Forget for a moment the rise of fascist MAGA Republicans, hell bent on destroying American democracy, what I wanna know is — did Harry Styles spit on Chris Pine?
Ok, let’s look at the photo evidence.
This is Styles as he’s about to sit down next to Pine at the film festival where all of this took place. It definitely looks as though his mouth is pursed as if he’s spitting a little bit.
It’s right about at this moment that Pine pauses want he’s doing and seems to contain some surprise at what has just happened. It’s not this frame, but maybe the one immediately after it where this is most clear.
Then, even more interestingly, Pine slips his shades on just as the lights go out for the movie to be shone.
So, my hunch is that, yes, Styles spit on Pine, but it may have not been intentional, given how jovial Styles looks just as the lights are going down. And if he did spit on Pine, it wasn’t a very aggressive spit. The way he pursed his lips was not like he was putting a lot of effort into it.
I’m not 100% sure that it happened, but it definitely seems as though it happened.
I started off this project wanting to try publishing my first novel in the traditional manner. Not that I have anything against self-publishing, but I wanted to go through the entire process to see how far I could get before I realized it just wasn’t possible.
I’m well aware that for someone like me to get published in the traditional manner is something like winning the lottery. Add to this that I have extremely high expectations for myself and I’ve been kind of drifting towards my goal without any deadlines and, well, here we are. I’m approaching 50 and there’s a good chance I won’t even begin querying literary agents until the fall of next year.
The thing about querying is, it not only is there a good chance someone like me won’t succeed, but even if you do, it can take months, years even, to finally land an agent. Over and above any talent you may have, a lot of luck is involved, too. So, there is every reason to believe that even if I sell a novel, if you factor in post-production issues of editing and marketing that I could be nearly in my mid-50s before I see anything on bookshelves.
Here is where my huge ego and general delusional tendencies come into play. For me, working on this novel — despite how, in some respects it’s obviously a fool’s errand — is existential. I’ve struggled with this project for so long, and improved so much, that I’m determined to see it to some sort of conclusion. I can’t help how old I am. I can’t help that I blew out an emotional knee because of the failure of ROKon Magazine in Seoul.
I’m determined to keep going, no matter what. But I do have to adjust my expectations some. There is the obvious problem of there potentially being a civil war in late 2024, early 2025 that I have to worry about. Tough for anyone to want to buy my novel if they’re dodging explosions. Or, if we become an autocracy, it’s very possible that I’ll just get pushed out a window because I got drunk in a bar and called President DeSantis a cocksucker.
Anyway, the whole point is — I wish I was about 20 years younger. Everything would be similar. But I’m an Old. I’m a loser failure who wasted way too much of my life grieving for a zine in a far away land. But I’m not dead yet. I still have the gumption to try to see if I might get this novel published.
But, of course, this novel isn’t A Confederacy of Dunces. If it doesn’t get published within a few years of me finishing it, it’s just another failed first novel that no one will see nor want to read.
There is a memorable Amy Schumer skit about a group of women having dinner on their “last fuckable evening.” I find myself pondering this as I approach my 50th birthday with little — if anything — to show for it. Now and again, I stop myself and ponder how the fuck I got myself into this situation and what I’m going to do about it.
The crux of the matter is I kind of blew out an psychological knee because of what happened with ROKon Magazine in Seoul. So, I spent a lot — A LOT — of time grieving over that particular clusterfuck because it was very clear that everything that went wrong in that particular situation was a reflection of my personality.
So, in a sense, it’s failure was my failure.
Now, of course, I’m zooming towards being 50 and for no other reason than to simply justify air being in my lungs, I find myself struggling to figure out how I might live up to whatever remaining potential I may have.
The biggest obstacle is, of course, my age and lack of any particular career. So, there comes a point — right about now — when it is exceedingly difficult to imagine a situation where I will ever find any traditional success at all. Even if I do something that would otherwise merit it.
Now, I’ve spend the last few years making myself feel better by remembering that Stieg Larsson was 50 when he sold three novels. (He promptly died of a heart attack, but still.) But I have to admit to myself that there were some factors that helped him be a success in that situation that I very much don’t have.
He had a successful career as a journalist in the comparatively small nation of Sweden. So, it wasn’t like he was me, being a complete loser nobody in the middle of nowhere in a nation of 335 million souls. Also, there was probably an element of nationalism in why he got his first — and last — three novels published. The publisher probably saw what he wrote as a way to further Swedish culture.
