Month: May 2021

The Dead Hand Of History & 2021’s Possible Secession Crisis


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The thing we saw after election night 2020 is, once history begins to have a certain momentum, someone, somewhere is going to pop up to take advantage of it. As such, the talk of recounts popping up here and there across the country is very, very dangerous because all we need is one (1) fraudulent “victory” on the part of Trump and the dead hand of history may take to some pretty dark places — like a secession crisis.

It’s very easy to imagine that initially we have some sort of “nullification” crisis in which Trump runs around the country having rallies where he demands the results of the 2020 election be nullified because he “won.” Because that’s a very dumb, batshit idea that is impossible to do, MAGA state legislatures will YOLO it and start to have secession conventions.

And, yet, it could be this is all a bunch of nothing. Trump talks a good game, but he’s way too lazy to actually do the hard work necessary to start a civil war in 2021. Really, that’s kind of the rub — it wouldn’t be Trump who did it. It would be us. We would do it to ourselves.

The issue is, does this crisis happen this year because of fucking Cyber Ninjas (and others) or does it happen in 2024-2025 because a MAGA controlled Congress tells us all to fuck off and nullifies any Electoral College result it doesn’t approve of. That, no matter what, would be the real moment of truth. Either it becomes conventional wisdom that the only way a Democrat can become president is if Democrats control Congress, or we have a civil war and answer the question of what America is supposed to be, that way.

I honestly don’t what which will happen right now. It’s one of those things where a lot of metrics are flashing red…and it could be that we manage to drift through this particular crisis and nothing really bad happens. Or, if Republicans do again take power — which the ebb and flow of history says they inevitable will — that instead of freaking out and turning us into Trumplandia, we come to some sort of an agreement whereby hard power for generations will be in Republican minority white hands, while soft power will remain in liberal hands via the infotainment industrial complex.

That, I’m afraid, is a very, very sanguine take on our prospects.

More likely we’re pretty much just going to face autocracy or civil war. That’s it — no middle ground any more. But, we’ll see. I’m often wrong.

The Struggle With Word Count


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Generally, from what I’ve read, it seems a thriller’s “sweet spot” is about 100,000 words. I read a comment on Facebook from someone who said *40,000* was what the industry wanted and I call bullshit — that’s barely more than your typical novella. It’s comments like that that make one feel more stupid than before you read them.

But anyway, I’m shooting for something no longer than 140,000 for each book I’m working on. It was when I wrote the whole story out as one book and it came out to be 200 scenes or 200,000 words that I decided to split the story into two, ending the first book with a cliffhanger.

The reason word count is so touchy for me is I have the structure of these two novels mapped out after about three years and I hate the idea that after all this hard work, they’ll be rejected not because of my bad writing but because they’re just too fucking long.

But I’m prepared to self-publish if need be. I just know I’m working really hard to make these two novels as fast a read as possible, so hopefully a literary agent will notice that and forgive me for how long they are.

Only time will tell, I guess.

The Jan. 6 Capitol Insurrection Was Our ‘Beerhall Putsch’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

About ten years before Hitler was elected to power in a general election, he staged the notorious “beerhall putsch” in Bavaria. It was a comical failure and only managed to get in him thrown in jail for a while, where he wrote the book Mein Kampf.

The meta aspect of the Republican lulzing of the January 6th Capitol insurrection is they are making it clear that they wanted the comical coup attempt to succeed and next time something similar happens, they are prepared to nullify any Electoral College win by a Democrat. In fact, they know they’re very close to making it convention wisdom that the only way a Democrat can become POTUS is if that party controls Congress, too.

Then, either people give up on voting altogether and we become an autocratic managed democracy like they have in Russia or we have a civil war.

I still can’t game out which one of those horrible options is most likely to happen. It could really go either way. On one hand, MAGA Republicans are so craven, so hysterical about white people becoming a minority in the United States that they’re probably going to be able to sucker punch us and get away with their plot to turn us into Russia.

