Category: Cold Civil War

2022 – 2025: The End of Pax Americana

by Shelt Garner
@sheletgarner

We live in very dumb times. When the word “liberal” is now so toxic that you can’t even use the very true phrase “liberal world order” without crazy, frothy nutjobs on the Far Right growing very upset and paranoid, you live in very dumb times.

But the point is — since 1945, humanity has lived with unpreceded peace and prosperity because of, well, the “liberal world order” associated with Pax Americana. And since the fall of Communism, things have only gotten better for everyone involved.

And then MAGA slithered out of its black lagoon.

The thing about the decline of the American Empire is it’s happening in real time before our very eyes and, yet, we can’t process it. The average person is too busy raising their kids and paying their taxes to give the very abstract concepts that are happening all around us much thought.

But there is a very real chance that no matter which direction the United States goes — autocracy or civil war — we will see the end of Pax America and, as such, WW3 will happen. Remember, all that has to happen for WW3 to be declared is more than one major regional war break out at the same time. So, as such, even if what happens is dingus Trump in his second term pulls out of NATO and pulls troops out of ROK, then, there you go, WW3 on a plate. Because what would happen is the US leaving NATO would be a crushing blow to the post-WW2 liberal order.

As Trump “brought the troops home,” China would fill the massive geopolitical vacuum and invade Taiwan just because of, well, YOLO. At the same time, the DPRK would attack the newly undefended ROK. Then maybe Iran attacks Israel. Then maybe India and Pakistan have at it –with nukes!

The point is — we’re past the Event Horizon now. We’re in the danger zone. Something big, really big is probably going to either happen at any moment or no later than January 2025 around certification day. The bolts are popping off the United States at an alarming rate and there’s a good chance that if we don’t become an autocracy, we have a very nasty civil war with WMD used by both sides.

Regardless, not matter if we become an autocracy or have a civil war, there is going to be a Great Reset or Fourth Turning (or whatever the fuck you want to call it) and many, many people are going to die for a very dumb reason. This is it, we’re at the end of the beginning of Pax America.

I fear I, personally, will have to flee my home for political reasons when everything begins to collapse. My politics don’t fit my location. At least I havea passport.

Good luck.

Are We About To Witness The Birth Of The Patriot Party?

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Just when you thought things couldn’t get any more bonkers, Trump may be facing something of a Far Right Rebellion. Maybe. But two notable crazed Far Right MAGA nutjobs — Laura Ingram and Alex Jones — have either suggested it’s time for Trump to leave the political arena or stopped supporting him altogether.

Will trump leave the Republican Party for the Patriot Party?

What the what?

This is, obviously, great news for Unfrozen Caveman Autocrat Ron DeSantis. And, yet, there’s a real chance that we’re careening towards an unprecedented clusterfuck. And that would be a sizable portion of the Republican Party all agree that they want to move on from Trump and Trump simply will not do that.

I have no idea how this would play out, but, jokes on Ingram and Jones — for the time being, Trump continues to have an absolute lock on the base of the Republican Party. As such, if DeSantis was somehow magical secure the nomination, Trump could very well do a wildcat bid via something called, I don’t know, the Patriot Party. That would be a huge chunk of the Republican Party that would no longer be around to influence things.

The moment something like that happened, then we’re entering — gulp — Election of 1860 type clusterfuck where the would be mass political chaos because the usual two party system would begin to break down just as the country itself was tearing itself apart because of macro problems.

Or, put another way, Jesus Christ is the United States — the most power, wealthiest nation on earth — far, far more unstable than we’re willing to admit. And, remember, to some extent, we’ve been living with Pax Americana for the last 70 odd years. If the United States buckles, WW3 will promptly happen.

But if Trump bolts the Republican Party for a new Patriot Party….get ready, things are going to get very, very bumpy.

What If Pence Testifies To The January 6th Committee?

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

There are rumors that Mike Pence is seriously considering talking to the January 6th Committee. Before we all get too Mueller, She Wrote level of excited about this, we need to put some context to what we might be able to expect from such a historic event.

The thing that Pence SHOULD do, which is the John Dean of the MAGA movement, is just not going to happen. I say he should do this because the only way that man is ever going to be POTUS is as part of a Unity Ticket of some sort. He doesn’t have to become Democrat, he just has to become a MAGA apostate to the point that he inflicts serious political damage to the movement.