Now, after adjusting to a severe learning curve, my both my writing and my storytelling has gotten significantly better. And, as such, I’m within shouting distance of not only not embarrassing myself with this first novel, but actually getting it published in a traditional manner.
But, still, even if I get this novel published and even if it’s a significant success, I’m not going to get what I want. It’s not like I can ever be young in New York City, no matter how successful I become. And, what’s worse, any success I have at this point given the context of what is going on will be couched in the context of my age and otherwise what a big loser I have been for much of my life.
It’s all very disheartening. The idea of there being an old age Even Horizon is not something that is clear until it’s too late. It’s not like I could start a career in any traditional field.
I’ve given all of this some thought and there are three ways that I might, despite my age, find a modicum of some “success” despite inherent ageism and the fact that I’ve been a big old loser for way, way too long.
The Novel I’m Working On Becomes A Hit This is the one I’m hoping for a the moment. But, of course, even if I stick the landing, we’re probably talking me actually seeing “success” at some point in 2024, given the needs of post-production. I will be 51 and not only will my age be anything anyone wants to talk about, but the United States will be in the middle of the 2024 POTUS campaign silly season. And, as I keep saying, I have real concern that the United States in late 2024, early 2025 is going to either have a civil war or turn into an autocracy. That puts a real damper on my hopes for how long I might be able to enjoy the fruits of my success.
Become a Successful Fashion Photographer This is one, while possible, is not very probable. Even though I have the innate talent, there are a lot of basic obstacles to this one, over and above my age. I can’t afford the equipment I feel I need to properly do the job. And I live in the middle of nowhere. For me to be able to pursue this career, I would need funds that I just, at the moment, don’t have. Obviously, something might change and I might get those funds suddenly and unexpectedly. For instance, if I sold my first novel and it was a huge success, then that would help me with my dream of being a fashion photographer. But there would remain the issue of my age. The idea that I’ve just waited too long and now things that I should have been able to do — like be a successful fashion photographer — I can’t do for the basic reason of my age is very troubling.
Second American Civil War This is, in its own way, the darkest and least likely of these possibilities. I’m just working with what I know about myself and extrapolating what I might be able to do. I’m a good enough writer and public speaker that if we have a civil war, I might — like U.S. Grant — find some success after having been a drunk loser for a long time. This is a really bonkers idea, but, if nothing else, it gives me a little bit of hope that I might be able to unexpectedly find the success I feel I deserve.
Anyway, if nothing else, I need to take more seriously the implications of my age. I’m not getting any younger and I really, really need to come to grips with the hold hard reality of what that means.
Ahh, John Eastman. Trump’s favorite toady MAGA lawyer who thought up the ill conceived memo about how Trump could “legally” stay in power. If you read the thing carefully, it’s very breezy and caviler about how Trump might end American democracy once and for all.
Here’s the ending of something Eastman recently posted.
This is very bonkers because it’s like the “Spiderman pointing” GIF in written form. Or, in a sense, it reminds me of Lincoln’s Second inaugural address about how much the two sides had a lot in common and yet they still decided to settle things on the battlefield.
Eastman is a prime example of one of those guys who should know better. He’s an intelligent, well educated person…who has gone all-in with MAGA Republicans. It’s only because of enablers like Eastman that Trump has gotten as far as he has.
And, in the end, this is yet another sign that the United States either implodes into a MAGA-themed autocracy or we explode into some sort of civil war, caused by a National Divorce.
I’m reading up on the rise of Hitler in Germany and I keep, in my mind, contrasting and comparing Hitler with Trump. The key difference between the two men is not what you might think. On paper, because form follows function, they’re almost identical. And, yet, there is one specific element about Trump that makes him different than Hitler.
I suppose what I’m thinking of is Trump’s complete absence of abstract thought on a macro political basis. Hitler, in his mind, had a very clear ideology and political vision for Germany — he even wrote a book articulating it in pretty clear terms. Trump, meanwhile, is nothing more than an avatar, a vessel for white Christian rage.
While Hitler was frequently underestimated, Trump is frequently overestimated. Given the absolute fidelity of Trump’s MAGA Republican followers and how he is politically above the law at the moment, virtually anyone else in his position would have the wherewithal to not only still be in power, but to be rapidly consolidating it.
