Tag: hot takes

How America Would React To Our Best Geopolitical Bud Great Britain Collapsing


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Americans think of Great Britain as our far older, posh relative that swings by every once in a while to hand out Fleabag DVDs. The United States is so big that we only have a hazy understanding of the outside world. Canada, cold. Mexico, hot. Great Britain — King George III was an asshole, Churchill was cool.

I’m not in any way suggesting I have any bead on the slow-motion collapse of Great Britain, but anyone paying attention to the goings on there will have to admit that the United Kingdom of 2021 has a very 1918 Austro-Hungarian vibe to it.

Or, to put a more fine point on it, a closer historical approximation might be Czechoslovakia. The two nations that made up that multi-ethnic state just gave up and split because they no longer had the energy to stay together.

The same thing with Great Britain, in that it definitely seems as though the very concept of being “British” is beginning to evaporate. Just look at how worked up the English got when they faced Italy on the football pitch recently. The English team didn’t go into that sports battle as British, they went into it as English.

This leads to the question, “How would America react if Great Britain finally buckled and ceased to exist?”

Well, ironically the United States is, uh, going through somethings right now itself. The United States is suffering a similar disunity momentum as Great Britain is. But, for the sake of argument, let’s say at some point between now and when the US is likely to go tits up (2024-2025) the UK beats us to it.

First, there would be earth shattering shock that the Union Jack was no longer applicable. The idea that once the Scots bounce out of the UK that the Union Jack would be moot would be something the poor old American brain could not comprehend. It’s a simple thing to grasp and a lot of people who don’t care about geopolitics would gasp.

Then, as the whole country pealed away with the departure of Wales and the unification of Ireland, Americans would start to make comparisons to the other big collapse of the last century — the Soviet Union.

But the dissolution of the UK would be one of those rare occasions when the United States would sit up and take notice that there was an Outside World beyond our boarders. Comparisons would also, likely be make to the shock of the 1940 Fall of France.

There would even be a bit of a question as to how difficult it would be to make the rump state of England a US state. (This would happen in some of the more bonkers portions of MAGA because, well, white people.)

We just would not be able to process any of it at first.

Until, of course, we had our own civil war and then everyone would say, “Fuck, both major Anglophone nations collapsed within years of each other.”

The Shakespearean Tragedy That Is Mike Pence


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

You couldn’t make this shit up if you wanted. About four-ish years, Mike Pence was the biggest fucking suckup to Trump there was on the planet. Pence, like von Papen before him with Hitler, gave Trump a patina of political legitimacy.

And then, near the end of the Trump Era he blew everything by doing the right thing!

So, in a sense, Pence destroyed his career near the end of the Trump Era for simply doing the absolute basics of the job he was elected to do. Now, Pence inhabits a strange nether realm where he is both hated by the center-Left AND the very people he would depend on to win any sort of primary.

The only Pence might find some redemption at this point is, tragically, if there was some sort of civil war and he flipped to the Good Guys in a big, big way.

I dunno. Strange times, guys.

My Hot Take On Conspiracy Theories


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’ve written about this some before, but here goes. While I’m willing to concede that there is the occasional conspiracy theory here and there, they rarely stay secret for very long.

A lot of the interest in conspiracy theories says more about how their proponents feel disenfranchise and helpless in a changing world. The actual conspiracies themselves are just a way for such people to funnel their frustration into a narrative.

I would suggest that most of the things that conspiracy theorists are noticing is the modern world is built on social constructs that have no valid reason for existing other than we’ve all agreed upon them as being “real.” Paper money has no value other than our society agreeing that it has value. That’s it. It’s really just paper.

There are plenty of other examples — barcodes, for instance. If you go down that particular rabbit hole, you can get pretty freaked out. But it’s not some sort of secret conspiracy — the nature of barcodes is well known and everyone just shrugs. So, I would say, that unless you’re willing to organize some sort of mass revolt against the much-needed constructs of the modern world: shut up.

Most of these constructs aren’t really hurting anyone or anything, so why get upset about them?

Anyway. No one listens to me.

Taylor Swift Will Never Be A Movie Star


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Taylor Swift is one of the best entertainers of her generation. She has millions of rabid fans who analyze and debate her every statement and action. Swift has all that and will likely have it for the rest of her life. But there’s one thing she will never have: a movie career.

The reason for this is simple — Swift is never going to do a sex scene and she’s never going to show any T&A. Never. Never. Even in this post-#MeToo era that we live in where mainstream Hollywood movies seem more interested in screeching about lesbian sex positions than entertaining an audience, someone as drop dead gorgeous as Swift would inevitably have to drop trou to get the type of movie role she might want to start a serious Hollywood career.

