A Fun-Interesting Event: Why Did The New York Times Retweet My Retweet?


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I don’t think many people appricate how rarely anything of note happens in my life. I spend most of my time struggling with developing and writing four novels and, for the most part, I live in oblivion.

So, it doesn’t take much to rattle my cage or to make my day, for that matter. Something as small as someone from Brooklyn doing some sort of due diligence on me by spending an hour on this site is enough to make me sit up and take notice. I mean, what the what?

Anyway, today, there was, minding my own business when this happened:

The New York Times retweeted my retweet of their tweet.

My first reaction is, lulz, it was all very random. They just picked me out of what they saw on their TweetDeck and that’s it. And, in fact, that’s the most logical explanation. Not a big deal. Nothing to think about beyond that.

Then, because I have a VERY active imagination, I start to game out other scenarios.

Hopeful
Someone who works at the paper has followed me using a burner account and they were giving me a hat tip.

Paranoid
They’re going to use my rantings on this site for some sort of take down of me and I’m going to get “canceled.”

But I think I’m way overthinking this. I think it’s all a lulz. While I like to think I’m exceptionally interesting and colorful, the truth in this situation is probably pretty prosaic: they just wanted to re-up the tweet and used my retweet to do it.

Nothing more interesting than that.

We Need To Talk About Maggie Haberman


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The more I think about it, the less I care about Maggie Haberman and her closeness to Trump. Some of this comes from how pointless it all is — she’s member of the media elite. As such, any time some hayseed rube like me points out much of her reputation comes from TrumpWorld scoops netted through…uhh…access journalism, it’s just scoffed at by her fellow nattering nabobs of negativism as not understanding what journalism is.

One of the key issues in this meaningless media kerfuffle is how nebulous and vague it all is. Yes, Ms. Haberman is a good journalist who is well respected — and defended — by her peers. And, yet, it’s also self-evident that she’s close enough to TrumpWorld that the average person is within their rights to be a bit squeamish about it all. It’s like how if your best friend breaks up with their significant other, there may not be any hard and fast taboo about dating their ex, but you try to at least wait a little bit before jumping in the sack with them.

As such, Twitter people get angry about Ms. Haberman bringing down the latest morsel of TrumpWorld news and her Twitter liberal peers get VERY UPSET that anyone might not see such morsel as just another example of how great a reporter she is. So, it’s something of a stalemate.

So, I think I’m going to go back to cursing the bread and pondering if it’s going to be civil war or autocracy that we face between now and January 2025.

What MSM Can Learn From Nascent ‘Tik-Tok Journalism’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Absolutely no one listens to me. But I will suggest, in passing, that MSM should study the growing number of people doing journalism on Tik-Tok. Such journalism is a lot like TV journalism, but it’s a lot tighter because they have only a minute — though that may be expanded to three minutes soon.

I read exceptionally well-written articles from the New York Times and they’re just too long. Give me 300 words and a Tik-Tok-style video instead. Unless something radical is done to traditional journalism, it may fade away entirely. Such a “radical” thing might be to re-imagine what a news story is. You can convey a lot of information via a Tik-Tok video and if you have the imprimatur of the New York Times on such a video, it would be quite good.

But, again, lulz. No one listens to me.

Even if I’m right, I won’t get any credit for it.

Sorry Maggie Haberman, It’s Starting To Look Like Trump MIGHT Not Be The Political Genus You Cooed About


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Let me begin by saying I never fucking let anything go. Maggie Haberman was weirdly mean to me on Twitter out of the blue and it still smarts. So, she’s become something of a running gag in my content. Anyway, for those of you playing the home game, for about four years, people like The New York Times‘ Maggie Haberman have told us in hushed tones what a fucking political mastermind Trump is.

How things have changed.

Welp, as of right this second, I ain’t seeing it, Ms. Haberman.

I mean, if Internet crank me can think of six different ways RIGHT NOW whereby Trump could stay in office as long as he likes and that ding-dong can’t even figure out one, well, it looks like he was just a very lazy right guy at the right historical place.

Trump is a lot like Hitler in the sense that he simply didn’t really do anything other than use the existing rot in his country’s political system to get what he wanted. Hitler was notoriously lazy. And, if you just look around, you can tell that Trump is pretty lazy, too.

So, about selling your soul to House Trump for access — you got what you wanted, Ms. Haberman, but you will forever be the journalistic equivalent of Leni Riefenstahl…in a sense. What I mean by this is when History judges Trump, she is likely to judge YOU too.

