First, let me say I loved Mare of Easttown. It definitely made me sit up and take notice. I realized I needed to up my game a great deal if I was competing against it in my genre and for the attention of the audience. But here is a general overview of what I thought about it.
Let me be note that I generally walk out out of movies — almost all the time — so for me to finish an entire TV series is a pretty big deal for me. Anyway, here we go.
There is so much to love about this story. In fact, my only quibble from a story telling point of view is how the show begins — Mare wakes up. This is poor storytelling — the protagonist waking up as the beginning scene. Better to have protagonist doing something at a point where their life changes in some way. This is not a hard, fast rule, but, in general, just to have them wake up is lazy, lazy, lazy.
But other than that, I was extremely impressed with the story on a structural level. It was well written and executed. I found the ending organic to the story and not contrived at all.
Though, the last two episodes did get a bit confusing for me. They should have been a bit more clear as to what, exactly the whole plot on the part of the people protecting the killer was. Maybe add a tick-tock of the exact events of that night. We came close to one at one point, but it was I don’t remember there being an accurate tick-tock with flashback included.
In general, however, Mare of Easttown really forced me to sit up and take notice. Like I said, I have to up may game. It startled me so much that I decided to have something of creative re-set for the rest of August. I’m just going to read and develop for a few weeks and then throw myself back into things at the start of September.
Hopefully, I will have four solid outlines by that point.
I’ve seen enough. The conditions are now in place for some sort of major political-related tragedy to happen just about any moment in the United States. I have no inside information from the Dark Web (or whatever) I just have a hunch. The MAGA New Right’s rhetoric has reached a point where it’s just a matter of time before someone takes them both literally and seriously and someone important gets hurt.
A lot, of course, would hinge on who got hurt, how badly and how. I don’t like to articulate exactly the kinds of things I fear might happen because I don’t want to put it out into the universe, but needless to say, whatever happened might be Big.
Oh boy.
If such a tragedy happened, here what I think would we see. First, there would be silence on the part of the MAGA New Right. They might vaguely say something about “thoughts and prayers” but that would be it. They would be hunkered down, trying to figure out what their talking points would be.
After about 24 – 48 hours of radio silence, the media narrative they would want us all to believe would be it was the act of someone who was “mentally unstable” and nothing they said or did had anything to do with it — even if there was some sort of manifesto that directly said they did! In other words, for their bullshit echo chamber, they would nullify reality with this event just like they did with January 6th.
“It wasn’t me,” they would say in unison until the faithful believed it.
Now, this has always worked in the past. But there is a small chance that if the Something Big I fear might happened was Big Enough that this wouldn’t work. Remember, the two sides are so absolute in their views now that politics only functions on the edges. So, if it was absolutely proven that Trump’s ranting about being re-instated was specifically and directly responsible for someone getting hurt, then the reaction of that crucial 1% of the electorate that open minded would determine everything.
There’s a huge but to all of this — the MAGA New Right is a macro issue. So whatever happened would have to be not just big, but fucking HUGE to actually put them on the back foot for, say, an election cycle or so. Again, while I have a few scenarios in my mind, I just don’t like to write them out.
So, in general, I think we’re just too divided for any type of tragedy to unite us, even briefly. It would have to be international terrorism, and only then it would be for about 24 hours. Or, if it was domestic political terrorism, it would have to be a huge fucking event.
In general, we’re fucking doomed. The macro trends are too powerful and the trendlines are all pointing towards the existential choice of autocracy, military junta or civil war.
One of the talking points you find within the center-Left Twitter echo chamber is how damaging FOX News is. I agree with this talking point, and, yet I feel it needs to be put in context.
Because of the nature of our society and government — we are supposed to be a liberal democracy, you know — FOX News exists because there’s an audience. In fact, what’s worse, the audience that it makes so much money scaring is growing more and more interested in watching North Korean-style propaganda like OANN and NewsMax that has the barest connection to reality.
That’s what they want, they want to be lied to. Or, put another way, for them the lie is the truth.
And, so, if FOX News had a come-to-Jesus moment and started acting more like CNN, it would lose all its viewers to OANN and NewsMax. How do you fix THAT problem?
