Month: July 2021

The Coming Sino-Taiwanese Singularity War


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I love to run scenarios in my mind. Some of these mental games grow very elaborate and span decades of mental energy. But when I was in Seoul, I came up with a pretty bonkers scenario for how China could strike Taiwan — build a land bridge to the island using nanotechnology.

This is an extremely fanciful (at the moment) idea, but it’s just the kind of thing that would stun the world. Take something we know in theory could happen, then say, “What if it happened NOW?”

I would say this idea would make for a great movie, but, lulz, Hollywood is so beholden to the China audience this would never happen.

But if I were to guess about what kind of really shocking thing was going to rock the world in the 2020s, something like China building a land bridge to Taiwan using nanotechnology would be it.

August Sucks: Fresh Hell Scenarios For August, 2021


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The reason why August is such a sucky month is it’s the nadir of the year for most normal people who work at the big media companies. Huge swaths of the newsroom leave town for this or that pleasant vacation retreat, leaving the fate of any reporting on a breaking news event to a bunch of wet behind the ears cub reporters.

As such, huge news events are drawn to August.

Everyone has to leave their vacation at a moment’s notice to cover this or that huge news event. So, that leaves the question — what will it be this year? Here are my guesses.

Cyber Ninjas “Prove” Trump “Won”
It’s my impression that not only does Trump think he will somehow be magically re-instated in August, but Cyber Ninjas will finally come out with the results of their dumb sham audit. If they come through for Trump and “prove” he “won” Arizona, either that in itself starts some sort of secession crisis by the end of the year, or it begins a process that leads to House Speaker Trump telling Senate Democrats to convict Biden and Harris or risk a civil war.
Someone Drops Dead
A lot of old people are in powerful positions. If any number of 70+ powerful people dropped dead, that, in itself could be The Thing that we think of what made August 2021 suck so bad.
The DPRK Does Something Stupid (Or Implodes)
The DPRK has been pretty quiet since the pandemic hit. August 2021 seems like just the right moment for them to pop out and scare the shit out of us all one way or another. Or implode. You name it. Anything could happen.
Iran Does Something Stupid
It’s easy to imagine a situation where Iran and Israel have at it suddenly and before you know it, WW3 has started.
China Does Something Stupid
A lot of people talk about China going after Taiwan by about 2027. What if China struck in August 2021? Then what?
Russia Does Something Stupid
It’s easy to imagine Russia starting some sort of late summer general war against Ukraine.

Wildcard: a major domestic terrorist attack.
Trump is doing everything in his power to destabilize the United States with his dumb nearly-transactional rhetoric. What if there was a large scale, coordinated MAGA New Right terrorist attack all across the country in some sort of proto-coup effort. How would we handle that?

Wildcard: Cuba
It’s within the realm of possibility that of possibility that Cuba could implode in August, given the massive protests there right now.

The Coming American Diaspora


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I don’t know anything about stocks, but I would vaguely suggest you long any stock of a company that might benefit from a huge exodus of Americans starting at some point in the near future. Say, by the end of the decade.

I say this because if you assume, like I do, that the United States is going to soon face the existential choice of civil war or autocracy, there are going to be winners and losers, no matter which one we ultimately decide to do.

Off the top of my head, it seems like Canada, Australia and New Zealand would have the most to gain if 30 million Americans bounced from the country all of a sudden. If it’s a liberal exodus, then the economies of Canada and Australia would likely benefit the most. Perth — which, as I understand it, is a very colorful and creative place, even if it’s in the middle of nowhere — could become a new Hollywood. (Or something.)

Meanwhile, if it’s the MAGA New Right that up and leaves, maybe Great Britain (or whatever is left of it by that point) would benefit?

Anyway, I guess what I’m saying is we’re all seriously, existentially fucked a lot sooner than you might realize. The 2020s are shaping up to suck.

At Least The New Right Makes Sense


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Jesus H. Christ do I fucking hate the MAGA New Right. I hate MAGA, specifically, because not only do they deny reality in service of their idiot ding-dong leader, but they both hate liberals and crave their validation. Meanwhile, the New Right at least is more forthright about what their intentions are.

They’re fucking fascists.

So, in that sense, that’s something I can work with in my mind. I call them “boring” because there’s no struggle to figure out how someone could possibly believe what they believe. There’s no mystery: they’re fucking racist misogynist fascists. There’s no quibbling about if their racists or misogynists or whatever because they refuse to even acknowledge that any fact that doesn’t help them exists.

Or, put another way, the New Right is Trumpism without Trump. It’s based more on a fascist ideology that you can game out rather than an irrational need to own the libs. With the New Right, there’s no confusion over what they believe or what they’re aims are.