Almost anyone else in Trump’s position between 2017 and 2021 would have fired as many people as necessary to indict either Hunter and / or Joe Biden in the spring or summer of 2020. But Trump was so ham-handed about his efforts to end Biden politically, that all he did was get himself impeached for his troubles.
For Trump to wait until the absolute very last moment to try to illegally stay in power by putting all his hopes on one person — Mike Pence — is just astonishing. I mean, even doofus me would have known better than to have done that if I was in Trump position.
So, what can we garner from Trump’s past behavior? Well, two things. One, Trump is very lazy and very stupid. And, two, to date, he has only gone transactional out of personal desperation. So, going forward, there is a greater-than-zero chance that Trump could go transactional at some point between now and 2024 if he felt there was a real chance he was going to be indicted.
And what might he do?
Well, to me, the most diabolical thing he could do would be to begin ranting in direct, transactional terms about the need for Red States to leave the Union out of protest for him finally being held criminally accountable. But Trump is so stupid and so lazy — and lacks any ability to think in the political abstract — that I suspect that’s yet another instance of me overestimating him.
While there is every reason to be very, very alarmed at what a Trump second term might look like — that, unto itself, might start a civil war — I have serious doubts that Trump has it in him to realize he could probably wiggle his way out of an indictment by directly asking Red States like Texas to begin the process of leaving the Union.
A MAGA Republican is a fascist. And what does that mean? Well, in this particular case, it means they not only have absolute fidelity to dingus Trump, but they are racist and misogynistic in the extreme. They hate the browning of America and the rise of economically liberated women.
Often they frame what they believe in the context of the “woke cancel culture mob” wanting to ruin their lives for “just for being conservative.” There is an intense sense of aggrievement on the part of MAGA Republicans, to the point that they are willfully blind to the complete lack of popular policies on the part of MAGA Republican leadership in the name of “owning the libs.”
In fact, that is the central tenant of the MAGA Republican movement — owning the libs. They will believe any lie, follow any conspiracy to its logical extreme and ridiculous conclusion as long as they feel the warm glow of there having been libs “owned.” MAGA Republicans are so consumed by the culture wars that they have no policies other than whatever Trump rants about at any particular moment. Their fidelity to Trump is as absolute as a Christian’s to Jesus.
Another important element of the MAGA Republican movement is they no longer believe in democracy. In fact, they go out of the way to make it clear that the United States is NOT a democracy at all, but rather a constitutional republic. They say this because they know the more people vote, the less likely it is they win elections. MAGA Republicans also believe that, by definition, any election they lose is rigged against them.
MAGA Republicans want to establish an autocratic, white Christian ethno state in the United States. They are growing to see violence as means to a political end. And, ultimately, should Trump either go transactional or his second term’s radical policies be too much for Blue States — there could be a civil war.
And, typically, pick the most extreme Right wing hot take on any subject and that’s what MAGA Republicans believe. MAGA Republicans also believe that their Dear Leader Donald Trump is, by definition, above the law and even if the authorities have him dead-to-rights with it comes to {name a law} then it’s all a Deep State conspiracy to get him out of the picture. They believe this to the point that there is a good chance that Trump could be cooling his heels in prison and he would STILL win the 2024 presidential election.
The endgame of all of this is still very much up in the air. On one hand, the United States could stagger into some form of autocracy. This works on the assumption, however, that Trump will somehow get out of the way so a more palatable political figure, like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, can be America’s first autocrat.
But, as history has shown, Trump is a fighter and, as such, he is a political monster who refuses to get out of the way, long after he has served his historical and political purpose.
So, it’s at least possible that Trump, unto himself, could cause a civil war and destroy the most powerful democracy the world has ever known. Good luck.
With 2022 zooming towards its end, I find myself thinking about the future and wanting to make some long-term predictions. These are fast and loose, decided upon by simply using existing macrotrends.
A New World Order In the immediate future, the biggest thing for us to see coming is the existential choice in the United States of autocracy or civil war. Pretty much at any point from now until, maybe spring 2025, the United States might collapse into civil war directly or indirectly because of Trump. But, more likely, we’re just going to slip into autocracy and that will be that. Either way, the liberal order that has kept Pax Americana together is going to finally collapse and something new is going to take its place. What that is, I don’t know. But what’s going on in the United States right now can’t keep going. Something’s gotta give. We’re just too unstable and too divided. Whatever happens, we’re probably going to have something akin to WW3 in the process, with several regional wars happening at the same time because the United States will either be out of commission or now aligned with fellow autocracies.
