Tag: Fourth Reich

What Is The Deal With Tech Bro David Sacks?

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I really enjoy listening to the All-In podcast because it challenges me, forces me to listen to people I generally don’t agree with politically. They are interesting, intelligent people who just so happen to find fascism way, way, too palatable. When your metrics for assessing something miss the issue of what is morally right, your politics are all fucked up.

Because, literally, the exact same reasoning that several people on the All-In podcast give for various degrees of support for Trump and MAGA could have been used by German industrialists in the 1930s.

But it’s David Sacks who shocks me with his consistently bad hot takes. His politics are identical to a relative of mine and so it is useful to listen to his bullshit for the next time I find myself debating politics with said relative. Sacks is “all in” with being a fifth columnist who supports Russia over Ukraine and the United States.

He is very intense and seems to have a huge fucking chip on his shoulder. It’s all very weird. But he’s cogent enough in his terrible hot takes that you find yourself listening to him and weighing different counter-arguments you might use to point out his hypocrisy.

Anyway, the point is — I’m growing very alarmed at the recent shift in politics among Tech Bros. They are very receptive to America’s new brand of fascism and, in the end, when we maybe need their support to stop the last seizure of power by fascists, they won’t be there for us.

On A Macro Basis, America Is Fucked

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Macro historical events are extremely difficult for the average person to process in real time. If you were living through WW2, you might have some general sense of the historical narrative happening around you but it wouldn’t be until it was all over that your mind could give any of it value.

The same with what’s happening with the United States at the moment.

We’re lurching towards some sort of climax around late 2024, early 2025 but at the moment none of us really know what that climax might be. Will we have a civil war or will we simply slip peacefully into autocracy? Or is even possible that we all may be punked by history and we manage to punt all of our macro problems down the road one more election cycle.

At this point, we’re too far out and I have no idea.

I have a hunch, but nothing set in stone that I really believe is going to happen one way or another. I say this because there remain way too many variables. Will Biden run again? Will DeSantis beat Trump? And if he does, will Trump bounce to the Patriot Party?

All of those things, and more, are very much up in the air at the moment. I generally believe at the moment that we’re going to slip peacefully into some sort of autocracy — be it Hungary-style or Nazi Germany style — and that will be that. Nothing will change at first, but soon enough the United States will no longer be a traditional Western democracy and millions of smug very online wealthy Twitter liberals who are the prime audience of Crooked Media podcasts will flee to the four corners of the globe.

Or not. I just don’t know yet. But I do think that the next 18 months or so could be very, very bumpy because of how many people the Republican House intends to impeach, if nothing else. Republicans just can’t govern and much of 2023 Republicans are going to do everything in their power to prove that they have no policy agenda other than riding the culture wars to ultimately seizing power and establishing permanent white Christian minority rule.

The American Right’s Rage Is Real

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

As I keep saying, fascism is very popular in the United States. There is a certain segment of the American Right which has, because of the huge cultural chip on their shoulder, given up on democratic norms and craves permanent white minority rule.

They feel so put upon that they are willing to sacrifice their American birthright of democracy in the name of not having to learn people’s pronouns or ensuring that their children aren’t “indoctrinated” with the “mind virus” of the “woke cancel culture mob” while at college.

There’s an extensive not just permission structure but ecosystem that has been built out for MAGA Nazis and their fellow travelers. They are so enraged about the changing nature of American society — and what they feel they “can’t say anymore” — that they would rather live in a fascist state than have the politics of a functioning Western democracy where things would get hashed out one way or another.

It’s because of how broken our politics are so broken that things that would otherwise get hashed out — like “What is a woman” — are festering to the point that our slide into fascism is almost inevitable at this point. And the “woke cancel culture mob” does none of us any good by screaming at the top of their lungs over how many pronouns can dance on the head of a pin or this or that “unwoke” thing in a movie that triggers them because it doesn’t fit their strict woke orthodoxy.

The part that boggles my mind is MAGA Nazis love, love, love to conflate the soft power of smug elite Twitter liberals with the hard power of the government. They do this to the point that they are forced to twist themselves into rhetorical pretzels when it comes to basic issues of free speech. In the end, it’s a matter of “Free speech for me but not for thee.”

They want to control who gets free speech, but in such a way that they “own the libs,” even if makes them look like hypocrites.

