Author: Shelton Bumgarner

I am the Editor & Publisher of The Trumplandia Report

‘Own It’ — #Lyrics To A Woke Pop-Rock Song

This is just me screwing around. These lyrics are about me telling Trump supporters who get so bent out of shape about me saying their racist to own it. Instead of shadowboxing and bob and weaving about how they support a racist, misogynistic bigot they should ‘own it.’ I may have used this title before, but no one cares about any of these lyrics and it’s just for fun, so, so what?

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

I tell you you’re a fucking racist
but you just get mad
tell me to get out
after I’ve screamed and screamed
that little hands demeans
women left and right
you don’t put up a fight
just don’t say I want to take your gun
that’ll start a fight
but all I gotta say
much to my own dismay is

own it
own it
just shut up it and
own it
own it

but there’s nothing I can do
nothing I can say
that will make you play my way
you’re always going to yell
when I tell you the truth
you’re a fucking racist without a doubt
why does that bother you so much
I have to ask
when Donnie has admitted to be a cad

so we’re at a stand still it seems
nothing will change I’m afraid
you’re still in your cult
still in your bubble
reams of paper prove
my thoughts but what can you do

own it
own it
just shut up it and
own it
own it

[bridge]
we’re all in this together
our leaders are afraid of the NRA
wish I could get an amen
from my friends on the other end

we’re all going to have to fight
hash it out until the end
I just don’t know where to begin
I just don’t know where to begin
I just don’t know where to begin
you can begin, my friend when you

own it
own it
own it
own it

‘Avoidance’ — #Lyrics To A R&B Pop-Rock Song

I fear my crush is actively avoiding me, so this is about someone talking about that scenario. As always, I just am writing these lyrics to vent and relax. It’s not like they’re any good or that anyone will ever produce them.

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

headed to the protest
hoping you’ll be there, be there
but your beau is supicious
won’t let you get within inches
so I walk around
looking for your smile
but it’s obvious to me
that you’re avoiding I believe

one day when you’re free
maybe you’ll be by my side
until then I’m alone
thinking of thee

you’re avoiding me
it’s obvious I’m afraid
you’re avoiding me
just hope you won’t flee
just hope you won’t flee

I hope to see you near
call you dear
maybe feel your presence near me
but I’m afraid it’s not to be
you’ll never be mine
’cause you love your man

you’re avoiding me
it’s obvious I’m afraid
you’re avoiding me
just hope you won’t flee
just hope you won’t flee

[bridge]
nothing will ever change
I’m afraid
I’m afraid
I’ll just think of you
with this sad refrain

you’re avoiding me
you’re avoiding me
you’re avoiding me

avoidance
avoidance
avoidance

Richmond March For Our Lives Photos #resist #MarchForOurLives #MFOLRVA #RVA

There are not all the pictures I took, but they give you a sense of what I took. Facebook wouldn’t let me embed more than two sets of pictures for some reason.

You can find all the pictures on my Facebook profile.

Cynthia Nixon, Chelsea Handler & The Right’s Hypocrisy About Trump

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

The Right has made an epic, enormous, historic deal with the devil when it comes to Trump. They simply don’t care that Karen McDougal was on TV for an hour talking about how much she banged Donald Trump while he was married. They just don’t care as long as gun rights are protected and the march towards making abortion illegal continues to be inevitable.

But trouble is brewing for the Right.

It comes in the guise of any number of women celebrities who might run for higher office at some point in the future. It will be difficult — but not impossible — for the very people who are completely silent about Trump being, essentially, a whore monger, to get upset if a female celebrity who has at some point in her career done nude scenes runs for office. I mean, hell, Chelsea Handler has a revenge-porn sex tape out that I’ve seen and I’d still rather vote for her than Donald Trump.

I guess what I’m saying is while the Right is completely shameless in their hypocrisy, them sucking up to Trump is at least going to make it a little bit more difficult for them to do it in the future. Maybe. A little bit. Should Cynthia Nixon become a viable presidential candidate, they’re going to attack her on her morals and on whatever she’s done on Sex & The City.

So people like me are going to go, “What the what?” I mean, it’s difficult for one to flip flop on morals within the span of a generation…twice! So it will be interesting. The damage that Trump has done to the moral standing of the Right is so devastating, so wide ranging that it is within the realm of possibility that the United States could go from a Right-wing nutjob (be it Trump or Pence) to a progressive bisexual woman all within the span of less than a decade.

But there are an enormous number of caveats to this scenario. The Russians could meddle again, Trump could start a war with either or both Iran and the DPRK. And history is pretty weird sometimes. It goes off in strange directions that you can’t possibly predict.

And, yet, like I said, the Republican Party is setting itself up for a pretty astonishing flip-flop on morals. Hell, even if it’s just Pence, the Republicans are in for a lulu of a moral compass change. Trump is such an historical aberration that no matter what happens, we’re in for head spinning change once he’s gone.

