I’ve started to shave my face again and its inexplicable. It makes me wonder if my mind may know something that I don’t know about my future. I’m not a spiritual person or believe in any New Age bullshit, but I do believe that your mind can give you a heads up that sometime may be about to change in your life.
But anyway, I’m probably wrong. I’m always wrong.
I will note, however, that occasionally, usually right about now in the year, something mildly interesting happens to me. But it could be the rest of this year will just be me working on this novel project.
I think that’s what I should focus on the most at this point — just keep my head down and try to work as hard as possible on these novels.
Republicans are notoriously bad at governance. So, it’s possible that when one of the more loony members of their caucus gets up on Day One of the new, Republican controlled House in 2023 and puts forth some Articles of Impeachment, they could very well pass.
And then, lulz, out of sheer embarrassment, Republican House leadership will send the Articles of Impeachment over to the newly-Republican controlled Senate and we spend far, far, far longer than we should in 2023 sitting through a Biden Impeachment trial.
Then, of course, Republicans things might break their way and Republicans might think up something with a microscopic grain of merit to go after Biden with and we’ll have Impeachment Trial Number 2.
First, we have to accept that Red States starting a civil war at this point is silly. They’re politically ascendant and have every reason to just be patent and wait while we slowly become a Russian-style autocratic state. And YET, day after day I continue to get pings to this blog from people in the more rural portions of Red States from people obviously very interested in my dystopian hellscape civil war scenarios.
So, how, exactly, could Red States, rather than Blue States, start a civil war?
Well, one thing we have to do is define “civil war.” A bunch of good old boys grabbing their AR-15s and shooting dem dar librals is NOT a civil war. Maybe something akin to a second insurrection, but not a civil war. And, really, at this point, I think the Reds who want a civil war bandy the term around just because it’s the worst possible thing they can think of in response to this or that thing that Blues have done to annoy them this time.
But I’ll give the shithead Reds what they want — a civil war started by their side, not by my side. Here goes.
All I got, at this point, is things grow so white hot during the coming impeachment of both Biden and Harris after the Reds take control of Congress that Red States flip out and begin to leave the Union. This, but even more so if Biden for some reason succumbs to old age and it’s President Harris and Speaker Trump we’re talking about.
If Speaker Trump, in the middle of the impeachment trial of President Harris starts to rant about secession (or reTruths something about it) then, yeah, you fucking cocksucker Reds, you might just get your Second American Civil War.
Otherwise, lulz. It either doesn’t happen and we just become an autocracy, or it’s the BLUEs who start it because of a Certification Crisis around 2024 – 2025.
The only thing saving this novel series at the moment is I’ve both invested so much in it and know the general universe so well that it makes no sense to start from scratch.
I guess, if anything, I have to overcome my embarrassment about how big this thing has grown. I mean, six novels, come on. But I think if I just focus on the first three novels and much more specifically just the first novel, then I think — I know — I’ll be ok.
Some of all of this comes from me simply not knowing what I’m doing. No matter what story I was writing, I would face the same type of problems. As such, I just have to keep going. I might have to delay my timeline a little bit, but as long as I’m moving forward, I’m ok.
And, I’m moving forward.
I have a huge portion of this first novel’s outline finished. All I have to do is plug the new holes in it and move forward. I also have to come up with a second book out of whole cloth, but I’m creative, I can do that. But the key issue is — not only are each of these books devoted to one thing and far more simple than they were, they are all thematically connected.
The first three books share a themed, the last three books share a theme.
I continue to be idly interested in working on some scifi, but it’s difficult for me to go down that path because of how much time I would have to spend thinking up a universe and characters to populate it. AND, there would be the aforementioned problems with basic storytelling that I continue to have.
The conditions will soon exist for a massive, royal culsterfuck in the United States. Joe Biden is not a young man. And if the mid-terms go as poorly as we all fear, there is a real chance that Republicans will control both the House and Senate in 2023 – 2025.
Here’s the rather apocalyptic political situation we could find ourselves in: for some reason Biden shuffles off this mortal coil between 2023 – 2025 and there’s no veep. It’s very easy to assume that Republicans — being spiteful dickheads — will simply not let now President Harris pick a veep.
Depending on when Biden is no more, either we have Speaker Trump frothing at the mouth to impeach President Harris for just existing, or we have him on the sidelines doing the same, demanding the same thing.
Such a high charged impeachment situation, well, THAT could be the thing to spark a civil war if it careening out of control. It would be another way that states might begin to leave the Union sooner than 2024 -2025.
But the point remains — the United States is very unstable for various reasons. The question remains — do we simply shrug and turn into a Russian style autocracy or do we have some sort of very blood, very costly, very horrific “national divorce.”
Just in the last few days, everything has collapsed with this first novel in the process of transitioning between first draft and second draft. As such, I’m going to focus all my attention on the first novel (which has been again split into two) and see the first three novels as a trilogy and the second three novels as a trilogy.
