Author: Shelton Bumgarner

I am the Editor & Publisher of The Trumplandia Report

Yet Another Version Of The Novel’s Outline


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’ve been working on this novel for several years now. There are a number of ways to look at this. One way is to say I’m simply spinning my wheels and I’m being too hard on myself — I need to just finish a first draft, any first draft. Another way to look at this I had absolutely no idea what I was doing when I started and it’s just taken a lot of different versions to finally produce something good.

But if the reaction of my alpha readers is any indication, I’ve finally reached something akin to what I want to do. The latest reason why I threw everything out is the first act had grown very bloated. This became very obvious when I changed the indicting incident and realized that I had way too much going on in the first act.

I hope to wrap up a new version of the outline very soon. Things have really clicked with this version and I think I should be able to get back to writing very soon.

That’s the goal, at least.

Olivia Rodrigo And The Deep Echo Of 80s Pop


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Olivia Rodrigo’s “Sour” is probably the best pop album I’ve heard in 15 years. It isn’t as danceable as maybe it could be, but it definitely seems to be something of a deep echo of 80s pop.

Every once in a while listening to Sour, I feel as though she’s so close to producing a song that The Cure might have done. It’s a testament to how musical tastes have changed that all the great pop hits of the 80s are now very niche. Young people are so interested in listening to 30 second bites of songs that they are completely oblivious to all the great songs that have come before. I keep hoping for some sort of revival of pop rock but…I’m beginning to lose hope. It definitely sees as though pop rock doesn’t exist and will never come back.

But having said all that, I really like Rodrigo’s album. She’s just a baby at 17, so she potentially has a very long career ahead of her. She’s a great singer and obviously a really good writer. (I’m assuming she wrote her songs.)

It would be nice, however, if in the future she might produce songs that “have a beat and you can dance to” like I grew up listening to.

Goodbye To All That: Maybe It’s Time To Let Gawker Go


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I keep hearing rumblings that Gawker is coming back in some form. While I’m all for something like Gawker coming back, I don’t know if bringing the Gawker brand itself back is all that great an idea. It’s too loaded. Any new version of the site would be judged by the old version.

Also, the Web is a lot different than it was nearly 20 years ago when Gawker first came out. The Web is now a mature medium. It’s almost impossible to organically grow a brand. A lot of the youthful vigor that helped grow Websites back in the day now is found on video services like Tik-Tok.

As such, I think literally bringing Gawker back may be a bit misguided. I would love to be involved in founding a new site similar to Gawker. I could do a really good job. I love shit like that.

But no one listens to me. I will note, in passing, how strange it is that the audience has moved on from the snarky, heady days of 2003-2004. There’s a fundimental change in audience tastes that I struggle to understand.

Pondering The MAGA Desire To ‘Just Be Left Alone’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

A recurring theme whenever I talk to MAGA people is their desire to “just be left alone.” Given how willing they are otherwise to embrace autocracy — which will definitely not just leave them alone, I struggle to understand what they’re really talking about. What, exactly, do they mean by the idea of “just being left alone.”

Under our current liberal democracy, who is not leaving them alone?

It’s this type of abstract fear on the part of MAGA that eats away at me. One reason this is so is FOX News and Trump really lean into this fear. They promise MAGA people that if only they support The Dear Leader, that they will stop the evil liberal-progressive forces that will mess with them.

I guess if I wrote for Vox, I would be smart enough to figure this out. I know this sentiment is some sort of MAGA code for a specific situation, but I still can’t figure out what they really mean. Maybe what they’re talking about is how they have a different interpretation of the social contract than non-MAGA people. Maybe they see “just being left alone” to mean the right to be openly racist, bigoted and misogynistic?

But I fear that doesn’t really even properly express what’s going on. We all want to just be left alone, regardless of political leanings, and yet I see that freedom as something we already have and MAGA sees it so currently imperiled that they would burn the country to the ground and install an autocrat to defend it.

Why The Cyber Ninjas Arizona Audit Could Be A Royal Clusterfuck


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Let me begin by saying I’m almost always wrong. I kind of got COVID19 right, but I wildly over estimated how deadly it would be. This happen, in large part, because I misjudged things from how hysterical the Chinese government was at the time it first popped out.