FOX News is a symptom of one of a number of macro trends that are lurching us down the inevitable path of the existential choice of autocracy, military junta or civil war. All the conditions are there, it’s just a matter of what the catalyst will be.
But it will happen — something’s gotta give.
At the moment, a lot of people who poo-poo my “doom shit” do so because they simply can’t process, can’t imagine, the idea that the United States, the most powerful country in the world, could face the type of existential choice I keep ranting about.
In short, they have no vision.
And, yet, I have to admit that I can’t predict the future. There is no reveled truth. I could be wrong. Or, more accurately, when we do drift peacefully into autocracy the people who laugh at me won’t even realize what’s happened because their, specific life, hasn’t change all that much for the time being.
When it does, they’ll get upset in private and never, ever admit that I was right all along.
I’m a reasonable good singer and often delusional enough to put myself in situations that I probably shouldn’t, so I on a lark was going to attempt to do American Idol. I was, that is, until I discovered the cut off year for participating is 1992.
I’m about 20 years too old to do it.
Write, write, write.
If you’re an unmarried man without children like I am at the moment, you don’t really have and aging rituals to mark your entry into middle age. Sure, there’s the issue of chatting up a young woman at a bar, only to learn she’s 24, but this American Idol thing has really rattled my cage.
The reason is, it definitely reminds me of the context of the novels I’m developing and writing. By the time I actually finish them — which, I hope, will be in about a year — my age in itself, will be part of the “story” behind the story.
Even if my dreams come true and I successfully sell all four books and they become popular, I may find myself answering the question, “So, how does it feel to be a success later in life,” a lot. Ugh.
And, yet, the whole point of this huge creative project was to give myself a huge creative project to finish before — gulp — I reached a certain age milestone. That has not changed. I had no idea the learning curve for writing a novel, much less four, would be so sharp.
But things are going really well.
I’m changing focus until the end of August — I’m doing more reading and developing than trying to write — and that’s really helping to clear my mind some. Giving myself a few weeks of breathing room to reflect on the saga so when I start writing again in September, things should move extremely fast.
That, at least, is the idea.
Some of what’s going on is I need to get a better handle on the whole thing so I can just go straight through the outline without fear of it collapsing. If I can reach that level of stability with all four outlines, then I will be well on my way to wrapping up the first drafts of the four novels a lot sooner than anyone might expect.
This is a huge fucking project and I love it. The sheer size and scope of this project perfect fits my personality. I’ll put a move on you, no matter how old I may be….
On a practical level, at least in my own personal life, American politics is dead. I have all but stopped talking politics with my far more conservative relatives. This is very bad because it means the very heart of our democracy — individual interactions where some sort of consensus is developed — no longer beats.
Trump is to blame for this clusterfuck. He’s to blame because by taking the most extreme position possible — and dragging the vast majority of conservatives with him — negative polarization has reached such a Singularity that any discussion of politics with someone you disagree with inevitable turns into a screaming match.
Now, obviously, this was already happening because of how insane the GOP turned after Obama won a second term, but the rise of Trump didn’t exactly help the situation any.
Instead of politics we just have a general drift towards a dark and unknown future.
Who organized the Pence Gallows in front of the Capitol? Sometimes, the biggest tell about an event comes from something we simply take for granted. In this case, it took some planning to set up a gallows for Pence on January 6th. That thing didn’t just magically appear out of nowhere. It suggests that there was a specific point to the insurrection — scare the shit out of Mike Pence so he wouldn’t certify the vote.
Why did Trump give Jim Jordan the Medal of Freedom on January 11? Again, it’s easy to dismiss this by saying Jordan was such a long-term toady of Trump’s that of course he would get the Medal of Freedom before Trump left office. And, yet, the case could be made that Jordan did something specific in that prompted Trump in his zero-sum-game mind to feel compelled to give Jordan a “gift” in exchange for…what? Silence? Actively fucking up any investigation into what happened January 6th? Why did a Proud Boy leader visit Trump in the days before January 6th? This is one of those things where what actually happened is kind of nebulous. Did a Proud Boy leader get a tet-a-tete with Trump in the White House? What did they talk about? There are a lot of conflicting stories about all of this, but someone needs to ask some questions to figure out what happened. How much did Trump know about the plot for January 6th? It is reasonable to believe that Trump was the driving force for what happened on January 6th….but just like with the Russia conspiracy stuff, it was probably very chaotic and haphazard. Trump probably would dip in to a meet every once in a while to give “his people” a general goal then wonder off. This gives him legal “plausible deniability” because all he had to do was incite the mob — he likely didn’t know exactly that was going to happen. He just knew there was a good chance they would attack to Capitol in such a way that it could scare the shit out of Pence so he didn’t do his job.