And I’ll freely admit that Ms. Haberman is a far, far better journalist than me. But you’re supposed to have a least a thin veneer of conflict between yourself and the people you report on.

Regardless, I’m just an anonymous Internet crank. No one listens to me, and they probably shouldn’t.

People Keep Doing Due Diligence On Me


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Another person used the Internet Archive to poke around this Website. I don’t know if I should be flattered or alarmed. They seemed interested in my dystopian “Trump wins” scenarios and the novel I’m working on.

The only reason why it’s even matters is I’m an anonymous rando. There’s honestly no reason for anyone to care about me. So for someone to take the trouble to use the Internet Archive to look at this site anonymously is really crazy.

The last person to look around this site so aggressively I think was The New York Times‘ Jodi Kantor. I contacted her for the novel and I think she was curious who I was. It’s pretty apparent she swiped left on me, if you know what I mean.

Anyway. I really need to get back to my novel. I just hope a civil war or revolution doesn’t break out in the next few days. Keep it peaceful, folks.

The Struggle to Develop My #Novel’s Female Romantic Lead


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I have something of a celebrity crush on The New York Times‘ Jodi Kantor because she’s hot and tough as nails. She has a very specific personality that I would like to adopt — in some way — for my novel’s female romantic lead. And, yet, I am well aware that it would be very easy to for me to slip into a characterisation that would belie my real thoughts — I know Ms. Kantor probably wouldn’t be thrilled to be anywhere near someone like me.

So, I have to be careful.

I want to make my female romantic lead smart, attractive and tough, but I don’t want to make her so much so that it’s unbelievable that she would fall for someone influence by, well, your favorite loser, me, so she comes across as extremely cold and unlikeable.

As such, I may make the character a muddled mixture of Ms. Kantor and someone like, say, Alexa Chung. Or something. Some sort of hook that will allow me an in to soften the character some so *I* like the character. I don’t want my need to be mischievous on this issue blind me to the fact that, well, readers have to actually like the female lead and want her to hook up with the hero.

Yeah, I guess you could say I have issues.

Escape To New York — Imagining Life In ‘Revolutionary’ NYC


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’ve decided that if need be, I’m going to head north towards NYC in the event of the advent of a Second American Civil War. There are some personal and practical obstacles to me doing this, but my general intention is to head that way at some point with the other thousands of political refugees that likely would exist by that point.

Me, fall 2021?

One my frequent refrains is I know myself well enough to know that if you put me anywhere in the five boroughs with access to the subway, I would likely make a name for myself one way or another. I’m too much of an extrovert and too driven not to make myself noticed. I’m well aware that this makes me sound both “delusional and stupid” given that I’ve not done anything for much of the last decade and — relative to the metrics of the average New Yorker, I’m just a big old rando loser.

And, yet, there’s a case to be made that if things have grown so absolutely bad in the United States that I become a political refugee that the “old ways” would have collapsed and a person like me might have a chance to rise to the occasion of an unexpected destiny.

The only reason why I even bring this up is I thought it would be interesting to imagine what life in a near future, “revolutionary” New York City might be. I’ve only been to NYC a few times and I love it. I used to live in Seoul and the two cities are very similar. In Seoul people won’t talk to you because they can’t speak English. In NYC people won’t speak to you because they don’t give a shit. But form follows function and my reaction to that is very similar — I thrive. What’s amusing is I also know that I probably would prosper more in LA because it’s a town based on storytelling and people are more willing to give a dumbass writer like me a chance because you never can tell.

Anyway, if things have grown so absolutely dire that I — and thousands of others — have been forced out of home for political reasons — I think the biggest difference would be how militarized the city would have become. Also, some of the locations of major conservative media outlets would have been gutted by that point as well.

One interesting thing would be the fate of The New York Times. The case could be made that on an institutional level, The Old Gray Lady has been on the wrong side of history. It’s at least possible that the NYT might have been destroyed — or radically re-imagined — because of the same forces that drove FOX News, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Post out of the city.

On a personal level, I wonder what I might be able to cook up if I was crashed on someone’s couch in, say, Staten Island. I’d be organizing something, that’s for sure. I learned a lot from running ROKon Magazine in Seoul and a lot of the reason why I haven’t been able to exploit that skillset is the fall of ROKon Magazine left me emotionally hobbled and I simply had no motivation for a long, long time.

Anyway, no one listens to me and no one cares. And if they do, they usually — with good reason –dismiss me as a fool. But, as the song goes, you never can tell.

