Listening to the latest Deep State Radio podcast, it seemed as though they all were sooooooooo close to coming to the same realization as myself — in 2024 – 2025, we’re either going to turn into an autocracy or we’re going to have a national divorce and, as such a civil war.
One of my favorite podcasts.
This is key because there’s going to come a point when either Deep State Radio fuses with the #NeverTrumper movement and you have the creation of people I call Radical Moderates. These would be the people who rise to the occasion and act as the leadership for Blue States should there, in fact, be a “national divorce”
The other option is, of course, that instead of helping organize Blue States to fight for their independence from tyrannical Red States, Deep State Radio will be produced in the south of France in 2025 when all the wealthy liberals flee the country en mass.
As an aside, as I’ve said before, it has occurred to me that if it comes to civil war, Blue independence would be Blue war aims. It would take some extraordinary leadership among the Blues for their war aims to be re-uniting the country under their rule.
It would be much similar just to bounce altogether.
Anyway, I don’t that and I don’t want autocracy. But I fear, like I said, that we’re beyond the event horizon. The die has been cast. We’re fucked. Get ready. It will be interesting which way the fine people of Deep State Radio go.
This is the summer of our discontent. It’s possible that the summer of 2022 is the last summer that the United States can legitimately be called a “Western democracy.”
I say this because should Republicans gain control of Congress again in 2023, the final sequence of events that will lead to the establishment of white Christian autocratic rule in 2024 – 2025. And at the moment, it doesn’t seem like there’s any stopping this from happening.
The center-Left is too weak-willed and divided — and, at the risk of being canceled, I think they’re focused on stupid shit like pronouns when democracy is at stake.
So, at the moment, there doesn’t seem to be the will within Blue ranks to stop the slide into autocracy. We’re past the event horizon when it comes to autocracy and the only question is will we magically get the will power to have a civil war instead.
A lot will depend on if there is any violence after the Dobbs decision is handed down in the next few days. If there is any significant violence when Roe is overturned, then that will give us some sense that maybe we’re going to have a “national divorce” and, as such, a civil war.
But, like I said, at the moment, we’re just going to slip peacefully into white Christian autocratic rule. Then wealthy liberals will begin to flee America en mass and such a brain drain will replace scary brown caravans as Fox News’ bugaboo.
I’m trying to populate this first novel with as many provocative characters as I can. I really want the main characters to be well thought out. And, to do so, I’m doing some fancy footwork. I’m really, really leaning into what I remember about the kooky characters associated with ROKon Magazine in Seoul way back when. Including me!
The protagonist of the first three novels is meant to be something akin to a journalistic equivalent to Mare of Easttown. At least, that’s kind of bar I’m setting for myself. I want my protagonist to be as rich and well developed as Mare of Easttown. That’s the dream.
I’ve also recently figured out the dynamic between two characters — just going to use what happened between Annie Shapiro and me back in the bad old days of ROKon Magazine — and this sets up something of a conundrum. I’m well aware that for many within the “woke cancel culture mob” by definition, a CIS white male writing from a female point of view is a mortal sin, never to be forgiven. Ok, I get it. But, what’s worse, is I really want to make this particular character problematic. She, in a sense, is the person to prompts a six novel series and, as such, she really needs to be interesting.
I fucking hate the woke cancel culture mob…when it tells me what I can’t write as a man.
But my definition of “interesting” could be another person’s definition of, “you’re a CIS white male, just shut the fuck up.” I mean, if Fleabag had been written by a man, would the reaction have been the same? If Mare of Easttown is who I’m striving to be like with my protagonist, then it’s Fleabag that I’m striving for in this very important other character.
I want her to be endearing, and yet so be so problematic that you, the reader, are ambivalent about her and you care about her, but when Something Bad happens to her, you don’t quite know what to make of it. Of course, I’m not nearly the write I need to be to pull off such a feat. But if you for the moon, you just might fall into the stars, as the hackney saying goes.