And, yet, the argument could be made that the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry and it’s possible that MAGA Republicans will bungle the transition to autocracy and the United States could balkanize as we slug it out to see which vision of America is going to take us forward. It’s very likely that things will grow very, very radical at this point and any number of atrocities will be committed by both sides — up to and including the use of seized WMD.

This doesn’t even begin to address the fact that World War 3 will likely happen because the United States is knocked out of commission for a few years — or for good.

Remember, if there’s a civil war, there are no assurances that either side will win. All that could happen is states like California, Texas and Florida become semi-independent, while Trumplandia and the United States simply bomb the shit out of each other with neither size being able to seize the entire territory of the former United States.

But the point of all of this is we have to take our two options seriously. We have to begin to prepare for not one, but two worst case scenarios. Yet again, I just don’t have a ready answer for you as to what to do about any of this. I guess that’s why I’m not good enough for New York Magazine or VOX.

We’re Doomed


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I don’t think enough people — especially Twitter liberals — really appreciate how fragile America’s political system is right now. It would not take all that much extra pressure at this point to cause the whole system to come crashing down.

It’s easy to run any number of very plausible scenarios whereby things really escalate out of control. Anything from Trump being indicted, to Trump — or Biden — peacefully shuffling off this mortal coil or the Cyber Ninjas recount in Arizona could be enough to cause something akin to a secession crisis very, very soon.

And that’s just the near-term threats.

I just don’t see us being able to punt this lingering existential crisis down the historical road past 2024-2025. Republicans will do everything in their power to nullify any Biden win and that will be that — it will become conventional wisdom that for a Democrat to become POTUS, they have to control Congress as well. Then all the voter suppression, gerrymandering and packing of the Federal courts with young, MAGA hacks kicks in and soon enough people like me start to get pushed out of windows by ICE.

Unless MAGA Republicans bungle this transition and we have a civil war.

But the one thing that isn’t going to happen is what’s happening right now — things being peaceful and normal. Once MAGA Republicans control the government again, they’re just never going to let go. They’re going to do everything in their power to turn the United States into a Russia clone.

So, in a sense, if you wanted to get all dark about it, at least with a civil war we might have the possibility of renewing our liberal democracy. But it would suck so bad. It would be a tragedy. A horrible tragic event that would be so scary and shocking that all sides would regret that we went through it. We would give it value and a narrative after the fact, but at the time it would be very much a holy shit situation.

You’re a fool if you think we’re going to muddle our way out of this particular situation. MAGA Republicans have grown too hysterical at the prospect of white people being a minority so they’re more than willing to burn everything to the ground rather than risk losing control. We’re fucked. We’re totally fucked on a historical level.

Again, I don’t write for VOX so, I have no idea what to tell you as to what to do about this impending clusterfuck. Get a passport. Move to a state that fits your politics. Or maybe just pray.

Ugh. Twitter Liberals Are So Oblivious


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The United States faces an existential political crisis without any ready answer. That crisis is one of its two major political parties no longer believes in the very liberal democracy that it’s a part of. The Republican Party is now biding its time for the opportunity to win a presidential election and then, well, that’s it. They’re going to crush our democracy and turn us into a MAGA version of the autocratic managed democracy found in Putin’s Russia.

Or we have a civil war.

The aggravating thing about all of this Twitter liberals continue to either think all of this is a joke or don’t grasp that what they’re documenting is pointing to a pretty stark choice at some point in the next few years. We’re all going to have to pick a side one way or another and there won’t be going back. What that choice may be will come down to how deft MAGA is in transitioning the United States from barely functioning liberal democracy to straight autocratic managed democracy.

It’s difficult for Americans to process the concept of an actual modern civil war. Sure, we can in an abstract fashion, but the idea that Americans would begin to kill each other in an organized manner for political reasons is still something we find difficult to grasp in any real, concreate manner.

Meanwhile, people on the far Right have embraced this very thing on a theoretical level. And, as January 6th proved, they’ve decided to start doing to for real, though their application of it on that day was more akin to a farcical beerhall pustch than anything else.