The question is, of course, will thing snap back into place, or have the changed forever? Only time will tell on that question.

‘John Bolton (We’re All Going To Die)’ — #Lyrics To A Woke Pop-Rock Song

One thing I keep hearing about John Bolton becoming National Security Adviser is “we’re all going to die.” So, in that spirit, here are some lyrics to yet another pop-rock song that will never be produced. I write these very fast and you could consider this a first draft of sorts. I do this just for fun because it’s relaxing.

John Bolton (We’re All Going To Die)
lyrics by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls
please give credit if you produce or perform

never met a war he didn’t like
John Bolton will have the president’s ear
everything we hold dear is at risk
what are we going to do now
I ask and I ask

we’re all going to die
John Bolton
we’re all going to die
John Bolton
we’re all going to die

things seem so dire
but I wish they’d get higher
we’re all just going to have to wait
the weight of the world is on our minds
now that John Bolton tells Trump the time
the time to start a war
what are we going to do now
I sigh

we’re all going to die
John Bolton
we’re all going to die
John Bolton
we’re all going to die

[bridge]
but maybe I’m wrong
maybe it’s all a dream
one I wake up with a scream
let it be so
I plead

but who knows what to say
when they tell me to shut up
and just get laid
the end may be near
and everything I hold dear
will be made dust
gotta have a lust for life
so what are we going to do
we’re all going to die
we’re all going to die
we’re all going to die

Face It, Guys, With John Bolton At The White House, WWIII Is Around The Corner

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Now, if I was still a reporter, I would give you links and detail examples of why I think John Bolton’s appointment to the president’s national security team is an example of us lurching towards what will be marketed by the press as “World War III.” But, alas, I’m not a reporter anymore and I’m too lazy to do basic journalistic stuff. So you get this.

Here’s what I think is going to go down.

We’re going to go to war with the DPRK by August, but it’s very possible that we could go to war with Iran along the way. Or Pakistan and India could go to war at the same time because of the instability our wars against Iran and the DPRK cause. Or the Middle East in general could go up in flames. Or Russia could invade Ukraine in a big way as well.

Regardless, if the United States attacks the DPRK the massive amount of instability that will cause probably cause several other regional wars to happen and the press will be quick to market the whole thing as WWIII. I have no proof this is going to happen, but I definitely see all the signs pointing in that direction.

Once John Bolton is ensconced in the White House, he will have the president’s ear on nearly a daily basis and all signs point to the president looking for a way out of all his sex scandals, not to mention TrumpRussia. Bolton is a known warmonger and all the pieces of a war cabinet are beginning to take shape.

Anyway. We’ll see I guess.

How To Save Time Magazine & ‘Disrupt’ Both Publishing & Social Media

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Let me be a bit more clear about all of this. So Time Magazine is up for sale. What if instead of letting some Right wing nutjob buy it and ruin it, you completely thought outside the box and re-invented it as a social media platform.

Here me out.

What you do is, move Time Magazine from New York City to Silicon Valley and make it a startup. The startup would be designed specifically to compete with Twitter, but you might be able to figure out a way to go after Facebook as well.

You use all the editors and writers for Time Magazine as your seed group of users. Instead of publishing a magazine each week, they would post content into the service. I think you should lean heavily on the concepts associated with Usenet from 20 years ago, but that’s just me.

Anyway, the point is, all those editors and writers would be the core of a Twitter Killer. They would then to invite other “thought leaders” into the service as part of your growth marketing plan and soon enough you could have something much cooler than Twitter that you could leverage to attack Facebook which is having some serious problems right now.

Let me be clear that no one listens to me, but this is fun to think about for a moment.

The Fate Of Time Magazine: It Should Be Reimagined Altogether #startup

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

If I had my way, I would scrap the current concept of what Time Magazine is altogether and re-invent it as a social media platform that would take advantage of the problems that both Twitter and Facebook are having right now. As you may know, Time is going to be sold — probably by June — and it really will be the end of an era. Time Magazine is kind of the New York Times of magazines, in a sense, and so when it changes hands it will mean A Lot to people like me.

Of course, some insane Right wing nutjob is going to buy Time and we’re all fucked. They’re going to buy it because they can get it on the cheap and Time’s brand name to old farts like me and Donald Trump is pretty potent. But it would be cool if someone would take my advice and scrap Time as we currently conceive of it and turn it into a social media platform. I would seed this new Time startup with content from the magazine, but I would go even further and deconstruct the magazine down to its core parts.

In other words, I would have Time Magazine writers and editors become users of a new Twitter or Facebook competitor that could really do something interesting. Why have those people writing articles in a traditional sense when you could have them posting stories directly into a new platform. That would be pretty cool.

I have on my Instagram account gone into great lengths about what this new service would be like, but in short it would be based on the concepts of Usenet, which was popular about 20 years ago. Now, I know Reddit does something similar to Usenet, but feel its application is kind of ham-handed.

