Oh boy. Talk about shots fired. While I’ve made my thoughts clear that I’m Team Oulaney, I’m not a heartless monster — Anna Marie Tendler’s Instagram account is tearing me up.
I don’t know what to make of it all. A divorce is always heartbreaking and messy and this one is no different. It’s one of those things where you could pick either side and have a very valid argument, which is what makes the whole thing so rough.
But I have to give Ms. Tendler credit — she’s an amazing artist. The above photo explains all we need to know about her break up from her point of view. It’s just devastating.
So, I totally validate her grief on this issue. And I hope nothing I’ve written seems to indicate I think her ex and his new baby mamma are in the clear, they’re not. I’m more annoyed with people being way too invested in this whole messy, messy situation than the specifics of what happened.
There’s enough hurt to go around, if you will.
Anyway. In the end, I think most of the “parasocial” investment that you see on Tik-Tok comes from younger women in Brooklyn who saw John Mulaney as aspirational — he was the type of guy they wanted. When it turned out he did not fit the romantic narrative they had in their heads…they were heart broken.
And I’m not picking on them for that, either. Just describing what I think may have happened. In fact, the level of misogyny I’ve seen thrown at Olivia Munn for this particular situation is really aggravating.
I have not seen any indication that she actively broke up Mulaney’s marriage. They were already on the rocks — apparently — and Munn just took advantage of what was going on.
Something’s gotta give. The country is in a crisis. This crisis may fade in the coming days, or it may come to a head. The crisis was brought upon by Biden’s new COVID19 policies. The fit perfectly into the MAGA New Right’s narrative that “liberals won’t leave us alone” and, as such, they’re being forced to radicalize and to glorify potential political violence.
This leads us to, “So, what are they going to do about it?”
I don’t want to be right on this, but it’s easy to imagine if there was some sort of severe, organized political violence on the part of the MAGA New Right, the motive for it would be this — incite a civil war.
Whatever happened, they would hope that by blowing shit up in a coordinated way around the country –or, knocking important political figures off — that doing so would be enough to start some sort of MAGA New Right revolution. This is, of course, very similar to the motives of the Tate–LaBianca murders. Manson told his followers that the murders –that they wanted to pin a group of mysterious African Americans, as I understand it — would so outrage the white populace that a race war would be a direct result.
Or something like that.
Anyway, from what I can tell on Twitter, all the conditions are there for there to be some sort of shocking domestic terrorist attack in the near term. I could even see a false flag operation take place, whereby MAGA New Right cocksuckers try to pin whatever they do on Antifa in hopes that THAT will so shock the MAGA New Right that they get their civil war or revolution that way.
But we’re dealing with idiots, so I don’t know if they have it within them to be so diabolical.
This is the point where I say I’m always wrong and I’m being hysterical and don’t listen to me. Trump isn’t going to run again, there’s no risk of civil war and we have more to worry about from woke companies than any of the so-called would-be autocrats that I keep ranting about.
I’m still smarting from the “Mueller, She Wrote” Twitter account blocking me after accusing me of peddling “doom shit.” It bothers me because I struggle to see how, at this point, how that is the case.
In fact, my counter-argument is, a Twitter account inspired by the foolish early-Trump Era belief that a life-long conservatives Republican was some sort of liberal savior of the Republic needs to do some introspection. Much of the Trump Era was a bunch of high profile Twitter liberals sitting around hoping for, or telling us about a “boom” that was going to wrap this MAGA problem up and we were all in the Final Days of a nightmare.
Me, mid-2025
Guess what!
All of that was naïve bullshit.
Mueller, in the end, did such a bad job by wrapping things up rather abruptly and taking too narrow a view of his mandate, that Trump turned around the day after his testimony to Congress and did something that go him impeached.
So, sadly, we have to put aside any foolish thoughts that a “boom” out of the blue is going to save jack squat, much less us.
We’re going to have to save ourselves. And, what’s worse, not only are radicalized Republicans attacking the basic machinery of elections on a tactical basis, they continue a macro, decades-long push to destroy our liberal democracy via gerrymandering and voter suppression. And, what’s even worse, autocracy is popular!
