Jesus Christ, are these times that try men’s souls. Instead of doing the obvious thing and fucking indiciting ding-dong Trump, Attorney General Merrick Garland named the apparently VERY well qualified Jack Smith to be a Special Counsel.
Not funny!
I fear poor old Jack Smith has no fucking idea how much he is going to be in the middle of a huge maelstrom as each side engages in a pitch battle to frame every twitch that happens to come out of his office over the course of what will probably be a few years.
“That guy doesn’t know jack shit,” is probably going to be a running gag on the fucking boring, unfunny Gutfeld! TV show that somehow, strangely enough gets really good numbers from all those Boomers wanting to “own the libs” by watching something extremely bad and unfunny.
Anyway, the whole point of naming Jack Smith is to slow walk any action against Trump. By the time Smith finally gets around to doing anything, we’re either going to have a civil war, be a military junta or have transitioned into a MAGA-themed autocracy.
In other words, lulz.
And even if Trump does, somehow, face some accountability, such an event will turn him into a MAGA martyr and, well, there you go. That particular political dystopian hellscape writes itself.
Americans like their modern presidents tall. And so I wanted to know how tall Ron DeSantis is — and I couldn’t find a straight answer. I finally found an answer, of sorts, on Twitter. But, even then, the answer was up in the air, with some people saying he’s 6’1″ and others saying he’s 5’9″.
How tall is would-be American Putin, Ron DeSantis? It’s a mystery!
Hmmm.
If he’s 5’9″, there’s no chance he’s going to become president unless he somehow manages to break the tradition — or he’s running against a woman who might be shorter. (The question of if modern TV audiences mind that a woman is probably going to be shorter than any male political opponent is still up in the air.)
But, I just don’t know. DeSantis is a very, very strong candidate because he hides his innate fascism behind a smoother image. Even if that image is boring as hell. He’s such a compelling “moderate” fascist candidate that I have one Traditionalist relative who is eager to vote for him “three times” given the chance.
Update — mystery solved?
Ugh.
Remember, by definition, to be a modern Republican in good standing is to be a fascist, moderate or otherwise. So, really, the only difference between Trump and DeSantis is if DeSantis becomes president, there’s a lot less chance that we’re going to have a civil war. DeSantis is so fucking smooth that he’ll strangle what’s left of American democracy in broad daylight with a shit eating grin on his face and no one will do anything about it.
Meanwhile, Trump is such an idiot that he could, unto himself, cause a civil war simply because he would gloat so much after winning, or stealing, the 2024 election. Blue States may leave the Union in late 2024, early 2025 out of spite towards Trump if he wins, if nothing else.
But we just can’t count DeSantis out yet. He may look like the old SNL sketch Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer, but he’s primed and ready to be America’s first autocrat — but for ding-dong Trump standing in his way.
With the crazy, fucked up things going on with Twitter at the moment, I find myself still daydreaming about my startup idea that cherrypicks some of the UX elements of the long-dead Usenet.
The key issue is, of course, the idea of Groups. I am well aware of the strengths and weaknesses of both Google+ and Reddit. But I have really thought through how to use this service. Here’s the basic elements of the service as I imagine it
Groups Anyone would be able to create a Group about anything you liked. It would be attached to your account ID, which would allow for redundancy, which would allow for scalability. This is a very flexible nature of the service — at least in this specific aspect. You would have to have a robust discovery feature for that to work, of course. Threads These would be presented much like a traditional blog inside of a Group. This would allow for huge page-sized advertisement. There would also be a subthread feature which would be pretty cool. Posts What would be interesting about this would be you would have inline, collaborative editing like you might find with a Google Doc. You would have, say, six people able to inline edit a Post before a new Post in the Thread is spawned because you would run out of colors.
Of course, there is the problem — but very necessary — issue of controlling who can Post. Having a lot of the service Read Only for most people is the only way that any sort of service based on Groups can scale and be successful.
The fact that absolutely no one cares about this very well thought out concept despite the chaos surrounding Twitter at the moment is enough for me to realize that maybe….it’s time for me to give up and put all my attention on the six novel project that I’m working on.
And, yet, occasionally I get drunk and need to vent about something OTHER than all these novels I’m working on. All this talk about Twitter ending once and for all makes me think — then what? And if Elon Musk pulled the plug on Twitter, which I don’t think he will, then there’s a greater-than-zero sum chance that someone might take me up on all my rantings about a startup based on Usenet’s best bits.
So, the word count sweet spot for a first novel by an unknown author is around 80,000 to 100,000 words. I’m now at the end of the second act and I’m around 100,000 words. And I have roughly 20,000 words more to write.
Write write write
That’s not bad for a first draft.
