Category: Cold Civil War

The Curious Case Of The #NBCUniversal ‘Thugs?’ At The #DCProtest

The guy in the white shirt had a NBCUniversal press pass and was doing B-Roll with a mic. And, yet, he was walking with those two goons to his left.
The guy with the tats was with the guy in the white. What the what?
I still don’t get it.

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

So, there was I was, walking around DC near the White House when I saw a clutch of goons standing around a guy with a video camera and a fuzzy mic doing what appeared to be “B-Roll.”

I took a look at the guy’s press pass and it was (I think) NBCUniversal. But none of it made any sense. Why was that guy with the goons? As you can tell from the pictures, these were not any ordinary goons. These were like, fucking Blackcube or something. These fuckers meant business.

Anyway, I keep talking about this an nothing happens.

It seems as though there are three possible scenarios.

  1. I misunderstood what was happening.
  2. They were simply added security for a NBC News camera man.
  3. They were doing some sort of undercover surveillance of the protest.

I honestly don’t know which one of those three is what was going on. I hope it wasn’t the last one. That is rather ominous.

I wish someone with NBCUniversal would at least tell me one way or another what I was seeing.

Some Trump Scenarios For The Next Year



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

No one can predict the future. So take that into consideration. But here are some scenarios as to what might happen between now and about a year from now.

Massacre
This is one of the more acute endgames for the clusterfuck that is the Trump Ministration. In this scenario, Trump finally gets his own Tienanmen Square on the National Mall. The bloodshed is enough that he’s quickly forced from office well before Election Day. I don’t really see this happening for a number of reasons. Or, put another way, there might be a massacre, but Trump still won’t leave office.

Rolling Political & Racial Violence
In this scenario, the rolling political violence I have long predicted for the fall simply happens as part of the rolling protests we’re having right now. The two merge as the year progresses and there’s massive violence on Election Day. America has its own “Troubles” until sometime in April-May 2021 when we finally figure out how to pull the now completely insane Trump physically out of the Oval Office

Trump Self-Owns By Going Crazy
There’s a real chance that Trump’s criminality and his lurching insanity will fuse to such an extent that he’ll take the whole country down with him. By the time his enables finally get with the program, it will be far, far too late to save the country and something akin to either an autocratic managed-democracy or a civil war happens. It all happens because no one is willing to stick their neck out in the real world to stop it.

Startup Saves The Day
In this scenario, someone figures out a way to organize the protests happening right now via an app. It would be designed to find leaders and to coordinate these protests in a meaningful manner. This is really me daydreaming because no one ever listens to me.

The Elector Crisis
Trump loses the popular vote, but goes after Electors on a personal level until they vote for him. Or there’s a 1876-type commission because Trump claims a huge amount of voter fraud and SCOTUS believes him. This all ends up with a massive clusterfuck and we either endup with an acting president or knowing way, way more about the personalities and personal lives of individual Electors than we should.

Bides 100 Days
Bides first 100 days — should they happen — may simply be him struggle to keep the country together as Trump rants on Twitter about how MAGA has to kill people to protect their 2nd Amendment rights.

Trump’s Most Dangerous Game



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

While Trump is an absolute moron, he is getting advice from someone who isn’t: Putin. So, it has occurred to me there’s a reason why Trump is shipping in Texas prison riot police to DC — he really wants to murder peaceful protesters in cold blood.

It not too much of a stretch to imagine the following: the goons from Texas serve as the Hell’s Angels at Altamont and there’s violence. Enough violence that the entire nation is shocked. This leads to direct combat(!) between the goons from Texas and the US Military.

The America Putin Wants.

The final battle is joined as everyone picks sides.

How exactly that would go down is anyone’s guess. I do think this would be the rolling political violence of the fall I have long predicted, just a few months early and in a different context. Now, there are a number of scenarios you could imagine at this point.

One is Trump really misjudges the whole situation and he is effectively forced from office in a rushed impeachment process at gunpoint on the part of the U.S. Military. But, given how things are likely to actually happen, it’s possible it could get even messier. It would happen very, very fast.

It would be total chaos (which is what Trump’s bestie Putin wants.)

And, really, I would say Trump would win, as always, but for how moronic and incompetent he is. He’s such a self-own artist that when faced with an unprecedented extra-political, extra-Constitutional attempt to remove him from office, he simply won’t know what to do.

A Very American Coup



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Not once in our nation’s history have we ever had a coup in the traditional sense. So, it’s rather surreal to me that I find myself thinking how a coup might happen now.