Republicans on a systemic level, are autocratic, anti-democratic fascists who have so glorified political violence that someone may take them up on all their bullshit and a lot of people will get hurt in a rather dramatic, 9/11-level type situation.
While the most obvious scenario is a lone-wolf blowing something important up like what happened in Oklahoma City, given how radicalized the Republican Party has become, it’s just as possible that whatever happens could be coordinated and happen at more than one location.
And I can tell you would would cause it: Republican rage at what they perceive as Biden’s COVID19 vaccine mandates. Just that added bit of pressure on our political system may be enough to cause something violent and dramatic to happen a lot sooner than one might think.
You would be amazed how many well meaning liberals I’ve spoken to who apparently still believe we’re going to be surprised by some combination of “booms,” rainbows, pixie dust and unicorn farts.
But instead of pinning all our hopes on something that is obviously not going to happen, we need to prepare for the worst. And that worst will be the existential choice of autocracy or civil war. I still don’t know which one we’re going to pick. But no one is going to save us.
The modern day Slave Power of the MAGA New Right is ascendant and if we turn into an autocracy the only question will be how bad it will get and how quickly. If it’s a civil war, well, we’re probably going to bomb ourselves into oblivion.
Just, please ,don’t rest your hopes on “booms.” We just don’t have the political will to do anything about Trump. And, even if we suddenly did, there are a dozen other would-be autocrats waiting to dive to finish the job he started. Things are bleak, really bleak and we’re being lulled into a false sense of security right now because we’re an autocracy without an autocrat.
No booms this time.
Now, there are conservatives who would tell me that I’m being “hysterical” and simply say, “no, it’s not.” But your normal and I’m not. You have a family that loves you and I could walk off the face of the planet and almost no one would care. We’ll see who’s right in the end. What do I get if it turns out I’m not being “hysterical” after all? A prize?
Or a bullet in the back of the head from an ICE agent?
There have been a few times in recent years when I felt a vague unease about what what was going on in the country. The most recent instance of this was Trump’s post-election shenanigans in late 2020 and early 2021. It just did not seem possible that things could keep going the way they were — in other words, something would have to happen.
I feel the same way now.
The reason why I feel this way is Biden has put unexpected additional pressure on our political system with his new COVID19 policies. And I have long said that the country is a lot less stable we realize. And if there was any additional pressure put on the system, it might come crashing down.
And, yet, what exactly might happen?
While I struggle to pinpoint any specific thing, in general terms, I’m worried about some sort of co-ordinated domestic terrorist event on a scale of 9/11. Something that would happen out of the blue that would shock us to the level that 9/11 did.
But, if history has proven one thing, there’s a reason why to date most of our major domestic terror attacks have been of the “Lone Wolf” variety (with the notable exception of January 6th) — usually it’s extremely difficult for a group of domestic terrorists to organize. They usually get infiltrated by FBI agents and the whole the is a bust (thankfully.)
And yet, Biden’s actions have ratcheted up the swirling turbulence in our political system to the extent that something could happen suddenly, abruptly, and violently on an unprecedented scale.
I just don’t know in what form it would take. I can think of some pretty dark scenarios — usually involving MAGA New Right people trying to incite a civil war by attempting to a coup-like-event — but I just can’t think of any particular one that is the most likely to happen.
And, yet, maybe I have it all wrong. Maybe we still have until either January 2023 or January 2025 to have to think about such things.
When it comes to often absurd discourse on the John Mulaney and Olivia Munn relationship, I’m firmly on team Oulaney. The core of the very dumb hot takes on this particular messy situation is apparently twofold, if what I’m seeing on Tik-Tok is accurate.
Leave Oulaney Alone!
One is, a lot of women who bought into Mulvaney’s Tiger Beat persona feel betrayed and use the proxy of his wife to express their outrage. They were invested in Mulvaney as a “good boy” that they felt they could bring home to mom. He didn’t want kids, sure, but he and his wife had their dog Petunia and that was good enough for them.
