Author Update

I am working on two new books, one of which is fiction, the other nonfiction. The fiction novel is urban fantasy, the nonfiction work is political science.

Also, I have left the Democratic Party. It wasn't a good fit for me. I am now officially Unaffiliated. I think the long-term plan is to go back to being a Libertarian, but the LP has annual membership dues, so it's more convenient for me to wait until January to rejoin and make it an exact calendar year of membership.

Why Donald Trump Won the 2024 Election - YouTube Video Analysis

Election 2024 Prediction: Update

The time to make a prediction is before, not after, the event happens, so I feel the need to write this short article today, and not three days from now. Previously, I had predicted a Trump victory, but I would like to change my answer from "Trump" to "I don't know; either Trump or Kamala." I had predicted that Trump would win because inflation would be the overwhelming issue of this election. Early polling data indicates that Kamala has an issue, whose significance I had not previously appreciated, namely, abortion, and that the abortion issue for Kamala is an equal but opposite answer to inflation as a pro-Trump issue. The abortion issue is causing women to go to the polls to vote for Kamala. Trump is banking on his voter outreach to young men to counter Kamala's appeal to younger women; however, the problem Trump has is that women have an issue, abortion, to motivate them to vote, but Trump's aimless, alienated young male voter lacks a signature issue for Trump to champion to cause him to get up off of his lazy, stoned ass and actually drag himself to the polls to vote for Trump. A feeling of masculine insecurity and masculine victimization is not, as such, a political issue, in the same sense that abortion is a political issue within a distinctly political categorization, despite the fact that such a feeling of masculine alienation might make alienated young men vote for Trump instead of Kamala if they were to vote at all. Laws that prohibit transgender identity are an issue, but Trump is not running on that issue, and, even if he did, this will not motivate a widespread vote for him among the alienated, anxiety-riddled, frustrated young male voters, who don't truly give a shit about trans people either for or against them, even if he did run on that issue. Inflation, too, is an issue that can cause anger and lead people to vote for Trump, but it is unlikely to be highly motivating to cause lazy people to go the polls if they would otherwise be inclined to stay home and not vote at all. In contrast, smart, college-educated young women have figured out that Trump would sign a federal national abortion ban, so they are highly motivated to go vote for Kamala. Thus, the 2024 election is a jump ball, a true 50/50 ball, which could go either way, and I choose not to predict one side in the event that the other wins and I look like an ignorant person.

Election 2024 Predictions: Trump Will Probably Win, And Here's Why

I recently learned of an interesting theory to predict the outcomes of presidential elections: that voters don't vote for the candidate, instead they vote for the party, but they don't vote for party along party loyalty lines, instead they vote for the party that they think will help them solve their current problems. According to this model, surprisingly, the candidate doesn't really matter, they are just a figurehead and a representative of the party and that party's broad principles and goals and abilities. And the basic idea is, when the economy is a problem, people vote Republican, because the Republicans will rein in spending and cut taxes, but when the economy is fine, people vote Democrat, because the Republicans won't let people have fun, but the Democrats will let people have fun, and when people have money all they want to do is have fun. There are ways for Democrats to win on the economy, but it is by means of, for example, as Bill Clinton did in the 1990s, being a "neoliberal," and to some extent even Obama was really a moderate liberal when it came to economic policy, he did Obamacare, which turned out to not be socialized medicine, and other than that he was pretty much bland and boring on economics. Hillary Clinton, unlike her husband Bill and Obama, was expected to be on the far Left based on policies she had advocated for during her husband's administration.

Based on this model, Donald Trump will win the election. The voters have not forgiven the Democrats for the Biden economy, they have not forgotten about Biden inflation (how could they when they feel it every day), and Kamala has done nothing to distance herself from Bidenomics, instead, in her recent interview on CNN, she embraced it. People hate Trump and people like Kamala, but, if this model which I described above is correct, that is not how voters think at the polls, instead, they will think that the Republican Party will fix the economy and the Democrat Party won't, and they will vote, not for Trump, but for the GOP by means of voting for Trump. The excitement surrounding Kamala is irrelevant, because, according to this model, the candidate is not what actually matters. If you vote for Trump, you aren't voting for Trump, you're voting for the GOP, and if you vote for Kamala, you aren't voting for Kamala, you're voting for the Democrats.

Bill Clinton had a famous campaign slogan in the 1990s: "It's the economy, stupid!" But in the post-Bernie Sanders Democratic Party, everyone has forgotten this. So, according to this model, Trump, though widely viewed as an underdog compared to Kamala, will win.

I am not sure whether I agree with this model, but I assert that, if this model is correct, then Trump will win.

