Tag: Autocrats Never Lose

I’m Using ‘The Enteral Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’ As My Screenwriting ‘Textbook’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I continue to drift towards my goal of finishing a novel so I can query it in the fall of 2024 — just as the so-called “Fourth Turning” is going to happen. Ugh. Anyway, I also want to have a fall back “second creative track.” As such, I’ve decided that screenwriting is going to be it.

Just as I have used Stieg Larsson’s “The Girl Who Played With Fire” as my “textbook” for the novel I’m writing, so, too, do I plan to use Charlie Kaufman’s “The Enteral Sunshine of The Spotless Mind” as my “textbook” for screenwriting. I think I’m probably going to do something similar with the Star Wars screenplay at some point soon.

I need to understand how to properly read a screenplay. I’ve already found bouncing back and forth between novel writing and screenwriting has helped my writing a lot. Something about thinking about how to structure a screenplay aids in helping me see things in a different way with the novel.

Anyway, something about the fall / winter season coming (along with a lot of more darkness) has caused me to feel a little unnerved. I’m still faraway, so close with the novel. It’s fun to just totally switch gears on a creative level and read about something completely different and new, while staying within the general writing skillset.

I hate the fact that I don’t have enough structure in my life. I have a rather idyllic situation going on at the moment and I spend way too much of my time just daydreaming and drifting towards my goal.

What’s more, I know damn well that this unusual — a great — situation that I find myself in can last for only so long. Something is going to throw everything out of whack soon enough and I’ll be smarting that I didn’t squeeze out every once of creativity I could when I had the opportunity.

I wonder what it will be. Maybe it will be The Fourth Turning, maybe it will be having to go underground when weaponized ICE agents start to hunt me down for thinking ding-dong Tyrant Trump is a fucking cocksucker.

My First Novel Is Growing Significantly Better

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Another day, another few thousand words written on the very beginning of the third draft of my first novel. I feel like I’ve been spinning my wheels for months and months and months to the point that I’m growing rather alarmed. I’m so alarmed that I definitely feel in put-up-or-shut up mode.

My dream title for my first novel.

Having said all that, I’m beginning to feel more confident that I may — may — be just about to zoom through the story because I’ve finally established re-imagined relationships between the major characters. I’ve fleshed out some characters that were just meant to be minor characters. I’ve also leaned into the duality of my heroine’s professional life.

Which, I think, makes it a far more interesting read, even if for marketing purposes all anyone will want to talk about is how my heroine owns a strip club. But, I go where the muse takes me and that’s where I want to go. I’m willing to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, if need be.

One key reform I think I’m going to do with this latest version of the third draft is I’m not going to be so quick to re-read what I’ve written. While doing that has really helped make the story a lot better, it has also led to significant drift in the story simply because I keep seeing ways to make the story better.

There is a reason why they say all novels are “abandoned” rather than “finished.”

The story is never going to be “perfect,” it just has to be “done” and “good enough” that I can query it to a literary agent without being embarrassed at how bad it is.

The whole issue of querying is beginning to loom large in my mind. It’s very much uncharted territory. I really need to finish this third draft no later than, say, about March. That will give me time to figure out how to properly query and to find “comp” books, etc, etc.

It will be a whole new era in this project.

Having said that, I continue to be interested in learning about screenwriting. I have even gone so far as to print out the screenplay of “The Enteral Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” to use as my “textbook.” I probably will do the same thing soon with Star Wars.

I have a number of REALLY GOOD screenplay concepts rolling around in my mind. But, just as with the novel, I apparently seem determined to just drift towards my goal without any structure.

All this as I worry that just as I’m trying to query my first novel in late 2024, the whole world will implode / explode and I’ll be kicking myself for not learning how to use Ham Radio.

I’m Growing Worried

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

We’re now almost exactly a year away from one of the most election days in American history. At the moment, it seems, we’re careening towards a crisis not seen since 1860. This crisis could manifest itself in one of several ways.