Or, put another way, Pence would have to “change the question” when it came to what he was supposed to do. Instead of the question in his mind being, “How do I become president?” the question needs to be, “How do I change the political equation I face so dramatically that being president is even a possibility?”

Because, as it stands — Pence is never going to be a MAGA Republican President. I seem to recall MAGA wanted to hang him, at some point in the immediate past. So, if Pence really wants to be POTUS at this point, he has to burn everything to the ground. He has to flip the circuit breaker do a hard reboot of the American political system.

In the carnage that results from him destroying the Republican Party, he could very well end up on top. Liberals would be so grateful for what Pence had done that they would vote for him at least for one presidential cycle, even if they hate everything else about his politics. This is not hard. The easiest endgame for Pence is also the most painful — but it would work.

At the moment, I just don’t think Pence has it in him. He would pray about it a lot and God would tell him to give the January 6th Committee just enough information that he could still feel as though he might have a chance to be a MAGA POTUS.

Because, just from my casual conversations with my Traditionalist relatives, they hate Democrats and liberal-progressive with such a white hot rage that they can’t even imagine a situation where someone like Pence would do country over party and for the specific purpose of saving the Republic, align himself with people he didn’t agree with politically. They’re so busy thinking of the center-Left as Satanic groomers that they’re completely blinded to even considering the idea of saving America’s democratic birthright.

So, at the moment, I have very low expectations for Pence should he testify.

I Fear A Trump-Induced ‘Great Reset’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

These days, I find myself thinking of how there was once a point, I think during the 2016 campaign, when a rumor began to circulate that there was evidence of Trump using the “N-Word.” There was even a panicked meeting about within the Trump campaign in which one of his African American supporters asked, “Well, how many times did he say it?”

With that in mind, it’s clear that not only is Trump above the law in general, but for some weird reason his followers don’t have any red line at all. He could start to demand the right to sleep with women on their wedding night and his followers would, after about 24 hours of silence, have a ready set of talking points explaining why Trump, as a former president, has that right and why won’t the woke cancel culture mob let him do something so heterosexual? Trump is, in short, something akin to a God to MAGA, leaving us all to wonder if push came to shove and there was some sort of military action between Reds and Blues if we would find ourselves in a German 1945 “Gotterdammerung” type situation where every man, woman and child was willing to fight to the death for their big orange doofus.

All of this leads me to believe that, in the end, the real battle is who will be Trump’s successor. Whomever Trump picks to be 2024 veep is going to be in a prime position to be something akin to America’s Putin. And, given how bonkers Trump is at the moment, he could pretty much pick literally anyone, ranging from Gen. Mike Flynn to Steve Bannon. Anyone! It could get really dark, in fact.

We may all be Antifa in the end.

As an side, to think, at some point in the next 20 to 30 years, some very serious scholar is going to spend a lot of time writing a very serious, weighty tome about dingus Trump that takes him seriously, at last. It may not be an American who writes it because we’ll be an autocracy, but it’s going to happen somewhere. Unless, of course, WW3 happens it’s all moot.

Or, put another way, my prediction that there’s a real possibility that in the end MAGA will cause the death of more people than the Nazis did. If you factor in that a Second American Civil War would cause WW3, then that’s at least 1 to 2 billion dead right there. And I could see between 10 and 20 million American dead if Blue and Red started to lob WMD at each other in the context of a MAGA “revolution” or 2ACW.

Talk about a Great Reset or Fourth Turning!

Anyway, the point is, we live in the lead up to Something Big historically. I just don’t know if it’s autocracy, civil war, revolution, WW3 or some combination of all of those things. A lot of people are going to die because of a fucking dingus moron racist who is nothing more than a vessel, an avatar for white Christian rage.

And there doesn’t seem to be anything we can do about it.

There Definitely Seems To Be An Air Of Inevitability To A ‘MAGA Uprising’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

There are an obscene number of AR-15s in the United States at the moment. And the rhetoric on the Right has grown so frothy and detached from reality that it seems as though it’s just a matter of time before some sort of “MAGA Uprising” happens.