A Return To Physical Media This is may seem rather mundane, but I think it’s possible that given how streaming services are removing a lot of titles for economic reasons, that we may see a renewed interest in DVDs, just as vinyl has become very popular in recent years.
Hard AI & Robotics This sounds like scifi, but it definitely seems like there’s a chance that sooner rather than later, advancements in AI will be combined with advancements in robotics and there will be a rather severe change in the lives of everyday people. It could be just as huge as the Internet. The reason why I say this is, a lot of menial tasks — some of them more complex than you might think — may be replaced by androids. I mean, what would be more jarring, more an example of future shock than walking into a fast food place and your order is taken and prepared not by a human, but a humanoid robot? The labor shortage would be solved, but then, of course there would also be a huge amount of unemployment, which might cause its own problems. I have no idea when this might happen, but maybe within the next 10 years?
The Rise of Environmental Terrorism As it becomes more and more obvious that global climate change is real, I think the next type of terrorism we’re going to face will be environmental in nature. One such terrorist group exists already, I think, and it’s only going to get worse. The nightmare scenario is, of course, a 12 Monkeys-type situation where they release a virus in an effort to significantly reduce the human population and put humanity back “in tune” with nature.
The Rise of Neo-Luddites This is something that I’ve been thinking about a lot. It seems as though the conditions are ripe for the Far Left and the Far Right, for economic reasons, to fuse together into a Neo-Luddite movement. This would upend everything as the world would be more about who embraced things like our new robot overlords and who didn’t.
Soft First Contact It is almost inevitable that the James Webb Space Telescope is going to discover evidence of extraterrestrial life at some point in the near, near future. While this will freak out the UFO community and a bunch of space nerds, I think the general public will lulz it. But we will, at last, know that we are not alone in the universe.
Wild card: Digital Telepathy I still think it’s possible that we may learn at some point in the future that Big Tech has figured out a way to read our minds and they’re hiding it from us. Either this will be a huge scandal and, like most things like this, it will be huge news for a few days then the average person will shrug and move along with their lives.
The idea that someone from one of the major English newspapers in South Korea searched for my name on LinkedIn is really beginning to worry me. I am well aware that there are many, many innocent explanations for this happening, but I know how big of a drunk, crazed asshole I was as an expat in Seoul and the more ominous scenarios write themselves — at least in my mind.
What I wonder is why now? What could possibly have changed recently that would make people think of me again? Or is my notorious legend so potent that people never really forgot me?
I love South Korea and Koreans and even hope to return at least once more before I shuffle of this mortal coil. But the idea that anyone would care about me all these years later is really unnerving. I’m very embarrassed by some of my drunken escapades in South Korea and I’m a dramatically different person. Again, at least in my own mind, I didn’t do anything THAT bad, but I was drunk and kind of nuts most of the time — especially in late 2006, early 2007. There are some stories to be told about what I was doing at that point in my life.
And, to be honest, there is a very interesting story to be told about what happened with me and Annie Shapiro when we were building up ROKon Magazine while I was also DJing at an expat bar in Sinchon called Nori. In fact, I spend way, way, way too much time dwelling on that story and how I could tell it literally.
That moment has passed, however. Though, I have to admit that I am drawing upon much of what I know about what happened between Shapiro and me while I was DJing at Nori bar as the basis for the six novel project I’m working on.
I’m so rattled about a newspaper reporter in Seoul searching my name on LinkedIn, I half feel like calling them up and asking, “Are you doing a story on me or something?”
Of course, if I wanted to put a positive spin on things, I suppose I might speculate that I managed to turn on of my student into a journalist and that’s why there is interest in me. Or something. Something not so dark and dire as I’m going to get roasted in a major Seoul newspaper for my bad behavior nearly 20 years ago.
Hopefully, all of this is a false alarm. Hopefully.
It’s becoming MAGA Republican orthodoxy to dress up their autocratic desires — and to own the libs — by being very adamant that the United States isn’t a democracy, but rather a “Constitutional Republic.” That Republicans quibble over nomenclature like this is a tell — they have very unpopular policies (such as there are) and rather than change them to win elections in a liberal democracy, they would rather destroy America’s democratic birthright.
There’s a lot to unpack here.
