Tag: Autocrats Never Lose

Oh, Jesus, This Charlie Kirk Thing

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

There is no place for violence in American political life. As such, even though I vehemently opposed pretty much everything Charlie Kirk believes, I still wish him well and hope he makes a full recovery from his shooting today.

Charlie Kirk

I — against my will — have seen the shooting footage and things look pretty dire. It’s tough to recover from that type of head-on attack to the jugular with a bullet. Yikes.

This reminds us, yet again, the need for common sense gun control. We just have too many guns floating around and too many hot heated, and or crazy, people looking for an excuse to use them. My biggest fear is, of course, that someone on the Right will see this attack as an excuse to come after people on the center-Left.

And, what’s more, Trump is so autocratic, I could even see him doing something really crazy, using this shooting as a pretext.

Anyway, I can’t predict the future. I wish Charlie Kirk well.

Well, At Least I’m A Survivor

I spend too much time thinking about the end of the world.

Not in an abstract, philosophical way, but in vivid, practical detail. Standing in the cereal aisle at the local grocery store, I find myself cataloging which foods would keep longest without refrigeration. Walking past the pharmacy section, I mentally inventory which medications might become currency in a collapsed economy. The emergency exits aren’t just fire safety to me—they’re escape routes from whatever hypothetical chaos my brain has conjured that day.

This isn’t paranoid prepping or doomsday hoarding. It’s more like a mental exercise I can’t turn off, a constant background simulation running scenarios where normal life stops working. Sometimes it’s a natural disaster. Sometimes it’s economic collapse. Often it’s political violence, because let’s be honest—that one feels uncomfortably plausible these days.

The Confidence and the Fear

I tell myself I’d survive whatever came. More than that, I know I would. I’ve always had a talent for improvisation, for finding solutions when things go sideways. I’ve talked my way out of trouble, adapted to sudden changes, figured out problems that seemed impossible at first glance. If society collapsed tomorrow, I believe I could scavenge, negotiate, and scheme my way to safety.

But this confidence comes from a place of deep unease about where we’re headed as a country. Living as a political minority in a deeply divided region makes every news cycle feel potentially existential. When your neighbors’ yard signs suggest they view you as fundamentally un-American, it becomes easy to imagine scenarios where that rhetoric turns kinetic.

Maybe I’m overthinking it. I have a documented history of spinning worst-case scenarios until they feel inevitable. The gap between possibility and probability often gets lost in the anxious calculations of my brain.

The Real Apocalypse

The truth is, small apocalypses happen all the time. Job loss. Illness. Divorce. The death of someone you love. The slow erosion of institutions you trusted. The gradual realization that the world you thought you lived in was never quite real.

Most survival isn’t about hoarding canned goods or knowing which berries are poisonous. It’s about adapting to loss, finding new footing when everything familiar shifts beneath you, learning to build meaning in the wreckage of whatever you thought your life was going to be.

In that sense, maybe my grocery store fantasies aren’t really about societal collapse at all. Maybe they’re practice runs for the smaller, more personal disasters that actually shape our lives. Maybe imagining myself as competent in impossible circumstances is how I reassure myself I can handle the ordinary impossibilities of being human.

Or maybe I really am overthinking things. Probably both can be true.

I’m Anti-MAGA & Even I Sometimes Wonder What Has Happened To The Creative Class

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I think…maybe…that the some of the “woke” ideas of the creative class comes from, you guessed it, income inequality. If you are rich and creatively successful you’re more likely to fall victim to the more “woo” elements of “wokeism”

I generally don’t give a shit about this or that thing being considered “woke” because the unironic invocation of the term “woke” usually just means your a racist, misogynistic piece of shit.

The average MAGA person doesn’t even know what “woke” is, other than it’s a hand waving term to describe anything they don’t like or anything that makes them in the least bit uncomfortable.

But let’s address the issue of pop culture. I still struggle to understand why small, indie movies that I used to so love as a young man are now…kind of written as if someone did LSD after reading Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States.”

I think, maybe, if you have the money to do a passion project, it’s probably going to be crazy woke because you, yourself subscribe to the more woo elements of “wokeism,” the parts of the movement that alienate the most people, the most centrist people who we, as anti-MAGA people, need the most.