My greatest fear is I’m going to write from a female POV and write something so absurd that all the female members of the audience throw the book across the room in disgust. I’m trying to be as conservative as possible when it comes to elements of the female experience that I can’t reverse engineer (which is most of it) but the more I push into making my would-be Fleabag character as problematic, the more I have to touch on sex, etc. The very things that CIS white middle age authors like me aren’t supposed to broach when writing from a female POV. (Which we’re not supposed to do in the first place.)
The late Annie Shapiro was my personal Fleabag.
But no one ever got anywhere in this world without taking a risk, as my father says. So, lulz, once more into the breach. I’m going to write what I can — even thought I don’t have a wife or a girlfriend to be my “reader” — and hopefully, I won’t embarrass myself too much.
You hear a lot of people talk as if as long as we never elect Republicans again, we’ll have a functioning democracy. The problem is, of course, is this is not possible. There is going to come a point when we face Republicans in power again.
And that’s the issue at hand — what happens Republicans are in power again? That’s the issue — what will be our reaction when radical reactionaries seize power again and simply never let it ago? I know that sounds hysterical, but it’s a very real possibility.
The reason is, the Republican Party is fascist and reactionary and we either have a civil war or we turn into an autocracy. Again, that sounds hysterical, but I just don’t see how those aren’t our options. Republicans — especially people like Steve K. Bannon — are pretty open about how they want to strangle American democracy.
And it’s not like we can stop them from ever gaining power again. So, in a sense, the Republican Party is, unto itself a macro trend that we can’t control. At the moment, I think we’re going to transition into an autocracy without a struggle. There will be a lot of wringing of hands about the transition, and a lot of wealthy liberals will flee the country because they’re a bunch of fucking cowards, but, in the end, that’s what’s going to happen.
DeSantis will become president at some point after Trump (or whatever), change the Constitution and 20 years from now we’ll be talking about Generation DeSantis and how he’s been the only president that millions of Americans have ever known.
Or, like I said, we’ll have a civil war, and “national divorce” and suffer through a pretty horrific civil war that will happen in conjunction with WW3. So, things are pretty stark. It’s not like we can simply assume the Republicans will never gain power again. And their growing more radical and reactionary by the day, not less so.
And, is so often the case whenever I talk about such things, a lot depends on what happens with Trump. If he is the nominee, then we’re more likely to go the civil war route. If he’s not, we’re more likely to simply peacefully become an autocracy.
But the key thing is –we can’t simply hope that Republicans will never gain power again. All they have to do is gain power ONCE and that’s it. The die is cast. Then the ball is in our court, then we have to decide if we’re going to have a civil war or allow ourselves to slip into autocracy.
We’re living through the montage before Something Bad happens in late 2024 – early 2025. What that Bad Thing will be, I still don’t know. And the reason why I don’t know is I simply can’t game out what the reaction to the theft of the 2024 election will be.
It could be that we’ll have a “national divorce” and, a such, a civil war. It could be that we’ll just slip peacefully into autocracy and that will be that. It could be that the crux of what decides the reaction of Blues to the 2024 clusterfuck will be if Trump is the Republican nominee or not.
Trump is so stupid and so lazy that he could, single handedly, spark a civil war by simply making Blues so angry that they feel no choice but to do so. But, again, I just can’t game things out.
There is every reason to believe that Blues just don’t have it in them to leave the Union. There could literally be a very brazen theft of the 2024 presidential election and…lulz. But anyway.
Every day that the 2024 election grows closer, the more we’ll get some sense of which direction things will go. For the moment, I think we’re going to turn into an autocracy without a peep of violence. The entire system is designed to keep people copacetic.
The key thing to look an eye on is wealthy liberals. If they begin to flee the country in anticipation then we’ll know which direction things will go. And, yet ,of course, wealthy liberals are probably going to flee the country either direction that things go. If there is obviously going to be a civil war, they’re leaving, if there’s obviously going to be an autocracy, they’re going to leave en masse.