All of this boils down to the extreme negative polarization because of changing American demographics that make straight white Christian men feel nervous about their status in society. It’s very easy to see the trainwreck that is about to happen in American politics at some point between now and, say, spring 2025. I say this with fear that things like ChatGPT could destroy the American economy rather quickly as we transition into a post-work economy.

I don’t know what to tell you. There are no easy answers, no easy solutions. Maybe get a passport? Figure out what you believe in when it comes to things with real world implications?

Regardless — good luck!

The Politics of The ‘Vibe Check’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I have struggled for some time to understand why MAGA Nazis act the way they do. I’ve struggled to understand what drives their bonkers rage and hate. Because my fellow center-Left comrades are struggling to do the same thing, they often use logic in attempt to explain a movement that has no logic. In fact, if anything, MAGA Nazis actively work to defy any sense of internal logic. They believe what they believe because they believe it.

But lately I think I may have begun to get some handle on what the fuck is going on with MAGA Nazis.

This “understanding” comes not so much from anything I believe, but the fact that I have Traditionalist relatives who are very “MAGA Nazi adjacent.”

Ok, so here goes.

I’m pretty indifferent to the performative nature of the Biden White House’s celebration of his signing of the “Respect For Marriage Act.” It’s one of those political “dance with the one who brung ya” type of political moves. The LGBQ+ movement is extremely potent within the Democratic Party, so what else do you expect he’s going to do?

And, yet, relative to my Traditionalist relatives, lighting the White House in rainbow flag colors and have a drag queens participate make my Traditionalist relatives rush towards the MAGA Nazi movement. The whole thing makes them very uncomfortable for various reasons religious and otherwise and I could see that given that everything is about negative polarization these days that they wouldn’t care about how idiotic MAGA Nazism is.

They just aghast at the idea of drag queens at the White House.

It doesn’t matter that Trump did far, far worse. All that matters is they are willing to support any movement that will “protect” their traditional views on the nuclear family. And throw in the border “crisis” while you’re at it.

So, the issue is — the two sides are beginning to not really think in terms of logic and are now more about “vibe checks.” Now, obviously the center-Left is far closer to reality than MAGA Nazis are. In fact, in a very ironic twist of fate, the center-Left is now forced to be the defenders of the “system” which MAGA Nazis want to burn to the ground and replace with an autocratic Nazi fascist state.

When the fate of your political system depends on “vibes” and not any form of logic, shame or self respect — you got a big problem. As I keep saying, this dynamic leads to a situation where you not only have to pick a side, but you have to be prepared to defend the most bonkers extremists on your side no matter what.

Because a lot of people don’t put that much thought into politics, negative polarization kicks in and you have the growing popularity of MAGA Nazism.

MAGA Nazis As Fascist Khmer Rouge

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The big difference between MAGA and traditional Nazis is they more like the Cambodian Khmer Rouge. That’s my biggest fear at the moment — that the United States is going to implode like Cambodia rather than try to take over the world like the Nazis.

There’s not much of a need for the United States to take over the world, we already have!

So, if our fears come true with the next Republican president, what our new MAGA Nazis overlords do will look like what the Khmer Rouge did. It most likely express itself in the guise of Qanon ideas becoming party orthodox.

Now, this is where I have to pause and say that the targets of these new prospective Killing Fields have the means to just leave the country. So, that would probably be the first indication that things are about to get lit — many, many wealthy liberals will simply flee the country, never to be seen again.

So, if there were MAGA Nazi Killing Field it would the average, poor people who will get rounded up and murdered en masse for political reasons. The reason I have this on the brain is I’m reading about the transformation of the Weimar Republic into the Third Reich.

Sometimes, the Darkest Timeline actually happens. And it definitely seems that on a macro level, at least, the United States is careening towards MAGA Nazi autocracy a lot sooner than you might think.

Of course, there is always the OTHER option, which is everything I just described happens, but it happens in the context of a National Divorce. Under this scenario, MAGA Nazis would be radicalized as part of a civil war. If there was no clear winner of such a civil war and the United States was simply split into to hostile nations, then while Trumplandia was beginning to see American Killing Fields, the Blue Union would return to some semblance of normality.

But all of that is very, very speculative. All I know is it is self-evident that at least the conditions are there for something very dark and turbulent to happen to the United States starting at some point between now and spring 2025.

‘Are We Going To Have A Civil War?’ (A Reassessment)

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Now that the 2022 midterms are over, let’s take a deep breath and think again about how likely it is that we’re going to have a Second American Civil War. The boner that MAGA Nazis have over this issue comes in large part from the fucking froth found within far Right circles.