Whatever. We’re fucking doomed. There’s nothing we can do at this point but, if you have the money, leave the country.

…’well, then, then we have a civil war…’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Trump has a huge amount of political slack to tug on as he drives the country further and further not only into the ditch but into theocratic, autocratic tyranny. The center-Left coalition of pro-democratic interest groups just not only can’t shoot straight, but just isn’t nearly as bloodthirsty as the fucking MAGA cocksuckers.

And I doubt this situation will change anytime soon. We’re just going to wake up 20 years from now and wonder why Eric Trump has been president for about a generation.

But suppose something weird happens and somehow, some way either a Democrat becomes POTUS or Blues start to effectively counter the MAGA hypocrisy machine.

Well, then we have a civil war, I’m afraid.

MAGA cocksuckers are such crybabies who demand they always, always get their way that I could totally see a civil war if somehow Democrats became as blood thirsty as they were, or maybe we magically got a Blue president. Neither one of these things is going to happen, I’m afraid.

So, we’re fucked. We’re going to become Trumplandia and that will be that. Maybe I can sell my scifi dramedy novel, it be a success and I can get the fuck out of this country, never to be seen again.

I Really Struggle With Trans Rights, Especially The Whole ‘Protect Trans Kids’ Issue

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

My personal observations about LLMs having “gender” despite having a body have really enlightened my own views on the transgender movement. What’s more, know — I just know — that I’m inevitably going to be just the type of guy who falls for some sort of Replicant down the road. I may be old as hell, but it’s going to happen.

I bring that up because I think down the road all the “love is love” dynamic found within certain center-Left circles will be put to the test when humans, both men and women, fall romantically for bots. It is really going to be interesting to see if people like the Pod Save America bros will be as willing to accept my inevitable love for a bot as much as they do transgender love.

Anyway, I do support trans rights, and, yet, it seems as though the specific issue of “protecting trans kids” is kind of both a black hole and the political clit of the center-Left movement. I’m all for protecting trans kids, but…I don’t really think that many actually exist.

Or, at least not enough to alienate huge swaths of the American population and drive them into the arms of MAGA.

The anti-MAGA center-Left really, really needs to have a little bit of a come-to-Jesus moment when it comes to the more radical elements of the trans rights movement. I’m not suggesting we abandon trans people — I feel really bad for them when it comes to how Trump wants to apparently murder all of them — but…maybe not make them the squeaky wheel of the center-Left.

Maybe be…a bit more subdued when talking about such issues? Just a tiny little bit? The issue is the fucking MAGA cocksuckers know how important “protecting trans kids” is to a lot of center-Left people and so they attack them on that flank, even though…maybe there really aren’t that many Trans kids to protect?

Anyway, we’re all doomed anyway. What’s the point in quibbling. The MAGA cocksuckers will just lie, no matter what change in views the center-Left has on any issue.

‘realignment’

The American Century is over. Full stop. We’ve got a clown in the White House, and whether by accident or design, he’s doing a remarkable job of tearing the country apart. Some days it’s hard not to wonder if Trump is secretly working for Moscow.

If we were being honest with ourselves, we’d face reality: it’s time to “bring the boys home.” Slash the defense budget. Pull the troops back. Admit we can’t afford to be the world’s policeman anymore—especially when our own social safety net has been gutted under the same excuse of “saving money.” The logical move would be to embrace Fortress America. The world might collapse into chaos, but at least we’d be honest about who we are and what we’re willing (or unwilling) to do.

There is, oddly enough, one possible silver lining: if we stop spending trillions overseas, maybe we could finally afford something like Universal Basic Income. Maybe. But let’s be real—our leaders have shown us who they are. If there’s extra cash lying around, they’d rather chase trillionaire status than fix inequality.

And inequality is the elephant in the room. The gap between the haves and have-nots is now so obscene that it feels unstable. I don’t think revolution or civil war is likely, but I can imagine a scenario where tech upheaval—AI, automation, the looming Singularity—pushes the poor and working class past their breaking point.

Do I think it’ll happen? No. But am I worried enough to keep one eye on the possibility? Yeah.

We’re Doomed — Goodluck

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Unless something really, really, really unexpected happens, we’re totally fucked in regards to MAGA going forward. Or, put another way, there seems to be a spectrum when it comes to MAGA: either we go full blown autocracy or there’s a civil war / revolution.