Thoughts on Gender and Gender-Neutrality

Some men -- a lot of men -- seem to have a particular view of gender, namely, that women and queers have a gender, but men don't really have a gender, because being a man is the gender-neutral posture, it is the default, whereas being a woman is an active, positive gender, which comes with gender issues, and being queer is a gender, which also comes with gender issues, but if you're a man, and if you're a "normal" man, then you can exist without having to worry about gender issues because you have, or should have, no gender issues, since you have no "active" gender at all, you are the gender default.

And I disagree with this view, and I regard the truth with respect to this matter to be objective and to apply to all genders, and to not revolve around the particular point of view of which gender you belong to. And my position is this: agender, which means, someone who has no gender (which is how I self-define) is the default, is the true gender-neutral position, but, if you self-identify as a man, then you have a gender, masculine, and you have all the baggage and gender issues that come (1) from gender, (2) from having a gender, and (3) from being a man -- and this is true not only for trans men but for cis men also. Women, then, have their own feminine gender, which also has the issues that come from gender, but then adds the female-specific gender issues of being a woman, while subtracting the gender-specific issues that men face. And then each queer person has whichever gender they have, and then have whatever issues attach to that gender.

Therefore, the belief of some men who feel gender anxiety in the modern world and feel that if queer rights and the queer agenda gets sunk then they won't have any issues with their own gender anymore, they won't have to worry about gender or be aware of gender or think about gender, because gender is a women's issue and a queer issue, is false. Gender is as much a masculine issue as it is a feminine or queer issue, it's just that the particular gender at issue is male, not female or queer. As such, men who suffer from masculine gender insecurity and get gender-baited into political opposition to women and queers are "barking up the wrong tree," they are looking in the wrong place for the solution to their problems.

I, however, am 100% agender, so I truly have no gender trouble, because I am that lucky unique person who legitimately has no inherent gender whatsoever. I am the default, true neutral, a perfect shade of gray that possesses not the slightest hint of either pink or blue. Agender is not a gender, rather it is the absence of gender, and it obtains its categorical status as its own specific category of gender identity only in relation to other genders which themselves contain positive gender contents against which to compare itself to. And I think that a lot of people, at a subconscious level, are aware that some sort of default neutral gender posture does exist, or should exist, but they get confused into thinking that the default is male instead of agender, they confuse the two, they mix the two up. The use of color as metaphor is informative -- blue is not a neutral color; gray is a neutral color. You can think of blue as male and gray as agender. So, to help fix this widespread problem, I have written this short blog post to help clear up any confusion with respect to this issue regarding gender. Thanks for reading it!

Update

Some exciting news to share:

(1) I have made Diamond rank in MtG Arena Ranked. I've been a hardcore gamer ever since the pandemic began, it's what I did to pass time while in lockdown, and this is the highest I have been in any seriously competitive ranked game.

(2) After having been a vegetarian for 10 months (Sept 2023-July 2024), I am back to eating meat. It just felt like it was time.

(3) I have joined the Democratic Party (gasp! shock!) No, I haven't become a socialist, I have not renounced my theory of economics, I'm just a conservative Democrat now. (There is no such thing as a libertarian Democrat, so obviously I can't be one, but there are conservative Democrats -- Senator Joe Manchin is one. If you look back at history over the past hundred years, there have been many famous conservative Democrats.) The local GOP in my area is very, very anti-trans, and since I have become public as being agender, I felt like the GOP not only didn't want me, but had some active hate towards people like me. And the Libertarian Party in my area is virtually nonexistent, I tried to start one, we had two or three people who came to our meetings, and then after two years it died. To say nothing of the fact that the Libertarian Party now has so many Donald Trump supporters that it is merely a branch of the GOP at this point, virtually all the LPCT members are loyal to Trump first, principles second, and I am not.

With Gen Z, and even with Millennials, there has been this radical demographic shift post-pandemic that straight cis men tend to be on the Right, and have serious masculine gender insecurity, and cope with their gender issues through politics instead of therapy, and hate trans people, while cis women and queer people tend to be on the Left, and they don't hate trans people. Only one of those two categories describes a place I can exist without fear of getting shot. The Left has its own set of issues, but I will have to live with it. In theory, Leftism means Communism, and I am not a Communist, but I will just have to see whether there is still such a thing as a moderate Democrat or centrist Democrat. We'll see. I believe in factual research, so I will be collecting firsthand data on this question.

And, by the way, no, I really didn't do this because of Kamala-mania -- I think she's better than Trump, but in terms of her policies, she seems to embrace everything Biden did, so I expect her to be pretty much exactly like Biden in terms of how she governs, although, unlike Biden, she doesn't suffer from early-stage Alzheimer's disease. She won't solve inflation, but Trump, with his protectionist tariffs, might not have solved inflation either.

