I Still Worry MAGA Is Going To Catch The Car When It Comes To Trans People

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I have a very serious vested interest when it comes to the macro safety of Trans people. I think of them as something of a political firebreak between myself and MAGA coming after, well, kooky people like me.

As it stands, MAGA seems to want to blame every fucking thing wrong with the entire world on Trans people. I am the first to admit that the center-Left has done itself no favors by being so touchy about “Trans rights.” But since Charlie Kirk’s murder, I have been feeling a whole lot more empathy for Trans people because of how fucked up MAGA is about them.

What is the goal of MAGA by demonizing Trans people? What’s the endgame? Is it just form follows function and fascists gotta have some group of people to have their 2 minutes of hate dedicated to? The absolute white hot hatred that MAGA has for the tiny sliver of America known as Trans people is just fucking bizarre, surreal.

But, here we are, with MAGA’s hatred for Trans people growing and growing and growing. At some point, ding-dong Trump is going to do something really dumb, which is thing, and THEN things grow dark. I could see him either declaring all Trans people terrorists or putting them in camps “for their own safety.”

Something dumb and ultimately ill-advised like that.

And THEN, gradually, all kooks — including me — will be rounded up by ICE and thrown into the campus with the Trans people and then they put us gas chambers or shoot us in the back of the head.

I really need to sell a novel so I can escape America. Sigh.

The Cancel Culture Is Coming From The MAGA Right…

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Wouldn’t you know it, because history loves irony, the MAGA Right is doing exactly what it has so worried about happening to itself — it’s trying to “cancel” anyone who doesn’t follow the party orthodoxy about MAGA martyr Charlie Kirk.

Now, this is of note to me for several different reasons. One, I have direct people in my life who are MAGA in no small part to their personal fear of being “canceled” by the woke cancel culture mob. So…lulz?

Also, we all know how this is going to play out. The infrastructure built to go after people “celebrating” Charlie Kirk’s murder will inevitably drift into a way to come after well, people like me.

People that fucking hate MAGA and aren’t afraid to say so. So, yeah, now the site may be devoted to people with the ill advised decision to celebrate Charlie Kirk’s murder, but, soon enough, anyone that MAGA doesn’t like for any reason could find themselves on those rolls.

And then, well, form follows function, we find ourselves in a camp. Ta-da!

Charlie Kirk As MAGA’s Horst Wessel

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I really do think that MAGA is American Nazism, even if it is an ideology not of expansion but of retrenchment. For the time being, I still have a First Amendment right to make such a comparison.

Horst Wessel

And I’m definitely not joking about or celebrating Charlie Kirk’s murder. His job was to do professionally what I do on this blog — give my political opinion.

But I’m talking about the “same, same, but different” dynamics of MAGAism and Nazism. The two are, in some ways, very similar. Very similar. Yes, in some ways they’re different — MAGA doesn’t want to take over the world — but in some ways they’re very similar: they both are going after the weakest elements of society in the name of the Leader.

So, back in the day, this guy named Horst Wessel died and he became THE Nazi martyr. And it doesn’t take a genius to see that Charlie Kirk is going to become something similar to MAGA. The psychological and emotional needs for both groups to have a martyr — regardless of the truth of the person’s murder — is eerily similar.

Anyway, the point is — things are going to get a lot worse now. Kirk is going to become a touchstone for MAGA going forward that is used to justify some pretty horrible things. I could see them figuring out a way to round up Trans people and put them in camps “for their own good.”

And then, presto, MAGA will expand the dragnet to regular old kooks like me and the next thing you know an ICE agent is shooting me in the back of the head in the name of Charlie Kirk. It really could happen, folks.

It’s happened before.

If I Have To Register With The Government Because I’m Bonkers Someone’s Going To Hear About It

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I have been very careful to hold my tongue, as it were, as Trump pushes us further and further into regular old autocracy. But with the news that JFK Jr. is floating the idea of “registering” autistic people…I’m given pause for thought.

I’m not autistic, but I am clinically bonkers.

As such, as we lurch farther and father into autocracy, it doesn’t seem like too much a stretch to think one day bonkers people like me will have to register with the government. Why this would be the case, but if they’re going to come after autistic people, then bonkers people sure as hell will be next.

I’m going to cause a ruckus every way I can if I have to register with the government. I’m not going to shut up and it could be the refusing to register could be my first actual real world “resistance.” Of course, I say this now and then I just turn around and do it anyway because I will feel pressure to do so by my far more normal relatives.

And what happens if there is criminal liability for not registering? Then what am I going to do? I guess I can at least get really angry on social media — I do that already — and continue to work on my novel.

Hopefully — hopefully — things won’t get that bad. Hopefully I won’t have to register with the government and I can finish my novel in peace.

The United States Is An Autocracy — Now What?

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

All my “hysterical doom shit” has come about, it seems. All that’s stopping Trump from doing some of the darker things I’ve worried about is he hasn’t figure out how to do them yet, or hasn’t gotten around to it yet.

So, there you are — the USA is an autocracy now.

I really need to get out of this country. I need to sell a best selling novel and get the fuck out of doge. Should that happen, I want to move somewhere hot an exotic where they speak English and have a pretty good medical system.

