I’m at a loss. I could have sworn I saw some mention of the “right of revolution” in the U.S. Constitution. But I checked again just now and…not there. Couldn’t find a thing.
Oh well. I hate violence anyway.
But the fact remains — I simply refuse to believe that Trump will be able to go full tyrant on Blues and….nothing will happen. I just refuse to believe that “vote harder” is our only option. We have to start to think about what we’re going to do if Trump wins and goes full tyrant and literally begins to snatch people off the street without due process.
Something’s gotta give.
(But I do hate violence — and guns — a great deal.)
Given how we’re careening towards what seems like the inevitable fate of Trump winning a second term, we have to start gaming out what the fuck we’re going to do. We can’t just put all our chips in the “vote harder” gambit and assume that will be enough.
As of now, early February 2024, it seems as though Trump is going to win and attempt to establish some sort of white Christian ethnostate the moment he’s in office. As such, we have to game out what the fuck we’re going to do.
A lot depends on Traditionalists. If Trump goes full tyrant and traditionalist conservatives just keep their head down and become good Germans then, well, we’re totally and completely fucked.
But if they actually show some of that principle that they’re so well known for, then, well, we’re going to the show. While they may not participate in any sort of Direct Action against Trump if he goes full tyrant, they MIGHT look the other way if there was a massive General or Women’s Strike specifically designed to cripple the government so Trump is deposed.
I have my doubts. No matter what, late 2024, early 2025 could be one of the most historic eras in America history.
I’m just about to leave the willfully delusional stage of developing and writing this novel and enter the “Holy Shit, now what” stage. I have to start thinking about different metrics than I have for the last few years. I have to start thinking about, well, among other things, the physical cost of printing the damn thing if I manage to miraculously sell it.
As such, I have to keep in mind that I could write The Bible, but if it’s too many words I probably am not going to successfully get a literary agent. I keep thinking about how The Girl On The Train is about 140,000 words and how I can probably meet that.
But this is my first novel and first novels are supposed to be closer to 100,000 words. Ugh.
What’s more, the murder that pushes us into the “special world” doesn’t happen until about 60 scenes in. In most murder mysteries the body is discovered either on the first page or serves as the “inciting incident.” All I can say is Stieg Larsson structured The Girl Who Played With Fire the way I’m doing this novel….so….lulz?
You know, I try. I try my best to validate the political views of my far, far more conservative relatives. I really do. But sometimes, out of the blue, they say something that stops me cold.
Apparently, within the Right wing echo chamber, a lot of people believe Michelle Obama is a Leftist Trump lurking in the shadows to pop out and run for president.
There is so much wrong with this. First and foremost Michelle Obama is far smarter, focused and driven than Trump. As much as I hate to say this — if you think Michelle Obama is a Leftist Trump, then, well, there’s a word for that. To be polite, I’ll use a phrase instead — confirmation bias.
Spouting off about how Michelle Obama is a Leftist Trump in waiting buys you time. Every moment you’re talking about that, you’re not talking about what a fucking fascist piece of shit Trump is.
And, what’s more, none of this even addresses how as far as I can tell, Michelle Obama has in private it made it ABSOLUTELY CLEAR that she has zero interest in running for ANY office. Racism is a hell of a drug, MAGA.
I just refuse to believe that our only option at this point is to “vote harder.” Everything I’ve read about what happened in Germany indicates there is no historical 1-to-1 between Germany 1933 and America 2025. And it’s not just beyond the obvious, “there’s never a 1-to-1” between historical events.
The reasons why about 38% of the electorate wants a white Christian ethnostate instead of a democracy are just really, really different from why the Nazis — barely — took power in January 1933. Where is the MAGA SA to knock the heads of Blues who don’t want to abide by fascism? The list goes on.
The issue for me is that too many people think that if Trump comes to power again and he goes full tyrant on us that all the Blues in the USA will simply shrug let him consolidate power and fucking snatch people off the street because he doesn’t like them.
These people are being extremely short sighed and simplistic. Trump has already caused some pretty unprecedented things to happen, there may come a point where his corruption of the administration of the leavers of power grows so bad that, on principle, the populace might rise up and depose him. (I’m not advocating anything, just musing. It really grates on my nerves when people refuse to contemplate how we might combat MAGA autocracy if Trump becomes POTUS again.)
Anyway, in general, we’re fucked going forward. There is a chance that Trump will get re-elected and that will be that. We’ll become a white Christian ethnostate and I’ll die in a Trump-branded ICE concentration camp because I won’t shut the fuck up about how I think Trump is a fucking cocksucker.
I have very, very high standards for my writing. I once read a young woman’s copy and was taken aback by how good it was from a mechanical point of view but how….meh….it was otherwise. She wrote clean, smooth copy that just did not really inspire me very much.
Given how many novels she’s finished relative to me, don’t quite know what to think. And, really, she in real terms has a much better chance of one day selling her novel than I do.