Meanwhile, the other thing that makes the parasocial people on Tik-Tok angry is, well, Oliva Munn. They don’t like that she wrote a book that was, well, the type of book you could imagine Olivia Munn writing. I remember her from The Man Show and she wasn’t, exactly, uhhhh….woke? The thing that made her a star, in fact, you could say started her whole career, was the episode of The Man Show where she struggled to eat a hotdog tied to a string above her head. (I think that’s what was going on.)
She’s kind of the type of woman that is “just one of the guys” but also is probably banging the best looking Alpha Male in that group.
And here is the point where I kind of hit a brick wall in my response to all of this. Because of how touchy woke people on Tik-Tok are, it’s so problomatic to comment on the surreal discourse about Team Oulaney that I honestly don’t know what to say.
I definitely validate the woke discourse. But I also think if those two crazy kids are happy, who are we to judge? Munn’s thing is being hypersexual and outrageous in a heteronormative fashion. That’s her thing. And that “thing” apparently does a number on the minds of some Tik-Tok users who think Munn is some sort of evil homewrecker who “stole” their Tiger Beat idol from his wife.
I find that argument dubious. Yes, she was probably more aggressive towards Mulaney than maybe they would like, but he was going through some things with his wife and she really, really dug him. That, as far as I’m concerned, is enough.
But I definitely think we can learn a lot about the excess of “woke” culture by mulling the arguments of people angry at Oulaney on Tik-Tok. It’s all very interesting….and a tad surreal.
Something that we have all taken for granted, living in a liberal democracy, has been if you do something bad on the national stage there are consequences. You resign in disgrace. You don’t run again. You maybe even go to jail.
Pray.
As Congress begins to look into the January 6th Insurrection, however, there is a dark, looming outcome that we have not thought about: nothing.
What if we learn the truth, it’s bad and it’s all a lulz? The indications that this will be the case, at least on a political level, are already there. Republicans have done a 1984-style job on what happened on January 6th to the point that the base is now willfully accepting their lies. So it seems very possible that even if, after much gnashing of teeth on the part of Republicans, we learn that there was direct co-ordination between the Trump White House, Congressional Republicans and the Insurrectionists, absolutely nothing will happen.
People like me will get upset. It will be a huge scandal for 60% of the population, but for that crucial 40% of the country that seems to control everything….it’s a lulz. They just won’t care. The power of negative polarization will be so extreme that the absolute best we can hope for is maybe Democrats continue to cling to power in Congress.
But even that might be a stretch because of the power of gerrymandering and voter suppression. This seems so likely that we have to prepare ourselves for it. Instead of worrying about how Republicans will, on a political basis, get away with such astonishing political crime, we maybe need to start thinking about how we’re going to handle the obvious implications of all of this: we’re going to have a severe, historic political crisis no later than January 2025.
Something so big that everyone will be forced to pick a side, any side, even if they don’t want to. And, what’s more, because of the nature of such a crisis, there will be moments when you may find yourself tested as to the choice you picked. Your life may even be threatened and you’re going to have to decide if your life — and the lives of the people you love –are worth the choice you made, the side you picked.
I’m well aware that this sounds like my usual “hysterical doom shit.” And, honestly, if you’re a normal person with a career and limited abstract thought abilities, I can totally understand why you might think that
I don’t think many people appricate how rarely anything of note happens in my life. I spend most of my time struggling with developing and writing four novels and, for the most part, I live in oblivion.
So, it doesn’t take much to rattle my cage or to make my day, for that matter. Something as small as someone from Brooklyn doing some sort of due diligence on me by spending an hour on this site is enough to make me sit up and take notice. I mean, what the what?
Anyway, today, there was, minding my own business when this happened:
Bottom line:
1. Delta is more contagious than earlier versions of the virus, causing a surge in cases. 2. Delta is not necessarily more severe. The bulk of the evidence suggests it's similar – maybe a little more severe, maybe a little less. https://t.co/kD3N1FKMcY
The New York Times retweeted my retweet of their tweet.
My first reaction is, lulz, it was all very random. They just picked me out of what they saw on their TweetDeck and that’s it. And, in fact, that’s the most logical explanation. Not a big deal. Nothing to think about beyond that.
