Tag: The Fourth Turning

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.

Spirits In A Digital World

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The more I look at Twitter as we experience something akin to a mini-Singularity associated with OpenAI ChatGPT, the more alarmed I find myself becoming. Not with the idea that there might be some sort of Terminator-like “Judgement Day,” but, rather the exact opposite.

There will be no need for our AGI overlord to blow the world up — humans will be so busy giving up any agency they might have to the decision making ability of an AGI. Given with the faux-AGI of a really smart chatbot, I see people pretty much just turning everything over to it.

Students no longer want to study. Adults think they can just have the chatbot do their work while they stroke one out to porn. Meanwhile, worst of all, all the same partisan bullshit we’ve seen with every other element society is now corrupting the chatbot revolution.

As such, THE political and societal issue of 2023 and beyond could very well be who gets to regulate the “bias” of chatbots (and, later AI.) When everything hinges on the “objective truth” of a chatbot because people are fucking lazy and refuse to talk to each other because of politics, then the whole woke vs. unwoke debate becomes white hot.

In the Second Trump Administration, I could see there being some sort of FCC-like agency design specifically to “purge” AI of any “woke” bias because children no longer learn anything but, instead, are trained on how to ask better questions of chatbots.

MAGA Nazis will scream bloody murder if a chatbot doesn’t give them the answer to “what is a woman” that they expect. They will say that chatbots are nothing more than CRT shills infected with the “mind virus” of the “woke cancel culture mob.”

I’m not exaggerating. That’s exactly what is going to happen — you see it already on Twitter with the usual fuckwit MAGA Nazi “thought leaders” whining that they can’t get their hate validated by a chatbot.

Of course, there is the even more darker scenario where the United States splits into to nations, one Red, one Blue and while Blue America is enjoying the fruits of an unfettered Singularity, Trumplandia will use chatbots to atomize Red States into a techno-autocratic state. Good times!

I think some of all of this comes from how the human mind is hard wired to believe in a god. So, people, presented with something like a chatbot, fall into the trap of thinking they can “pray” objective questions to the chatbot and get some sort of “objective revealed truth” that they can spread to the world. All you need is a burning bush and some stone tablets and it’s a story as old as history.

In short — we’re fucked. Humans are just too lazy to put up much of a fight with chatbots or AGI. It will be interesting to how all of this ultimately shakes out.

A Hot Take On OpenAI ChatGPT

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I am not an expert on AI, but I did live through the early days of the Internet / Web revolution and it’s very interesting how similar it is to the rise of chatbots and, potentially AGI.

Everyone is coming at ChatGPT from their own personal direction because it’s so new that we don’t have any established idea of what it is or its place in society. As such, everyone projects on to it their hopes and fears — which is exactly what happened when it became clear that because of the Web the power of the Internet would soon be harnessed for the average person.

Before I go any further, I have to note that chabot technology is just one of several different emerging technologies that are probably all going to go mainstream at some point between now, and, say 2025. Things like the metaverse (Web 3.0) chatbots, the blockchain, robotics and automation are all going to fuse into an event that might be something similar to a “Singularity,” or at least a “soft” one.

The real Singularity, of course, will happen whenever we move past chatbot technology into the realm of Artificial General Intelligence. If you hook that up to robotic trends…yikes.

But back to chatbots.

I just can’t imagine that we’re all going to be using one chatbot — OpenAI ChatGPT forever going forward. I suspect that numerous other chatbots of equal or greater ability will pop out in the next few years. I say this because if you were to talk to people in 1945 about nuclear technology they might make a lot of assumptions on the idea that only the United States would have The Bomb going forward.

It didn’t happen with the a-bomb and it’s not going to happen with chatbots. In fact, if Moore’s Law is to be believed, we’re going to be aswash in chatbots as major company — and a lot of start ups — get woke to how advantageous it would be to them to have their own advanced chatbot to use. So all the people who seem to think that ChatGPT is going to somehow overthrow Google should probably slow their roll.

Another thing to note — and this one really grinds me gears — is how the extremes on both sides of the political spectrum seem really invested in chatbots. You have your usual suspects of ‘woke” people complaining about the stupidest shit — well beyond the obvious, legitimate concerns about potential abuse for racist or misogynistic behavior. They get upset if the chatbot is somehow goaded into doing something that they perceive as not following their “woke” media narrative.

Meanwhile, on the OTHER end of the political spectrum in a much more ham-handed way, you have the fucking MAGA Nazi cocksuckers who apparently want chatbots to be “Ultra-MAGA” so they can turn around and use that as justification for their own form of Social Darwinism.