It took me a long time to realize what was going on, but now I think I have a better handle on things — the reason why MAGA Nazis have civil war on the brain so much is they want the ability to murder people like me in cold blood without having to worry about any criminal accountability. Once the rules of war, not law are in play, then they can finally end the “woke cancel culture mobs” tyranny of “grooming” and forcing them to learn to hate white people and attend drag queen storytime on their way to their gender reassignment surgery.

But, you say, “Are we going to have a civil war?“

Well, I don’t know yet. But I can tell you that if it happens, I just don’t see it being because MAGA Nazis take up arms in rolling political violence like civil war expert Barbara F. Walter thinks. She’s so busy thinking about how angry Reds are, that she misses that the dynamic is such that it will be Blues — the majority of the country — that will ultimately face the decision as to if we’re going to have a civil war or not.

But I will say that for a lot of people — especially people within the MAGA Nazis community — the idea of a Second American Civil War has taken on an air of inevitability. It’s al very ironic because the very people who just need to be patient so they can get everything they want through politics, MAGA Nazis, ironically are the ones chomping at the bit to run around murdering people.

It’s because of that weird, ironic, dynamic that I have serious doubts that we’re going to have a civil war. If you take out the possibility that MAGA Nazis are going to spontaneously take up arms to overthrow their smug “woke cancel culture mob” overlords…well, I just don’t think the logical people to start a civil war — Blues — have it in them to do it.

And, remember, the issue is of Trump.

If anyone could start a civil war, it’s ding-dong Trump. But, still, any civil war that happens will be caused when Blue States refuse to bend a knee to autocratic MAGA Nazi fascism. That’s it — I just don’t see Reds doing what they keep thinking and talking about. They have no need to. They’re getting everything they want through politics because they control the “attention economy” with a tyrannical vise grip.

So, my answer is — we’re not going to have a civil war. Either we somehow magically punt the tectonic problems we have as a nation down the road one more presidential cycle…or we have another Republican POTUS and he / she turns us into an autocratic state that probably will, if we’re lucky, looking like Hungary or Turkey, and if we’re not…Russia or Nazi Germany .

Good luck and Godspeed.

The Coming Battle Over Chatbot ‘Bias’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

As chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatbotGPT grow more and more mainstream, there will be a growing tendency by the average person to assume whatever answer it generates is “objective truth.” People are going to treat it like praying to a god who just happens to give them a direct answer.

The problem is going to be that by definition, any statement of fact that doesn’t align with this or that person’s personal views will be seen as “bias.” So, on one side, MAGA Nazi cocksuckers will grow enraged if the answers the get are what the perceive to be “woke,” while center-Left people will be equally enraged if their chatbot shoots up answers that they perceive to be racist or misogynistic.

Under normal circumstances, when our politics functioned, there would be debate back and forth as to how to deal with this. Maybe, if it became that big a problem, the government might pass legislation regulating this particular element of chatbot technology.

But, lulz, that’s just not going to happen. All the techniques that MAGA Nazis have used in the past to make polite debate impossible, they will use to force the issue of “what is objective truth for a chatbot?” Either they win and we all get MAGA-approved “objective truth” or they win when a new chatbot designed specifically for them is designed and, lulz, yet another element of society is siloed into Red and Blue.

I still think there is a chance that a war will be fought over chatbot and AGI bias. And it could be a world war. The moment we have a setup where there is a battle between us (Humans) and THEM (AGI) anything is possible. Some pretty strange things could happen because once the nation-state isn’t as important as your views on our new AGI overlord, the civilization itself may be at risk of collapse.

I am well aware of how hysterical that sounds. But we have to start taking these things seriously. If there was some way for us to figure out the gray areas of “objective truth” in the context of politics, then there might be a chance that we might see us peacefully and gracefully transition into a post-chatbot, post-AGI world.

But Americans can barely agree on what color the sky is. So, we’re fucked. As I’ve said before, I’m concerned that given there might be a recession in 2023, that by 2024 we will face a perfect storm — a Singularity, a lingering recession and a massive political crisis surrounding the 2024 election.

‘Stab In The Back’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Rather than confront the fact that their hate-filled movement is unpopular, MAGA Nazis have decided but for the “stab in the back” done by a combination of Twitter and the Deep State, Trump would have won in 2020. This is so fucking dumb.