They’re fucking American Nazis.

The New Right isn’t a pure 1-to-1 with the Nazis, of course, because their not expansionist and, to date at least, they’re not anti-Semitic. (But that’s coming, of course.)

All I can hope is eventually history will do with the New Right what it did to the Nazis. It’s going to fucking suck getting rid of them, of course, but in the end hopefully we can move on to a new and brighter future.

The Dead Hand Of History & America’s Ultimate Near-Term Fate


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The conditions are there, at least, for the United States to experience something akin to a second civil war between now and at around January 2025. And, yet, I struggle to figure out if I’m just being hysterical or if there is, in fact, some reason to be honestly worried.

I just can’t game things out.

Every metric that I would use to say, “Oh, of course we’ll have a civil war,” at this point could also be used to for, “Oh, of course we’re going to turn into an autocracy.” So, I dunno. MAGA and the New Right are, in fact, actively destroying our democracy in hopes of establishing some sort of race-based, permanent autocratic minority rule.

And, as of the moment, I would say they’re going to peacefully get away with it. It’s theirs to lose, if you will. In fact, I would go so far as to say if they can just control themselves once they get what they want, the MAGA New Right can run the nation (into the ground) for generations to come. The United States will become Fortress America, China will gradually rise in power and by the end of the century the idea of a “free” America will be looked back upon as quaint.

But form follows function.

Once President Pompeo (or whomever) rewrites the Constitution via a MAGA dominated Constitutional Convention, purges the media and weaponizes the existing ICE infrastructure, it’s very easy to imagine some pretty bad shit happening. The excesses of the newly unbound MAGA New Right regime might grow so severe that there is something akin to a popular uprising and we finally drive a stake through the heart of the MAGA New Right vampires.

The counter argument is, of course, Russia.

They have huge protests all the time and jack shit happens.

So, again, I don’t know which direction the country will take once we finally are forced to decide autocracy or civil war. I do know, however, that if the MAGA New Right gets the civil war they apparently crave, shit is going to get real really quick.

If the last civil war America had is any indication, once the establishment of the United States gets woke on such matters, there is an element of institutional radicalization that doesn’t happen very often. Once it’s impossible for, say, the chatty Cathy’s of Morning Joe to avoid that we’re in the middle of a civil war, they’re likely to take what seem as rather radical political stances virtually over night.

Having to deal with an existential threat does tend to do that to even the most establishment moderate.

Know Your Right Wing Cocksuckers: MAGA Vs. The New Right


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Do you find yourself confused as to the difference between MAGA and the New Right? Well, let me break down what (I think) the difference is.

MAGA
MAGA is a violent personality cult that revolves around a bonkers idiot who is an avatar for the rot within the American political system. Trump is “playing himself,” if you will. He’s lazy. He’s stupid. He’s willfully ignorant and generally latches on the whatever the most destructive possible thing someone could do in his position is. MAGA both hates liberals and cares, deeply, about what they think. Since there’s no overall ideology to MAGA because it’s leader is a racist, misogynistic ding-dong they vacillate widely as to the specifics of what they believe at any particular moment.

The New Right.
Now, let me say up front that any idea I may have as to what the New Right is gleaned from hate reading Jesse Kelly’s Twitter feed. But, just from looking at what he has written, it SEEMS as though the New Right has some sort of ideology. And, surprise, that ideology is fascism. They — or at least Mr. Kelly — are very forthright in how they live in an idyllic mental state because they no longer give a shit what liberals think, even if it’s fact base and true. They are very coy about the whole fascism thing, saying that while they’re not fascist NOW, liberals are driving them to fascism and liberals will have only themselves to blame when that transformation finally happens. The New Right, apparently, is populated with people who have cogent, logical reasons for why they’re fascists. So, in that way, they’re very much like smart Nazis. You know, the ones that helped put the Untied States on the moon. They’re college educated, often lawyers. And they fully embrace autocracy and racist minority rule. That’s their jam.

Anyway, fuck both MAGA and the very boring New Right.

Will There Be A MAGA New Right American Revolution In 2021?


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Ok, let’s think about this seriously for a moment. Liberals want to cancel you and your family just for being conservative. They want to use Critical Race Theory to indoctrinate your children so they hate America.

And guess what?

No, there isn’t going to be a MAGA New Right revolution in America, you fucking cocksucker piece of shit. What is happening is a systematic attempt on the part of MAGA and the New Right to use gesture politics to cause their idiotic believers to no longer trust or believe in any American intuition.

