Month: November 2021

Of Putin, Ukraine, Trump & A Potential Republican Civil War


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Now, before I begin, let me be clear that Republicans are on track to win in 2022 and 2024 and accomplish their final consolidation of white minority rule. So, even with the scenario I’m about to lay out, it’s doubtful American democracy survives.

But, if noting else, the context of its death might be different. As such, keep in the back of your mind the cold hard facts that through voter suppression, gerrymandering and Bannon’s administrative coup on the local level we’re an autocracy without an autocrat.

Another thing – Putin has yet to do any sort of invasion of Ukraine. It’s possible this is all a bluff. It’s possible that we’re all overthinking this and the United States will slip peacefully into autocracy, without a hitch.

Having said all that, let’s begin.

It appears as though either Putin is going into any war with Ukraine with modest, limited war aims or he believes that no matter what, any war he starts will be wrapped up early enough that by the time 2024 rolls around the Republican Party will go back to its monolithic personality death cult swirling around Donald Trump.

The Republican Party may face unprecedented division between itself and Donald Trump if there is a war between Russia and Ukraine, because Trump is such a fucking Putin toady that he buck 60 years of Republican political tradition and support the Russians against the Ukrainians.

A lot would depend, of course, on how bad any war between Russia and Ukraine became as well as if the war captured the popular domestic imagination. If the war got really bad and graphic images of the death and destruction of the war between Russia and Ukraine got so bad that Americans picked the Ukrainian side and Trump STILL sided with the Russians…well, Republicans might, finally, have a window opportunity to excise Trump, if not MAGA, from their body politic.

But it’s one of those things that is impossible to predict. There are just too many different variables. And, you know, of course, that Trump is so craven that he specifically for near-term political expediency, he might switch gears, only to go back to slobbing Putin’s knob the moment he was safely in the White House again.

Anyway, the point is — the moment any major war starts in Ukraine, we may all have to take a deep breath and reevaluate what might happen politically in the United States on a domestic basis because of it.

What Is Putin’s Endgame For Trump In The Context Of Ukraine?


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The more I think about it, the more I realize that Putin’s relationship to Trump is not nearly as easy to figure out as any objective observer might want. We know that Putin wanted Trump to win in 2016. And we know that Putin probably early on made a political calculation that it would be dumb to invade, say, Ukraine in Trump’s first term given what a suck up Trump would be to Russia if it happened.

And, yet, when we turn to the present day, we encounter a conundrum.

It’s very possible that by definition, if Putin invades Ukraine in some sort of “general war” that he would severely damage the Republican Party by splitting it into the Pro-Russia MAGA faction and the more traditional anti-Russian faction. Depending on how bloody the war became, you could even see Trump finally getting a worthy primary opponent, one who would run specifically on being tough on the Russians who were destroying eastern Ukraine.

Which makes one wonder — why?

Why risk destroying the political career of one of the biggest geopolitical patsies in modern history when you could just sit back, wait for Trump to win re-election in 2024, get his Constitutional Convention and THEN strike Ukraine. Putin is a very patient man, he could very well do that and get everything he ever wanted with Ukraine and more.

So, there are a lot of contradictions in Putin and Trump’s relationship that don’t make any sense because we don’t know all that’s going on. But the case could be made, I guess, that something like this is going on — Trump was a combination Manchurian Candidate, Manhattan Project and very, very lucky asymmetrical political attack against the United States.

Even though Trump was a Russian toady and the most powerful man in the world in the palm of Putin’s hand for four years, now that he’s out of office, Putin sees a big chunk of Eastern Ukraine being something he craves so much that he’s willing to destroy the Operation Trump to obtain it.

Putin has made the geopolitical decision to strike now, even though doing so would be a make or break event for the Republican Party for at least one political cycle. And, yet, maybe I’m not giving Putin enough credit.

Maybe Putin is going into his winter war against Ukraine knowing that he intends to wrap it up by spring. If that’s the case, then by fall 2022, everything will be back to where it was. Trump will be the most powerful man in the Republican Party and Putin’s toady.

Meanwhile, Putin will control a huge swath of Ukraine.

But, at the same time, Putin is potentially making a pretty huge miscalculation. If Russia’s involvement in Ukraine lingers long enough to really catch the attention of the domestic American imagination then….things could get interesting for all involved.

I Encourage You To Subscribe To My Free Substack


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

For various reasons, I may try to shift more of the content that I would otherwise post here over to Substack. I keep saying this, then not do it. But I just wanted to remind those very few readers that I do have that my Substack exists and how to subscribe.

Is The Omicron COVID19 Variant My Feared “Omega Variant?’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Some time ago, I worried out loud on this blog about the possibility of a super potent COVID19 variant I called “the Omega Variant.” The announcement today of the existence of the “Omicron” variant has again got me wondering if my dire predictions might come true.

