to do it to ME.

The issue is — Trump is an avatar for some seriously fucked up issue in American society. He’s like political herpes. Now that we have him, he ain’t going anywhere. Or, at least, his influence in government isn’t going anywhere. I think Trump is literally going to stay in office for the rest of his life, but that may be overstating the issue.

It could be that we’re simply in A New Era and Trump will be like Reagan was — there was life before the Reagan Revolution and life after it. I’m not one of those people who thinks Republicans will run away from Trump. To the contrary, Trump will be the new heart and soul of the Republican Party. Everything will be relative to him, just like it used to be everything was relative to Reagan.

Or, put yet another way, while I keep hearing people talk about how “fragile” our democracy is, I think we’re no longer a democracy. We’re now, officially, an autocratic managed democracy and the only possible way we have some sort of House Trump Interregnum is how God-awful incompetence Trump is at being an autocrat.

As such, we might have a few years of respite from autocracy, but soon enough, a new autocrat will take power and that will be that. It will be Trumpism without Trump. And I still think Trump will be like a reverse Gorbachev. Instead of bringing freedom to a country, Trump will strangle it.

Though I will note that while I’m often wrong, something really big has to happen for Trump to simply never leave office. TrumpBarr will use the same media narrative management techniques they used with The Mueller Report. The more difficult is for them to do this, the more radical they will become to the point that it’s rather brazen that A Very American Coup is taking place.

In the end, we may have to go through what I call The Big Ugly. And there are no assurances that the Good Guys will win if that happens.

Can A Crank Like Me Sell A Novel?


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I am well aware that I come off as an Internet crank. Ok, you got me. I come up with weird ideas. There are plenty of reasons to dismiss me as just an over opinionated rando in the middle of nowhere.

And, yet, I know I’ve got lightning in bottle when it comes to this novel. The conceit is really, really good. What’s more, my storytelling ability is, at last, up to being able to tell the story in the way I want to tell it.

My fear is, I can actually pull this rabbit out of a hat when when I try to sell the novel, people will do their due diligence on me and not give me any credit for writing a really good piece of pop art. (As I keep saying, this novel has no literary aspirations — it’s not A Confederacy of Dunces.)

This is a question that has begun to eat away at me because it would be so unfair — and typical — if I actually do what I have set out to do and it’s not the novel it’s ME that prevents it from being bought. But if I have to self-publish, I will.

I just wish the work could get judged on its merits, not on what a conspicuous weirdo the author is.

The Rebooted Novel Is Stabilized Again


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It took me significantly longer than I thought, but I’ve stabilized the rebooted first draft of the novel I’ve been working on for some time now. A lot is going on and a lot could still go wrong, but I’m at least content with the first scene. The hardest part of writing the first scene is how much you don’t show.

You have all this stuff you reference but don’t explain, hoping people will turn the page. It’s so easy to do something akin to a datadump in your excitement to explain this great story you’ve come up with. But I’ve studied my textbook, Stieg Larsson’s The Girl Who Played With Fire, and after much struggle I’ve figured out how to introduce in general terms what’s going on.

It seems as though what you’re supposed to do is introduce your novel’s universe in a very simple, direct way. Little or no dialogue. Introduce a little bit of a mystery and theme. But don’t overwhelm the reader with too much information that either won’t make any sense or will take you too long to explain if you try to make it do so.

The reason why I like having a “textbook” is it’s like journalistic writing — once you understand what’s expected in that type of writing then it’s pretty easy (at least for me) to write something that hones to those expectations. I just have no idea what I’m doing and out of sheer desperation I’m really studying in very exact detail what Larsson does in my “textbook.” Artists borrow and great artists steal, as they say.

Having said that — there’s a massive amount of my “textbook” that I’m ignoring. Larsson does too much backstory and is way too languid in pacing for my needs. I want to get right to the story. Snap. Snap. But I am definitely keeping an eye on what he did to have some frame of reference.

My novel is completely different than The Girl Who Played With Fire, but it is at least in the same genre. So it helps to understand what a successful book does and then follow that path. When I kept talking about the book for years as being a “textbook example of how to write a novel,” I didn’t realize that I would endup using it as exactly that when I decided to write a novel on my own.