If I ended up with a first draft at about 120,000 words, then the second draft can be just around 100,000 words. There is a lot I don’t know, however. I don’t know how strict that 100,000 word sweet spot. What if I write something really, really good that is close to 120,000 words?
I fear, of course, that given that I’m an unknown, untested writer that the closer to 100,000 words I can get with the second and third drafts, the better. This is an example of how I’m slowly beginning to leave the completely delusional phase of this process. Issues like marketability is beginning to come to the forefront of my mind.
One thing I have to do is read. I need to read a lot more simply to force myself to get outside my comfort zone. I have to know what I’m up against when I get to the gatekeepers that are literary agents.
Then, of course, there is the issue of, well, ME. I’m really beginning to worry a great deal about when a literary agent inevitable does due diligence on me, they’re going to think I’m totally bonkers and they won’t want to have anything to do with me — no matter how good the actual novel is.
Anyway, I’m ready to rock in roll. I hope that no later that Christmas I will have the first novel’s first draft wrapped up will allow me to turn around in January and start to write the second draft.
Anyone who doesn’t think House Republicans are going to wallow in some pretty stupid shit for the next two years is a fool. They don’t care that they’re going to massively self-own by overreaching. That’s not the point. The point is to suck their own cocks in an effort to stroke the MAGA base.
The MAGA base lives in its own la la land to the point that some pretty stupid shit is going to be investigated to such an extent that Republicans are going to do serious political damage to themselves — and the country as a whole. But the United States isn’t a democracy anymore, but rather an “anocracy” so, this is it — the final countdown.
It’s at least possible that Trump will win the 2024 nomination and in 2024 the administration of elections will be corrupted by MAGA cocksuckers AND there could be real political violence.
So, lulz, it doesn’t matter, in real terms, what House Republicans do. They are going to impeach a lot — A LOT — of people in the Biden Administration and they’re just going to wallow in Hunter Biden to the point that it will be lodged in the average voter’s mind like BENGHAZI! (Which is the point.)
If you want a masterclass in dealing with powerful media types, just listen to the amazing “On” podcast interview between Kara Swisher and CNN’s Chris Licht.
It was very illuminative and combative. Licht reminds me of the extremely powerful executives of Media General and The Richmond Times-Dispatch that I once, long ago, hung out with when I was desperate to get a job at the TD.
Anyway, I was very impressed. It was interesting to see how a VERY POWERFUL dude struggled to weasel his way out of answering tough questions. I came away with a serious case of unease, however. Nothing Licht said made me feel any better about the fate of CNN on either editoral or business sides.
I think CNN is going to veer Right to the point that when it’s inevitable sold, it might get sold to some Right Wing plutocrat who will turn it into a Fox News clone. (This would likely happen in the context of the United States turning into a MAGA themed fascist autocracy.) The logical person to buy CNN, if a Right Wing plutocrat doesn’t buy it, would be Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. He already owns The Washington Post and the two media properties would make a nice fit.
It will be a testament to the absolute stranglehold that Trump has over the Republican MAGA base that he can be as low energy and boring as he is at the moment and STILL be the 2024 frontrunner for the Republican POTUS nomination.
So, we are going into a situation where Trump is under any normal condition would be a big old dud of a nominee like Jeb! And, yet, Trump could very well be the next president of the United States despite how dull, low energy and boring he is.
And, remember, if Trump is the 2024 Republican nominee, the possibility of a Second American Civil War increases dramatically. Not only could Trump brazenly steal the 2024 election prompting Blue States to think seriously about leaving the Union, it could be that once it’s clear that Trump’s second term agenda is cold hard fascism, the same thing might happen.
It could happen even though Trump is very, very low energy and should be pushed aside by someone like Ron DeSantis who would do the exact same thing only with a bit more pep in his step.
So, pretty much, we’re totally completely fucked. I’m always wrong, however, so it’s possible that something will happen between now and Election Day 2024 that makes all my alarm look very hysterical and foolish.
While I’m always, always wrong, I think I’m safe in saying that it’s now an immutable force of history that House Republicans are going to impeach a number of people in the Biden Administration.
And, what’s more, it seems pretty clear to me that there is a real chance that Biden himself will be impeached as many as three times. The first time will happen just because it can happen, while the other two impeachments will happen because Republicans wait to take away the “Trump is the only president impeached twice” talking point away from Democrats.
Here’s a back-of-the-envelope prediction about all the potential impeachments we should expect in 2023 if Republicans do, in fact, take the House.
President Biden It’s pretty clear to me that a Republican House will be so full of spite and rage and bloodlust for revenge that it’s very possible they may accidently on purpose impeach Biden for no apparent reason in the early days of 2023. It will be so transparent as to what is going on that House Republicans are going to do severe political damage to themselves. But it won’t matter — that political damage would only matter if we were a functioning democracy. But we’re no longer a functioning democracy, we’re in between autocracy and democracy — in other words, an “anocracy.”