I guess, then the issue is if Trump decides to run. If he runs, then the possibility of a civil war increases significantly. And then there’s the whole issue of how many times Biden and Harris will be impeached by by Republicans when they control the House.
From my conversations with my hyper partisan ultra conservative Traditionalists relatives, it definitely seems as though the Republican Party has a problem. And that problem is Donald J. Fucking Trump.
My Traditionalist relatives are ready to move on. They are quite open about what they want in a 2024 Republican candidate — Trump without Trump. They tell me they want to vote for Ron DeSantis “three times.” In other words, the ground is very ripe for DeSantis to be America’s first autocrat.
And, as an aside, it’s interesting how oblivious my Traditionalist relatives are to the sea change that the United States is about to experience. The usual ebb and flow of our politics will gride to a halt when we’re not longer a democracy — something my Traditionalist relatives don’t even believe America is in the first place.
The idea of the United States no longer being a democracy is something very abstract to my Traditionalist relatives — whom I love dearly. All they know is they fucking hate the “woke cancel culture mob” and the fucking hate the “gay agenda.” I mean, they’re all in with the anti-gay “drag queens teaching 3rd graders about anal sex” fears that seem so potent within Republican ranks these days.
It’s the first thing they turn to whenever there’s a discussion of such fanciful things as a “unity ticket” or me telling them all they have to do is be patient and they will get all their policy dreams enacted.
But back to Trump.
If we were a functioning democracy and not an anocracy, Trump would be a has been and we would all just be waiting for DeSantis to become president. But we’re not. Trump refuses to wander off into the political night and, as such, the issue is not who will be the 2024 Republican nominee, it’s who will Trump pick to be his veep?
I’m of the opinion that Trump has so lost his mind that he’s not going to pick DeSantis unless he absolutely has to. He’s probably going to pick some deranged, insane person like Mike Flynn or, if he’s feeling charitable, maybe Ivanka Trump.
Or, put another way, it’s probably going to be shocking.
And, what’s more, we haven’t even addressed the issue of what the reaction to Trump and Bannon stealing the 2024 election through an “administrative coup” will be within the center-Left. My Traditionalist relatives are pretty much ready to accept the secession of Blue States if it comes to that. Though, in all honesty, I suspect the moment Fox News demands blood for Blue States doing the very thing that Red States like Texas want to do, everything will change.
In other words, Trump is a political monster and there’s no ready endgame. I have no idea what is going to ultimately happen. But I do know on one end of the spectrum is civil war and on the other end is autocracy.
Things are really moving quite well as I transition from first draft to second draft of this novel. As I go through the first draft, I am taken aback by how poorly thought out some of the characters are. And how underdeveloped some elements of the story are overall.
There’s a lot to work with and there’s a grain of something really good floating around in all that crap. I just have to flesh out some of the characters and really heighten the conflict and drama. And, of course, I really need to think long and hard about cause and effect.
That’s something I keep overlooking and having to fix — you can’t just spring shit on the audience. You have to prepare them for it. Or, at least, use foreshadowing to lay the groundwork for a surprise to happen. If you don’t do that, the result can come across as choppy and disjointed. People don’t like things to Just Happen because that’s not how storytelling works.
But anyway, here’s where things stand scene wise per act: 50 / 60 / 30. As you can tell, my first act is way, way, way, too long, at least strictly on a scene count basis. I can futz with this problem some by simply making some scenes shorter and, as such, making sure I get as close as possible to the every-important sweet spot of about 100,000 words.
As it stands, I think I’m probably going to overshoot my goal by a minimum of 20,000 words. But, The Girl On The Train is, as I seem to recall, about 140,000 and that is a first novel, so it’s not impossible for me to pull such a thing off.
I find myself thinking a lot about the second novel in the series. One thing that I’ve really realized is it’s not going to be nearly as easy as I first imagined. I’ve pretty much just got a concept — a baby is stolen — and I have to think up a whole new plot, not just the second half of the first novel that I cut out as part of my transition from first to second draft.