Let me stress — I really have no idea what I’m doing. But over the last two years, I’ve come up with some very strong opinions about how I develop and write a novel. In the process, I’ve begun to understand why successful authors act the way they do. It’s tough figuring out how to develop a novel according to your own personality.

I see some much stuff on Twitter from novices like me who are writing novels that make my blood boil. They just seem so preening and cloyingly annoying. I want serious discussions about how the sausage is made, not bullshit drivile about what your MC looks like. Fuck that.

Anyway, the novel is on track again. I still have a massive amount of reading to do that I keep not finding time for. My biggest problem right now is I don’t have any editor (read: girlfriend or wife) to tell me what to do when two mutually exclusive plot points are of equal value in my mind. I think I may have figured out how to square circle for the most recent occurrence of this problem, but we’ll see.

The biggest issue with the novel is out of my control — who is going to win the 2020 Election? The novel is so drenched in modern politics that whomever wins the election is going to dramatically change the context of the story. I still think that no matter what, there will be an audience for a novel that aims to be the Apocalypse Now (or maybe Network?) of the Trump Era.

We’ll see, I guess.

Our Coming Hunter Biden Laptop Deep Fake Debacle


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

So, that’s how Trump plans on winning. This mysterious laptop of Hunter Biden’s Republicans have discovered will have a video on it that will be released soon that makes every Qanon fucktard spooge their pants.

From Russia with love.

This is going to happen very, very soon. Probably in a few days.

We spend about a week debating as to how real it all is, but it serves the purpose of the Second Comey Letter and Trump “wins.” Soon enough, we learn it was a deep fake done by the Russians.

Add to this my continued belief that the Russians are going to hack directly into our election systems as part of a quid pro quo with Trump for him removing 1/3 of our troops from German and, well, there you go.

Trump wins and our dystopian nightmare kicks into high gear. We leave NATO, form a direct alliance with Russia and politically we’re identical to Russia. People start to get snatched off the street and pushed out of windows. We have a solid 40 years of this before the dead hand of demographics finally makes House Trump’s rule untenable.

Autocrats Never Lose


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

As I keep saying, two facts are heading towards each other. On one hand, it definitely seems as though we may see unprecedented numbers of people vote in this election. On the other hand — autocrats never lose.

Add to this my personal belief that Russians are going to hack directly into our election systems as part of a quid pro quo with Trump for him removing 1/3 of our troops from German, and you have the makings of a massive clusterfuck — The Big Ugly.

Or, put another way, come January 20th, 2021, Trump is getting sworn in for a second term, no matter what. Even if it means we have dueling swearing in ceremonies and the country implodes. Even if Trump loses in a landslide, he’s going to sue everything and everyone in the way of his victory and he will win 5-4 or 6-3 at SCOTUS.

This is going to happen even if a sizable chunk of the Republican Establishment publically tells Trump to cool it and to leave office.

It’s just not going to happen.

I say this because Trump knows he’s probably got a real risk of being indicted if he ever leaves office. And the Russians have him by the short ones, so he has every reason to destroy the country before leaving office. And he has Bill Barr to make sure all this troubles go away.

The more difficult it becomes for TrumpBarr to stay in power, the more radical they will become. We could very well have A Very American Coup before it’s over with to the point that it’s seen as something of a political 9/11 — not even The New York Times will be able to “both sides” this — they’re going to have to admit that a coup is taking place.

The question, of course, is what the reaction of the average person will be to this Very American Coup. There’s something of a spectrum in my opinion — either there’s a lot of gnashing of teeth on Twitter but nothing really happens i the real world, or we careening towards The Big Ugly of some sort of civil war / revolution.

Of course, there is the “Trump Salts The Earth” scenario where Trump, after quickly bringing the country to the edge of The Big Ugly abruptly gives up, but tries to destroy as much as possible on his way out. He fires people, he pardons people — including himself! Or he won’t leave office unless he can quit and get Pence to pardon him.

The darkest scenario is Trump holds up in the White House and just rants on Twitter all day and we have to physically remove him from the Oval Office while a mob of angry MAGA shitheads surround the building to defend the Dear Leader.