Anyway, having said that, the conditions are there, at least, for the Cyber Ninjas recount of Arizona votes to set off a cascading series of events that may lead to a severe political crisis in the United States by, say, August. (Or whenever they get done.)

I say this because Trump is setting expectations among the MAGA faithful in a very dangerous, corrosive manner. While Trump’s popularity has faded significantly with the general public, he still has absolute power over the Republican Party. As such, it’s easy to imagine a situation where Cyber Ninjas “proves” that he “won” Arizona and Trump takes this one fake victory in one state and begins to rant hysterically about how this “proves” that he has to be reinstated in the August-September timeframe.

I only pick August-September because August is a shitty month and also we’re coming up on the 20th anniversary of 9/11.

Anyhoo, this is where I just don’t know what is going to happen. It could really go either way. This “victory” could become nothing more than just another overheated FOX News talking point — or it could be the stepping off point to something far more ominous. As I keep writing, I could imagine Trump’s nuts rhetoric being taken both seriously and literally by MAGA state legisatures and they convene conventions to study the “nullificaton” of the Biden Adminstration.

These conventions turn into secessionist conventions….and away we go. But I don’t know. I just don’t know. It all could be just a bid dud and we get to enjoy hot girl summer. That is, of course, until next year when Republicans will do everything in their power to make it impossible for Democrats to keep control of Congress.

We Need To Talk About Maggie Haberman


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The more I think about it, the less I care about Maggie Haberman and her closeness to Trump. Some of this comes from how pointless it all is — she’s member of the media elite. As such, any time some hayseed rube like me points out much of her reputation comes from TrumpWorld scoops netted through…uhh…access journalism, it’s just scoffed at by her fellow nattering nabobs of negativism as not understanding what journalism is.

One of the key issues in this meaningless media kerfuffle is how nebulous and vague it all is. Yes, Ms. Haberman is a good journalist who is well respected — and defended — by her peers. And, yet, it’s also self-evident that she’s close enough to TrumpWorld that the average person is within their rights to be a bit squeamish about it all. It’s like how if your best friend breaks up with their significant other, there may not be any hard and fast taboo about dating their ex, but you try to at least wait a little bit before jumping in the sack with them.

As such, Twitter people get angry about Ms. Haberman bringing down the latest morsel of TrumpWorld news and her Twitter liberal peers get VERY UPSET that anyone might not see such morsel as just another example of how great a reporter she is. So, it’s something of a stalemate.

So, I think I’m going to go back to cursing the bread and pondering if it’s going to be civil war or autocracy that we face between now and January 2025.

A Theory About Why Democrats Are So Bad At Defending The Republic


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The Republican Party is now a “violent cult,” and, as such, they’re hell bent on an existential level, on forcing us to the breaking point. The Republican Party is involved in an extended, existential power grab. A lot of people like me are looking at the actions of the Democratic Party and struggle to understand why they’re so limp wristed.

A lot is going on as to why this is the case. One is, as the Republican Party grows more deranged and alienates people, the people the Democrats represent are large and diverse. This makes it more difficult for Democrats to have a cohesive, potent counter-message to Republicans who have an entire propaganda infrastructure designed to tell their faithful what to think at any particular moment.

But, I also think on a systemic level that Democrats know that if they play dirty like the Republicans that such behavior will only accelerate our current drift towards the existential choice of civil war or autocracy. Democratic leaders would rather delay the inevitable by playing dead than risk forcing the issue sooner than it would happen anyway. So, I guess, in a sense, Democrats are engaging in a form of political appeasement.

I don’t have a ready answer for that. The reason — I hate violence and it’s not like I want a civil war, either. And, yet, there’s a part of me that would rather we at least put up a fight against the autocratic leanings of Republicans. But I’m gradually coming to believe that the center-Left just doesn’t have it in them to do what is necessary to stop the United States from slipping into autocratic managed democracy.

In the end, MAGA Republicans are going to be just too much for people who believe in “the American way’ of liberal democracy. ICE will be weaponized and I’m going to get pushed out a window.