I don’t know what form it might take, but it definitely seems inevitable at this point. It will probably happen because Trump is indicted, or he peacefully shuffles off this mortal coil in his sleep. I think the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago was just the first step in the process. It’s going to take another event before the bullets start whizzing around.

Here are some reasons why we may have a civil war over and above the FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago.

  1. Republicans have come to glorify political violence
    Something you see a lot these days within the bullshit echo chamber of the MAGA New Right is the belief that because “liberals won’t leave us alone” that they are being “driven” to extremism. There’s a lot of leading not-so-vague talk as to what all this would ultimately mean. But it’s clear that for a number of “thought leaders” within the MAGA New Right that they have accepted that at some point in the future, they’re going to have to resort to violence to get what they want.
  2. Republicans no longer believe in democracy
    It is now clear that like any good fascists, Republicans no longer believe in democracy unless it’s for the specific purpose of gaining and keeping power. This view of the system they’re supposed to a part of leads them do extremely destabilizing things that help push the country to the brink.
  3. Trump 2024
    Just Trump being the 2024 nominee would, in itself, be enough to cause a civil war at some point in late 2024 – early 2025. He just has a special knack for “owning the libs” in such a way that if he stole in 2024 election and said the “quiet part outloud” that Blue States would grow so enraged that it would be they, not Red States, that left the Union and caused a Second Civil War. But Ron DeSantis is polling exceptionally well at the moment, so either Trump politically shivs him at some point, or he co-ops him, making him his VP, opening the door to DeSantis becoming America’s Putin at some point down the road a little bit.
  4. Steve K Bannon.
    Bannon and his toadies are actively working to destroy the framework that we use to administer free and fair elections. So, it’s very easy to imagine a situation where this gambit works in ways that Trump himself is too idiotic to pull off personally and it will be so egregious that, again, Blue States leave the Union and we have a Second American Civil War.
  5. Extreme negative polarization
    We’re in for a bump four or so years, no matter what, because negative polarization, on a systemic level, has reached a critical mass. When one of your political parties is fascist and would rather crash the global economy instead of even appear to work for the good of the nation — you got a problem.
  6. A lack of shared values
    As the big blow up on Twitter in the last 24 hours about a Stephen Colbert song and dance gag about getting vaccinated proves — we can’t even agree on what’s funny. A combination of this and negative polarization is leading to the United States being two nations, one Red, one Blue and when we get around to attempting to elect the next president, the system simply won’t be prepared for the passions it will stir up.
  7. A potentially historic miscalculation on the part of Republicans
    It’s possible that, much like European powers in the lead up to WW1, when the time comes and Republicans have a choice between peacefully transitioning us into autocracy or fucking with us all so we want to take up arms, they will choose the latter not because they have to, but because they want to. It’s possible that by the 2024 — 2025 period, Republicans will see a civil war as their only choice to consolidate power, even if it’s clear that they could get everything they ever wanted within the system they so obviously loath.

It definitely makes you wonder how the American press would react to an outbreak of lingering, widespread political violence across the country. The more I think about it, the more I just don’t see what Barbara F. Walter thinks will happen. That is, some sort of Troubles in the United States. It makes no sense to me, given that the Republican Party is now fascist and autocratic. It seems like if Trump got indicted he would grab the Federal government by the short ones and demand that Red States begin to leave the Union in an effort to end that particular problem for him.

And I still think that we aren’t even going to have a MAGA civil war or revolution or uprising. It’s going to be Blues in 2024 – 2025 that cause a civil war when they leave the Union after the 2024 election is brazenly stolen by Reds.

So, we have a few years to prepare. And if we don’t have a civil war, we’re just going to become an autocracy, probably with DeSantis becoming America’s Putin. Ugh.

My Hot Take On Liz Cheney Losing Her Primary

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

While I am well known for my abstract hysterics about how bad things are in the United States at the moment as MAGA continues to be ascendant, occasionally, there is a concrete thing I can point to and say — “That’s bad!”