The Bad Guys Are Going To Win


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I just don’t see any way that the bad guys of TrumpBarr don’t win. Even though I’m very pleased with how many people are voting right now, in the end, it won’t matter — TrumpBarr will likely nationalize the National Guard across the country Election Night and stop voting “until SCOTUS can figure things out.”

Or whatever.

We’re too far down the road to tyranny. In fact, we’re IN tyranny. Autocrats never lose. There’s going to be A Very American Coup and because we can’t get the conservatives-who-aren’t-MAGA to care, it’s going to be successful. There may be some violence and threats of secession, but in the end, nothing will happen.

It will all be decided at SCOTUS and it will just be a more extreme version of 2000. I just don’t see any other outcome. Even if there was a landslide, you have to actually count the votes, you know. TrumpBarr will either never let that happen, or they’re just going to sue everything and everyone to SCOTUS and win there.

Darkness is here. We’re in a dystopia. Get out of the country while you still can. Proles like me will just have to make do as best we can. I’ll be snatch off the street or pushed out a window by ICE soon enough. Maybe sent to a re-education came and die there. Who knows.

The only way that doesn’t happen is if people are willing to risk things important to them in the real world. I just don’t see that happening. And if they do, Qanon or whomever will respond in kind and the whole country will implode.

If that happens, then TrumpBarr uses the Insurrection Act from here on out. Maybe there will be a dystopian Second Reconstruction. Autocrats never fucking lose.

Good luck

Various ‘Big Ugly’ Scenarios


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

We’ve officially reached the point in the political silly season when all this data is getting thrown at you on a near-hourly basis and you have no idea what’s important.

So, as it stands, because of how badly 2016 hurt, I’m simply assuming that “autocrats never lose” is our future. I’m sitting back, waiting for the inevitable political 9/11 on the part of TrumpBarr. They will do this attack even if Biden wins by 10 points (or more) and the entire country outside of GOP-MAGA-Qanon wants TrumpBarr to leave office.

And they’ll win, for no other reason than we just don’t have it in us to go the South Korea route where we grind the country to a halt until TrumpBarr leaves office. And, remember, even if The New York Times says, “there’s a coup going on” that may not be enough to get conservatives-who-aren’t-MAGA to even tacitly agree with massive, rolling political protests against TrumpBarr.

We would have to literally be on the cusp of a hard Big Ugly — revolution / civil war — for #MoscowMitch to walk to the White House and suggest TrumpBarr leave office because, lulz, they lost the election. It could really get that bad. Nothing TrumpBarr is doing right now indicates they have any intention of leaving office for any reason, even if they lose in a landslide.

Now, I think the Russians are going to hack directly into our election systems as part of a quid pro quo for Trump removing 1/3 of our troops from Germany. If that happens — which I think it will 100% — and Trump mysteriously wins in exactly the same way he won in 2016, it will be interesting to see if we figure out what happened before or after the Electors vote.

I think the whole thing will be a lulz. Trump will “not lose” and we’ll leave NATO and make a direct alliance with Russia, Hungry, Rump England, and the Philippines. The bad guys will win, the dystopia will be here and we’ll have to wait about 40 years until the end hand of demographics makes House Trump’s control over the country untenable.

That’s what’s going to happen.

But, let’s daydream. Imagine there really is a blowout Biden Blue Wave. Then what?

Well, first, no matter what, Trump won’t concede. TrumpBarr will sue everythig and everyone in the courts. But if the country is on the cusp of The Big Ugly, it’s at least possible the courts choke this time and we don’t have a replay of 2000.

But another possibly — and I’ve seen this discussed elsewhere — is Trump “salts the earth” on his way out. He pardons everyone he can possibly pardon — including himself! He fires the FBI director and force-confirms some MAGA-Qanon lackey. He actively tries to destroy the country on the way out.

Another horrific possibly is he goes Hitler in the Bunker on us and simply won’t leave the White House no matter fucking what. He demands MAGA circle the White House and we have a huge standoff on the front lawn as we struggle to get him out safely..

One interesting thing is Trump keeps egging his supporters to fuck shit up and, to date, they haven’t taken him seriously. If he finally fucking snaps because he can’t simply sue his way into victory, then the long-feared Big Ugly might happen for the same reason the violence at the end of Do The Right Thing Happened — fuck you.