If any military coup happened, it would be so chaotic in nature that it’s impossible to predict exactly how it might happen. But my best guess is Trump finally gets the massacre of peaceful protesters in DC that he’s so excited about and the military does something completely out of the ordinary for it on a historic and institutional level — it turns on its commander-in-chief.

Given the nature of American political tradition, the only way I could possibly imagine this happening would be the top military leaders contact Nancy Pelosi and tell her in no uncertain terms that the House has to do a snap impeachment of Trump….NOW.

Then, using the same hint-hint methods, the military gets the Senate to do a snap trial and conviction of Trump. This would be the only way for everyone not to feel dirty about what had just happened. Of course, this could all be a setup. Trump could be trying to consolidate power in the military by pushing it to the breaking point, then hoping there would be some sort of coup attempt so he could purge those people. (This happened in Turkey a few years ago.)

All of this is meaningless, of course, because Tom Cotton is likely to be elected president in 2024, no matter what because of the same macro issues that elected Trump in the first place.

Lulz!

The ‘Little Green Men’ Have Landed

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Ugh. Why am I the only one to notice this:

American Little Green Men
Russian Little Green Men

A ‘National Union Front (NUF)’ Manifesto



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

These are the times that try men’s souls, as Thomas Paine wrote. As such, it seems as though it’s time to be honest with ourselves. I’m a man of peace. A man of ideas. But the country I love so much, the United States of America, is careening towards nothing less than a tyrannical fascist state.

The last time the National Unionists existed was the election of 1864 during the Civil War. We need to harken back to their goals of unity and freedom. The National Unionists were, by definition Lincolnists. The modern National Union Front would draw from anyone who believes America can do better than one Donald John Trump. He needs to leave office — immediately.

The current protesters across the nation need to take up burden of history and defend the freedoms we have all come to enjoy the last 244 years. We need to be willing to let the Tree of Liberty drink from the sweat of our brow as we fight the dark forces that would take our birthright from us.

I don’t want any violence. But if we’re going to defend Columbia from those who would abuse her out of spite, greed and a lust for power, we have to prepared to defend her with our lives and sacred honors.

I don’t have a lot of hope for the current protests for several reasons. One, the protests are leaderless. Or, put another way, no one with something to lose has decided to throw their lot with the protesters. I doesn’t matter who it is at this point — it could be David Frum or Taylor Swift. It just has to be someone, anyone, with a career they might destroy if things don’t go the right way.

The time for limp-wristed nattering on Twitter is over. We have to evoke change in the real world. We have to forsake violence and follow in the footsteps of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

But what we lack in violence, we need to make up with ideology and demands. Our ideology should draw from the works of Jefferson, Madison, Lincoln, Gandhi. Lennon and King.

Most of all, the National Union Front needs three things.

Leaders
I don’t care where they come from. We need people with some organizational skill to adopt the NUF cause and plunge straight into what’s going on right now. Again, it could be David Frum for all I care. Someone needs to throw on a revolutionary beret and help the masses get the job done.

Ideology
The NUF ideology should be inclusive and simple: liberal democracy.

Demands
1. The Immediate resignation or removal of Donald John Trump, 45th President of the United States of America.
2. Addressing of systemic racism
3. The Green New Deal
4. National Health Care
5. Federal decriminalization of pot
6. Student Loan forgiveness
7. A national debate on how to address the historical consequences of slavery


Of Trumplandia, The American Fourth Reich



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Once you reach a certain level of historical momentum, there’s not much you can do. We, sadly, have reached a macro-historical tipping point in regards to America’s new managed democracy. It’s here and there’s no going back.

Trump will win re-election in the fall — it doesn’t matter how — then ICE will be weaponized and I will die in an ICE camp sometime in the next few years.

But, just for fun, let’s daydream about how you might stop this from happening.

Let me stress — I’m a man of peace, a man of ideas. But I do love to run scenarios, so, to me, this is just a scenario.

The only way I could see stopping the rise of the American Fourth Reich at this point is people actually willing to risk their lives to stop it. What’s more likely to happen is they will decide to pledge their “lives and scared honor” only after it’s too late and they have to be a REAL “Resistance” like the French Resistance.

What I might suggest is all these protests are really a protest against Trump. Or, put another way, they could evolve into that if there was any leadership associated with it. But, to date, these protests are simply people venting frustration. If there were, like, actual revolutionaries involved in these protests, then there would be demands that could be drawn up, etc.