It’s definitely an intriguing idea, though. The below video talks about this idea some, too.

Stormy Daniels As An American Icon

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Someone recently quipped on Twitter that Margot Robbie is set to get her Oscar win playing Stormy Daniels in one of the many movies that will be generated by the Trump Administration. Meanwhile, one of my favorite nattering nabobs on Twitter, Benjamin Wittes gave Ms. Daniels a little shade calling her a “sex worker” employing legal tactics barely above blackmail. He did say she was weirdly one of the more honorable characters being spit out by the Trump Administration clusterfuck.

So that makes me wonder — is Ms. Daniels kind of an icon of this surreal Trump era that we now find ourselves in? When the history of the Trump Administration is written, will we look back upon Ms. Daniels as an icon of the hole we dug ourselves into when we elected Trump?

Now, for me, the interesting thing is the Stormy Daniels Affair has garnered far more traction than any of the other many, many, many scandals produced by the Trump Administration. I just don’t get it. I just don’t understand why this, of all the scandals, is actually taking its toll on the Trump Administration. There are now three different women suing the president for various sexually related screw ups. Add to that the whole #TrumpRussia imbroglio and it does appear as though we’re headed for a perfect storm of epic proportions.

The difference between Stormy Daniels and the “bimbo eruptions” of 20 years ago is Ms. Daniels seems to have her own sexual agency. She isn’t some young woman being exploited by powers beyond her control. She is a self-avowed “slut” who claims the only thing she won’t do for money is “toilets and dishes.” As such, it’s difficult for people on the Right to slutshame her out of the public eye. As anyone who follows her on Twitter can attest, she is quick with a retort and can hold her own when it comes to the numerous MAGA haters who want to rain down sexual shame on her.

I, for one, see Ms. Daniels as the hero we deserve at this moment in time. She has managed to turn the tables on Trump and beat him at his own game. Maybe nothing will happen because of all of this, but it is definitely delicious to watch.

What the ultimate outcome of all of this will be is anyone’s guess. But it is within the realm of possibility that it could be Ms. Daniels, not Bob Mueller, who ultimately brings down Trump. What gets me the most is it’s possible we’ll see Trump’s junk at some point and that still won’t be enough to bring him down. I mean, Trump has already legally admitted that he had an affair with Ms. Daniels and the Religious Right is completely silent on the issue.

I’m old enough to remember the Monica Lewinsky Affair and how people on the Right were so quick to tell me that “character counts.” Now that the roles are reversed, the Right is employing the same moral relativism that they claimed I was using to defend then President Bill Clinton. The perspective of having been politically aware 20 years ago makes the current Trump situation makes me head spin. At the center of all of this is Ms. Daniels. If she does manage to bring down Trump rather than Mueller, it will be rather appropriate.

What makes all of this different is all of Trump’s other sexual peccadilloes were “baked in” to people’s views of Trump when they voted for him. Ms. Daniels, however, has brought with her some accusations that risk overturning some assumptions people have about Trump. That her lawyer would claim that she was physically threatened by someone in the Trump circle is difficult for even the most harden Trump cult member to defend.

Of course, they won’t defend it, they’ll just bob and weave and shadowbox like they always do. But it’s all very interesting. Ms. Daniels may push things to the breaking point. Things could very well get much, much, much more surreal before it is all over with. It may be so surreal that 20 years from now people will still be processing what happened.

I know I will.

So, Can We Blame Facebook For Trump Yet?

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

It is becoming more and more obvious that Facebook, as much as the Russian trolls on Twitter, is to blame for the success of Donald Trump in 2016.

This should have real consequences to their bottom line that will humble them. As anyone with even a casual acquaintance with Mark Zuckerburg can tell you — he’s kind of a dick. And as the Bible says, there is pride before the fall, so it’s likely the house that Zuck built will be extremely arrogant for as long as they can get away with it.

If Congress — and more importantly the general populace — take it upon themselves to do something about Facebook, eventually something will change. There is precedent for this. Gawker Media was extremely arrogant and no one thought they might be taken down — but they were.

So, as I have said before, it’s possible there’s a window of opportunity to do something about Facebook’s evil ways. It’s possible that under the right conditions that someone might be able to think up a better mouse trap and “kill” Facebook. I believe the old Usenet is a great blueprint as to how to do it, but it would take some serious tweaking and updating of those core concepts to do it.

But I think we need to start grouping Facebook in with Russian Twitter trolls — along with the second Comey letter — as to how is that Trump won in the first place. The 2016 election is now extremely tainted and some fundamental flaws in the American political system that will take decades to fix.

Regardless, Facebook has a long ways to go. It’s corporate culture is such that not until it feels real fiduciary pain will it sit up and take notice. If droves of people were to leave it for a less evil service, then maybe it might change its ways.

But it’s up to you and me to make a personal decision to do that.