Let’s Talk About The Left’s ‘Abolish Profit’ Versus The Right’s Well, Virtually Everything

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

So, there’s a picture going around of the NYDSA and their protest sign that says, in part, “Abolish Profit.”

This is a profoundly dumb slogan from an American political point of view and they will live to regret it in various ways. Having said that, if my choice is between having loonies on the Left propose “Abolish Profit” and the surreal hate found on the extreme of the Right, throw my lot in with the NYDSA.

The Right is completely devoid of positive ideas as this point and their primary avatar is, for lack of any other word, a demagogue. Trump wallows in ignorance, hate and malice. He’s just a hateful person who’s only goal is to own the moment and sate his rapacious need to accumulate as much power as possible.

I’m all for profit and the more money I make — and everyone else — the better. But now is not the time to quibble about dumb slogans on a sign. Now is the time to rally the base, energize The Resistance and bring down the Trump regime as quickly as possible.

Dust Off Your ‘Safe, Legal & Rare’ Signs, Trump’s Probably Going To Pick Judge Amy Barrett

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

It is growing every more apparent that given what Trump has said about who he wants to put on the Supreme Court, that the extremely young Judge Amy Barrett is probably who he’s going to nominate. Now, let me be clear — I have no inside information and am no expert on her, but this is just me idly mulling the situation.

Apparently she has made it clear that in the instance of Roe, the court would have a moral obligation to overturn it, despite it’s place in established Constitutional Law. So everyone who keeps telling me there’s no way Roe could possibly be overturned are being extremely niece.

Overturning Roe has been the entire point of Republicans picking judges for the last 30 years. So it’s not like the judges they have been cramming onto the court are going to choke given the opportunity. And in real terms, there’s nothing to stop Judge Barrett from getting on the court should Trump pick her.

When she’s on the court, the real issue will be no so much if Roe will be overturned, but to what extent our basic assumptions about reproductive rights in the United States will be challenged. I have long believed that Roe serves as a firebreak to prevent the Religious Right from coming after birth control in general. Their ultimate goal is to drive a stake in anything that makes recreational sex possible in the first place.

The only thing to stand between A Handmaid’s Tale becoming all but a documentary is the enormous moral outrage on the part of American women who have long assumed Roe was there as a failsafe in the case of a worse case scenario. It’s possible, but not likely, that women of all stripes would join together in a post-Roe world to protect reproductive rights as best than can.

It could be a pretty enormous historic event if it was the overturn of Roe that was the tipping point that finally caused the average person to believe Trump had overstepped his bounds. Many women are already furious with Trump on a very personal level and this would simply throw gasoline on the flames of that rage.

But Trump hasn’t picked Judge Barrett yet. He has a list of about 15 to choose from as I understand it. But given her age and gender — and obvious inclination to overturn Roe given the opportunity — it definitely seems as though Barrett is high on the list of people Trump will pick.

Only time will tell, I guess.

‘New Model Army’ — #Lyrics To A Rock Ballad

This is just me screwing around. I’m trying to go for a “What if Radiohead went really obviously political” vibe to these lyrics. But I’m just relaxing writing lyrics at this point.

New Model Army
lyrics by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls
please give credit if you produce or perform

the end seems near oh dear
but we can hear the screams
the children pulled away at night
what we need is a

new model army
you heard me right
new model army
is coming to save us alright

when the coast is clear
we’ll know when to yell
there’s nothing but rage
to hold us over it seems

what will you say
when they come to take you away
are you afraid of your fate
the footsteps in the night
telling you of your plight

new model army
you heard me right
new model army
is coming to save us alright

[bridge]
we’ll be free soon
like it was before
if not you’re going to
hear us roar

new model army
you heard me right
new model army
is coming to save us alright

new model army
new model army
new model army
new model army

Mulling 2020 Democratic Possibilities: Cynthia Nixon, Michael Avenetti….& Jon Stewart?

by Shelton Bumganer
@bumgarls

It is way, way, way too early to even begin to speculate on who will be the 2020 Democratic presidential nominee, but I’m going to do it anyway. There are any number of insane things that could happen between now and 2020, so much so that this idle speculation on my part is almost entirely moot.