The most obvious way is, lulz, we simply drift into autocracy with our eyes wide open and shrug as we transition from the halfway situation of being an “anocracy” to full blown autocracy. Trump is re-elected, he goes full tyrant and there’s no reaction on the part of the majority of the population. Of course, that doesn’t mention the 1 million smug Twitter liberals who will flee the country en masse as soon as it’s clear Trump is going to transition us into autocracy.

That scenario, for the time being, seems to be the most likely one.

Alas, there are some other, far darker scenarios that we have to contend with.

One scenario is Trump is re-elected, goes full tyrant and, well, he gets so absolutely bad that there is some sort of “Glorious Revolution” on the part of the populace — maybe with the help of the U.S. Military. I could see the organizers of such a coup using a novel — to say the least — interpretation of the 14th Amendment insurrection clause to kick Trump to the curb by saying he was never legitimately president to begin with.

That might be the legal fig leaf that would allow the New Patriots to get the job done and still be able to sleep at night. But there would be a spectrum with this scenario, with there being a “light touch” revolt that has the specific aim of getting rid of Trump all the way to a far more general collapse of the country because MAGA freaks out.

But, wait, there’s more.

Another situation would be Trump loses, and starts to demand a National Divorce with the specific intent of him personally avoiding going to jail. Then we have a repeat of 1860-1861 with states leave the Union one by one and a massive fucking clusterfuck.

Meanwhile, there is a small chance that rather than wait until Trump goes full tyrant, Blues freak out and do something akin to a civil war / revolution of their own starting as soon as Trump is named the winner.

But my thinking on this has evolved. I no longer think that Blues would cause a civil war. A revolution, maybe, but not a civil war. It’s just the temperament of Blues to want to start a new nation. Blues like me just want to reform and remake the nation that we have.

One last thing — never underestimate the possibility that Reds will, once Trump is in office, begin the process of calling a Constitutional Convention. I think that’s a real possibility.

Anyway. Good luck. You’ve got a year. Use it wisely.

What If Trump Goes ‘Full Tyrant’ During His Second Term?

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

In general, Americans are collectively pretty chill. It takes a whole lot to rile us up. We’re not French, after all. In fact, the last time we really got ornery was in the late 1960s, early 1970s in the context of the Vietnam War. Once The Draft ended, then, lulz, everyone just wanted to shake their booty and being politically engaged was a thing of the past.

A book I really enjoyed as a young man is William Safire’s “Freedom,” which is a huge tome of a novel that deals with the early days of the Civil War leading up to the Emancipation Proclamation. The book deals with what I would call “Radical Moderates.” This is epitomized by when one of the characters says, “We’re all Abolitionists now.”

The average person in 2023 has no comprehension as to how radical freeing the slaves being a war aim was in 1862. So, in a sense, if you want to know what a Radical Moderate is, just think of how President Lincoln only gradually warmed up to the idea of freeing the slaves.

ANYWAY.

The point of all that is — if Trump goes totally bonkers and full tyrant, what happens? Anything? All the signs point to Trump winning in 2024 and then, in a very, very fucking erratic manner, shoving tyranny down the throats of Americans in an unprecedented manner.

And, as an aside, remember — if Trump does happen to lose, there’s really good chance that he will single-handedly provoke a civil war in an effort to avoid going to jail. Let that sink in.

This is where I note that general macro political trends are for the United States to drift (peacefully) into autocracy. It’s a gimmie at this point. Now, in late 2023, the United States is an “anocracy” or even, maybe, an autocracy without an autocrat.

So, if any other Republican was in Trump’s position, we would simply wake up on day 20 years from now — or less — and wonder why the United States is invading Canada to free it from the “woke mind virus.” But this is Trump we’re talking about.

He’s so stupid, lazy and idiotic that what should be a historical gimmie, could turn into a massive fucking clusterfuck. But, again, this all raises the question — how tyrannical can Trump get before there’s some sort of “Glorious Revolution” lead by Radical Moderates?

And, remember, pushing things to the limit is kind of Trump’s thing. The man has been a one man stress test to our entire political system, ranging from the courts to the election process itself. So, yeah, I could see Trump going stark raving mad and tyrannical at some point in his second term to the point that, say, there’s a General Strike of some sort that might bring the nation to its knees.