But that’s kind of the fun of it all. I have a very well thought out universe and now I have to think up new and innovative ways to use the elements of that established universe to tell the story I want to tell. It just might take a little bit longer than I originally expected.
And, yet, maybe not.
I now know how *I* develop and write a novel, which speeds up the process considerably. The big issue is figuring out how to tell the best story I can possibly tell as quickly as possible. I still have a faint hope that I could potentially finish three novels and sell them all at the same time like Stieg Larsson did, hopefully without then promptly dying of a heart attack.
Yet, I think I may have to lower my expectations some. Just to finish one novel and get to the point where I feel comfortable to try to get an agent and then see what happens.
My storytelling and writing have improved so much since I began this process. The point is to get something, anything done so I can blow up with my DJ money like I’ve always been fated to do.
Before there was Alien, there was Dark Star. It’s a difficult movie to explain. It’s sort of a comedy scifi movie with very bad special effects. Like, piss poor. But the overall effect of the movie is quite good. It ends with the memorable scene of an astronaut surfing his way into a planet’s atmosphere.
Anyway, it seems like just the type of movie that you could use as a stepping off point for a new, big budget Hollywood movie. It would be a lot of fun.
So, according to Page 6, 18-year-old Sami Sheen’s decision to open an OnlyFans has caused something of a family quarrel. The child of Charlie Sheen and Denise Richard, the issue is Sheen is freaking out while Richard is kind of lulzing it.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CdUyV0JuOtf/ hed: Denise Richards Spends Mother’s Day with Estranged Daughter Sami Sheen: ‘Grateful to Have You in My Life’
The great irony of GenZ is on one hand they’re “canceling” the shit that Olds like me like — like the Victoria’s Secret Runway Show — then they turn around and support shit like OnlyFans. Ugh. It’s because of fucking the weird morals of GenZ that Dua Lipa doesn’t feel comfortable doing the occasional “accidently on purpose” T&A that people like Madonna pioneered.
Anyway, given the movies that Richard has been in over the course of her career…I have to agree with her on this issue. So what. Given that Playboy doesn’t have any cultural relevance anymore, where else can a stunning young woman use her beauty to further her career?
I look back on my life and am sad that I didn’t have the gumption to visit NYC on a regular basis when I was in my 20s. Maybe things would have worked out differently for me. Now, as an Old, I visit NYC every once in a while and I love it. It’s really inspiring and, as an extrovert, I feed of the city’s intense energy. Whenever I go, find myself slipping into a daydream where I live in the city full time and I’m a regular bon vivant.
Me, in LA 2025?
In other words, I’m delusional.
But there’s some context. I’ve found most New Yorker’s have a lot of heart despite being very cold and distant to strangers. The city if full of characters and, being a character myself, I find myself drawn there. If I can make it there, I can make it anywhere, as the song goes. I think back to my drunken rampage when I was living in Seoul many moons ago, and a little part of me wistfully wonders if I could pull off similar success on Trantor instead of Terminus, to use an Isaac Asimov reference.
Here’s my thinking — the same dynamic that caused me to become one of the best known expats in South Korea would be at play in New York City. I’m an extreme extrovert and the more I drink, the more extroverted I become. The usual caveats about drunks thinking they’re the funniest person in the room apply, of course.
And, yet, every time I delude myself into thinking this, I realize maybe I have the wrong city in mind. There are plenty of cranks on the streets of New York City that get nowhere in life. New York City is full of larger-than-life, colorful characters who pretty much exist solely to inspire drunk writers like me.
As such, maybe LA is where I should head instead, given the opportunity. The only reason I even suggest this is I’m such a good schmoozer (especially when intoxicated) that I have a hunch that someone, somewhere with a little bit of clout might notice me if I ended up at a cocktail party. As I’ve written before, I’m known to pontificate a lot like Quentin Tarantino in the movie “Sleep With Me.”
But, of course, I’m old. I’m not as cute as I used to be, far from it.
So, I think my best bet is to just keep my head down and keep working on these six novels I’m developing and writing. And, should the opportunity come, look into writing a screenplay or three as well.
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