But here goes.

Cynthia Nixon
When it comes to Ms. Nixon, it all rides on her ability to win the New York governorship. If she wins, she’s pretty abruptly at the front of the line for presidential candidate. She’s young, smart, an actress and a passionate advocate for progressive goals. But she has to get over the hump of winning the race immediately before her. She wins it, she’s golden. She’s pretty much at the sweet spot of what The Resistance wants right now, at least in my view.

Michael Avenetti
The thing about Avenetti is I don’t know anything — in real terms — about his politics. We run the risk of imbuing him with whatever policy we want him to have, much like Republicans did with Trump. But he’s got the personality, street smarts and social media skills to at least give Trump a run for his money.

….and, lastly, the wildcard,

Jon Stewart
I only put Stewart in this one because as I keep saying, the only person in middle-school who can successfully confront the school bully is the class clown. So, Stewart would be ideal to defeat Trump in 2020. I thought Stewart might run for governor of New Jersey, but he let me down. So, unless Trump wins re-election in 2020 and Stewart runs for New Jersey governor next time around, it’s far less likely that he will run for office at all. Which is too bad. He’d make a great candidate.

Trump As An American Nazi & What To Do About It #Resist

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

I don’t use the term “American Nazi” lightly in regards to Trump for a number of reasons. As I have mentioned elsewhere, there are three major reasons why it’s difficult for Trump to literally be an American Nazi. Those three reasons are his age, his general incompetence and his lack of an overall ideology.

Let’s go through these reasons one by one and talk about them.

His Age
Trump, at 72, is old. He’s so old that even if he made a run for it by getting his own version of Hitler’s Enabling Acts by way of an Mercer-funded Constitutional Convention that might give him God-only-knows what powers, he would, in real terms, be too old to fully use those powers. At this point, I’m more worried about him hobbling the Judiciary by cramming it with young, loony ultra-conservatives than I am him going full dictator and ignoring the Constitution. He could still try to pull it off one way or another, but he would face the other two issues.

His Incompetence
The famous quip by Benjamin Wittes is that Trumpism is malevolence mitigated only by incompetence. Besides his weird ability to be an avatar for the surreal Right-wing of the Republican Party, Trump is actually really, really bad at his job. He’s horrible. He has no center, no morals and he’s easily swayed by flattery. He’s no Pat Buchanan, that’s for sure, for more than one reason. Trump was really lucky and the fate of the entire American Republic may rest on how completely incompetent Trump is, in real terms, when it comes to welding the reigns of power. But he’s getting better at it, so we find ourselves with the last thing that prevents Trump from going full Nazi.

His Lack Of Ideology
Trump is no Pat Buchanan. If Trump had an ideology outside of being an asshole and having a complete lack of empathy, he would have a real chance at destroying the American Constitutional System and turning the United States into a “managed democracy” like they have in Russia and Turkey. If Trump had some sort of core belief system he was willing to fight for, he would truly be a danger to the Republic. The really surreal aspect of all of this is had Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio won the nomination and won the election, the only thing that would have prevented them from doing the same damn things Trump is doing — outside of the weird fixation on immigration and a wall — is they would have abided by existing democratic norms. Trump is a outlier for lots of reasons and he’s stress testing the entire system because he’s just self-aware enough to be more than just your usual demagogue. But the fact that all he wants to do is win the moment, to “own the libs” at any one moment during any specific debate means he doesn’t have a political center to speak of. It’s difficult to go full-blown American Nazi if you don’t have an ideology beyond whatever you might have tweeted that morning.