Countdown To American Fascism: Now What



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner


The thing about America’s decent into fascism is how obvious it all is and yet Twitter liberals continue to be painfully oblivious. There won’t be a free and fair election this fall and we all have to prepare for the consequences of that. The history books will mark the end of liberal democracy in the United States as the day Trump was acquitted by the Senate.

We are now in a fascist state. The bad guys have won. We have to turn our attention from scoring points on Twitter to figuring out how to live in a fascist state. The key point we have to understand fully is the Republican Party is fascist. It sees democracy as only a means to an end. That’s why Trump gets away with acting so surreal — Republicans only see themselves as legitimate. Anyone else with any power is to be destroyed at all costs. And, really, the logic is there for them to start murdering people in cold blood, it’s just a matter of the circumstances being right.

I refuse to delude myself. The fascist have won and will likely either snatch me off the street or push me out a window at some point in Trump’s stolen second term. This is an absolute law of political nature at this point. But, simply to be fair, I will entertain a few scenarios where that will at least be punted down the road a (few) years.

There are a few major problems for the fascists going forward.

Trump Is A Self Own Artist
I find this plausible, but just barely. Trump is not a political genius, no matter what The New York Times‘ Maggie Haberman thinks. He’s just a very lucky moron. So, it is at least possible that at some point between now and when the Electors vote, he’ll pull defeat from the jaws of victory. He’ll screw up in some way that he can’t weasel his way out of. This has happened to him a few times over the last four years. To date, he’s always managed to avoid any real accountability, but if he did it at just the wrong time during his efforts to steal the election, well, lulz.

Trump Is Barely Sane
Connected to the first issue is Trump being bonkers. He’s just barely holding on his mind. Now, this is not quite the fatal flaw you think it is — Interior Minster Barr will simply do whatever is necessary to keep House Trump in power, even if Trump finally snaps in a way that is so conspicuous it can’t be hidden.

Electors Are Human Beings
I have long assumed that Trump’s criminality and his insanity would merge if there was any risk he might actually lose. That’s happening a little bit, but if really did feel he was going to lose, he would strike at the weakest link of the Constitution — the human beings who are Electors. He is going to dox them on Twitter. Or to “joke” on Twitter that MAGA should remind them of the power of the Second Amendment. And, Electors being human beings is such an unpredictable variable that I simply can’t for sure tell you how that might work out. It’s just possible that everything will completely be thrown up in the air and the entire country will come to know the personalities of all the Electors in a way we never felt possible. It could be that the Electoral College is finally abolished because we have the political equivalent of 9/11 in 2020. It’s barely possible, but any time humans are involved, all bets are off.

Both Trump and Biden Are Old
I have nothing personal against Trump. Live long and prosper, you fucking criminal. I would prefer he be arrested the moment he’s out of office and put in jail for the rest of his life where he could “prosper,” but that’s unlikely to happen. Anyway, I want a political solution to the cancer that is MAGA, but I will note that if either one of the major presidential candidates were physically indisposed for some reason — especially if it was really, really late in the process — then you ain’t see nothing yet. Some really, really surreal things might happen.

But none of this is going to happen. Trump is going to successfully steal the election and that will be that. Fascism in America is no longer something that “may” happen at some point in the future — it’s here, now.

Just like with Brexit, the worst is going to happen. We’re in for 20 to 40 years of fascist rule in the United States. We’re going to be identical to Putin’s “managed democracy” in Russia. There will be a Constitutional Convention at some point in Trump’s stolen second term that will pass Enabling Acts and, well, that’s it. This is an absolute certainty.

The reason it’s an absolute certainty is Twitter liberals are delusional. They don’t realize how dirty the fascist Republicans are going to play if there’s any doubt of their final victory. And, a such, Republicans are going to willingly embrace fascism.

I wish I was smart enough how to survive the new fascist state of affairs in the United States. But I’m not. You’re on your own.

Countdown To American Fascism: Electoral College Meltdown



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner


As I understand it, there are a series of times from the moment the popular vote is counted until the Electoral College actual votes where the vote has to be certified. I think individual State legislatures do it and then Pence does it as the President of the Senate.

One of the major talking points of fucking fascist shitheat MAGA assholes is that the United States is a “constitutional republic” and not a democracy. They make this point because they’re fucking fascists and don’t believe in democracy in the first place unless it facilitates them gaining and keeping power. Otherwise, fuck you.