This, of course, raises an interesting idea — might the U.S. Military step in? I don’t think so. And, yet, if Trump was running around demanding the U.S. Military to do things to the domestic population that were clearly illegal and un Constitutional….maybe they would step in?

An interesting way that Trump might be deposed is the an novel use of the 14th Amendment. Remember, the Radical Republicans of Reconstruction were able to fuck with the South for a few years by saying the did not have a “republican form of government.” As such, if Trump went crazy and started to do things that the U.S. Military simply could not brook, it’s at least possible that the legal fig leaf that would be used would be that Trump was illegally in office to begin with because he was in violation of the 14th Amendment.

But all of that is just a speculative daydream at the moment. I think that while Trump is likely to go full bonkers tyrant the moment he’s in office again, that, in the end, he’ll solve all his problems with the U.S. Military by demanding a Constitutional Convention that rewrites the Constitution in the likeliness of MAGA.

If that happens, may God have mercery on all our souls.

Trump Is A Symptom, Not A Cause — Twitter Liberals Need To Get A Grip When It Comes To The ‘What If Hillary Won?’ Counter-Factual

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I have no special insight into anything, but I was alive in 2016. And Republicans made it clear in the days leading up to the 2016 Election that lulz, they were fully prepared to simply not allow ANYONE to fill a SCOTUS vacancy unless they were MAGA.

As such, Twitter liberals need to shut the fuck up about “Oh, if only Hillary Clinton had won in 2016.” Trump is nothing more than a symptom of some severe macro problems in the American political system that would have caused SOMEONE like him to become president starting early as 2016 and no later than 2024.

In some respects, you can’t even “blame” Obama for Trump. The forces that allowed Bill Clinton to win in 1992 also caused Trump to come into being. In general, America’s fucked because of the forces that bring down all empires sooner or later.

The only question in my mind at the moment is are we going to somehow pull off a third hat trick and — after some turbulence starting in late 2024, early 2025 — renew our democratic traditions and grow even stronger. Or are we going to slouch into a MAGA autocracy. Or, worse yet, we bomb ourselves into oblivion without any clear endgame.

But the point remains — Twitter liberals are being crybabies to pine for some alternative universe where Hillary Clinton won in 2016. I remember the passion that the Trump Train had behind it in 2016. If he had lost, we wouldn’t know what a horrible president he would be and he would definitely win in 2020. So, all the horrible shit that happened in 2017 – 2021 would just have been punted down the road four years.

GET A FUCKING GRIP TWITTER LIBERALS.

MAGA Mike Is Doing America A Favor By Being Who He Is

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The thing about Speaker MAGA Mike Johnson is the more I learn about him, the more I know my conservative relatives — whom I love dearly — will love, love love him. I would even go so far as to suggest that they will soon be chomping at the bit for malignant ding-dong Trump to name the Speaker his 2024 veep choice.

The thing about MAGA Mike is he’s pretty much just your typical modern MAGA person. A solid 38% of the electorate loooooooves what he has to say on the culture wars and the “vibes” that are tearing the country at the moment.

After much, much, much, much time brooding over what the fuck is going wrong with America on a systemic basis, I think I may have it figured out. A combination of growing income inequality, the browning of America and women’s economic agency is tearing the country apart on an existential basis.

The browning of America is really key to America’s instability because it feeds into a white identity politics narrative. America is zooming towards a tipping point where we’re kind of like South Africa in the sense that a minority of the country controls a majority of the political and economic power. This is a very fucked up situation, no matter which nation it happens to occur in.

Anyway, we’re reaching a moment in time when Americans collectively figure out what our future will be for generations to come. Do we become an autocratic MAGA state of blood and soil, or do we allow things like the browning of America and women becoming economic equals happen as they should?

I have a fear, of course, that we’re going to “take it to the streets,” if you will. We’re going to have at it against each other in our struggle to figure out what type of America we want to be. If Trump becomes POTUS again in 2025, the possibility of a Blue “Glorious Revolution” and a reactionary counter-revolution on the part of MAGA grows by leaps and bounds.