Put those three things together and you come to several different conclusions. One, while Trump has all the makings of an American Nazi — and effectively is — in real terms, what he might be is a ominous precursor to the real thing. Trump is rattling the cage, destroying norms, using the Overton Window to fuck things up big time, but more likely than not, he’s the guy who will make the actual American Nazi president possible. Sad to say, the entire American Constitutional System is rotting away as we speak. The Founding Fathers could never have predicted that not only would the Legislative Branch completely put party over country, but in addition to that — in fact, because of it — the Judiciary would be eaten away by the cancer that had infected the Executive.

But I stand by my opinion that Trump is, in fact, an American Nazi. He is the closest approximation to one that the existing power structure is willing to permit. He is pushing the American political ship of state in to unprecedented waters and the consequences in the real term will be difficult for many — if not most — of us to process as they happen. In other words, Trump is a Nazi in spirit, if not literal ability to be one, and the whole Ivanka-is-Jewish thing is really just white noise. Trump is unlikely to attack Jewish directly for the time being — that would be a little bit too much on the nose — but he will go after the next best thing for domestic political expediency — immigrants. Once the infrastructure for Concentration Camps is in place on military bases across the country, God only knows who the Trump Administration will throw in there with immigrants who are a little too brown for its liking. My guess is the mentally ill because, they too, are a weak link in society that requires some compassion and empathy, two things Magaist lack completely.

I still can’t get over the fact that Magaists — some of them mothers and fathers! — have had little or no compassion for the children torn from their parents at the border. If that’s not an ominous sign that America’s very own fascist blight is now upon us, I don’t know what is. The complete dehumanization and lack of basic human empathy is the first step towards some pretty horrible things, at least in the past. I’m reluctant to suggest Trump would have the audacity to attempt to implement a “Final Solution” to the immigrant “problem” stranger things, as they say, have happened.

Having said all that, the next issue is what to do about it.

All I can say is — get mad and stay mad. I would cop-out and say meekly that all you can do is vote. But if anything has been learned from the on-going crisis associated with immigrant children being torn from their families at the border, it’s that really, the only thing the American Republic has going for it now is moral outrage. It’s easy to say that the immigrant children situation was unique in a lot of ways, but it did prove an unexpected point: Trump will actually back down if public opinion is aligned against him enough.

So, don’t just vote. Get enraged. Stay politically active. Use whatever personal political power you might have at your disposal to effect change. What happened with the children at the border has given me a little bit of hope. A tiny little bit of hope that maybe the American spirit is a little bit stronger than I had feared. It’s maybe possible that through sheer force of collective will, American citizens might save the nation through there own actions.

Having said that, I might suggest that we need an app of some sort to organize protests. Something that would facilitate regular massive protests across the country to allow people to take a stand, to hold the line. The next few years are going to be bumpy, no matter what happens, and an app is desperately needed to help The Resistance.

But honestly, I don’t know what happens next. We’re just going to have to keep the faith, if nothing else.

Shelton Bumgarner is a writer and photographer living in Richmond, Va. He may be reached at migukin (at) gmail (dot) com.

The Lament Of A Twitter ‘Power User’

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

I don’t know how much of a true Twitter power user I am, because I never use lists. But these days, I use the service enough that I have come to have one, specific aspect of the service that I loath.

That is, of course, the inability to see only new tweets. I find myself seeing the same old tweets over and over again when what I want to see is new tweets only. I wish there was some feature I could turn on that would do just that.

But as far as I know, that feature doesn’t exist.

I could ramble on about the feature set of a “Twitter Killer” that would fix this and other problems, but since I have no money, can’t code and don’t want to learn, I will refrain.

How To Address Trump’s Political Mindfucking (Hint: Focus On The Children)

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

When I was in South Korea, I knew a young lady named Annie Shapiro who, on a personal level, used many of the same methods of mind fucking that Trump uses in a political way on the United States today.

Here’s what I learned from that experience.

The thing about mindfucking is it plays on the basic human inability to manage an enormous amount of information being thrown at you at any one time. Mindfuckers like Trump do the following: They do something crazy then use the confusion to get away with bloody murder somewhere else.