Now, before I continue, let me remind you that autocrats always win. Always. They never fucking lose. So, I have accepted that Trump is going to have a second term one way or another. It is now an absolute equal to gravity and the speed of light — Trump is going to “win” a second term and soon enough people are going to be pushed out of windows in America like they are in Russia. That I may be one of those people in the end doesn’t make me feel very good.

But let’s suppose for a little while there is some debate as to Trump’s inevitable status as “winner.” This is where all that fucking shithead MAGA talk about us being a “constitutional republic” comes into play. All they care about is Trump winning. That’s it. Nothing else matters. As such, they’re going to do everything in their power to make sure he stays in power, even if it means destroying the political system of the country they claim to want to “make great again.”

So, I could see a few repeats of the Brooks Brothers Riot of 2000. I could see rolling political violence between election night and when Trump is sworn in. I could see states with Republican legislatures simply refusing to certify the vote at the behest of Trump. All of this would smash into the MAGA dominated Federal judiciary where — surprise! — Trump wins. It happened in 2000 and it’s going to happen in 2020, should it come to that. It will be a five-four vote and Trump is sworn in and fuck you, libtards.

If things got really dicey for Trump, I could see him pressuring individual Electors on Twitter, or doxing them or telling MAGA people to “show them the power of the 2nd Amendment.” Or, if Trump hasn’t already indicted Biden as his “October Surprise,” I could see him doing it AFTER the election as a way to fuck with the Electoral College and or negotiate his own pardon should, somehow, we manage to frogwalk him out of the Oval Office on January 20th.

The issue is, in the end, because Trump is a fucking fascist, he will come out on top. Then all of our nightmares will come true and, well, that’s it. In fact, the only possible thing that MIGHT happen to stop this political hellscape from happening is, well, Trump being Trump.

While Trump has some astonishing macro political trends in his favor, he, himself is still a fucking moron. He’s not a political genius as The New York Times‘ Maggie Haberman would coo that he is. He’s just a fucking idiot. What’s more, he’s a fucking idiot with history of repeated self-owns.

So, in the end, any chance we have of having a little bit of a breather before Tom Cotton or Mike Pompeo finally smother Lady Liberty will come because Trump, personally, screws up in some fucking massive way.

But there’s no assurance one way or another that this will happen — if ever. And probably what would happen is his personal screw up would be such a massive human tragedy that no one in particular will gain from it. We’ll just be rid of Trump for a little while until Ivanka or Don Jr have to battle Cotton and Pompeo for the House Trump crown.

Trump’s Coming Second Term Purge of Late Night Hosts


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner


Form follows function, so it would make a lot of sense that once Trump brazenly steals a second term that one of the first things he’s going to do is purge late night of all the hosts he doesn’t like.

Remember, by this point, Trump will have crossed a number of Rubicons in his successful efforts to steal the 2020 election, so he’s going to do some pretty jawdropping things that even he might not have thought about doing before. There are two ways I could see him getting rid of late show hosts he didn’t like.

One would be direct — he tells the heads of the majors media companies to do it or else. He’ll take their broadcasting license or whatever. This probably will happen behind the scenes, but when the boom is dropped it will happen very rapidly. We’ll all find out what he did, but lulz, nothing matters.

There’s another way he might do it — he might convince “German Industrialists” to buy up stock in various media companies and get them to pressure media execs to get rid of the hosts that way.

Whenever this happens — and it WILL happen — there will be a lot of gnashing of teeth by media types. We’ll learn all about the Smothers Brothers and LBJ. There might be some isolated protests. Many a “successful” meme will be launched on social media that “destroys” Trump. (Ugh.) But, in the end, nothing will happen. Absolutely nothing. Trump will win and there will be a new crop of late night hosts. It could be a number of these new hosts will be women or minorities in a sop liberals. But, oddly, none of these new hosts will talk about politics at all.

Meanwhile, the purged late night hosts will get new deals on Netflix or Disney+. They will all start a number of successful podcasts.

But an era will be over.

Soon enough, a similar purge will take place in TV newsrooms across the country. It’s even possible that Rupert Murdoch will be encouraged to buy The New York Times and or CNN. By the time Trump ramps up his efforts to get a Constitutional Convention called up to “pass a balanced budget amendment” the media in the United States will be nothing more than a lap dog to House Trump.

I believe barring a pretty enormous self-own on the part of Trump himself (which is obviously always possible) this is our future. It’s an absolute law of nature at this point.