That way, everything is thematically connected.
But I’m going to look at it this way — there are three novels that I’m going to really focus on then three more novels that I will only think about all that much if somehow the first trilogy is a success.
That way, I won’t feel overwhelmed by all this writing I feel obligated to write.
I’m waiting to start writing the second draft of the first novel in this five novel project. I really want to just start writing NOW, but I am beginning to understand why they tell you to wait a month before working on your second draft.
It really does help a lot to clear your mind some before you turn around and start working on the second draft. You need to decompress. You need to also do a lot of reading and development before you throw yourself back into things. It’s too easy to get too excited and grow overwhelmed. Then you experience burnout.
So, I’m going to try to do some reading and development for a little bit longer. I really love, love, love the writing element of novel production when the conditions are right. They aren’t always right, but sometimes they are. Anyway, I’m going to force myself to read and develop for a little bit longer.
For some time, I have suggested that all America needs is a slight push and all hell is going to break loose. And I still think that. There are two reasons why I believe this to be the case.
One is, I continue to get a trickle of people to this blog looking at my hysterical “terribly negative” predictions of doom and gloom for America’s future, specifically the possibility of civil war. Not that it’s all that many people who are thinking this, but there definitely are a number of people floating around the country thinking enough about civil war that they’re searching for it online.
The other is each new mass causality event in the United States seems to make people even more anxious than they already are. To me, that seems to indicate that the nation is a lot more on edge than it has been up until recently.
As such, it’s at least possible that if some big historic event happened in the US that left us all wondering Which Side Did It long enough for the guns to come out.
Or not. It could be that that isn’t at all what is going to happen. It could be that I’m overestimating how fucked up things are in the US and it will be a lot later, like around 2024 – 2025 before everything is primed for something catastrophic if we get just a little bit more pressure put on our society.
First, I have to cry a bit into my beer because of how young Andy Weir is compared to me. Ugh. I’m an Old. But I just finished reading his novel Project Hail Mary and I thought it was really, really good.
It took a bit to get into it, but once I did, I read it fairly quickly. It’s a novel that would be very, very easy to film. And it is yet another piece of content that not only helps me be a better storyteller but also inspires me to think seriously about putting a plot on a concept I’ve had for 15 years or so now. Something about how he handled the concept of one person saving the world triggered my synapses.
But, I do have a few quibbles with the novel.
There was no sex in the novel, not even suggested outside of a conversation so lulz, it could easily be a YA novel, or be for the same type audience. There’s nothing wrong with that — I’m not dinging him for the lack of sex — but I am making note of it.
Second, he has a far, far more optimistic opinion of the human condition than I do. Even just getting Americans to go along with saving the world — even if it was beyond a shadow of a doubt that that is what was going on — would take up a third of any novel on a similar subject I might write.
And the third act was really, really good. And, yet, I did not get the catharsis that maybe I might have gotten had things gone another way. But I suppose because he did that with The Martian, he wanted to go a different direction.
But I was very pleased with Project Hail Mary, especially as a fan of scifi.
I’m honestly at a loss as to what’s going to happen to the United States between now and, say, January 2025. All I know is, it’s going to be big and I mean Big. America will never be the same, no matter what happens because a number of enormous, macro trends are all coming to a head as part of the 2024 presidential election cycle.
I dunno.
But, really, I have no idea what is going to happen.
Why?
The Two Sides Are Hardening Their Positions No matter what happens politically in the United States going forward, it’s going to happen in the context of the two sides growing more and more absolute in their views. There just isn’t any middle ground anymore. American politics is no longer in a death spiral — it just isn’t working at all anymore. So, either the MAGA New Right seizes some sort of total autocratic control or we have a civil war. No middle ground. No Viable Center-Left Leadership There are a least a dozen would-be autocrats within the MAGA New Right ranks. There are a dozen men and women who, should Trump hand pick them as his successor, could finish the job of turning America into a Russian-style autocracy and still be in power in 20 years. But, within the center-Left…there’s just nobody. There’s AOC…and? She’s kind of too young and should might kind of be knocked out of commission in the near term when she inevitable has her (1) one child after getting married between now and 2024. Or not. What the fuck do I know. But the center-Left has a real problem when the only leadership I can think of all comes from the ranks of the “Radical Moderate” #NeverTrumpers. Not, great, Bob! Trump I simply can not game out what’s going to happen with the USA as long as Trump may run for office either as Speaker in 2022 or POTUS in 2024 (and or both) I just don’t know. He kind of has the fate of the United States in his tiny, tiny little hands at the moment. MAGA Is Ascendant And Yet They Want Political Violence This is a real mystery to me. The MAGA New Right craves political violence, even though they’re on track to get everything they want over the course of the next generation or so. But here we are, with cry baby snowflake MAGA people whining about “the woke cancel culture mob” even though that, in a sense, is something of a joke.
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