There are at least two reasons why Biden will be impeached. One is, of course, his wastrel son Hunter Biden. The other is the “border crisis.” The big issue is will these be two seperate impeachments so Democrats will not longer have Trump being impeached twice as a talking point, or if these two issues will be fused together into one event.
At the moment, I honestly don’t know. There’s always a chance that MAGA Republicans will impeach Biden THREE times, for two reasons. They both scream at the top of their lungs that Biden is the only president to be impeached three times and at the same time they can, expo facto say it’s no big deal that Trump was impeached twice.
Veep Harris I have no idea why House Republicans will impeach Harris, but they’ll think of something. Just the idea that they could somehow impeach and convict Biden and Harris in quick succession is enough to give them all a boner and they have no self control so they’re going to do it at some point between 2023 and 2025.
DHS Secretary Mayorkas As I understand it, there’s already a move afoot by House Republicans to hit the ground running impeaching Mayorkas for his handling of the “border crisis.” So, there’s every reason to believe that he’s going to be impeached at some point between 2023 and 2025.
HHS Secretary Becerra This is a bit more speculative, but I could see that once the impeachment counter-revolution gets going that House Republicans will set their sights on Becerra for something connected to “gender affirming” care of minors. That seems like just the type of culture war edge issue that MAGA House Republicans would want to wallow in for a few months to prove a point. I could also see a potential impeachment article surrounding the Biden Administration’s handling of COVID — even though it was Trump who fucked that particular situation up. Who cares about facts when you have lies?
Education Secretary Cardona This is also rather speculative, but once the monster of impeachment is unleashed, House Republicans may go after Cordona on the nebulous charge of encouraging “critical race theory” in schools — even if this is total bullshit. They just want to be able to hold hearings where they rant about CRT for hours on end. It will juice the base while “owning” the libs.
FBI Director Wray If this happens, it will be a prime example of how wrapped up in their own bullshit MAGA House Republicans will be once they have power. Wray is ON THEIR SIDE and they will still come after him because something something Deep State.
Attorney General Garland This is obvious — MAGA Republicans are so blinded by their anger over the Mar-a-Lago raid that they want to impeach Garland for approving it, despite it being totally justified given what Trump did.
There could be a few Federal judges that spark MAGA ire that will be impeached as well.
I say this because the base continues to love Trump with such an absolute love that they are willing to put the country through THREE impeachments in a very short amount of time for a very, very petty reason. But here we are.
Remember, Republicans crammed through a massive plutocrat taxcut just because they could. And I think at the moment that the only thing that united Republicans is the need to impeach Biden a few times. The base is out for political blood and, as such, no matter how much impeaching Biden a few times will hurt the Republican Party in 2024….it’s going to happen.
It seems as though the United States faces a fork in the road. Either we go down the path of Trump and a potential civil war, or we don’t. We either succumb to the siren call of dingus Trump and destroy ourselves with our eyes wide open, we go down a far more gradual path to fascism in the guise of Ron DeSantis.
Because there is one thing that is for sure — America has a fascism problem that isn’t going away. The only difference between Trump being the person to strangle our democracy and, say, Ron DeSantis is one would be a lot more chaotic than the other.
If you wanted to get all technical about it on a macro historical basis, you could make the argument that Trump being the 2024 Republican nominee is the best of a variety of bad endgames because the likelihood of a “National Divorce” and a Second American Civil War grows as does the possibility that at least a part of America might not live under the yoke of fascism.
But that’s a very risky. And might only result in things getting way, way, worse than they might otherwise. I guess what I’m saying is — when your best case scenario is a horrific civil war…maybe things aren’t going so great for your nation on a macro level?
Anyway. I still don’t know which direction we’ll go. Are we going to gradually turn into a fascist state, or are we going to go the bumpy — but same — route via Trump. Only time will tell.
If you stopped even trying to make the Lisbeth Salander the heroine of a story, but instead turned her into something more akin to “Pearl,” I think it’s a setup for success. Let me explain — if you made Salander someone a brutal man-hating woman with some redeeming qualities, that sort of solves the problem of how to properly present Salander to audiences.
Mia Goth as Lisbeth Salander?
This would be rather jarring to people, but it’s also very freeing. You don’t have to use the conventions of a mainstream movie anymore. You can really toy with who Salander is by actually showing her brutal, violent side.
And a horror movie is, in general, far more provocative than a mainstream movie, with things going haywire for no apparent reason on a far more regular basis than a mainstream movie where generally there can be no sudden movements.
But, having said all that, generally no one listens to me. It’s an interesting concept, though. And I continue to dwell on my own American interpretation of the Lisbeth Salander troupe. I have a lot of cool ideas that I think once I finish everything I have in mind, people will really like.
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