Duchess, Part 2

In my last post I blogged about the Duchess chocolate cake. Today I would like to food blog about Duchess's eggplant parm. They do something really clever, instead of serving it on a hero wedge like most places do, they cut the eggplant into large round slices and deep fry it, then they put it in a hamburger bun and cover it with marinara sauce and melted mozzarella, and it's like a veggie burger but it's actually better than a veggie burger. And Duchess has two veggie burgers already on their menu, they have a Beyond burger and they also have a veggie burger that's sort of like a Praeger burger, but I've taken to ordering their eggplant parm instead of their veggie burger because it's such a good, clever vegetarian option, I'm amazed more people don't serve eggplant parm as a burger. It's delicious!

But, if you don't live in Connecticut, you'll probably never eat at a Duchess. Alas!

I've fallen in love... with a slice of chocolate cake

In Connecticut there is a fast food chain called Duchess which only exists in Connecticut, and I have fallen in love with this sort of chocolate cake pie that they make, if you are ever in Connecticut you must eat at Duchess, and if you eat at Duchess you must have their chocolate cake pie. It's basically chocolate cream pie but they make the pie crust with crumbled Oreo cookies and it's just divine. And normally, when I find food I love, I try it several times and eventually it gets boring and I move on, but I have been having one slice of this cake each day for the past week, and I'm not getting bored with it, it's so good that I discover new facets of its flavor profile each time I eat it. (Don't worry, I'm not gaining weight--my car broke down recently so I now walk as my primary mode of transportation, so I walk 2 miles a day and I've actually lost weight in the past week).

I bought something at my local drug store today and the cashier said to me "Happy Fathers' Day, because you're a man," and I could have gotten really angry and snapped back "I'm not a man, I'm agender," but this person was a boomer and obviously very uneducated and it's a drug store that caters to an uneducated working class clientele and I was like, you know what, this person wouldn't understand, just move on, so I said "thank you" and left, which I think was me being a nice person instead of getting angry.

I was also thinking about the scene in Lord of the Rings: Return of the King were Eowyn says "I am no man!" and it would have hit if Eowyn was agender.

What I'm Working On, Author Update

Author Update:

I recently published The Crystal of Light and An Essay on the Philosophy of Religion. Please read both of them!

I am currently working on a LitRPG Isekai Progression fantasy novel. It's going to be a short one by my standards, only 100 to 200 pages long, not 500 pages like some of my other fantasy novels.

In other news:

Now that I'm openly agender, I am learning that agender is too trans for cis people, but not trans enough for trans people. It's the worst of both worlds. It's great! (/s). But, seriously, I didn't choose to be who I am, I just happen to be the wonderful person I am. And I refuse to change just because other people don't like me.

I have published my new fantasy novel - Please read it!

Clocking in at an epic 525 pages, my new novel "The Crystal of Light" is now for sale in its Kindle Edition. Please buy it! At least please take a look at the free sample and see if it interests you. I think that you will like it! It's a series starter but can be read as a standalone, the story is satisfying in itself although the ending leaves it open for me to write sequels.

Author Update: Two New Books This Spring!

Hello, Readers!

It is I, author Russell Hasan, here with another update!

I will be publishing two new books this spring: an epic fantasy novel, and a nonfiction essay. The fantasy novel is unlike anything I have written before, but I am very happy with how it looks, and I hope you will be, too! It's an epic fantasy novel, but it is unique in two respects: first, it's a fantasy heist novel, which is not very common but does have a handful of famous novels which have done great things with that premise, and I am happy to say I think mine does, too. Second, it's a character-driven soap opera in addition to being a fantasy heist novel. It's got a lot going on in it, but it's going to be a long novel, like 500 to 700 pages, so there will be room for a lot of stuff to happen. It's coming out soon, like this month or next month.

The nonfiction essay is a sharp departure from many of my previous nonfiction works, because it is an essay on the philosophy of religion, and it says some very favorable things about religion; however, all of my arguments are logical, and, to the extent that my nonfiction books about Objectivism have always been characterized by logic, I don't view it as a 360 or anything of that sort. I go where logic leads me, regardless of where the conclusion ends up. Regardless of whether a reader agrees or disagrees with the essay, it serves as a nice introduction to a variety of topics within the discipline of the philosophy of religion. This one I am targeting for April or May, certainly no later than June or July.

Also, as is my habit on my blog, I have to give an update about being vegetarian. I have been perfectly vegetarian for the past five months, except that I continue to have an issue where I eat something that I don't expect to contain meat, then I read the ingredients and learn to my dismay that the horrific food packing industry put meat in something that has no business containing meat. Like, why put gelatin in a granola bar? Gelatin, in case you did not know, is a meat byproduct. I don't eat a granola bar expecting it to contain meat! But alas, some do. And when I go to Whole Foods and buy a tub of freshly prepared mixed vegetables, I don't expect it to contain bacon bits! But, alas, apparently, they expect me to watch out for meat when I buy vegetables. Now I just read the label on everything before I eat it, but it's annoying!

Happy Reading!