Then, because I have a VERY active imagination, I start to game out other scenarios.
Hopeful Someone who works at the paper has followed me using a burner account and they were giving me a hat tip.
Paranoid They’re going to use my rantings on this site for some sort of take down of me and I’m going to get “canceled.”
But I think I’m way overthinking this. I think it’s all a lulz. While I like to think I’m exceptionally interesting and colorful, the truth in this situation is probably pretty prosaic: they just wanted to re-up the tweet and used my retweet to do it.
Many moons ago, I was famous. I was famous in Seoul because I was DJing at well known expat bar and I was publishing ROKon Magazine. Now, in the context of the actual, real world, I was barely a big fish in a puddle. But I did learn a lot about the dynamics of fame.
And so, this brings us to this picture.
Why, hello, ladies.
This is a picture of well-known lesbian lothario Cara Delevingne in a two-person cardigan with Kaia Gerber. Given to them by Taylor Swift, of all people. Now, it is very, very possible that they were and are just friends. I’m totally willing to believe that. Just two friends goofing around with a promotional two-person cardigan gifted them by a good famous friend.
And, then, I find myself having some nagging questions about this situation. People who poo-poo any romantic connection between the two women will point out that, as I understand it, Gerber had a boyfriend at the time the picture was taken so, lulz, I’m being a weirdo for suggesting anything untoward. Then I think about what I know from my time in Seoul and it grows very difficult for me not to at least think THIS is what happened: yes, Gerber had a boyfriend, but the whole situation was far more Rich People Open Relationship than us Poors might understand.
As such, Poors like me don’t understand that what I think was happening with this picture is exactly what was going on with this picture, but it’s not as cut and dried as my Poor morality might be able to comprehend. The case could be made that, yes, Gerber was somewhat romantically involved with Delevingne at the time the picture was taken, but she DID have a boyfriend.
Whatever was going on between two women was so far removed from “Instagram official” that they weren’t dating at all and, by the way, Gerber had a boyfriend so why are you even thinking that you Poor freak?
Or put another way, when you’re famous, you have fan base and an image to maintain. If whatever you’re up to in your personal life doesn’t fit the narrative you have for your fan base, it doesn’t exist. It helps if you’re wealthy, have a powerful supermodel mom and the celebrity press is your willing accomplice.
What’s more, even if they WERE dating, at such rarified strata of society as these two women inhabit, whatever they may have been up to is so mundane to their peers that it doesn’t even deserve to be acknowledged. Within the circles of the rich and beautiful, there’s so much bed hopping — same sex and otherwise — that it really takes something unusual for what Poors think is scandalous behavior to become public.
And even then, it’s often something akin to a celebrity false flag operation.
So, yes, relative to my life as a rando Internet crank, there’s nothing to see in the above picture other than two good famous same sex friends sharing a promotional cardigan from another famous friend.
Reality may have been a bit more complicated and murky.
I’m not perfect. I freely admit that I can come across as a kook if you don’t know me personally. And I have something of an obsessive personality. But as the late, great Annie Shapiro said about me at the height of the emotional war we were engaged in at one point, the worst you can say about me is I’m a “delusional jerk with a good heart.”
Annie Shapiro and I in the good old days.
So, while my long-term plans at the moment are to write four novels and see if I can become a professional fashion photographer, the latter idea is more about giving myself some hope than anything else. There are many, many obstacles to me getting anywhere near having any success as a professional fashion photographer and, really, at this point, me talking about it tantamount to using The Secret to make it happen.
I’m growing paranoid that, I don’t know, Alexa Chung knows who I am and thinks I’m some sort of deranged stalker? I can’t express how bad even the abstract fear of that being possible makes me feel. I’m a lot of things, but a menace isn’t one of them. I’m a kook, crank even, but usually anything I do that is off putting to people comes from me not having much of a mental filter and also having no idea what the “right” thing to do is most of the time.
But I don’t know. Hopefully, I’m giving myself too much credit. I’m a big ol nobody and have been since I left South Korea. Yet, I do have an organic ability to take a good photo. I just want people to give me an opportunity based on my ability, not some misunderstanding about me otherwise.
