Month: September 2022

Why I’m Right

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The only way I’m wrong and we don’t either have a civil war, turn into an autocracy or have some sort of military junta is something I just can’t predict. Something really big that would either unite the country long enough to punt our problems down the road or might somehow allow a Democrat to overcome the corruption around the administration of elections so they can get into power peacefully.

Otherwise, we’re fucked.

And, at the moment, it definitely seems as though of the three options, autocracy is it. What I mean by “autocracy” in this context is such a significant change in our government in that wealthy liberals begin to flee the country in the millions — they vote with their feet. People stop voting. The Constitution gets changed — or DeSantis simply becomes Speaker of the House after his eight years as POTUS are done.

That definitely seems to be our fate at this point. And, as I keep saying, the wildcard is Trump. He is so bonkers and says “the quiet part out loud” that he unto himself, could start a civil war.

But I will be really, really shocked if that happens. We’re more likely to have a military junta than a civil war at this point. But, who knows. Anything is possible.

The Real Reason Why National Service Would Never Work Now

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’ve long believe that National Service would fix most, if not all, of America’s modern problems. If every 18 year old no matter what gender was forced to interact with people outside of their comfort zone, then that would do wonders for keeping the country together.

But the more I think about it, the more I realize that window of opportunity has past. If National Service had been enacted in, say, 1993, then, yes, by now, we would be in a lot better shape. We would all be on the same page culturally and we would all agree on what it meant to be “American.”

Yet, now, it’s too late.

The real reason for National Service is, of course, sort of light touch indoctrination. And that’s why trying it now wouldn’t work. What Blues would want to be the indoctrination would be totally different than want the Reds would want. And, ultimately, because Reds are ascendant, they would game the system such that they would cram all those young minds with visions of an autocratic Christian ethnostate.

So, it’s over. I don’t have any solutions for you. We either turn into an autocracy or we have a civil war– or maybe have a military junta. But, Something Big and Bad is going to happen between now and spring 2025.

It’s only a matter of what it is.

The Struggle Continues With This First Novel

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I really need to shut up about working on this novel. I’ve simply talked so much about this project and it’s taken so long that I don’t even know why I keep mentioning it at all.

I should just do it in private and not tell anyone where things stand until I’m finished. But I am 100% extroverted and sometimes I just can’t help myself. I need to let off some steam by just giving a general sense of where things are with the massive project.

At the moment, things are going ok, I guess. My biggest problem is how slow everything is going. And I continue to worry about not just my own fate — I’m not getting any younger — but the fate of the country. My fear is just as I’m wrapping up my first novel, the country will collapse into civil war, starting WW3.

But hopefully (?) we’ll just turn into an autocracy instead and I will at least be able to publish my novel in Canada or something.

‘When All Else Fails, Start WW3’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

You see a lot of dumb hot takes on the Left about how people have been complaining about “effeminate” men and “masculine” women since dirt. And all of that is very true. And, yet, a part of me thinks that most of the social problems facing America would be solved by, I don’t know, bringing back the Draft.

Or, more specifically — unisex National Service.

This will never happen, of course, because the fucking GQP MAGA Republicans know that National Service would probably close the tap on ignorant, crazed young white men wanting to join their deranged movement. So if something like National Service ever happens, it’s going to be the Draft and it’s going to be because of either a civil war or WW3 or a combination of the two.

The reason why a Draft would fix a lot of America’s problems is one, it would force people from all over the country to have to deal with each other in the real world. It would give even the poorest white boy in West Virginia something akin to the college experience where they might have to bunk near a dude from New York City.

But also, it would force young people to face an existential choice in their late teens and early 20s. They would no longer have the luxury of worrying about their fucking pronouns, or safe spaces, or micro aggressions or whatever fucking dumb thing the “woke cancel culture mob” has come up with of late. The very real prospect of being cannon fodder would focus their minds on concrete things like getting married, having babies and just surviving long enough to get stuff like that.

Excuse me, I’m feeling old and crabby.