The point is –the conditions are there for The Big Ugly to start very, very, very soon. Like any moment. It could be a Oklahoma City type bombing somewhere. A false flag. Anything at any moment.

One thing that is curious is how many people are voting NOW. What does that mean for election day itself? Is it possible that so many people will have voted by election day that the day itself will be rather mundane until Trump simply won’t concede? (Or he “wins” mysteriously.)

November to January is going to suck, is all I know.

Rebooting The Novel Redux


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Every once in a while I have existential issues with the novel that give me pause for thought. So, here I am again. I’ve decided to throw myself into reading until around election day.

The reason why I’m going to continue with this specific novel concept is the problems I have with it, I would have with any novel. I have a real problem with character development. Why throw this novel out after two years when I can spend about a week read and get back at it?

Also, the result of the election is going to play a big part in what happens to this novel. If Trump loses, then I keep the novel set where it currently is. If he wins, then I take a shot of tequila and think seriously about pushing it forward a year so it opens just before the election in 2020.

And, yet, maybe not. I might keep it in the “before times” for no other reason than the pandemic simply is an added element to the story that would cause me to lose focus.

So, it’s possible, I might keep it set when it is, but the context would be significantly re-imagined.

But the issue at hand is reading. I know this is a great concept and I’m going to push forward. If something happens out of my control that makes this specific novel moot, then I can use all the hard work I’ve done over the last two years to throw myself into a new novel.

I have a lot to say, it’s just a matter of how I’m going to say it. I have a solid three novel / screenplay concepts in the back of my mind I can turn to after my sulking ends should the worst happen.

The Metrics Of ‘The Big Ugly’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

All signs point to Trump simply never leaving office, no matter what. I say this because of Bill Barr. Even if Trump loses in a massive landslide, Barr is going to be Trump’s hatchet man and make sure all Trump’s troubles go away. In the end, it all endsup at SCOTUS and Trump wins 5-4 or 6-3.

And, yet, it has to be noted that this isn’t going to happen in a political vacuum. This is not 2000. The reason why the Republicans were able to steal that election was the country wasn’t as polarized and it was something of a sucker punch. It took us years to process what happened and why.

While I absolutely believe at this point that TrumpBarr will “not lose” the 2020 election, there is at least small possibility that I’m wrong. In the end Trump’s incompetence will finally, at last be his downfall. But the nation will have to go through a traumatic experience to get rid of him.

Here’s the idea — it soon becomes apparent that TrumpBarr has lost “the mandate of heaven.” So much so that even Senate Republicans, sated by a huge tax cut and hundreds of young, hack MAGA judges might begin to distance themselves from The Dear Leader.

One metric to look at is Sen. Lindsey Graham. If Graham starts to make it clear that Trump should leave office because, lulz, he lost the election, then that’s a good indication that even though Trump is using the full weight of the U.S. Government to stay in power, that the political ground has shifted subtly beneath him.

But the biggest metric to look at his Trump himself. If Trump’s insanity and political criminality fuse — which they will — then it’s possible we enter a gotterdammerung situation where Trump, using Barr, sort of forces the issue. He forces EVERYONE to take a side on an existential level. So much so that the Republican Establishment itself begins to fragment.

I guess you could call this the “Very American Coup” scenario. In this situation, TrumpBarr’s attempt to “not lose” the election is nothing short of a political 9/11 attack. Everyone knows what’s going on. Everyone is on the same page. And it all boils down to if you’re a Trump “true believer” or not.

So, even though even Senate Republicans don’t want Trump to take everything to SCOTUS, he does anyway. He wins there and the country is so fucking enraged at what has happened, that the fucking bolts finally pop off and the United States implodes along the lines of the Soviet Union in 1991. But probably in a far more messy, violent manner — The Big Ugly.

It just seems like 2020 is it. This is the election where 50-odd years of macro trends all crest at the same moment and all of our nightmares and dystopian fears happen at the same time.

I honestly don’t know the endgame. I honestly don’t know if TrumpBarr wins or if such a brazen extra-political attempt to stay in power will be enough to get conservatives-who-are-not-MAGA to get woke or not. If we can’t get that crucial part of the electorate to finally show some backbone, then on a political level, at least, the United States in 2021 will be identical to Belarus in 2021.