Category: Cold Civil War

Things Are Going Well With The Newest Attempt At A Third Draft Of The Novel

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I think the only way I’m actually going to get past the first few chapters is just…not look at the first few chapters of the third draft once I finish them. Just wing it when it comes to consistency.

My dream is to write a novel as accessible and popular as The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

Things are set up now that I should be able to methodically go through at least the first half of the novel without feeling forced to re-read everything from the beginning. I had a real problem the last time I thought I had transitioned from the first to second acts of the third draft to the point that I went back to the very beginning and made some structural changes.

I’m pretty pleased, in general, with what I’ve come up with. I continue to worry about things I just can’t control. The rise of AI and the possibility of The Fourth Turning happening at some point over the next 18 months weigh heavily on my mind. But, as I’ve written, finishing this novel is existential.

I’m going to try to finish the third draft of this novel not later than April, but it might be closer to July. THEN I have to worry about finding the funds to get someone to look over the novel before I query an agent. And even then, I have to worry about an agenda doing due dilligence on me and thinking I’m not only a crackpot, but a smelly CIS white male who writes from a female POV sometimes.

I do still have a few scifi concepts I want to work on. It’s just so difficult for me to stop fixating on the mystery-thriller long enough to do such a thing. But I really do need to do it ASAP. I don’t like having all my eggs in one basket.

Comparing To Trump to Navalny Is Fucking Insane

By Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The late Alexei Navalny.

Alexei Navalny’s tragic death has caused the usual MAGA suspects to compare his murder to what’s going on with Trump these days. Or, even more stupidly, MAGA will do “whataboutism” of pointing out the uncertain nature of Jeffery Epstein’s death in prison.

Ugh.

And Tucker Carlson pretty much gave Putin a pass for what happened to Navalny. Double ugh. The whole thing is fucked up. But it does give us a pretty solid indication of how bad things will get if Trump is re-elected.

I continue to predict that about 1 million wealthy, smug Twitter liberals will flee the country starting in late 2024, early 2025 should Trump get re-elected. That will be just the beginning as Trump begins to put the squeeze on anyone he sees as either a potential political opponent or critic.

What’s so bonkers about all of this is, of course, the fact that if Trump is really ham-handed in the implementation of MAGA tyranny….oh boy. All bets are off as to how that particular situation is finally fixed. If Trump is a total bonkers tyrant starting in 2025….it’s at least POSSIBLE that Blues might rise up against him in some sort of General Strike that might lead to a Glorious Revolution.

But I have my doubts — and I’m not advocating anything. I hate violence of any sort.

Yet I am worried. Very worried.

The Last Stand: In The End, Our Only Hope May Be Principled Traditionalists

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I fear that should Trump get a second term that, in the end, the entire fate of the United States will hinge on the principled nature of Traditionalists. All Traditionalists want is to separate brown families at the border, make undocumented people enteral second class citizens and to return shame to person decisions like abortion or being gay.

So should Trump, in a very ham-handed way, start to do shit that is even more tyrannical than THAT, like, say snatch someone like me off the street for calling Trump a cocksucker, well, I dunno. Things MIGHT get interesting. If Trump’s weaponized ICE — or whatever agency is weaponized — starts to act really tyrannical in such a manner, there is a chance that Traditionalists might radicalize — turn into Radical Moderates — JUST LONG ENOUGH to depose Trump in some sort of Blue “Glorious Revolution.”

In other words, 2025 could see the greatest political upheaval in the United States since the Civil War if Trump in a very ham-handed way goes full tyrant in a way that Traditional conservatives just can’t condone.

I fear I’m being delusional. We’re fucked.

Hollywood Just Hit The Iceberg: OpenAI’s Sora Is A ‘Burn, Hollywood, Burn’ Advance In AI Movie Technology

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It may take a little while — 18 months? — but there is going to come a moment in the not-so-distant future when we have a Her movie future where our digital personal assistant will, on the fly, churn on VR narrative immersive media for our Apple Vision Pros.

The beautiful Zendaya.

I don’t see how “human” Hollywood has much of a long term future unless Congress passes some sort of carveout whereby a certain amount of entertainment HAS to be created by the hand of man, rather than an AI. And if we’ve gotten to that point, I could see maybe neo-Luddism being the natural evolution of MAGA.

I mean, if 3 million high paying blue collar transportation jobs go poof overnight, that is going to have a severe economic impact. At this point, my only question is if “The Fourth Turning” is going to somehow pause development of all this cool shit while we bomb ourselves into oblivion because of “vibes.”

I continue to feel very uneasy about America’s political future. Shit is going to get really complicated really soon and it could be that all this cool stuff we keep expecting to happen in the next few years simply will be punted down the road until we decide if we’re going to be an autocracy or not.

Good luck.

MAGA Is American National Socialism

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The issue of how socialist the Nazis were is a tricky one whenever it comes up. The Nazis being socialists is something that far Right American groups throw around whenever they want to shit on the center-Left.

What people miss about the Nazis and socialism is the Nazis were NATIONAL socialists. They were far Right nationalistic group that wanted to take over the world. But they *were* socialist, just not in the way that could be used to attack center-Left people in the US.