Next time, however, we won’t be so lucky.

I’m not smart enough to tell you what to do about any of this. But don’t lull yourself into any false sense of security about what’s going on in the United States right now. The next few years will be a fucking bumpy ride one way or another.

An Update On The Novel I’m Working On


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The novel is shaping up to be an even bigger creative project that ROKon Magazine which totally consumed my life for about eight months in late 2006 to early 2007. I’ve been working on this novel for what feels like forever, but I think it’s probably close to about three years.

Finally, finally, things have clicked.

But I still have a huge amount of work to do. I’ve learned a lot about how to structure a novel over the last few years and one thing that’s becoming clear is you need to read your stuff as you write it. If you do that, then you catch problems with pacing before you show it to other people.

I’ve spend all day today getting the sequence of events in this novel just right. It’s been exhausting, but well worth the hard work. I really feel like how I felt with ROKon Magazine at its height when I was lugging a backpack full of magazines around Seoul. It felt as light as air.

So, spending about 12 hours throwing myself at this novel today was a breeze. I know why I was working so hard — I have something I need to do and I was avoiding doing it by working on the novel.

Another thing I’ve learned is you need to map out scenes. At least I do. Mapping out individual scenes before you write them is a great way to force your characters to do what you want them to do. They don’t have any opportunity to do anything unexpected.

The key thing I’m focusing on with this novel is readability. I want these two novels to be such fast, easy reads that you zoom through them. I want you to look up from reading these two novels and realize it’s 4 a.m. on a Thursday morning and you’re willing to stay up all night to read them.

The last time I felt that way was while reading the book I’m using as my “textbook:” The Girl Who Played With Fire, by Stieg Larsson. The two novels I’m working on are so different from Larsson’s stuff in some ways that you would be hard pressed to believe there’s any connection between what I’m writing and what he wrote

He was a better storyteller than I am (at least at the moment). But I’m getting a lot better. I still think I might need to do some character studies to make what I understand about my characters to be more concrete. Right now, everything is pretty much in my mind. This lends to a huge amount of flexibility, but it also leads to problems of canon management.

Anyway, I hope to get into the second act of the first draft pretty soon. Hopefully, in the next few days. I’m trying to write these two novels as one big story that just happens to be told in two self-contained novels. Then it will be easier to sell both books.

Questions That Will Determine Our Political Fate


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

  1. If Cyber Ninjas “prove” Trump “won,” does anyone care?
    The bullshit recount in Arizona of that state’s 2020 presidential election results is suppose to wrap up in the next few days if memory serves right. I thought it was going to be in mid-to-late May, if I recall. Trump is already doing that thing where he pins all his hopes on one thing, causing his supporters to do the same thing.

    Given that Cyber Ninjas know that, it’s very possible that they’ll give Trump the “win” there that he craves. The question is, what next? Will anyone care? You can make the case either way. Either it’s a meh or it’s a huge fucking deal that brings the country to its knees.

    And, right now, I can’t figure out which one it’s going to be. It’s easy to imagine the same dynamic as January 6th, only on a national scale. Trump races around the country, egging state MAGA state legislatures on. They first want to look in to “nullifying” the Biden Administration, and before you know, we have a full blown secession crisis.

    Or nothing happens and we all laugh at how Trump has gotten himself worked up over nothing — again.
  2. What happens if Trump actually does get indicted?
    First, I seriously doubt Trump is ever going to suffer any accountability for anything he ever has done. Or, put another way, if we expect that to ever happen, we’re going to have to throw all our hopes on the Republicans suffering a historic, catastrophic defeat in 2022 specifically because they’ve tied themselves so tightly to Trump. If the result is muddled or open to interpretation, then, lulz, Trump is the nominee in 2024 and we have to go through Trump’s bullshit all over again.