And, yet, MAGA can’t accept that they’re the bad guys and they’re already really fucking paranoid so even the suggestion that they were slighted in 2020 is enough to make them go completely insane. The “stab in the back” orthodoxy within the MAGA Nazi movement has developed at astonishing speed to the point that it now completely explains to MAGA everything that has gone wrong for them since 2020.

One darkly humorous element to all of this is MAGA now has a talking point to pivot to whenever someone like me has the temerity to remind them of the conspiracy between the 2016 Trump campaign and the Russians. MAGA Nazis from now on will scream at the top of the lungs “stab in the back” whenever the subject is brought up.

All of this is very alarming for a number of reasons. One of them is it’s yet another example of how the United States is careening towards a very dark future. The two sides now completely inhabit their own political and cultural silos to the point that if, say, a Certification Crisis strikes in late 2024 – early 2024 there won’t be any slack in the system.

The United States, the wealthiest, most powerful democracy in Human history is primed and ready to collapse into chaos as the two sides fight over who the president is. Add into this mix how old Biden is, how untested Harris is and how there’s a real possibility of a severe recession between now and 2025 in the context of a Singularity….and, oh boy.

I definitely believe that we are being lulled into a false sense of security about MAGA Nazis because of how the economy is doing ok — at the moment. The moment the recession kicks in at some point in 2023, all bets are off. A lot of people might join the MAGA Nazi ranks out of economic desperation and suddenly malignant ding-dong will have a huge amount of momentum going in to 2024.

If that does turn out to be the case, may God have mercy on our souls.

Slouching Towards MAGA Nazi Tyranny

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I love my Traditionalist relatives dearly and they have a great deal for me, but I’m enraged by how totally dumb the current narrative within the MAGA Nazis echo chamber is.

Elon Musk has given something MAGA Nazis a huge gift — they now have something to whine about whenever anyone reminds them of how Trump actively worked with the Russians to steal the 2016 election. It is now MAGA Nazi orthodoxy that but for the “stab in the back” on the part of Twitter, Trump would have won re-election in 2020.

The amount of gross stupidity combined with conflation of what really happened this entails is so broad and deep in scope that it really grinds my gears. But, here we are.

Rather than accepting that maybe their hate filled message isn’t a winning policy agenda, MAGA Nazis are now going to triple down on their hateful dreams. What’s so comical is if they could just wean themselves off of sucking Trump’s cock, they might be able to cruise into winning the 2024 election, no cheating necessary.

But, at the moment at least, that doesn’t seem to be what is going to happen.

If you throw in a severe recession in 2023 – 2024 and the potential of a Singularity happening at the same time…it’s very possible that MAGA Nazis — even if their nominee is Trump — will be able to have something of a Red Wave. Then the United States turns into an autocracy and I am pig tied and shot in the back of the head by an ICE agent after I get drunk at some point after 2025 and rant about how our Very American Autocrat can suck my cock.

Anyway, it’s all very disheartening. There’s just not much we can do. MAGA Nazis have their talking points and, really, the question becomes do they finally decide to start murdering people like me in cold blood on an individual basis or do they wait until they can use the power of the state to do it for them.

The Crux Of The Hunter Biden Imbroglio

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

People who get really upset about what may or may not have transpired around Hunter Biden’s laptop are telling a tale on themselves. If you’re all that invested in the story and think some great injustice occurred because voters didn’t get a clear shot of Hunter Biden’s dong on Twitter during the 2020 election — you’re a fucking MAGA Nazi.

I suppose you might make the case that some of these fucking MAGA Nazis are upset because of the general “injustice” they felt was perpetrated against Republicans, but that is just a thin veneer to cover what fucking MAGA Nazis they are. If you wanted Trump to win in 2020, you’re fucking Nazi.

If you had any sense about you, even a conservative would look back and in hindsight say, “Given the context, and the candidate Republicans were fielding at the time, maybe we can be grateful that malignant ding-dong wasn’t helped by all of us seeing Hunter Biden’s cock.”

But no, your typical Republican in good standing is so absolutely partisan, so blinding by how their a fucking MAGA Nazi that they don’t care. They wanted Trump to win and they want autocracy because they hate democracy because their racist, rage-fueled policies aren’t popular to get them elected if we have a functioning democracy.

All of this, of course, is obscured and conflated by how fucked up modern American politics is. But the fact remains — if you wanted Trump to win in 2020, for whatever reason, you’re a fucking MAGA Nazi.