You see, I am a good-to-great storyteller, but my spelling and grammar can at times be can so bad that some people get really upset. In large part this comes from I just can’t properly see subtle bad grammar — sometimes, when it’s staring straight at me. That I ever tried to be a copy editor is rather comical in hindsight.
Anyway. The key thing I have to keep an eye on word count on this novel. I’m shooting for no more than 140,000 words. Anything more than that and I may have to split the thing into two. There remains a structural problem whereby the murder that sets off the story happens way too late in the game — the end of first / beginning of second act.
But as I’ve mentioned before, so many interesting things happen in the first act that I think there is at least a chance that readers won’t really notice that delay in the murder all that much.
I was listening to The All In Podcast today and one of the participants made an interesting observation — the content found on YouTube could be the most valuable information in the world. The idea that it’s possible that Google might train its AI models on YouTube is kind of mind blowing.
Now, there might be the issue of Google’s management may fumble the bag for various reasons and even with all that content not be able to build a “moat” around its AI. But just the idea that you might have a commercial AI product trained on YouTube content is staggering.
It will be interesting to see what happens going forward.
One thing is clear — barring The Fourth Turning / WW3, the next 18 months could see hyper development on the AI, android and spatial computing fronts. As part of that, I think we’re going to have to start taking the Universal Basic Income as a serious policy agenda.
I’m well aware of all the problems with both Apple Vision Pro and existing AI models. But I’m old enough to remember the early days of the Internet and how in fits and starts that technology gradually took over the world.
Again, remember, before I continue that there IS the issue of The Fourth Turning to worry about. It could be that much like WW2 delayed the development of TV, so, too, will the collapse of the US and WW3 could delay the actual Petite Singularity from happening.
But back to the point — when AI Generated Media is available on something like an Apple Vision Pro, then, lulz, we’re definitely in a Burn, Hollywood, Burn type scenario. In fact, the only way I could see Hollywood surviving such a thing is Washington passing some sort of carve outs for humans created art.
I could also see passive, human Hollywood surviving in some way if we, as a society, begin to give human-made media some sort of specific cultural value. In line with that, I could see Broadway really becoming culturally white-hot because Hollywood has been consumed by the technologies associated with the Petite Singularity.
And that doesn’t even begin to address how things might be disrupted if we can figure out a way to stick LLMs into android technology. It’s at least possible that if all the DDD jobs that immigrants come to the US to fill simply are done by androids…that MIGHT solve our border crisis. (Though, I will not that the racism of the Right is white hot that it could take decades for them to calm down about the lack of those sweet, sweet white babies — even if technology makes their concerns moot.)
Who knows. I can’t predict the future. But I do think that the next 18-odd months could be some of the most eventful on both a technological and political manner in recent human history.
If the history of the Internet is any indication, then we’re probably going to see something akin to the Sandra Bullock movie “The Net,” but for the Petite Singularity pretty soon. One movie that deals with a lot of topics that would allow some cool visual effects would be an adaptation of the novel The Unincorporated Man.
The Fourth Turning may make the technology of The Unincorporated Man moot, at least for a while.
The novel is really interesting for a number of reasons, but it really talks about the potential downsides of VR. In the novel, set in the far future, there was something called The VR Plague that wiped out a lot of people who stopped eating because they were addicted to VR.
There are some political elements to the novel that might cause it to be something of a turn off to some, but overall the novel is ripe to be turn into a movie. If nothing else, I do think that we’re going to see an explosion of movies that deal with the Petite Singularity technologies of VR, AR and AI.
It would all be a part of the broader vibe shift that we’re just about to undergo –that is, of course, unless the fucking Fourth Turning doesn’t cause a collapse in human civilization.
I was running hot with the novel again so I’ve decided to chill out today. I’m already seeing results because when I casually looked over the novel some today I saw a number of ways to make it better that I had not thought of before.
No longer a bar fly.
I continue to be clean sober. That I am able to pull this off so abruptly is a testament to, well, my desire to live. My already know my blood is apparently sludge, which is a “Not great, Bob” situation. And I would prefer not to drop dead like Stieg Larsson did at 50.
I would prefer to live long enough to see the “cool stuff” of selling a successful novel.
I’m also watching the latest iteration of the Mr & Mrs. Smith franchise. It’s…ok? I’ve just started. It’s just so difficult for me to consume ANY media that I didn’t produce. So, so very difficult. But I’m forcing myself to go outside my comfort zone so I can get some sense of what modern audiences want, not the audiences of 20 years ago when The Girl Who Played With Fire came out.
Success equal to Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Series is my dream.
One thing I don’t like about the TV show already is it uses the “interview the characters” trope as a form of exposition. It’s cheap and often used to expedite the story because you don’t have to “show” character traits. But, so far, the story is good enough for me to continue to watch it.
I also plan on doing a lot of reading, too.
I may — MAY — expand my little creative reset to Sunday afternoon to mimic what would happen had I gone to NYC. I don’t know yet. There is a balance between recharging my batteries and losing momentum.
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