Long Answer If you’re searching for some sort of easy answer as to if the Red States would win a theoretical Second American Civil War, I just don’t have it for you. You probably are out at the cabin, drinking Miller Lite with the guys and someone gets a little too worked up about Vaccine Passports or Cancel Culture or whatever the fuck it is that cocksucker MAGA New Right idiots are upset about at the moment.
You pull up your phone and ask Google, “Will Red States win the civil war?“
And so, here you are.
First and foremost, you’re going to have to make concrete your hazy, abstract thoughts about a “civil war” and give me some sort of war aims. Even more important, is the issue of why do Red States even need a civil war in the first place? What, specifically, would make Red State people think that they need to start killing their fellow Americans in an organized manner because of their political views?
As I tell my conservative relatives at every opportunity, all Red States have to do is be patient and they’ll get everything they ever wanted and then some. Blue State leadership — at the moment — is divided, tepid and weak-willed and, as such, Red States could very easily establish a MAGA New Right autocracy without firing a shot. It’s when you leave the realm of politics and start making things existential that Red States have a severe problem on their hands.
But, lulz, the MAGA New Right glorifies political violence and is itching for the opportunity to eliminate the “liberal problem,” so it’s something that is at the forefront of a lot of Red State people’s minds.
If you’re still eager for a Second American Civil War and want to know if Red States will win it, I need to know what your war aims would be. What’s the point of the civil war relative to you? With the First American Civil War, the war aims of the South were clear — independence in order to protect slavery. With any Second American Civil War, Red State war aims seem extremely abstract.
Red States so hate the way Blue State people think that they’re willing to risk everything for the opportunity to physically harm them en masse. But why? Why do that when you could simply be patient and have the country slide peacefully into autocracy. It appears that the glorification of political violence on the part of the MAGA New Right is nothing more than what you would expect as part of a Fourth Turning — it exists because it exists.
Back to war aims.
I’m having to do some political reverse engineering here, but here goes. The first problem that the MAGA New Right Red States face when gaming out a civil war is, at the core of their desire for a Second Civil War is a severe existential fear of the browning of America. So, after the initial political violence began, it would soon become clear that establishing some sort of white Christian ethno state would be the chief Red State war aim.
As such, Red State people, who to date have been getting everything they want via traditional politics will get a rude awaking — POC will freak the fuck out the moment the MAGA New Right makes it clear they want to “put them in their place.” Hence — a race war will begin. And part and parcel of that race war will be crimes against humanity on the part of Red State governments (collectively known as Trumplandia) who will begin to systematically kill POC in a frantic effort to maintain control.
So, right off the bat, Red States have a race war to deal with — they just don’t have a unified polity because of that.
Then, you have two other major issues: population and economics. If California stays in the Union at the onset of a Second American Civil War it, unto itself, would be enough to allow Blue States to dominate everything from the West Cost to Texas in the South to the Mississippi River in the center to Minnesota to the north.
Add to this, in general, the Blue States have far bigger economies and more dense populations geographically and things aren’t looking good for Red States.
But if you STILL want to have a Second American Civil War because you “just want to be left alone” then Red States have a few things going for them. First is, Blue States aren’t really taking seriously how deranged Red States are going into any Second American Civil War. So, it is possible that some sort of sucker punch could happen that would knock Blue States off their feet long enough for Red States to consolidate power — still a problem: race.
Additionally, it’s almost inevitable that WMD will be used by both sides, so you could sketch out a scenario whereby the MAGA New Right is simply so much more fanatical than the Blue States that when push comes to shove on the use of WMD, Red States win because they’re willing to vaporize more people.
The argument could also be made that if Trumplandia simply wants to leave the Union to form its own white Christian ethno state, then, yes, Red States would then probably come pretty close to achieving their war aim. There would be a massive migration of POC out of Trumplandia, but the MAGA New Right hates POC to begin with, so win-win, right?