Or, hell, I’m so desperate, I’ll move to Great Britain if need be. I’m just done with worrying about ICE or the FBI swooping in an murdering me in cold blood because I won’t stop calling Trump a fucking cocksucker.

Anyway, we live in dark days, folks. And it’s only going to get worse.

A Perfect Storm

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

This summer, it seems as though we are determined to careen directly into a techno-government-economic perfect story clusterfuck. All three of those elements of our society could be “disrupted” in a big way for various reasons and it will all happen at the same, exact time.

The key thing everyone is missing, of course, is Trump would rather murder people in cold blood than relinquish power. And, what’s more, the press is so beholden and co-opted by the fascist Trump MAGA regime that whatever protests there are would have been REALLY BIG and last for a LONG TIME before they would be willing to give them the proper attention.

Though, I suppose if the Social Security Administration collapses then there is a good chance that Trump will be in SERIOUS TROUBLE….but not enough to be deposed. We’re suck with the fucker for the rest of his life.

So, lulz, my prediction is if there are some protests that Trump will just declare martial law and that will be that. That will give him the excuse he needs to start shooting people or rounding them up and maybe even going so far as to end regular elections — at least on the Federal level.

There’s a chance that he will let state and local elections continue as either a safety valve for discontent or make them so unfree and fair that they’re moot anyway.

Meanwhile, as all of this is happening, what might otherwise be a moderate recession might become a severe one as AI causes a huge disruption. The economy will stumble as huge swaths of it are revolutionized by extensive AI use.

At the moment, it seems as though programming and advertising will be two sectors that will be really disrupted in a huge way. They will either contract or be so revolutionized that thousands — millions? — of people simply will not be able to find a job in those fields anymore because of AI.

A lot of people are so wrapped up with how excited they are about the new developments in AI that they totally miss the cold, hard reality of this new world: I just don’t see how many jobs will be left in any number of fields because the changes are just happening too quickly.

This Musk Clusterfuck Is A Fake Out

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

What Trump wants to do is cram the US government with MAGA whack jobs to the point that even if somehow amazingly enough there is one day a Blue Administration, it won’t matter — the MAGA Deep State will ignore his or her orders. But he has to get rid of existing civil servants first, hence the need for Citizen Musk and all his bullshit going on at the moment.

Now, I just don’t believe we’re ever going to have free and fair Federal elections again. I know we’ve had some special elections since January, but I’m talking the midterms in a general way — they will happen, but they will be corrupt. The same goes for the 2028 presidential election.

Anyway, so unless something really big happens, this is it — the US government will be corrupt and full of crazy MAGA people who want to hurt as many people as possible, in as craven a way as possible to line not just their own pockets, but the pockets of plutocrats.

The Regime Risks Growing Arrogant

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

There is pride before the fall and I’m beginning to worry that Trump is going to really do something crazy with the FBI to the point that people might…begin to care?

If Trump actually makes good on his desires for a police state then, at least in some of the Blue States, this is going to cause some problems. I’m a man of peace, a man of ideas, but the idea of some sort of Blue revolution does seem in the greater-than-zero range right now.

I hope, I really hope, that doesn’t happen, but if Trump uses the FBI to literally snatch people — like me! — off the street then, well, we got a problem. But hopefully that won’t happen. Hopefully.

But it definitely, at least, SEEMS that we are headed in that direction. What will be interesting to see is the reaction on the part of the population to such thuggish shenanigans.

I suppose what Trump might do is purge the FBI to the point that he has to find whack jobs in police departments in Red States to fill all those high paying positions and then he uses them to do is bidding in Blue States. That causes mass protests, he calls in Red State National Guards and, tah-dah, we’re a military police state under martial law for the foreseeable future.

After The Fall

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The United States is now an autocracy. Everything I kept ranting about for years has or is happening. The only big miscalculation I made was about protests. I thought if Trump went full tyrant from the beginning that there would be a General Strike or mass protests.

But, fun fact, no.

I know we’re still early in Trump’s administration, but it is clear to me that even if there were massive protests, there’s a good chance that the mass media is so beholden to Trump that they wouldn’t even cover any of it. I do think a prolonged General Strike with very strong leadership and a clear agenda could probably bring Trump and his regime down…but that’s just not going to happen.

People on the center-Left are just too busy being keyboard warriors to do something as dramatic as actually risk their “lives and sacred honors” in the real world. So, here we are, an autocracy.

The only lingering question is who gets to be the guy or woman who is president for 40 odd years once Trump shuffles off this mortal coil. I honestly don’t know at the moment. Maybe it’s going to be Musk, his legal inability to have the job be damned? Who knows?

I suspect the person is going to be a Trump, one way or another. And given Trump’s fascination with being a king, I wonder what would happen if he styled himself an emperor. Would anything happen? Anything at all?

What If You Held Massive Protests Against Trump & The Press Didn’t Care

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

If Social Security checks aren’t cut on time, there’s a real risk of severe protests across the country. But my fear is that just because there are massive protests, doesn’t mean that the press will cover it.

In fact, I would go so far as to suggest that only if there’s a General Strike will and the economy crashes will anyone give a shit. And I just don’t see American being willing to risk their “lives and sacred honors” in the real world instead of being just keyboard warriors.