But if it’s NOT Trump who is our MAGA POTUS, then I think we simply shrug and become an autocratic white Christian ethnostate with a thin gloss of lingering 1st Amendment rights.

Imagining An American ‘Glorious Revolution’ Against Tyrant Trump Starting In Late 2024, Early 2025

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I hate violence. Hell, I hate conflict of any sort. But, as we enter being about one year away from the so-called “Fourth Turning,” I find myself thinking about what might be the BEST case scenario in a huge, massive clusterfuck.

Now, in real terms, I think the United States just slipping peacefully into autocracy is probably the absolute best scenario of a wide rage of really shitty outcomes. And, yet, if you think about what might be best if we want to remain a functioning democracy, there is the “Glorious Revolution” option.

This is all very speculative and I still can’t really game it out, but, in general, this would be where things get so fucking bad under Tyrant Trump that the 60% of the American population that wants to remain the “land of the free” rises up and brings Trump down, MAYBE with the help of the U.S. Military.

But it would go something like this — starting in January 2025, Tyrant Trump lives up to his name and he’s so full of hate and the need for revenge that a lot of common folk who, to date, have lulzed Trump’s tyrannical inclinations will sit up and take notice.

I think of these people as political “Radical Moderates” As such, even though about 1 million smug Twitter liberals will have left the country by that point, enough of us Poors join forces that we manage to bring Tyrant Trump’s tyrannical regime to its knees.

I could see not only mass protests as things got progressively worst under Tyrant Trump, but maybe, just maybe, that unicorn of American political levers — the General Strike. Americans are so chill — even under duress — that it’s really difficult to imagine something as out of the ordinary as a General Strike.

But we live in unprecedented times. And, according to political science, all you need is a motivated 5% of the population to bring down the government. So, it’s easy to imagine if Trump somehow managed to sign a complete, and total, ban on abortion of any sort in the context of pulling out of NATO and South Korea and God only knows what the fuck else, that women, if nothing else, might collectively decide to YOLO it and just not go into work until Trump is out of power.

Now, before this seems like too rosy a scenario, there would obviously be an equal and opposite reaction on the part of MAGA if, say, Congress was actually thinking of doing something about Trump. So, things would really be totally chaotic as the two sides tore the country apart.

What might START as a “Glorious Revolution” against Tyrant Trump, might endup as just a regular old fucking Second American Civil War.

So, as I mentioned before, lulz. I guess I’m cool with us slipping peacefully into a MAGA-themed autocracy.

Of MAGA, Incels & Sexbots

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It definitely seems as though we’re rushing towards a moment where at least two macro issues will fuse — sexbots and Incels. So, in the future, it’s possible that Incels will simply have relationships with pliant sexbots rather than have any relationships with women at all.

Ugh.

What’s worse, it’s possible that once MAGA succeeds into banning all birth control, they will go after this alliance. MAGA’s “moralistic state” will regulate the use of sexbots to the point that they can’t be used as…sexbots.

And all of this definitely seems to possible a precursor to MAGA finding a moralistic reason for regulating AI out of existence. I think this is part of a broader move on MAGA’s part to see AI as a threat to “traditional values,” be they economic or moral.

Anyway. No one listens to me.

‘The Moralistic State’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It seems clear to me that fucking MAGA Nazi Republicans want to replace the “administrative state” with the “moralistic state.” There will be a 30% VAT rather than any form of income tax. Meanwhile, all sorts of white angry Christian morals will be imposed on hapless Americans who just want to be able to edit a tweet.

That, at the moment, seems our fate.

At least on a macro level, that’s what we’re drifting towards. That move towards a moralistic state has a huge amount of historical-political momentum behind it. And, honestly, as much I as I don’t want to even think about it, the only way to avoid such a horrible fate is a massive political clusterfuck in the guise of something like a second American civil war or revolution.

I don’t want that. I hope it doesn’t come to that. But….oh boy…..

A Hot Take On Speaker MAGA Mike Johnson