So, while you’re thinking about the revelation that they’re putting kids in “Tender Age” facilities, they do any number of almost as abhorrent things while you’re struggling to comprehend what you’ve just learned. It’s sad, but true, but if because of all of this, you have to pick one thing and fight for it.

For me, it’s the kids. Plenty of those really horrible things are taking place as part of the Trump Administration, but its the kids who have been separated from their families I would suggest we focus on that absolutely. That’s a simple — yet major — issue we can focus on that maybe we can fix.

If we don’t do that, then Trump not only wins, but about 2,000 children will float down the memory hole, never to be seen again. That’s really too much for me at this point.

It’s Self-Evident That Trump Is An American Nazi & Those Who Are Silent Are Collaborators

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Now, let me be clear about all of this. Trump and Magaism are completely devoid of any ideology beyond an absolute need to “win the moment” by “owning the libs.” They will say anything during the course of an argument to win the moment. Magaists are so beholden to their Fuhrer that it doesn’t matter of what they say is contradictory or strategically makes no sense, as long as they win the moment they’re happy.

Also, just like Hitler, Trump has a personal control over the deplorables to such an extent that the only thing that prevents him from going full dictator and getting his own version of Hitler’s Enabling Acts is our still robust media and an natural disinclination to obey the president absolutely by roughly 60% of the population.

Because they’re no ideology, Trump can — for political expediency — seemingly be an absolute supporter of Israel while at the same fucking time saying there are good people “on both sides” of whole Nazi versus everyone else debate. It can leave one scratching their heads to make sense of it all, to say the least.

To me, however, that’s really all just white noise. To any objective observer, Trump has all the makings of a white nationalist to such an extent that he’s an American Nazi in all but name. It may take him a few more years, but he’s going to either get the handle on how to use the levers of power or he’s going to be given the “gift” of an enormous crisis not — for once — of his own making. He’ll get his Reichstag Fire and when he does, he’ll go full Nazi on us with a particularly American, Maga twist to it.

So, it may not literally be the Nazism of yore finally come to America, but some thoroughly unexpected things. Things will happen between now and whenever Trump happens to agree to leave office — which seems up to debate at this point — that are going to shock us. There will be concentration camps and a growing number of people are going to be throw into them and the question at some point will be if there is going to be a Final Solution or not. I know that sounds rather nightmarish and hysterical at this point, but if we as Americans don’t take a stand now, Trump or his successor is going to finally break the Constitutional system beyond repair.

The thing that really frightens me is the idea that it isn’t even Trump that we have to worry about. It could be someone younger and more ideologically centered that we’re going to have to really worry about. Trump is just laying the groundwork for someone who actually, like, knows what the fuck he’s doing.

Thus, in a sense, Trump could be just the bile, the primordial ooze from whence a political creature that is significantly closer to an actual American Hitler than Trump. If that isn’t enough to give you the heebeejeebees I don’t know what will. I don’t know who it will be, but the it would be someone with the ideology of James Woods combined with Trump’s weird populist charisma. Someone who could actually get enough people to agree with him that he could finally bend the Constitution to the point that is breaks.

I’m not saying that Trump won’t try, to, say, amend the Constitution through a Constitutional Convention or simply ignore elections, but someone younger and more with-it might have a better chance of being successful. So, really, it seems the only thing standing between the United States and actual, real-life fascism is Trump’s age, lack of an ideology and general incompetence.

The American Constitutional system is weak and getting weaker. The systemic weakness of the Legislative Branch, combined with the cramming of the Judiciary with young, loonie MAGA judges means by the time Trump’s eight years is up, he could very well feel emboldened to simply ignore large swaths of the Constitution altogether.

I have no hope that there will be a Blue Wave. The economy is doing too well, there’s too much dark money, Trump’s too powerful and the Russians will hack the vote again. So, we’re in for a long haul of troubling events. This is the darkest timeline. There’s honestly no hope at this moment that anything is going to get us out of this situation anytime soon.