It just seems to me that a lot of the things that are so important to the “woke cancel culture mob,” the things that the Right harps on and what is so corrosive to the country as a whole will no longer be important when we either become an autocracy or we have a civil war. When you’re struggling to survive on a day to day basis that does tend to focus the mind.

I thought maybe the pandemic would do the trick, but it wasn’t bad enough, it wasn’t apocalyptic enough. It was too easy for the two sides to spin the reality of the pandemic for their own crass, shorterm political needs. But if WW3 or a civil war happened, well, that would be a different matter altogether. I don’t want a civil war or WW3 to happen — obviously — but it sure would force fucking Leftists to pull their heads out of their smug asses.

The Rise Of White Identity Politics & The Destruction of America

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I know a lot of people poo-poo the following idea, but it’s difficult for me to dispute that the white “birth dearth” is at the heart of pretty much everything that’s fucked up with America right now. Everything from the rise of popular autocracy, to white nationalism, to the freak out about the border, to the end of abortion rights all boils down to: white women aren’t having enough babies to keep racist happy.

And that’s why it’s so difficult for people like Ezra Klein to give us any actionable solutions in an otherwise great book, “Why We’re Polarized.” He probably didn’t want to bring the issue of race into what is causing everything, even though he does mention that as long as whites were in the clear majority that even racist whites felt comfortable giving more rights to minorities. And, really, I suppose there isn’t any solution. We’re fucked.

No amount of ending abortion rights is going to make enough of those sweet, sweet white babies that White Nationalists crave. Wealthy liberal white women are going to just go to Canada to have abortions if need be. And no amount of making it impossible for young people to college is going to make enough ignorant people that MAGA is happy. America is now two nations, one Red, one Blue and either we turn into a white Christian ethnostate with everything that entails, or we have a civil war and pretty much bomb ourselves into oblivion.

There just isn’t any simple answer to the decline and coming fall of the Pax America. We’re on our own. And either you see it or you don’t. I still believe that MAGA Republicans will probably be the direct cause of more deaths than the Nazis no matter what happens. Either they turn us into an autocracy, pull us out of the post-WW2 liberal order and empty the cities like fucking Pol Pot, or we have a civil war using WMD and, well, that will be that.

We’ve passed the event horizon. America as we know it is over, all we’re doing now is quibbling over the details of exactly how everything is going down.

America is Spinning Out of Control

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

America is increasingly two nations, one Red, one Blue. The two sides simply can not, will not agree on anything. We can’t agree on what’s funny. We can’t agree on the meaning of some basic, huge events…even when there is video footage of what happened!

I continue to do a lot of reading about why and how all of this is happening, but I just am not finding the answers I need. Some of the authors punt on giving any answers because there just aren’t any. It’s like we’ve collectively, as a nation, given up. Either we become all fascist (Red) or we have a civil war in split into two nations. Or, maybe, have some sort of military junta.

But what won’t happen, can’t happen is some sort of gauzy slouch into the future where we don’t address any of our problems. Everything is coming to a head between now and something around spring 2025. And, what’s worse, it’s not like any of this is happening in secret.

MAGA Republicans make it very clear what they’re up to and what their agenda is. The only question at this point is what the ultimate reaction of Blues will be when the choice of “bending a knee” to autocracy or having a civil war arrives. I just don’t know which one will be the engame.

Daydreaming About My Webstats

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I study my Webstats, way, way, way too much. There is just something addictive about seeing that someone, anyone is actually interested in what I have to say given that I generally am living in oblivion. It’s fun to speculate on why someone in, say, Brooklyn, would have this page bookmarked.

Then there are the people who are downright obsessive about this site who I just don’t understand. Are they, like, someone who loves / hates me from my time in South Korea? Or are they, like, some sort of serial killer who really is looking forward to hunting me down and eating me one day? Yikes!

Anyway, it’s all a mystery. I have no idea who anyone is that visits this site. All I know is, in general, where they’re coming from and sometimes the ISP they use. But even that isn’t even the case as much as it used to be. And I have a feeling that a lot of people access this site in a way that the Webstat software I use sees their connection as coming from a bot and is, as such, ignored.