U.S. Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) delivers an opening statement during the opening hearing of the U.S. House (Select) Committee investigating the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, on July 27, 2021 at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC. During its first hearing the committee, currently made up of seven Democrats and two Republicans, will hear testimony from law enforcement officers about their experiences while defending the Capitol from the pro-Trump mob on January 6. (Photo by Jim Bourg-Pool/Getty Images)

And that’s how I feel about Liz Cheney losing her primary. Even though on policy, I pretty much disagree with her 100%, when it comes to her willing to sacrifice politically in the name of defending democracy I back her just as much. In fact, I’m so desperate for principled leadership and an elected leader who at least believes that the United States IS a democracy that I’m willing to entertain the idea of voting for Cheney. I say this especially in the context of her potentially being a part of a Unity Ticket.

Anyway, the Republican Party is very autocratic and growing ever more so by the moment. It is inevitable that they will gain power again and when they do, I’m not totally sure that they’re going to ever give it up peacefully. And autocracy is so popular, that there’s a decent chance that Trump could win outright in 2024, no cheating required.

He will cheat anyway, of course, because that’s his nature.

We have to prepare for the United States being faced with the deeply existential choice of autocracy or civil war starting in late 2024, early 2025. If Trump is the Republican nominee, this choice is going to be very, very extreme and severe. There won’t be any middle ground.

And, of course, there is the very real possibility that something akin to The Troubles of Northern Ireland might happen in the United States before then. MAGA is already chomping at the bit to murder people like me in cold blood for political reasons — they sure do come to this Website a lot looking for my dystopian hellscape scenarios.

Too bad my nightmare is their dream. What I fear, they want.

Or, to reiterate, we’re past the Event Horizon for civil war or autocracy and we’re in the danger zone of severe political violence erupting at any moment. It could start because Democrats have an upset win in November. It could happen because Trump is indicted. It could be that Trump pulls a Scalia on us and dies peacefully in his sleep. It could happen for you name it. Anything and everything might be the final straw for MAGA and they grab their AR-15s to murder people like me in cold blood. It’s already all they talk about!

Anyway. I’ve already begun to feel the same sense of rage I felt when Trump was president. I hope to channel that rage into six novels and hopefully finish them before I drop dead. But I have to accept the very real possibility that at some point between now and around 2025 I may become a domestic political refugee and will have to find succor somewhere outside of my current abode because all my MAGA neighbors want to murder me for my political views.

We all may be Antifa before it’s over with.

But, back to Cheney. I really respect her principles. And I still believe that if we do have a National Divorce that she could, ironically, become a Blue State America leader. It would be surreal, but when such tectonic historic forces are a play virtually anything is possible.

We may be in for some pretty fucking strange events between now and January 2025.

Three Celebrity Dudes Wearing Skirts Is A Trend, Right?

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

As I have said before, high fashion designers have long wanted men to wear skirts and dresses. And, yet, to date, men have been reluctant to do so. Given that I’ve noticed three celebrity men wearing skirts in public I think we may have a gender bending trend on our hands.

The question is, now, of course, given the context of the our never ending, on going culture wars, what does it all mean? Does this signify that we’re seeing a major gender shift going on? Or is this still, much like how apparently every women in high fashion is dating another woman, something that only celebrities are doing while the Poors aren’t interested?

It’s all very curious. What’s even more curious is Fox News hasn’t taken this up as the latest CTR, “cancel culture” or “woke mob” canard that they can bang into their audience’s minds. Given that the United States is experiencing a lingering gay panic in the context of liberals being “groomers” you would think that high profile men wearing skirts would be something that would play into that.

It will be interesting to see if “dudes wearing skirts” will eventually get wrapped up in the 2022 mid-term political silly season. But if it isn’t that would be great. For once, something different can happen without people freaking out.

How Close Are We To A MAGA Revolution In 2022?

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It definitely seems as though the United States is primed and ready for some sort of popular MAGA revolt since the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago. Something about the raid seems to have confirmed the worst fears of MAGA and now they are itching to do something about it in response.

Here are some reasons why we may have a civil war over and above the FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago.