And, yet, life is not fair. You have to work with the cards you’re dealt, especially when you’re middle aged and no young anymore.
So, again, as I said, at the moment, me talking about being a fashion photographer is nothing more than me giving myself something to think about other than writing four novels.
I don’t even have a camera yet.
But once I do have the camera I want, I’m going to start going out of my way to find things to take pictures of. I am the first to admit, however, that I’m probably 20 years too old and, really, I should just shut up and lie in bed all day so no one knows I exist.
That’s just not my speed. I’d rather go down in a blaze of glory (hence, the four novels) than play it safe. Every moment of life is precious and it’s up to each of us to do the best with what we have.
I have been called, at different times, “hysterical” about the prospect of a Second American War and someone who peddles “doom shit” about our future. At the moment, everything is very abstract when it comes to such things. But let’s go through my current reasoning as to why, at the moment, I just don’t know if we’re going to have a civil war or simply slip peacefully into autocracy.
Now what.
The first metric is that I’m simply listening to the other side and taking them seriously. They’re telling people like me on Twitter: you’re forcing me to radicalize and one day I’m going to strike back with violence. They say it all the time like an abusive husband tells a wife, “I wouldn’t hit you if you didn’t make me.” It’s my fault that they’re snowflakes who get think of violence when they don’t get their way. Uh huh.
So, we have a very public glorification of political violence happening in broad daylight. I suppose the retort to this on the part of people who think I’m full of shit is it’s all talk. They don’t really mean it. It’s like all the autocratic talk that Trump did for four years — just ignore it. And, this reasoning goes, by not ignoring it, I’m simply a fool.
My response is, I think some of this is the people who think I’m “hysterical” are “normal” and have no vision. They barely function in the abstract world and they only react when a crisis has grown so dire that they absolutely have to do something about it. Then it’s too late.
Or, put another way, there are all these abstract macro trends tearing the country apart in subtle ways that all seem to be coming to a head either in January 2023 or January 2025. Either you see it, or you don’t. Either you’re alarmed at the prospect of organized political violence in the United States, or you’re not.
A far less abstract element of our potential doom is Donald Trump. I’ve long believed that what’s most likely to happen is the United States is going to slip peacefully into autocracy. In fact, at some point in early 2025, one of the big debates in the United States could be, “Does this mean we’re an autocracy now?”
Conservatives will ridicule people like me for being hysterical, even as President DeSantis begins to methodically purge the media, weaponize ICE generally consolidate power. It won’t be until it’s personal or our new autocrat somehow bungles the transition that instead of talking about autocracy, we’re talking about civil war.
Which gets us back to Donald Trump — Donald Trump is an incompetent idiot. I’ve been told, when I bring up the idea that Trump will run again that, “No he won’t.” And we all know that because of negative polarization and an extensive permission structure that the very conservatives who think “no he won’t” will vote for Trump AGAIN despite the Jan. 6th insurrection because they simply can not, will not, form a united front with liberals for the specific purpose of stopping Trump from becoming POTUS again. (Or at least the nominee.)
Given how abjectly stupid and incompetent Trump is, it’s very easy to see Trump single handedly doing something so stupid between late 2024 and early 2025 that drives us collectively into the arms of organized political violence. I don’t know what it would be, but Trump is so stupid and, yet, so attune to the MAGA volk that it’s easy to imagine a situation where he leans into political violence in an effort to nullify any Biden win, he misjudges the situation when it comes to everyone else — like he always does — and boom, we have a fucking civil war.
Part of why norms think I’m “hysterical” about all of this is they simply don’t think in the terms that I do. They can’t make the cognitive leap of looking at abstract macro trends and saying, “Oh boy. Something’s gotta give.”
But it has not happened yet. It’s possible that either we slip peacefully into autocracy that not everyone even acknowledges has happened or, I dunno, we kind of continue in an anti-democratic trend until we don’t even realize we had something that is now gone.
Yet, again — keep an eye on what Trump does.
If he runs, the chance of us having a civil war grows significantly.
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