For it to be what I feared, the Omicron variant would have to be so much worse than the original COVID19 everything would be thrown up in the air in an unprecedented fashion, very, very rapidly. In fact, the very existence of our current concept of the modern world would momentarily be put in doubt. Hundreds of millions of people all over the world would have to die in quick succession.

That’s when we know that the Omicron variant was the Omega Variant.

So far, I don’t even know why the WHO is concerned about Omicron in the first place. As such, I think we’re all kind of freaking out and pouring our fears into it in the abstract.

There is a political aspect to all of this. Enough people die quick enough in the United States and the country will buckle in to warring camps a lot — A LOT — sooner than you might think. But, for the moment at least, that’s all very fantastical.

Soon enough, I think we’ll find out what the deal is with Omicron and how concerned we should be. I’m hold up with a broken right ankle, so, hopefully, if the apocalypse does come, it can at least wait until February.

At least give me a running start, Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Joe Rogan Is Becoming the Jon Stewart Of The Right — And That’s Bad For Everyone


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

There was a point when Jon Stewart was, by proxy, one of the most influential political figures in American politics. But he always seemed very uncomfortable with taken so seriously. It got to the point where whenever he could not help himself and flexed his political clout, he would crack a fart joke to soften the blow.

Joe Rogan / The Internet

And, so, now, we are in a new era, the Joe Rogan Era, where he is in a similar situation to Stewart, only for the Right. The analogy isn’t one to one, but there’s enough similar to take note of it.

Rogan isn’t nearly as smart or engaging as Stewart, but he has garnered a lot of attention in the “alt Right lite” by having clear opinions that he’s will to defend. Up to a point, of course. Wrapping yourself up in an earnest masculinity will only get you so far. Rogan can be a big fucking idiot.

And that tendency to be an idiot has gotten worse as his political influence has increased. In fact, the case could be made that he is yet another cog in the massive, extensive permission structure that allows Traditionalists to make common cause with the MAGA New Right.

He’s part of the amorphous media blob of non-FOX News, non-OANN, non-NewsMax media outlets that water down and make palatable the putrid bullshit of Alex Jones, et. They do this so Traditionalists, who feel pushed up against a political wall because of negative polarization, are looking for any possible excuse not to make common cause with the center-Left in an effort to defeat the rise of fascism in the United States.

Joe Rogan is a pretty big player in all of this. And, you could plot out a counter-factual in which it was Rogan, not Trump, who ran for president in, say, 2020 if Trump had not run in 2016 (or lost.)

Meanwhile, just like Jon Stewart, if Rogan ever does something that causes a lot of pushback, he simply shrugs and says he’s a “comedian not a doctor” and why is everyone getting so upset.

Anyway, Rogan has a lot — a lot — of very passionate defenders who love his gruff, earnest masculine platitudes. No matter what we end up doing — having a civil war or turning into an autocracy, Rogan is likely to only grow in power until things reach some sort of stability again.

What that New Normal will look like is anyone’s guess.

Why Would Putin Wait To Attack Ukraine After His Toady Trump Was Out Of Office?


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

On paper, it seems as though Putin missed a golden opportunity to achieve his geopolitical goals by not attacking Ukraine while Donald “golden showers” Trump was still in office.

And, yet, if you look at Trump’s recent statements about Ukraine, one gets the sense that Putin had a very specific reason for not attacking Ukraine (or anywhere else) while Trump was in office. If he had, the jig would have been up as to how absolutely weak Trump was with Putin.

Trump was so beholden to Putin — for whatever fucking reason — that had Putin taken advantage of it while Trump was still in power then it would have been difficult for Trump to successfully stay popular enough to become the autocrat that Putin wants him to become.

Or, put another way, one could make the argument that Trump is too weak domestically for Putin to have walked all over the United States while Trump was president the first go round. If Trump had won a second term, then, probably at some point after he got his Constitutional Convention and secured his place as American’s first autocrat, THEN Putin might have attacked Ukraine knowing it would all be a domestic political lulz.

But now that Trump is out of power, Putin can attack Ukraine and pretty much it will be Biden’s problem and there’s nothing he can do in real terms without risking WW3.

At least, that’s all I got. It just makes a lot more sense to me for Putin to be thinking this than anything else.

What The Success Of The Internet Can Tell Us About The Possible Future of The Metaverse


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

When I was in college at JMU, I was obsessed with the Internet revolution that was going on around me, to the point that I studied every little morsal of news about it thinking I might see something unexpected about to take off. If I had had any ability to learn software, there’s a chance I could have become some sort of dotcom billionaire before the whole thing was over.

The kids of Meta.

But, sadly, just like how I’m not fond of little kids who aren’t mine and they aren’t all that fond of me, either, I’m a writer of words, not code. This, however, did not stop me from ending up my college newspaper’s first online editor.