    But if he does get indicted, I wouldn’t get too excited. There are a dozen would-be MAGA autocrats waiting in the wings to lead Trumpism without Trump. To be the person who turns us into an autocratic managed democracy like Putin’s Russia. They will purge the media and render all opposition null, even more so than what already exists. ICE will be weaponized and people like me who absolutely refuse to shut the fuck up will be pushed out of windows.

    So, I dunno. I suppose a Trump indictment might be one way to end him as a problem, but there’s just too much momentum with MAGA right now. Even without Trump, it’s pretty clear how easy it will be to turn America into an autocratic managed democracy. So, lulz. An Trump indictment would not be any sort of quick fix to the Trump-MAGA problem we face.
  3. Autocracy or Civil War?
    I have long said that this particular question is the one that we’re going to slam into in a rather abrupt fashion sooner than you might think. And, really, this question is more about “Will MAGA Republicans bungle the transition?” than anything else. It’s very easy to imagine our democracy simply fading away as it becomes conventional wisdom that a Democrat can only become president if Democrats also control Congress. People give up on voting because it’s become so difficult and we turn into a Russia clone politically, where everything revolves around “blood and soil.”

    This hasn’t happened yet. It will be interesting to see how close I am to being right about this absolute choice we may have to make…no later than 2024-2025.

The Curious Case Of Modern American Politics


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

On one hand, American politics has snapped back into something akin to “normal” now that ding-dong Trump has been deplatformed and kicked out of office. And, yet, there are some pretty crazy things happening here and there that are so wild that it makes you wonder not if we’re going to have a civil war of some sort, but when.

Here and there, there are pings that everything I’ve been worried about for the last few months is still there. We have the Cyber Ninjas in Arizona still hard at work to prove somehow, anyhow that Trump “won” the state through some nefarious deep state efforts. Trump’s absolute control over the Republican Party grows tighter and tighter.

And, yet, at the same time, its becoming clear that, in a sense, non-Republican Americans have moved on. The fact that there are a dozen would-be autocrats waiting in the wings to replace Trump the moment he bows out, doesn’t exactly make me feel any better.

The point — what should be happening, isn’t happening. Which is good. What should be happening is it becoming absolutely clear that Cyber Ninjas is going to “prove” Trump “won” and that Trump is going to start up his rallies again, demanding that he be named the rightful president because, lulz. That starts a nullification crisis and then a civil war.

For the time being, at least, we’re in a holding pattern to see what Cyber Ninjas finally pull out of their asses. And, at least as of right this moment, it seems possible that even if Trump does scream at the top of his lungs that he’s “really” POTUS that…nothing will happnen.

My guess is if this happens, we’re just not there yet.

It really will be the 2024-2025 timeframe when we face the very, very stark choice of autocracy or civil war.

And I honestly don’t know which one will will pick.

MAGA As Modern Slave Power


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’ve been reading books on both the American Civil War and the rise of Hitler in Germany and it’s pretty obvious to me that we’re careening towards a tragic, stark choice: autocracy or civil war.

Because form follows function, a lot of American politics right now is very similar to what was going on the last time the United States was tearing itself apart. It’s not an exact one-to-one, but there are some spooky similarities. In the late 1850s, it was their version of the center-Left that was consumed with conspiracy theories, specifically that “slave power” really ran the country.

Which, of course, it did (in a sense.)

Also in the late 1850s, there was a glorification of political violence. Though, to be fair, back then, they actually did something about it in Congress. People were always having duels and beating the shit out of each other back in the day before the Civil War. Thankfully, that hasn’t happened — yet.

Anyway, these days, I vacillate wildly in my mind between thinking it’s obvious that we’re just going to slide into MAGA autocracy without a peep to thinking we’re on the cusp of a Second American Civil War. While, in a sense, all the conditions are there for either outcome, it probably will ultimately be something I can’t predict that will force one or the other endgame to occur.

That’s why I’m so nervous about the sham Cyber Ninjas recount in Arizona. The United States is a political powder keg and it’s easy to imagine Cyber Ninjas “proving” Trump “won” in a few days being the spark that causes the country to finally descend into a hot civil war of some sort.