  1. Republicans have come to glorify political violence
    Something you see a lot these days within the bullshit echo chamber of the MAGA New Right is the belief that because “liberals won’t leave us alone” that they are being “driven” to extremism. There’s a lot of leading not-so-vague talk as to what all this would ultimately mean. But it’s clear that for a number of “thought leaders” within the MAGA New Right that they have accepted that at some point in the future, they’re going to have to resort to violence to get what they want.
  2. Republicans no longer believe in democracy
    It is now clear that like any good fascists, Republicans no longer believe in democracy unless it’s for the specific purpose of gaining and keeping power. This view of the system they’re supposed to a part of leads them do extremely destabilizing things that help push the country to the brink.
  3. Trump 2024
    Just Trump being the 2024 nominee would, in itself, be enough to cause a civil war at some point in late 2024 – early 2025. He just has a special knack for “owning the libs” in such a way that if he stole in 2024 election and said the “quiet part outloud” that Blue States would grow so enraged that it would be they, not Red States, that left the Union and caused a Second Civil War. But Ron DeSantis is polling exceptionally well at the moment, so either Trump politically shivs him at some point, or he co-ops him, making him his VP, opening the door to DeSantis becoming America’s Putin at some point down the road a little bit.
  4. Steve K Bannon.
    Bannon and his toadies are actively working to destroy the framework that we use to administer free and fair elections. So, it’s very easy to imagine a situation where this gambit works in ways that Trump himself is too idiotic to pull off personally and it will be so egregious that, again, Blue States leave the Union and we have a Second American Civil War.
  5. Extreme negative polarization
    We’re in for a bump four or so years, no matter what, because negative polarization, on a systemic level, has reached a critical mass. When one of your political parties is fascist and would rather crash the global economy instead of even appear to work for the good of the nation — you got a problem.
  6. A lack of shared values
    As the big blow up on Twitter in the last 24 hours about a Stephen Colbert song and dance gag about getting vaccinated proves — we can’t even agree on what’s funny. A combination of this and negative polarization is leading to the United States being two nations, one Red, one Blue and when we get around to attempting to elect the next president, the system simply won’t be prepared for the passions it will stir up.
  7. A potentially historic miscalculation on the part of Republicans
    It’s possible that, much like European powers in the lead up to WW1, when the time comes and Republicans have a choice between peacefully transitioning us into autocracy or fucking with us all so we want to take up arms, they will choose the latter not because they have to, but because they want to. It’s possible that by the 2024 — 2025 period, Republicans will see a civil war as their only choice to consolidate power, even if it’s clear that they could get everything they ever wanted within the system they so obviously loath.

But how close are we, really, to any sort of significant political violence in 2022? It’s definitely in the air — the nation is on edge. And, really, all the talk about some sort of “revolt” or “civil war” or even “revolution” by fucking cocksucker MAGA people is more about them wanting to murder liberals with impunity than it does the actual likelihood that it will take place.

We may all be Antifa someday soon.

In other words, MAGA cocksuckers have murdering liberals on the mind, but the idea of going to prison for doing it is holding them back. At least, that seems to be the most logical explanation for why we haven’t had this popular MAGA revolt I keep hearing about.

As such, I would suggest you keep an eye on Trump. While I suppose it’s possible there might be some sort of spontaneous MAGA revolt, it’s far more likely that Trump, feeling the heat, would go transactional and tell the MAGA faithful to start using their AR-15s to murder people like me.

So, I think that’s your answer.

Unless Trump intervenes in some way, it’s highly unlikely that MAGA people are going to randomly take up arms against the state. I suppose it’s possible, but it’s not very probably. But if Trump told MAGA people to actually do specific things, then, yes, we could see MAGA violently burn the country to the ground. The other way it might happen is if — gulp — something happened to Trump physically.

Given how tightly wound the country is at the moment, Trump peacefully shuffling off this mortal coil would be enough to cause the MAGA based to burn our cities to the ground in a rather abrupt manner.

I Still Find The Idea Of A ‘MAGA Revolution’ Dubious

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

While there is a certain logic to the idea of a somewhat spontaneous MAGA “revolution,” I still find the practical application of this scenario dubious. I do this for a number of reasons.

One, the United States is very big — 335 million people. And for what the MAGA “revolutionaries” to get what the want, which would be the ability to murder people like me in cold political blood without any criminal consequences would require the Federal government to be overwhelmed.

So, it couldn’t just be one or two lone wolves using their AR-15s to shoot people they didn’t like in some sort of mass-casualty event. It would have to be something that happened a lot and for more than one day. So, what MAGA wants, which is to finally murder dem dar libtards without the risk of going to prison, is very unlikely to happen.