The interesting thing, and the thing we can learn the most from, is how it was not inevitable that cyberspace’s endgame would be the public Internet and, not, say, AOL, CompuServ, Prodigy or even AT&T / Ziff Davis’ Interchange. There definitely was a huge amount of momentum that was in the public Internet’s favor in the mid to late 1990s, but nothing is inevtiable.

It could be suggested that because the rise of the Internet was a unique thing event unto itself that it was given a breaks that it otherwise would never have gotten. If the powers that be — especially in the media — had truly understood how “disruptive” the Internet would ultimately have become, they likely would have tried to throttle it while they still had the opportunity.

So, this brings us to the Metaverse.

Meta is playing the part of 1990s Microsoft in this example of history repeating itself. This go round, because of what happened with the Internet, the Powers That Be know the potential power of this very disruptive concept and, as such, want to make it closed and proprietary so they can control it.

If you wanted to make yourself feel better, you would believe that despite this willful sabotage, all we might need some scrappy startup to use existing open standards for Web 3.0 (if they exist) in such a way that what happened to the Web when Netscape was released will happen to the Metaverse.

Or not.

It could be that Facebook, er Meta, will always control the Metaverse and that will be that. It will be interesting to see how things play out going forward.

Jesus Christ, Is Meta Thirsty About Being Considered Hip


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Because of my fucking severely broken right ankle being in the process of healing, I’m stuck on the couch writing, developing, reading — and watching TV.

While I love the idea that, essentially every waking hour is now going to be focused on working on one of my four thrillers, or a scifi pandemic novel or a scifi screenplay or a short story, I fucking hate watching TV.

I keep seeing Meta’s fucking thirsty ad begging for hip POC to give them street cred. This, of course, is never going to happen. That ship has sailed. It’s all about Tik-Tok now. And should the “metaverse” take off, it’s more likely to be some small startup with really cool features that blows up and gets the street cred that Meta is begging for.

Ok, guys, we get it.

The reason why the Meta ad is so thirsty is this: they have a group of young men and women POC who are seduced by the amazing potential of the Meta platform. We see their faces in EXTREME CLOSE UP, giving us the sense that they’re about to cum because of how great and wonderful Facebook — I mean Meta — is.

It’s so over the top and transparent that, ugh, it’s just very dumb and a waste of time. Meta, however, does have a lot of money. So I guess it’s at least possible that through sheer force of will provided by a few billion dollars of marketing over a few years that they might get their wish.

They Shoot Writers, Don’t They? — For The Next 3 Months I Plan On Being A Dry Drunk


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

For various reasons, I’ve made an informal deal with myself — I’m not drinking until I can walk again. I feel pretty comfortable that this deal will be successful because of my relationship to booze.

I will admit that I’ve abused alcohol — especially when I was in South Korea — but I’ve also gone huge spans of time no drinking for various reasons. Usually, because I was simply too poor to buy any.

What’s interesting is, I have been forced to take painkillers because of my severely broken right ankle and — to date — I don’t understand how someone can get so addicted them. So far, the ones I’ve taken have either given me a tiny buzz or no buzz at all. I’m WELL AWARE of how easy it is to become addicted to painkillers and I treat them with a great deal of caution and respect because of that.

But I’m hoping it won’t come to that.

I’m hoping in three months everything will return to normal and I can laugh and laugh at this stupid freak accident that threw my life for a loop in a dramatic and unexpected fashion.

I can go back to drinking rye and ranting on Twitter, making everyone think I’m nothing more than just another Internet crank.

Idle Musing About Developing A Screenplay


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
I’m essentially using the method of development for the structure of a big story that I have formulated over the last three years to now work on a screenplay. The scifi movie concept is set in the far future and has is very much a warning about both the threat of MAGA and global climate change.

One thing I’ve noticed as I actually develop this screenplay’s outline is how much more native and organic outlining a screenplay is for me than a novel. There is a very strict rule when developing a screenplay — more screen time equals more attention directed to a concept or theme.

This also exists for novels, of course, but the whole dynamic of how you handle this is different for a screenplay. Because it’s on the screen, there are all these tricks you can use to really stress to the audience in a subtle way that this or that thing is REALLY IMPORTANT.

As such, I find myself flexing a different part of my creative mind as I go through the scenes of the outline. It’s a lot of fun.

And now that I’ve severely broken my right ankle and I’m literally unable to do anything but sit in front of my laptop every waking hour, it’s at least possible I’ll be able to focus a lot more attention on my various side projects over and above the four thriller novels I’m working on.

All that is the goal, at least.

I’m struggling to find a silver lining in this dumb, freak accident. And, if nothing else, if I ever reach my “potential” I can look back and all of this will be a funny story I can tell on the TV talk show circuit.