As I’ve said before, I would feel a lot better if we had a functioning political system. As it is, we’re on our own. It’s inevitable that as chatbots grow in cultural importance — and more and more children turn to it to do their homework, the batshit fucking bonkers MAGA people are going to scream at the top of their lungs that chatbots are “woke” and the only way to stop their spawn from being “indoctrinated” into the “woke cancel culture mob” is for the Second Trump Administration to regulate it parrots MAGa doctrine.

I wish I was exaggerating. I really do. But I’m not. This is what I literally think will happen at some point in the not-so-distant future. Or, it could be, that instead of the Second Trump Administration doing it, the issue will be regulated differently in the new Blue Union as opposed to Trumplandia after we have a National Divorce and Second American Civil War.

The point is — things are on the cups of getting very, very turbulence on not just a technological basis, but a cultural, economic and political basis as well. The next few years could be some of the most dramatic in human history — or at least since the end of WW2.

Cal it “The Fourth Turning” or “The Great Reset,” or whatever the fuck you want. There’s not going to be any narrative or value to it while it’s happening and it’s going to be scary as hell to live through. There’s a reason why “May you live in interesting times” is a curse.

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.

AGI In Blue & Red

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

While it’s still very speculative, the advent of OpenAI’s chatbot definitely seems to be a ping from an upcoming Singularity. If that is the case, what does that mean for American politics?

Humans are existentially lazy.

As the pandemic showed us, every issue of the day is seen through the prism of partisan politics so the advent of AGI will be no different. It seems to me that the issue of “bias” in AGI will be one of the biggest issues of the 2020s. I say this because people are already fighting over it on Twitter and OpenAI’s chatbot has only been around for a few days.

As such, how will the two sides process the idea of “The Other” in everyday life. My gut tells me that the center-Left will be totally embrace the rise of AGI, while the center-Right will view its presence through the lens of religion. The wild card for the center-Left is, of course, the economic disruption that will be associated with AGI.

If millions of high paying jobs become moot because of AGI, there could be a real knee-jerk reaction against AGI on the part of the Left.

This raises a number of different issues.

One is, it’s possible that that the traditional Blue-Red dichotomy. It could be a real revolution where things are very chaotic and uncertain as we all struggle with the political and economic implications of the AGI revolution. For me, the issue is when all of this bursts open.

Will it be a late 2020s thing, or a late 2024 – early 2025 type of problem? If that’s the case, it would be a perfect storm. If we’re dealing with not just what the final endgame of the Trump problem will be at the same time that we’re dealing with massive economic and political disruption associated with a Singularity…I don’t know what to tell you.

World War Four

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It’s rare when something so abruptly comes out of the blue that makes me stop thinking about how America is careening towards the existential choice of autocracy, civil war or military junta in late 2024 – early 2025 and makes me think about events past that crisis.

But now, when the OpenAI chatbot, I find myself thinking about what happens next after we sort out our political Trump Problem one way or another.

If you work on the assumption that essentially OpenAI’s chatbot is a ping from an impending Singularity, then it’s very possible that in the late 2020s, the issue of the day will be technology. It could be that the current concept of the Blue -Red paradigm will be up ended and our current understanding of what everything is “Left” or “Right” of will be radically changed.

Imagine a near future where a Non-Human Actor has totally transformed our society and economy so radically and abruptly that a neo-Luddite movement is born. You could see elements of the current Far Right and Far Left fuse together in opposition to the excessive use of technology like AGI to replace humans. And this would be a global realignment.

In fact, given that an AGI would be “The Other” you could plot out a scenario where the even the nation-state becomes a quaint concept as Humanity divides itself into pro-AGI and anti-AGI camps. Your nationality won’t be as important as where you stand on the issue of allowing AGIs or NHAs pretty much replace Humans in every conceivable task.

And that would be a potential World War Four (World War Three having happened around in the mid-2020s as America either becomes an autocracy or has a civil war.) WW4 would be the essential battle over the nature and relationship of AGI. I say this because it’s possible that large segments of humanity might have a near-mystical relationship to an AGI. You see seeds of this happening already with OpenAI’s chatbot, with people using answers from the service to validate what they already believe.

This is all very, very speculative. But it does make you wonder where the American Left and Right would fall politically when it comes to their relationship to an AGI “Other.” At the moment, I think Leftists might be the ones to embrace an AGI as a near-godlike thing, while the Right would freak out because they would, I don’t know, think it was the anti-Christ or something.

Anyway. We really need to start a serious debate about these issues now. If the Singularity really is headed our way, everything may change overnight.