But, nada.

Nothing is really going on with these protests other than being a huge political windfall to our tyrant president.

Anyway, all I can say is get out of the country if you love freedom and liberty. Trumplandia is, at last, tragically here

TNT: Trump / Trump 2020?



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

My current estimation is at some point in the next few weeks, we will reach a Trump freakout tipping point and Trump will rather abruptly dump Pence as his 2020 running mate.

Now, the Republican MAGA backbench is so wide and deep that he has about 30 people he could pick from who would get the job done. But, for the moment, it seems two people are more perfect than the others — Ivanka Trump and Gen. Mike Flynn.

Flynn is perfect because, well, he’s a fucking traitor and probably Trump’s Russian “handler” so what better way to “own the libs” than to put a turncoat one heartbeat away from the presidency. So, Flynn seems perfect. And, yet, Ivanka would also fix a lot of problems for House Trump.

She’s a “threefer” in that she’s Jewish, a woman and a Trump….and moderate! So, she’d be perfect for the white college educated women in the exerbs that everyone seeks so desperately in a presidential campaign. What I could see happening is something like this:

Trump’s political fortunes get dramatically worse. His insanity and his criminality fuse into one and he begins to lash out in some pretty insane ways (he’s already doing that, natch). As part of this insane lashing out, he does a major shake up of his campaign, including booting Pence. (Brad Parscale is a different matter. He’s too good at his job for Trump to do anything about him. He’s so powerful — and necessary to Trump’s victory — I could see Trump naming HIM his veep.)

Then Trump names Ivanka his veep. Everyone goes insane for a few days. Then things begin to calm down and we realize that, like most Trump political moves, it’s both genius and very stupid. But, really, the whole point is to simply setup Ivanka (and Jared) to become president at some point in Trump’s ill-gotten second term. Jared will probably really run the country, while Ivanka is a figure head. Or maybe there might be some combination of Ivanka-Jared-Flynn should Trump finally totally and completely lose his fucking mind in his second term.

Trump is going to win, no matter what. I see no indication that he will ever EVER, ever have any political accountability because of some pretty significant macro problems in the American political system.

Lulz.

‘538’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Nothing matters but the actual 538 human beings that make up presidential Electors. So, if the dozen other ways Trump has to steal the 2020 Election don’t work, he’s simply going to threaten the fuck out of Electors to vote for him.

And if THAT doesn’t work — MAGA is going to murder people they don’t like (like me!) in cold blood.

So, spare me all the giddy excitement about this or that poll indicating Trump is going to lose. Autocrats never fucking lose. We’re going to wake up Jan 20th, 2021 and Trump is going to be sworn in for a second term. There is absolutely no scenario I can think of where that doesn’t happen.

It’s like a law of nature at this point.

Then we get a Constitutional Convention and things get really, really dark, really really fast. And, yet, the end of the United States will have a very clear date to it, I guess. At least the American history teachers of the future will have an easier time of it making test questions.

‘Spooky’



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

When I was living in Seoul, I occasionally would get a weird feeling that someone I was interacting with was….a bit…spooky. Whenever you suspect you’re dealing with spooks, you come off sounding like an crazy person because typically the average person doesn’t run into them.

But the thing about Seoul when I was there was there was a huge military base in the middle of the city. So, every once in a while when I was DJing at Nori in Sinchon, I saw older guys in the audience who just did not fit in. I have an extremely active imagination and so I would stand there, behind the bar, and wonder…are those guys spooks?

The only reason why I even bring this up is I’m listening to the “Wind of Change” podcast and it seems to fit very much in how I view the world in general — “normal” people are way too quick to assume that that just because someone is a kook that they couldn’t possibly have anything of merit to contribute. I am finding a lot of inspiration from the podcast as to how to come up with some out-of-the-box ideas for the novel I’m writing.

It’s this tendency that really bugs the shit out of me about successful Twitter liberals who look down their nose at me because I’m a bit “touched.” I often up come up with rather fantastical ideas. But at the same time, I occasionally do actually figure things out correctly — COVID19 being a prime example. I know why they do this — they have a vested interest in doing things “the right way” and if you don’t fit that metric, then, well, fuck you.

Anyway, I generally have a positive view of spooks these days because, well, we have a mad, tyrannical American Caligula hell-bent on destroying the nation I love and it seems as those if there really was a Deep State, they would be the good guys. Trump is actively trying to replace these good guys with traitors and sycophants, so who knows where things will end up.