Now, if they could pull off not just a “Day of Rage,” but a few weeks or months of persistent violence, then, yes, the dynamics would change. The tools that the Federal government has to stop an insurrection would be used, rather than the police. It would be ironic if it was Biden, not Trump, that ultimately invoked the Insurrection Act.

But, again, and I can’t say this enough — MAGA having any sort of “revolution” would be extremely dumb. They are getting everything they want peacefully, why run around murdering people? Any sort of revolution would be a massive miscalculation on the part of the MAGA movement and would only cause those sweet, sweet Traditionalist votes to rush towards Democrats.

I say this because, just from my conversations with my Traditionalist relatives, they love, love, love all of MAGA’s vision — but they won’t brook violence. So, as such, while the MAGA New Right might get a quick fix by starting their so-called “revolution” the long term political implications would be their destruction.

I guess the point is — let’s not have a civil war or a revolution, shall we? I have six novels I want to write and I would prefer not to have to do that with bullets whizzing around.

‘When Will The MAGA Revolution Begin In 2022?’ Trump, Once Again, Has America’s Fate In His Tiny, Tiny Hands

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

America, the most powerful and ostensibly stable nation in the world finds itself in a somewhat surreal situation at the moment. It seems — if my Webstats are any indication — that a pretty big subset of the electorate believes that something akin to a “MAGA Revolution” is all but inevitable in the immediate future.

Something about the FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago made concrete the lingering, paranoid fears of the MAGA New Right about why they feel they need to take up arms against the Federal government. Now, obviously, this is bonkers logic for more than one reason — chief amongst them being that the Right is extremely ascendant in the United States and is getting everything it wants peacefully via politics and the courts.

But, as we all know, history loves to be ironic so, if Trump went transactional in a bid to prevent himself from going to jail, yes, the “MAGA Revolution” that so many fucking cocksucker MAGA people seem to believe is going to happen, will, in fact, happen. Yet, as I’ve written before, this is a very complex situation whereby a number of macro trends are all converging at the same time. You can call it The Fourth Turning or the Great Reset.

Whatever you call it, not only have we passed the Even Horizon for the existential choice of autocracy or civil war in 2024 – 2025, we’re also in the danger zone for something that would be marketed as a “MAGA Revolution.” Here’s how it would happen — America is awash in AR-15s. And, as we all tragically know at this point, AR-15s are specifically designed to murder as many people as possible at one time.

So, if Trump went transactional on Truth Social and told his followers to, say, start to kill FBI agents, then, yes, there is a good chance that they would pick up their AR-15s en mass and begin to do just that. But it might not be FBI agents — it could be pretty much anyone that the MAGA New Right perceives as part of the “woke cancel culture mob”….including people like ME.

And, of course, there is the chance that things could spiral out of control at this point without the help of Trump. It could be that a few lone wolves shooting up a lot of liberals somewhere might be enough to start a violent forest fire across the country that the press would call a “MAGA Revolution.” I suppose the whole point is that MAGA really, really wants the laws of war, rather of the criminal justice system to apply when they start murdering people like me for political reasons.

I guess that’s what they mean when they search for “civil war” or “revolution” and come to this site to look at my dystopian hellscape scenarios. They don’t really know what they want in any concrete manner, but in a gauzy, abstract grunt that is there political views they want to know, “When will I get to murder liberals without having to go to jail?”

But let me be clear — MAGA getting what they want when it comes to a “civil war” or “revolution” in 2022 would be so very, very dumb, not to mention very tragic for everyone involved. If they are just patient, they can get everything they want without firing a shot and it would be in the Blues’ court to start a civil war in 2024 – 2025 because either the 2024 election was brazenly stolen or Trump’s incoming second administration’s policies were just so radical that Blue states will decide to bounce.

The point of all of this is while it may seem inevitable to fucking cocksucker MAGA New Right types that we’re going to have a civil war or revolution at any moment….I still have my doubts. I just don’t see it happening unless Trump specifically demands it and even then, the idea that we’ve crossed that particular Rubicon is dubious.

Only time will tell, I suppose.