Or it could be a big old dud and we simply slide into autocracy in the 2024-2025 timeframe when a MAGA Republican Congress nullifies any Joe Biden re-election.

I just don’t know which one of these endgames we face. Things are still too much up in the air.

But the case could be made that in, say, 1859, it would be just as difficult to figure out if Southern Slave Power was going to finally take over the country in 1860 or if there was going to be a civil war.

So, who knows? All I know is the United States is very politically unstable right now. Our storied liberal democracy is undead and either it finally becomes dead-dead or there’s some sort of refounding via tragic, avoidable events.

MAGA Republicans & The Threat of a Second American Civil War


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

One of the many alarming things about American politics right now is how the American Right has been completely consumed by the cancer that is MAGA. This has been a long-coming process, but it is finally complete. Now, the only Republican who doesn’t believe Trump’s Big Lie is a Democrat.

Or, put another another way, things within the Republican Party have gotten so bad that for all the talk about Liz Chaney will potentially run for president, in reality, the only way she might do so would be as a modern day “War Democrat” if things got really, really bad.

The COVID19 pandemic laid bare how bonkers the modern conservative movement is in the sense they could not see the pandemic as a health crisis, but only as a political football to be managed. They hate science and it is now MAGA orthodoxy that Dr. Fauci was, I don’t know…out to make ready cash from COVID19 via the Wuhan lab and….was in cahoots with liberals to bring down Trump with it?

My personal theory about why Republicans love this Big Lie about Dr. Fauci is they hate science so much that once he became a political lightening rod, they keep wondering, “What’s in it for him?” So they pull the idea that he, personally, was making money off the Wuhan lab in an effort to understand this mystery. (Not that it’s even been proven that the Wuhan lab had anything to do with the outbreak.)

But it’s that kind of reliance on Big Lies that are now at the heart of the modern GOP. I often say that conspiracy theories are the last refuge of the intellectually dishonest and Republicans are a prime example of this. Because of macro trends in the American political system, they’re very, very angry and anything that doesn’t fit their FOX News-Qanon-OANN media narrative must be some sort of conspiracy designed to allow the globalist cucks to take over and take their guns.

So, the thing we need to appreciate is the Republican Party isn’t imploding, isn’t getting weaker and isn’t going to do anything but get closer to Donald Trump until, say, they have an unusually bad mid-terms in 2022. Pinning your hopes on this happening is danger for two reasons: 1) November 2022 is a long time and any number of batshit insane things could happen by that point 2)Mid-term elections usually are about getting the base to the polls and it’s very easy to imagine a scenario where center-Left people lulz voting and when Republicans take control of the House and Senate again, Trump gets the credit and he’s well on his way to becoming the nominee in 2024.

The people who take such glee from what they believe are indications the Republican Party is dying should slow their roll. What’s more likely to happen is the Republican Party will fight dirty and nullify any election of a Democrat if it has the power to do so.

Or there’s a civil war.

These two choices are on something of a continuum. In a way, tragically, it could be only a civil war that will at least give us the possibility of saving our liberal democracy by destroying the Republican Party once an for all. But I really don’t like that option. I’m a man of peace, a man of ideas. I just am taking autocratic threat posed by the Republican Party seriously.

As I’ve written before, there’s a greater-than-zero-sum-chance that the Cyber Ninjas recount in Arizona will “prove” that Trump “won” the state and that, in turn will cause Trump to run around saying we have to “nullify the Biden Administration.”

That, in turn, will cause a secession crisis when MAGA legislatures take Trump both seriously and literally.

The ironic thing about such a scenario is if we’re going to have a civil war, better to have it now than in the 2024-2025 timeframe. But again, I don’t want a civil war now and I don’t want a civil war later.

Anyway, the point is — we have to take the threat of the anti-democratic Republican Party seriously. They are going to come roaring back at some point and the sooner we get ready for that, the better.