A lot of this is just bad faith MAGA New Right grift. It’s like how someone who has a porn addiction grows so numb to porn that they have to watch more and more graphic versions of it to get off. So, too, does the MAGA New Right have to think up even more fucking bonkers conspiracy theories to give the base the hit it needs.

The downside to this idiotic behavior is, of course, that the goal posts keep getting moved. People in Alabama and Arkansas doing pot and drinking Miller Lite on the back porch of their cabin do a Google search for “MAGA revolution 2021?” and end up at this site where I get drunk and tell them what a piece of shit they are for being MAGA New Right in the first place.

But, to answer the question — the MAGA New Right definitely THINKS some sort of popular Right wing uprising is going to happen very, very soon. Or, put another way, they are doing everything in their power to have the base of the movement on edge that at any moment Trump will go transactional and some sort of fucking MAGA New Right revolution will happen and, at last, they will “just be left alone.”

The surreal part of all of this is a portion of the electorate is now primed for unprecedented political violence should something put unexpected pressure on our political system. So, I guess, in a sense, yes, it is within the realm of possibility that there might be a “MAGA New Right revolution” in 2021.

But something pretty huge would have to happen. Something that was the catalyst. Off the top of my head, I guess it’s possible that Cyber Ninjas “proving” Trump “won” Arizona MIGHT be the type of thing to do it. But there a few darker scenarios involving people shuffling off this mortal coil that I think would actually be the thing to cause any punitive fascist “revolution.”

My Hot Take On The (Very Boring) ‘New Right’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The thing about the New Right is it’s full of overwrought, over exited rhetoric that if you take at face value definitely seems an embrace of cold, hard fascism. But usually, it’s done in a rather coy, conflated manner. At least from what I can tell from Jesse Kelly’s Twitter feed, apparently “it’s a New Right thing, you wouldn’t understand, lib” in the sense apparently they want both to embrace fascism and say that they’re being “driven to it” by evil Cancel Culture libs.

The issue is, there comes a point where the dicking around about if they’re fascist or not is both dumb and boring. I would respect the New Right a lot more — and find them more interesting — if they tore off their human face and reveled their real American Fascist beliefs beneath.

If we were all the same page on what the New Right really is — modern American fascism — then, at least, we would all know the dynamics of American politics going forward.

But, at the moment, the New Right is going all Waiting For Fascist Gadot. They say, “Well, we’re not fascist yet, but those damn liberals are going to force us to become fascist!”

So that’s why the New Right is boring. They’re not only intellectually dishonest, but they’re coy, too. I know what’s going on. A lot of MAGA people are tired of getting owned by libs by giving any logic, fact-based argument any validation. As such, the New Right has decided to nullify any that a liberal articulates in the first place.

If a liberal — or anti-MAGA person– states it, they won’t listen to it.

Throw in the growing number of paramilitary groups in the the United States and a general glorification by the New Right itself and, well, I’m reminded that we’re careening towards the existential choice of civil war or autocracy that I constantly harp on.

We Live In A Cultural Vacuum


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The interesting thing about the modern era is, well, we’re not in an era. I guess the argument could be made that we’re in either the post-Trump Era or the pre-autocracy era or even modern Antebellum era. But, really, when it comes to culture none of those are true.

We’re not in just a cultural wasteland, we’re in a cultural vacuum.

The current era began, I would posit, with the introduction of the first iPhone. In a broader sense, I guess, we’re still in the post-9/11 Era. I thought Rona would do something to jiggle our culture, but that really hasn’t happened.

If I want to make myself feel better, I would get all excited and say we’re one unexpected hit in music, movies or TV for some sort of major shift in our culture perceptions to occur. That’s usually how such eras begin. Some young outlier produces a song, or an album or whatever that is so unexpectedly popular that it shakes everything up.

I guess, in a sense, I am looking forward to a new Nevermind or Pulp Fiction to pop out to really rattle hyper modern pop culture. In a sense, maybe, you might say that Tik-Tok is a precursor to what I’m talking looking forward to. Tik-Tok is making new era stars in a currently unnamed era.

Tragically, of course, the Something Big that changes everything might be some huge news event that is the Day The Earth Stood Still, like 9/11. We’re just about due for something like that to happen.

But I can’t predict the future. I have no idea that is going to happen.

Margot Robbie, Call Your Agent: Watch Me Come Up With A Great Movie


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’ve mentioned this before, but I’ll do it again: Margot Robbie should produce a reboot of the classic Aussie movie “Picnic At Hanging Rock.” She produces, Greta Gerwig directs and Saoirse Ronan stars.

Ta-da — instant hit.

Money please.