One of the signs to me, at least, that the United States is probably going to slip into autocracy is my Traditionalist relatives, who should know better, parrot this MAGA talking point. What they’re really saying is not so much that they believe that the United States is a Constitutional Republic, but rather they don’t believe in traditional liberal democracy anymore.
They hate it when people vote because they know that the more people vote, the less they win and the more pressure they feel to maybe, I don’t know, change with the times? What they want is to be able to play the more obscure, undemocratic elements of the Constitutional to ensure that they, at a minimum, establish an “illiberal democracy” like there exists in Hungary, in the United States.
And my Traditionalist relatives are all-in on this canard. They talk about how democracy is “mob rule” and how Alexander de Tocqueville warned about the dangers of democracy. (Which, I think is a disingenuous or even downright wrong interpretation of what he wrote about the United States.) And, what’s more they even say shit like the Founding Fathers didn’t want democracy and you’re not doubting their wisdom, are you?
This is all bullshit. The reason is, while, yes, we are a Constitutional Republic also, at least until recently, a very stable Western democracy. There were democratic norms and, in general, the general movement of American pollical life was towards more democracy and a broader definition of who could vote. So being a Constitutional Republic is not mutually exclusive with being a democracy.
All of this, of course, is a cover for how desperate white angry Christian (men) are to establish a white, autocratic Christian ethno state in the United States for various reasons. They are afraid of the browning of America, the rise of economically liberated women and a growing secularity in the country. They point to things like the “woke cancel culture mob” because that is lot easier to sell on a political basis than, “I want to take your democratic birth right.”
The rise of Republicans believing that the United States is a Constitutional Republic is a clear sign that we’ve lost Traditionalists and, as such, we are careening towards an autocratic state the moment — any — Republican becomes POTUS. That’s all she wrote. If someone like DeSantis becomes president, then we’re going to have A Very American Autocracy and we’re going to wake up in 20 years and wonder why he’s still POTUS.
Millions of wealthy liberals will leave the country to the point that the “liberal brain drain” will replace “scary brown people at the border” as a boogie man for the American MAGA Right. On paper, all things considered, that seems to be a foregone conclusion.
And yet, there is a wildcard — Trump.
Trump is such a fucking malignant chaos agent that he could, personally, start a civil war in a variety of ways between now and, say, spring 2025. I’m not saying he will, but there is definitely a greater-than-zero-sum chance that it will happen.
Anyway, I just don’t think we’re prepared for how bumpy the next few years will be. MAGA Republicans have all the political momentum — despite their snowflake bellyaching — and either they get what they want, which is an illiberal democracy, or we have a civil war of some sort.
Figure out what you believe in the real world and what you’re willing to suffer for. Or just leave the country, if you can.
I left South Korea a long, long time ago. There are young children nearly about to drive who were born around the time I left Seoul the last time. And, yet, South Korea can be something of a blackhole in the sense that once you pass its Event Horizon, you never really can ever leave.
Back hen I was fab in Seoul.
Now, let me be clear — I have a hyperactive imagination and I often spin some pretty wild tales from very, very little information. So, when I saw that I appeared in three searches on LinkedIn and one of them was from someone with the Korea Joongang Daily, I immediately thought the absolute worst. And by absolute worst, I mean maybe some sort of expose on me being a crazed drunk asshole when I was still in Seoul. Or something equally ominous.
I was kind of a huge drunk asshole for much of my time in South Korea and while I didn’t do anything that bad, I definitely did a few things that probably would get me “canceled” if, for some reason, I became a public figure.
I’m a very different person than I was when I was in South Korea. I have a lot more humility and, in some respects, it’s like I have had a brain transplant. But in this hypersensitive world, where apparently everything you’ve done in your entire life can be held against you until you die…well, you know. I can be a severely flawed person and times and being “pickled” in South Korea only aggravated that particular situation.
But I have a lot of wisdom now. There’s not much I can do about who I was nearly 20 years ago. You just try to be the best person you can be now.
Some other interesting things — another person to search for my name in the last week was an “author.” It makes me wonder if maybe my qusi-defense of J.K. Rowling maybe caught the attention of her — or someone like her. And, lastly, one of the pictures Google references in its Image Search for me is DEFINITELY NOT ME. I have retweeted too many of the guys sexxy pictures on Twitter, and the algorithm decided that the two of us looked enough alike to use his picture with my name. Ugh.
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