But no fate but what we make, as they say, so, lulz, who knows?

Back In The Second Act Struggle


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I went to DC this weekend to have a personal writer’s retreat and on my way back home, I realized the story was way too front loaded. So, once I got home, I did a lot of restructuring.

The story is a lot better now, but now I have a lot of holes to fill in the second act outline. I’ve done this before, so I know I can do it again. It’s just at times like these I kind of feel like I’m spinning my wheels. I shouldn’t still, essentially, be in the first act after this much hard work.

And, yet, here I am.

A lot of this comes from how poorly I was prepared to write the novel I thought up a few year ago. Now, however, I’m much closer. I just am at a loss as to what to write in the places that are blank right now. The best course of action is to just think of up something, anything and then fix any major problems in the second draft.

One solution to all of this is to do a lot of reading. I think if maybe if I force myself to delve into the small library of unread books I have right now, that something I read might spark the creativity necessary to fill the current blanks in the outline for the second act.

I just need to stop being so hard on myself. I have two more drafts after this one, I can afford to be really crappy now.

Sydney Powell, Cyber Ninjas’ Arizona Recount & The Prospect Of Second Civil War Caused By A Nullification Crisis


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The bolts continue to grow loose on the United States’ government. We have professional crazy personal Sydney Powell ranting about how Trump should be “reinstated” at the same time that Cyber Ninjas continue to work towards what seems to be their obvious goal of “proving” Trump won Arizona.

Now, as I keep saying, what makes all of this unnerving is, at this point, it could go either way. It could be that I’m really stretching to believe that should Cyber Ninjas “prove” Trump won Arizona that that might be enough to get a number of MAGA state legislatures to convene conventions to weigh the practicality of “nullifying” the Biden Administration. These conventions could, in turn, become secession conventions once it becomes clear that ding-dong Trump’s ideas about nullification are, well, just stupid.

It could be all that happens is the Cyber Ninja results becoming nothing more than a talking point for MAGA thought leaders, but otherwise won’t mean anything at all. Republicans could just keep recounting various states over and over again and it won’t be until January 2025 that we have to worry about the real nullification crisis — this time sparked by a MAGA controlled Congress being unwilling to certify Biden’s win.

The only reason why I’m uneasy is it’s very easy to imagine the same dynamic that happened on January 6th happening again — only this time on a national level. Trump and other dipshit Republicans will rant about the need to nullify the Biden Administration — and then won’t know what to do when MAGA state legislatures take them both seriously and literally.

But, again, I could be really miscalculating things. It could be, thankfully, a big old dud. I honestly can’t tell what is going to happen right now.

The Twitter ‘Resistance’ Movement Needs To Grow The Fuck Up


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

One of the most fucking annoying things on Twitter, other than people begging for followers and asking stupid questions, has got to be when well meaning busybodies talk about all their “resistance” friends.

Fuck that.

The thing I’ve learned since 2017 is Twitter “resistance” to MAGA is completely value free. It just doesn’t mean anything. I’ve grown to believe that at some point between now and January 2025, MAGA is going to make a serious power grab to the point that we either become a white Christian ethno state like Russia, or there’s a civil war.

If the former happens, all you have to do is take one look at the state of the “resistance” in Putin’s Russia to know people having fits on Twitter won’t mean squat. All a President Pompeo or Cotton, or Hawley has to do is flip a switch and the ICE infrastructure is weaponized…and people like me start getting pushed out of windows.

You come preen all the like on Twitter about how some interview “devastated” this or that well known MAGA dipshit, but when the autocracy comes…you had better put your big boy pants on. At some point after the MAGA autocracy is established, you’re going to face real-life consequences for “resisting” the autocracy. And from what I can tell of the current Twitter “resistance” ranks, I don’t have a lot of faith that these self-avowed resisters will be up to the task. They have families, and careers and or whatever. Most of them come off as elderly liberal Boomers…and they’re not exactly what is needed as the core of a French Resistance-type group.

So, like, put up or shut up idiots. Be prepared to risk things in the real world that are important to you or shut the fuck up.