And, remember, none of this clusterfuck would happen in a vacuum. The DPRK could lop nuke our way to scramble things. WW3 would probably break out during the second civil war, the list goes on.
So, no, Red States wouldn’t win the Second American Civil War, or if they did, they would severely regret the whole thing by the time they “won.”
The #NeverTrump people are what I like to call “radical moderates.” You can quibble about how “moderate” they really are relative to the Left-Right divide before Trump, but #NeverTrump goals are pretty moderate in my opinion. They want simply to protect our liberal democracy at any costs.
Abraham Lincoln, Radical Moderate
In a sense, they really do harken back to Lincoln. Father Abraham was the quintessential radical moderate. At his heart, he was pretty moderate, but in the severe crisis of the Civil War he made a very radical choice out of desperation: free the slaves so as to make the war one of liberation and Union, not just Union.
As such, because the United States is hurdling towards an existential choice of autocracy, military junta or civil war, it’s at least possible that for a moment in time everyone will be #NeverTrump — there will be a United Front with the leaders of the #NeverTrump at its head.
Should it happen, it will be astonishing on a political level because such a unification of political views has only happened one or twice in our history. I would say the Civil War and WW2 are the last times it happened. For AOC to join forces with someone as conservative as, say, Rick Wilson, under “radical moderate” rubric we would have to be suffering a very, very severe political crisis.
Now, as an aside, let me address something I’ve mentioned before – are #NeverTrumpers the modern equivalent of “War Democrats?” At the moment, they are. But the moment we’re facing the type of severe political crisis I fear we’re hurdling towards occurs, they will be something totally different — the vanguard of the the radical moderates.
In other words, the leadership of the people who will have the opportunity to finally destroy the scourge of the fascist MAGA New Right will come from the group of conservatives who are now #NeverTrumpers. The center-Left simply does not have that many leaders to use for such a cause. AOC is pretty good, but she’s still too young and untested.
I can think of half a dozen #NeverTrumpers who could provide crucial leadership for the — glup — war effort, should things get that bad.
Or, put another way, if the crisis grows as severe as I fear it will, instead of the current political situation where you have a huge center-Left then the #NeverTrumpers, you would have a United Front with the #NeverTrumpers providing the leadership.
But all of this is extremely speculative. I’m always wrong, at least to date. I’m just kind of sketching out possibilities given what usually happens in revolutions and civil wars
Sometimes, I grow very frustrated with Twitter liberals. They went to Harvard and shit and yet relative to what I, a mere hayseed rube Internet crank rando believe, they are completely clueless. A prime example of this is what’s going on with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
Ron DeSantis
All his thuggish behavior that is putting the lives of his own electorate in danger is exactly what not just the MAGA New Right base in Florida wants, but the NATIONAL MAGA New Right base wants in the abstract. The more thuggish he is, the better in their eyes.
They want autocracy. They want to “own the libs” no matter what the consequences are. And the more DeSantis’ political fortunes improve because of him being a demonstrable autocratic cocksucker, the more every elected Republican official who sees the next president when they look at themselves in the mirror in the morning will feel obliged to one up him.
Autocratic thuggery is now the sweet spot of modern Republican politics. Negative polarization is so absolute, so extreme now within Republican ranks that even the most overheated MAGA New Right fascist rhetoric could very well become policy once a Republican inevitable becomes president again. Then all my “doom shit” won’t look so hysterical.
Anyway, DeSantis knows what he’s doing. At this point, the only issue is if Trump co-ops him or the two of them have a political deathmatch to see who gets to be the first American autocrat.
Of course, 2025 is a long ways away. There are about a dozen other would-be autocrats who are going to fight like hell to get the chance to come to power in 2025 and….just never leave office for any reason. As such, DeSantis doesn’t have a complete lock on being our first true American Autocrat, but he’s definitely at the moment the chief contender.
We are so fucked. So very, very fucked.
I have no ready answers for you. I have no VOX Tik-Tok video spoken in formal Twitter liberal received English. I just have my two eyes and ears and simply “doom shit” logic to use.
We’re going to have to have some sort of United Front or hope we can get the type of radical moderate behavior that happened around the time Lincoln decided to free the slaves. Something gotta give. Something big has to happen, otherwise, DeSantis will become an American Augustus and establish a American Empire.