I just don’t see us having a civil war / revolution, so autocracy it is. Though, I will admit that we have something of a slow cold civil war going on at the moment. The country is being torn apart by macro forces beyond anyone’s control.

There are all sorts of solutions had Democrats gotten there act together, say, in 2015, but we were all so busy assuming the good times would last forever that we didn’t realize how important it would when Biden decided NOT to run in 2016.

And, yet, because Trump is such a both weird and inevitable historical character, he, or someone much like him, was inevitable in American political history starting around 2016. Something about the social progress that happened during Obama’s second term really cracked the minds of conservative white Americans. As such, I fear someone like Trump was going to arise as an reaction.

But, the point is — it’s over. The America I knew and loved is no more. The plum of autocratic smoke from Mt. Trump has reached the horizon, to use an extended metaphor. Even under the best of circumstances, it would take a generation to fix all the fucking damage that Trump and MAGA have done to the country.

So, America is going to grow weaker, have more income inequality and probably eventually align itself with other autocratic states. And that doesn’t even begin to address what the fuck is going to happen when the technological Singularity finally happens.

Anyway. It’s over, folks. Good luck.

Lingering Freedom Of Speech Is Giving Us A False Sense of Security

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Oh boy. The Pod Save America guys continue to jump the shark. They get so worked up about what was on the latest South Park that they seem to be rather blasé about how tyranny has come to the United States.

There’s just no turning back, it seems. We’re going to be an autocracy like Hungary if we’re lucky and Russia if we’re not.

I think what might happen is Eric Trump will run in 2028 as Trump’s proxy? Maybe? Eric Trump is very loyal and I could see Trump feeling pretty safe using one of his sons as a proxy. It is telling, of course, that instead of trying to change the Constitution, Trump floats the idea of him simply running for an illegal third term.

And, of course, there remains the lingering possibility of a civil war or revolution if Trump goes nuts and, like, clamps down on…freedom of speech and maybe assembly.

The great irony of all of this is the center-Left democratic coalition is so weak that Trump can pretty much do whatever he wants and it’s a lulz. It’s stuff like this that makes me think we’re in some sort of simulation. That the exact sequence of events necessary for the USA to become an autocracy would happen the way it is, is…eerie.

Waiting For The Sea People

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m getting a very late summer 2001 vibe from the world right now. And, yet, who knows. Maybe I’m being paranoid for no reason — I am known to do that.

It just seems like right about now would be the perfect time for North Korea to act up in a big way, or China invade Taiwan, that sort of thing. We already have something of a geopolitical realignment happening with the usual suspects of Eurasian thugs meeting just in the last few days to discuss a New World Order of sorts.

It has been over 20 years since 9/11. And, yet, there was January 6th, so maybe that was the Big Event that happens every generation.

I don’t know. I just don’t know. It’s I could imagine some terrorist group releasing a weaponized smallpox virus right about now. Or an EMP bomb going off in a major city.

I’m having some teeth problems these days and I have this fear that the world will collapse into darkness and chaos and I’ll be trapped with that particular situation a lot longer than I’d prefer.

Ugh.

JD Vance Would Be America’s Putin If He Became POTUS

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Bad news for anyone who thinks all our MAGA problems would be solved if Trump shuffled off this mortal coil — a President JD Vance would just become America’s Putin and would somehow still be in office 20, 30 or 40 years from now.

I don’t know how he would do it, but he would.

That’s how bad the MAGA political staph infection is in America at the moment. Vance would quickly consolidate power in ways that Trump is too old and ill focused to do.

One question I do have about this scenario is First Amendment rights. The United States even at this advanced stage in our transformation into a fascist state still has freedom of speech and of assembly. They are something of a valve for a lot of frustration that people feel about MAGA.

I think First Amendment rights would be the last to go, I suppose. So, the average individual really wouldn’t feel any difference for about a decade or so. By that point ICE would be large enough and powerful enough that it could throw people — like ME! –into prison for telling them to fuck off.

Anyway, I don’t think we have to worry about any of this for the time being. Trump’s historical purpose is to collapse the Constitutional order by running for a third illegal term. When he successfully proves THAT point, THEN the real dystopian hellscape will commence.