It’s hard for an American in the 21st Century to understand the complexities of why Hitler added “National Socialist” to the National Socialist German Worker’s Party’s name. But he did. And he really fucking hated both traditional socialists and Communists.

But the issue for me is — MAGA is American National Socialism. It’s even more complex than that, though. MAGA really doesn’t have any ideology other than whatever the fuck Trump “truths” that particular day. And that’s something interesting about the future of American National Socialism — what happens when fat fuck Trump shuffles off this mortal coil?

Who will take up his bonkers mantel and will the base of the Republican Party have the same about of absolute fidelity to him or her? A lot depends on how far we’ve transitioned into a MAGA-themed autocracy when ding-dong goes up to that big fast-food joint in the sky.

I do think we need to keep any eye on MTG. That woman is far more sly that any of us might otherwise believe. And I have long thought that we might one day live under a “Velvet Glove” autocracy with our tyrant being a MAGA woman, not man.

Only time will tell, I suppose.

Biden Being So Frail Is Historical Bad Ju-Ju

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m very uneasy about what is going on with President Biden. He’s demonstrably old and frail — if mentally still smart as a tack. My fear is that things will get so bad with Biden that we’re going to have to invoke the 25th Amendment in some way.

I continue to believe that late 2024, early 2025 could be one of the momentous few months in American history. The fact that Biden is so frail and old just as a number of major historical trends are all coming to a head all at the same time. And remember, Trump is chomping at the bit to exploit any possible weakness that might occur in late 2024, early 2025.

Look up the election of 1872.

If we manage to escape this catastrophe, I will be very pleased. I’m just worried. Really worried. But maybe the strange thing to happen will be not that something shocking happens, but rather….we muddle through.

I dunno. It will be curious going forward.

We Need A Cultural Reset

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I don’t know if this is the cultural equivalent of The Fourth Turning or not, but it seems like we need some sort of cultural reset. It we need to lurch into a new, more exciting future. We exist in some sort of luminal state whereby a bunch of old people control culture.

I honestly don’t know how to fix this problem.

But I suppose if there was some sort of Fourth Turning then once it was over and we came out the other side, we would have a new, vibrant culture again. But it definitely seems as though we’re stuck in a cultural malaise for the foreseeable future.

I also think that people aren’t thinking through how bad things suck at the moment in general. I suppose there is a possibility that technology will fix the problem. Some combination of AI and the Apple Vision Pro going mainstream might be the thing that prompts some sort of cultural reset or vibe shift.

I hope, is all I gotta say.

A Disturbance In The Force

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

There are a number of destabilizing things floating around these days that make me very uneasy. The chief amongst them is the weird far Left bullshit focused on the “Free Palestine” movement. It definitely seems as though some crazy person might use the Free Palestine agenda as the underpinning of something very dramatic and unexpected.

What that might be, I don’t know.

I am very empathetic to Free Palestine, I just don’t think violence is ever the proper way to achieve an objective. And I worry that some weird thing is going to come at us from left field between now and early 2025 that we just can’t predict that will totally put a different spin on things.

To the point that it might be the “Black Swan” even that forces us to rethink everything. I have no idea what that might be, but I am worried that something might happen that is so historic that it’s up there with 9/11. It could be that whatever bad juju we should have to worry about has already been excised as part of the January 6th Insurrection.

Who knows. But I do, in general, sense Something Big is brewing out there in the historical aether.

Big Gretch For POTUS

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

In an ideal world, Biden would step down ASAP and we would have a President Harris who would be thrown into the mix of who would be the next Democratic nominee. But even if Biden just decided not to run again, I know who I would support — Gretchen Whitmer. And I think Josh Shapiro should be her veep.

Big Gretch

That would be my personal ideal ticket, if nothing else.

I would throw Jon Stewart into that mix, but I would prefer if he got some experience in government before he ran for POTUS.

But all of this is just mental masturbation. Fighting Joe Biden isn’t going anywhere and so we just have to hold our collective breath for a few months to see if he can not only beat malignant ding-dong Trump but actually function as a human being.

I just don’t want to have to get a flood of hot takes about the intricacies of the 25th Amendment if Biden’s health really deteriorates. But, hopefully, that won’t happen.

Every Revolution Eats Its Young

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It’s surreal to me that someone as good as Jon Stewart is now the subject of political vitriol from…the Left. People have been picking apart is first show back at They Daily Show…and a lot of people are pissed.

We’ve reached the point where anyone — ANYONE — who tries to give some sort of even handed approach to the issues that divide us…is yelled at for “bothsiderism.” Now that IS a real problem in American political discourse. A lot — A LOT — of people simply do not want to address the fact that MAGA is American Nazism and should be shunned accordingly.

A lot of people actually agree — or are complicit towards — American Nazism and they just can’t brook the idea of siding with the Blues against them. But from what I saw of Stewart’s show, he did a pretty good job of saying that both Biden and Trump have problems that we have to deal with, it’s just that Trump is worse because he’s an old, malignant ding-dong.

I continue to believe that in an ideal world Jon Stewart would one day become POTUS. Too bad the only way such a thing might happen at this point is if we had a Blue Glorious Revolution because Trump went full tyrant on us.

I hate violence. I don’t want that.