When it came to predicting the ultimate effects of COVI19, I did a fairly good job of predicting things. Where I made the biggest mistake was on how severe I thought it would be. Given how the Chinese government freaked the fuck out when it was first reported, I assumed it was far more deadly than it ultimately turned out to be.
Anyway.
Let’s look at why, specifically, I think we have three options — autocracy, civil war or military junta — before us between now and January, 2025.
The United States is far less politically stable than we appear. The MAGA New Right talks openly about how liberals are “forcing” them to become radical fascists. They talk in sometimes not-so-vague terms about how soon enough they’re going to embrace fascism once and for all and it will be all liberals’ fault.
When you begin to accept that the Republican Party is now nothing more than a modern version of Slave Power that will stop at nothing to protect its interests, then, lulz, you have a recipe for disaster on your hands. The Republican Party has officially embraced autocracy and minority rule as its path to perpetual power from here on out.
What did you do to defend democracy, daddy?
What bothers me the most about Twitter liberals is they continue to frame the behavior of notable MAGA New Right elected as if we had a functioning liberal democracy. This, sadly, is not the case. The very thuggish, autocratic things that people like Ron DeSantis advocate are the very things that make them popular with the anti-democratic Trumplandia base.
Now, the ironic thing about all of this is Trump is such an idiot moron that he could very well, simply by existing be the thing that prevents us from peacefully transitioning into an autocracy in all but name. He’s so popular — and yet such a fucking idiot — that what should otherwise be a very easy political transition to autocracy on America’s part may turn into one of the other two options I keep thinking about: civil war or military junta.
The United States has been so stable for so long that it’s difficult to wrap one’s mind around the idea that there might be a civil war here. A lot of people simply can’t grok it as a possibly at all. And, yet, according to all the metrics I keep in my mind about such things a civil war is definitely among the three options we face.
And now, we come to the great irony of all of this — the very same macro trends that could lead us to civil war, autocracy or a military junta — could very well simply give the MAGA New Right everything it wants without destroying our democracy.
For the moment, the center-Left is divided, fractious and ineffectual. America has been drifting towards a more conservative political center for about 50 years now. There’s every reason to believe that the Republican Party — even with the browning of America — could dominate American politics within the context of American political tradition for at least another generation if not more.
But they’re fucking greedy and want an autocracy because they lost the culture wars and they want to “own” the libs once and for all.
And, yet, once the MAGA New Right make shit existential for Leftist soyboys, they could very well have a lot more kick in them than expected. It’s human nature. Let me repeat that: IT’S FUCKING HUMAN NATURE.
The MAGA New Right Red States could very well make the same mistake about the Blue States that the Axis Powers made about the United States in late 1941. Red States think Blue States are “degenerates” who will collapse the moment there’s any political violence.
Surprise! That’s not true!
And, yet, this all raises the issue — why am I so certain that one of three unthinkable options will happen between now and around January 2025.
Besides the glorification of political violence on the Right, the hardening of the political divide and the death of politics in general, I would point to the coordinated efforts on the part of the Republican Party at the state and local level to highjack any election result they don’t like.
Sorry for the shitty quality.
Why give the Republican dominated legislature the right to take over local election certification if you don’t intend to use it? Why make it so fucking hard to vote if you don’t intend to abuse your ability to dissuade people from voting in general. I’m simply taking Republican anti-democratic moves both seriously and literally and then extrapolating from that.
A lot of the people who poo-poo my “doom shit” about our political future either refuse to realize that we’re no longer a functioning democracy or they would be the people who tuned out entirely once we become an autocracy and it becomes clear that it’s pointless to vote.
I’m beginning to think that maybe — just maybe — when we finally face the options of civil war or autocracy the U.S. Military will step in and tell everyone to cool it. We may live under military rule for a few months — years? — but in the end all that will happen is there will be a Constitutional Convention that sorts out all our structural issues and then we move on without a lot of bloodshed.
Doom Shit
But, in general, the macro trends are definitely drifting towards Something Big happening no later than January 2025. At this point, in my mind, the biggest known unknown is if Trump will still be politically viable enough to fuck everything up so we start killing each other for political reasons.
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