Given what most of her fan base is made up of — liberal white girls and women — the idea that she would do something as out of character as do a sex scene in a movie to further her Hollywood career is just not applicable for Swift. I’m not saying this is a bad thing — you do you, Tay-Tay — but Swift definitely seems like the type of ambitious young woman who would otherwise have at least a chance of having a serious Hollywood career.

The only out for Swift on this front is when she is in her 40s and she’s had a 20 year residency in Vegas and even the youngest members of her fanbase are in their 30s, she probably could get away with a traditional Hollywood sex scene. Her fan base will be so jaded by this point that they, at last, won’t care. And Swift herself will be old enough that she will want to prove she’s still got the goods.

As an aside, I will note that Swift is in the exact middle of pop culture. She is the center of pop culture. She never went through any kind of wild, crazy period in her career where she came out as bi and dated a woman or a rapper or whatever. The thing about her music career that I have noticed is she apparently has decided to do exclusively fan service from here on out. She’s never going to challenge her fans, or change, or mature or anything. Another thing about Swift is she’s hot but not sexy. She’s about the most chaste pop star out there. She never, ever has ever had an accidently on purpose nip slip or flashed a bit of butt crack on Instagram.

She’s training bra music and will spend the rest of her life producing some variation of that theme.

My Hot Take On The Yashar Ali Controversy


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It’s my impression that Yashar Ali is of Iranian origin. The reason the recent kerfuffle about this Twitter “influencer” caught my eye is I knew a Iranian dude in Seoul who — much like Ali — collected friends like other people collect stamps. This guy had about 30 people at his birthday party in Seoul one year. I was flabbergasted.

Nothing I write here should be taken as any sort of judgement on Iranians — on an individual level, I’m quite fond of Iranians because they can do the one thing I can’t do: make friends.

It makes me wonder if Ali is, like my Iranian friend in Seoul, just really, really, really good at making friends. It’s spooky how apt the description of Ali fits the guy I know from Seoul.

Anyway. No one cares what I think.

Tackling Dumb Political Hot Takes


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I try to be a reasonable, easy-to-get-along with person. And, yet, sometimes I talk to someone whose political hot takes are so confoundingly stupid that I grow exponentially exasperated. Let’s go through some recent dumb hot takes I’ve heard.

American Poor People Are Ungrateful
The premise of this dumb hot take is that the average poor person in the United States would “be in the in top 10% anywhere else in the world.” The purpose of this hot take is to suggest that American poor people are ungrateful mooches who want to drain hard working Americans of their tax dollars. If only they would realize how good they had it, the theory goes, American poor people would be seen and not heard. And they wouldn’t complain when the social safety net was cut, because, lulz, they already have it too good, anyway.

There are a lot of problems with this hot take. The most obvious of them is it’s just not very well thought out. Just because someone, in relative terms, is doing well if you directly compare them to someone in a 3rd world country, doesn’t mean that in practical terms their life is all that great. There is this thing called the cost of living. This hot take is sooo fucking dumb it enrages me just thinking about it.

Professional Politicians Should Be Eliminated
This dumb hot take posits that if only we stopped paying politicians and got a bunch of good old boys working in Washington part time, then “real America” would finally get the government it wanted. There is so much wrong with this hot take that, again, I grow enraged. The more glaring dumb aspect of this hot take is it has some sort of wistful longing for the good old days of early America when White People Were In Control. The fatal error of this hot take is it ignores the massive amount of corruption that would take place if you didn’t pay Congress anything. Even the most seasoned pol in Washington is often a pushover for lobbyist. If all you had were citizen pols who swung by the House floor on their way to see Lynyrd Skynyrd play, all you’re doing is handing the keys to government to the permanent lobbying class.

America Is A Constitutional Republic, Not A Democracy
This is dumb hot take pops up now and again in American history whenever people like me start to grow concerned about the fate of liberal democracy. It was harped on a lot right before World War 2 and it’s seen a lot now in a lot of MAGA and MAGA friendly circles. To me, this is just backdoor autocracy. It’s what people like MAGA say when they don’t like the fact that a lot of people don’t like their policies and, as such, vote against them. These “Constitutional Republic” people want to do everything in their power to delegitimize the importance of voting. This argument arises, in part, because people like me are now very alarmed about the fate of our democracy so these people just lulz and say, “What are you worried about, we’re not a democracy.” The end result is their autocracy-friendly and just want their unpopular conservative policies to be implemented, no matter what.

The general take away from these dumb hot takes is there are a lot — A LOT — of people who have recursive political political views. They’re generally uneasy with the talking points of the center-Left and, as such, they pull whatever necessary out of their puts to justify what they already believe.