Meanwhile… #14: Beyond The Pages

Hello there, friends and fans! It’s June 2, 2025– and here are some things that happened in the meantime!

This Is The Current State Of Things:

General News:I’ve been working on my research proposal for varsity, which is very time consuming. Sorry if I haven’t posted videos or articles lately, but this has to take priority for now. In case you missed it, I’m busy with my PhD in Religious Studies, having received a study bursary and RPL (recognition for prior learning) which is something of a life achievement in itself that I’m very proud of – and honored to have received. Work in that regard is progressing well, I just need to remember to take more breaks and rest more – can’t afford to burn out! I need to do another video – at least a short – for my channel, just to keep the people interested and to show them I’m still alive LOL. I seem to be almost over that lingering bout of “flu” (which I suspect may have been another round of COVID, considering how difficult it’s been to get over, even with meds) but yeah, I’m still not out of the woods yet.
New Videos: I managed to post a new music video on Friday, of which I’m very proud. I think it turned out really nice! Have a look here. The lyrics are based off a poem I wrote in 1992 by the same name.
Current Writing Projects: With my time now fully occupied with research assignments from varsity, I’ll have no time available for writing fiction for the immediate future! At least not until I’ve handed in my PhD thesis sometime next year! (It still doesn’t sound real to me, but yes, it really is happening!) I did have a bang at a story when I took a public holiday off from varsity work last month, but I’m so focused on academic writing and research right now, that everything I wrote came out a bit wooden (and to be honest, I kept looking for citations!) so I decided to give it a rest until I’m done with that whole project. In the meantime, if you like, you can catch up on books you may have missed (there are over 40 of them!) or keep up by bookmarking What’s Brewing?

There we are, all caught up!

Bibliography – All my books so far:

You can find them at .

Catch me on my channel! Support for my creativity welcome via PayPal or Ko-Fi !

Other Stuff:

So, No Second American Revolution Then?

It’s June 2025, and the former United States is now less united than ever. Predictions of the Trump regime rising to position itself as a dictatorship have begung to realize. Scholars and academics in the field of sociology and political science who warned of a looming dictatorship have left the US for greener pastures, as well as many other intellectuals, heralding a “brain-drain” which will affect the USA’s “thought-leader” capacity for decades to come. People leaving the country – for whatever reason – now also face the added gauntlet of ICE scanning their social media accounts – with or without their phones – and risking detention and incarceration without due process for critizing Trump or his politics. So much for the people under those stupid red caps who were shouring “free speech”.

What’s so sad about this situation is that for half a century, the US fed the world a steady diet of movies, books, series about how Americans wouldn’t take a dictatorship lying down, and how they would rise up heroically and fight to overthrow or resist, no matter the cost, and that they would win.

All we’ve seen from out here is lots of embarrassed foot-shuffling, mealy-mouthed excuses, hoping impotent politicians will save you, reliance on compromised legal and political systems that Trump and his regime are totally ignoring – and people just avoiding being the next to get dragged away to a concentration camp.

A good friend of mine has left the States and fled to Mexico to avoid retribution for their peaceful activism for human rights on various fronts. Considering that they are a published author, US citizen by birth and retired public servant with a spotless record, that should be a good indicator of where the USA is right now on the spectrum of “are we fascists yet?”

I still think most of you don’t really “get” or realize just how serious a mess you’ve gotten us all into – and by “all”, I mean the rest of the world. Tariff wars, trade wars? Undermining science and medicine? Education? Openly supporing war-mongering dictators and rogue states? Arming and supporting genocide? Carpet bombing a country that tries to oppose that genocide? When did these things become the right thing to do?

Some of these things didn’t just start overnight, but began long before Trump ascended to the Oval Office along a slime-trail of hate, vengeance and populist fascism.

What the hell happened to you, America?

Granted, it’s only been 5 months of the naked orange emperor’s reign, but it seems more and more like y’all are just going to “adjust” to having less or no freedom, write off all your co-workers, relatives and neighbors who vanish into a mysterious black hole of one of Trump’s purges – hope it doesn’t happen to you, and keep on waving that stupid flag as if it actually means anything. The republic is dead. Democracy is dead. You’re in a dictatorship. Act like it.

Predictions for the USA:

Future predictions for the US and its descent into fascism? I have a few.

At the rate things are moving, trans people will be criminalized outright before the end of 2025, and coupled with the loss of medical support, will face detransition. Most will not be able to survive that – which the enemy knows and understands, and has foreseen. Sanctuary cities are already under political and legal siege by Trump, and will be over-powered within the next few months. Trump and the Republicans will continue to consolidate their permanence in power (Project 2025), continuing to remove adverserial judges and replace them with yes-men and stalling and ignoring court judgements against him. During that time, trans people attempting to flee the US will disappear at the border, either because they’re discovered to be trans through online history, or documentary history, or because they “look trans”.

Y’all should’ve left when you had the chance – when I warned you to, months ago.

Let’s see if I get to say “I told you so” again.