Once I thought maybe if this was World War II, we were in, say, 1942 and as we eased in to 1943, maybe there would be some hope. But now I’m thinking we’re more like Eastern Europe after WWII. Hope was slowly extinguished and ultimately died. It took about two generations for hope to come back and it came back in a wholly unexpected way. I have a feeling I’ll be an elderly man in a nursing home — or on the streets — before some ensemble of the America I knew as a child will return.

Make America great again, indeed.

Shelton Bumgarner is a writer and photographer living in Richmond, Va. He may be reached at migukin (at) gamil (dot) com.

‘Guatemala’ — #Lyrics To An EDM Pop Song

These lyrics are meant to be kind of deep. I’m well aware that EDM songs often start with a beat first and then get the lyrics, but I don’t have that luxury. I don’t have any beats, but it seems as though given the significance of the ProPublica audio of the little girl who says, when asked, “Guatemala” in such a heartbreaking manner when she’s torn from her family that it merits song lyrics if nothing else. I only pick EDM Pop as the type of beat to go with the lyrics because EDM Pop often uses longer words like “Titanium” or “Chandelier” or “Diamonds” that are drawn out for effect. So, ideally, these lyrics would have a beat similar to an up tempo song that Sia might sing. These lyrics are actually pretty good. Need a composer and a co-writer (and some beats!) but they definitely make the point.

Guatemala
lyrics by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls
please give credit if you produce or perform

torn from your family at the border
big scary people speak a language
you barely understand
your screams are heard around the world
this is America this shouldn’t be happening

[Pre-Chorus]
things are looking rough I will admit
we’re in for a dark, dark time
but when you are given your chance
we’ll hear loud and clear

[Chorus]
where are you from little girl
Guatemla
where are you from little girl
Guatemla

you’ve make a trek with your mom
2,000 miles away from home it’s true
but you simply want a safe place to lay your head
what’s in the mind of the people hurting you

[Pre-Chorus]
things are looking rough I will admit
we’re in for a dark, dark time
but when you are given your chance
we’ll hear loud and clear

[Chorus]
where are you from little girl
Guatemla
where are you from little girl
Guatemla

[bridge]
one day we’ll get you safe
little don’t be afraid
Uncle Sam should be ashamed
but it’ll work out in the end
I swear

[Chorus]
where are you from little girl
Guatemla
where are you from little girl
Guatemla
Guatemla
Guatemla
Guatemla

‘What’s Happening?’ — #Lyrics To A Pop Rap Song

This would feature the audio from the scene in Poltergeist where the young woman jumps out of her car and screams, “What’s happening?????” as its hook. I see this as a Kanye West type pop-rock-rap song.

What’s happening?
lyrics by Shelton Bumgarner
Sample from the movie “Poltergeist” 1982
@bumgarls
please give credit if you produce or perform

{sample / hook}
What’s happening????
What’s happening????
What’s happening????

the end seems to be near
every day things are the same
I wake up to chaos in the tweets
people wanting to take to the streets
all I wanna do is get you beneath the sheets
but it’s not be be until we get some peace
call the police to complain
but they tell me if I wanna get laid
I’m going to have to act sane

want you by my side
let me slide across your border
these are dark days indeed
these are dark days indeed
when our POS POTUS prevents a man
from getting laid
{sample / hook}
What’s happening????

just give me what I want
you naked as can bee
letting me see the truth
but you tell me it just ain’t gonna happen
I gotta to prove my love by fighting the power
take the streets you say
“lace up your Adidas until the babies are free
if you want to put a baby in me” is your refrain
we am I gonna do
when are you gonna let me off the hook
let me get to work on that body of yours
I can be expected to wait
until the dictator is defeated

want you by my side
let me slide across your border
these are dark days indeed
these are dark days indeed
when our POS POTUS prevents a man
from getting laid
{sample / hook}
What’s happening????

[bridge]
what’s happening indeed
just want this to end
one day it will I’m sure
but we’ve got a fight ahead of us
the passion of the streets
ain’t anywhere near being complete

{sample / hook}
What’s happening????
What’s happening????
What’s happening????