Thanks For The Memories, Old Gawker, or ‘Don’t Meet (or Get Blocked By) Your Heroes’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I know why the first days of Gawker meant so much to me — I was going to a pretty dark phase of my generally dissipated life and reading the old Gawker back in the day really helped me out. It was like eaves dropping on a really cool conversation between two New Yorkers who otherwise would never give someone like me the time of day.

But that was the first few years of the “Old Gawker,” not the Undead Gawker that we have now. And, honestly, something really, really weird happened to Old Gawker in its final days. For people who were paying close attention to the site, it jumped the shark a few times to the point that there was not much point in reading it anymore. One a number of occasions, it posted spiteful, hateful and sometimes nearly obscene posts that seemed designed to drive people like me away from it.

By the time it was driven out of business by a Peter Thiel-funded attorney, it didn’t feel like that much was lost.

At some point between when the Old Gawker collapsed and the present day I discovered that one of my publishing heroes — Nick Denton, the founded of Gawker — blocked me on Twitter. I suppose, all things considered, that relative to his world view I probably deserved that. It still hurts, though.

Anyway, I’ve finally reached the age where I have to accept that it’s time to move on. Much of what made the Old Gawker so interesting is now found all over the Internet, specifically Twitter and a few corners of Tik-Tok. Barring something truly amazing, I’m never going to start my own Gawker-like publication.

This is it. Whatever happens, will probably happen in some way because I sell a novel in a traditional manner and even if that happens, I’ll be too old to really enjoy it the way I always wanted to.

Am I Just Too Bonkers to Sell A Novel, No Matter How Good It Ultimately May be?

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

There’s a great scene in Ocean’s 11 where someone goes through a list of crucial parts of making the heist a success to Matt Damon’s character and when he gets to the last thing, he doesn’t tell Damon what it is.

Time is running out.

I feel that way as I work my way towards being in a position to attempt to sell my first novel. I read all these different how-to books that give you all this advice that you absolutely have to follow to sell your novel. But, I think, really, a lot mean to just remind you that it’s really difficult to get a novel published the traditional route and for people to adjust their expectations accordingly. The people who give all their advice about how to write a novel mean well, but the net effect is to try to discourage as many people as possible from writing a novel in the first place.

Anyway, as I continue my march towards querying, I again and again find myself uneasy about what is going to happen when literary agents do “due diligence” on me. Repeatedly, literary types — who I’m willing to pay! — have dismissed me as a crank and aren’t even willing to work with me at all.

It makes me wonder if there some sort of unspoken culture clash that I just won’t be able to overcome. Do I, by definition, come across as too bonkers for your average literary type?

This is extremely aggravating for a number of reasons, chief among them being creative people tend to be “problematic,” weird” and “different.” It also doesn’t help that I’m a CIS white middle age man who writes from the POV throughout the novel of someone who is not that, but rather an Amerasian woman. (Among other different types of people.)

But, in the end, being delusional got me this far and being delusional is going to get me as far as I can possibly get before I learn one way or another if what I fear is true or not.

Of Novels & Beginnings

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m really growing to like both the tactical beginning of the first novel I’m working on and the strategic beginning of this planned six novel project. The tactical beginning is strong because it opens with a huge question — why is this person in this situation?

What I imagine the protagonist of the first three novels in this six novel project looks like as I write.

It’s take me a very long time to stumble across this specific beginning and it could definitely still change. But, for the time being, I’m pleased with what I’ve managed to come up with. It is kind of embarrassing how many months I wasted with various other versions of this novel. And I like to think, at least, that if I had a wife or girlfriend maybe the process would have been sped up considerably.

Meanwhile, the strategic beginning is cool because there’s a lot — A LOT — of room for growing and development. I easily have six total novels I can map out if I try to sell this first novel, set 25 years ago. Everything is pretty sorted out in my mind, I just have to knock out the remaining five novels in the series (and beyond.)

Of course, a lot could go wrong. And they say if you’re querying your first novel, you need to be working on something else while you’re doing it. I’m not getting any younger and I really need to put up or shut up one way or another.

But, in general, the whole experience continues to a lot of fun — if a lot of hard work.