Category: The Gray Plague

#COVID19 Threat Assessment For March 18th, 2020: I’ll Give You Something To Cry About

Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Here are some threats on the top of my mind right now:

Continuation of Government
Now that members of Congress are beginning to get back COVID19 positives on their tests, it seems at least possible that it’s going to whip through the halls of power at a rather alarming rate at some point between now an April 1st. We could see many Senators and a few Constitutional Officers be unable to fulfill their duties (for various reasons.)

This is ominous because a lot of different things could go wrong all at the same time to such an extent that we will reach 9/11 levels of fear and terror across the country. Throw in everything from Trump going full-Caligula to some obscure Trump MAGA hack being able to appoint nearly the entire SCOTUS to Nancy Pelosi having to save the Union and we could be in for a wild fucking ride.

Or not.

It could be things work out fine and I’ll be (thankfully) wrong.

Race and Political Violence
We’re about two weeks and one Trump tweet away from Asians and liberals being hunted down and murdered in cold blood by MAGA. If Trump finally feels he might have some actual political accountable on an existential level, he’s likely to lash out and “joke” to his fucktard cocksucker base to “remind Asians and liberals of the power of the 2nd Amendment.” MAGA goes on a rampage and The Little Terror happens across the nation in a rather End of Days type of way. We come out the other side ashamed of ourselves as a nation and we endup apologizing for it all in a few decades.

House Trump: Caligula
This is one of those things that is a serious wildcard. I have no idea if Trump is going to explode or implode if it occurs to him that his handling of this clusterfuck really is his Chernobyl. He’s barely functioning as it is, and if we’re lucky, he becoming a mental puddle and we don’t see him that much. Or he explodes and whips his cock out every chance he gets. Or tweets out racist diatribes to any notable minority leader he doesn’t like. I have no idea how likely any of that is, but it’s something to think about.

Emperor Trump
Trump may eventually turn himself into an Emperor in a rather dramatic fashion. He’ll really lean into the “war president’ thing and simply ignore the Constitution even more than he already does. And, really, the only thing that would save us at that point is he’s very dumb. And he’s a self-own artist. So he might finally make the average American realize what a moronic tyrant he is and THAT would be the cause of his final undoing. But I find the idea that Trump will ever have any political unaccountably rather dubious at this point.

A New World Order
The one place I could see maybe pushing us into a totally new world order is the DPRK. It’s such a black box that if it freaks out because most of the population is sick or dying, then, well, yikes. And Trump could very well bungle the whole thing. AND, China might decide to accomplish some of its long-term geopolitical goals at the same time for no other reason than everyone else is too sick to do anything about it. There are just a lot of surreal twists and turns that might occur on a global scale if this preventable clusterfuck lasts for 18 months.

The Gray Plague
If this happens, and about a million elderly people die over the next 18 months, then, well, yikes. I’m really concerned about this as a possible future. And, yet, there’s probably a lot going on that I don’t know about. Maybe this prediction is just too dark for it to become a reality. I mean, could we really handle a few months of 10,000 old people dying every day? If we realized there was nothing we could do, but just let it play out? And remember, we’ve put a whole lot of our future on the shoulders of elderly people. It wouldn’t take too many powerful — and old — people being felled by The Gray Plague for history to change in a rather startling fashion.

The WuFlop
I only call it the WuFlop because I don’t know the scientific term. But it wouldn’t take a lot of people being recorded passing out with the WuFlop for that to spook people on a rather existential fashion.

But maybe Trump’s announcement tomorrow is a cure and we can all go back to waiting for the ICE camps to be weaponized. Good times!

‘The Little Terror’ #COVID19

Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m growing more and more nervous that we’re about two weeks and one Trump tweet away from unprecedented racial and political violence in the United States.

It seems as though if Trump goes bonkers because it suddenly strikes him that he may, in fact, be rightfully blamed for this pandemic clusterfuck that he’ll go transactional with his Twitter feed and “joke” that Asians and liberals should be reminded of the power of the 2nd Amendment. This would likely cause all his cocksucker MAGA dispshit followers to go on a deranged murdering spreed. Asians, liberals (like me!) and anyone else these fuckers could think of would be in harms way.

The, of course, Trump will turn around and say OBVIOUSLY we need martial law to control the situation — which, of course, he started in the first place. If that happened, Trump would be so fucking bonkers that really anything could happen. He could shoot out dickpics using the Presidential Alert System. He could just start ranting racist shit to anyone he didn’t like. He could pull out his cock at a press conference and start masturbating. Nothing. And I mean NOTHING would be off the table.

But even that wouldn’t cause us to have the political will to do anything about Trump. Or, if it did, it would only be because Moscow Mitch had finally squeezed out as many young hack MAGA Federal judges out of Trump. He’s already gotten his smash-and-grab welfare for plutocrats, so anything beyond that is a win for Moscow Mitch.

If things got insane enough, there might be a half-hearted attempt to do the Pence Pivot, but more likely Trump’s going to pick Don Jr. as his Veep. Gotta keep it in the family, you know. The Thousand Year Trump is here and not even 1 million unnecessary, preventable deaths is going to stop that. We just have to wait about 30 years for the macro demographics of the death of the Baby Boomers crossing the Browning of America so whatever’s left of America can go back to some sort of “normal.”

But by that point, of course, America will be so fucking dystopian that, well, lulz.

Prove me wrong, guys.

What I Got Wrong #COVID19

Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Well, we’ve reached March 15, so let’s look over in general terms my predictions about COVID19.

I got a whole lot wrong. A whole lot. But in general I did, at least, make some relevant observations. Two things haven’t happened (yet): the Gray Plague and Wuflop. Neither one has happened in the United States and maybe never will.

It’s possible that while we have a short, severe two weeks of social distancing, in the end, Devin Nunes will crow he was right. Trump will simply use all of this to consolidate power, win re-election through any means necessary and get impeached again in his second term. But by that point Don Jr. will be his veep and House Trump will be firmly established. We’ll have Trumps for about 30 years until the browning of America reaches a tipping point and AOC topples House Trump through a popular uprising.

Or something.

I did get right, in broad terms, the idea that America might buckle by the March 15. But it didn’t happen the way I thought. It’s not that everyone has gotten sick, it’s a psycho-social situation. The powers that be have decided to take “flatting the curve” seriously and, as such, the country is shutting down as a preventive measure. In real terms, the death toll, for the moment, is relatively low.

And, really, I don’t see an endgame where House Trump isn’t stronger. Either this kind of fizzles out in April and they use it to discredit everyone who freaked out, or we have something akin to the apocalypse and House Trump uses THAT to consolidate power. There’s just no stopping our inevitable slide in to the Fourth Reich. The Thousand Year Trump is going to happen one way or another.

For it NOT to happen, things would have to grow eyepoppingly surreal and dark in just the right way so House Trump was blamed for a shit ton of preventable deaths. And, I, for one, am not thrilled at the idea of 1 million people dying over the next 18 months, regardless of what Crown Prince Don Jr. may think.

Anyway, the point is — I can’t predict the future. I got the general outlines of what is happening now, but the death toll isn’t rising as quickly as I predicted. That may be an issue of it just takes time for exponential growth to pop up in the real world given how big the United States is on a geographic level.

Or something. Why are you even reading this. Go read something from someone with credibility. Wink

The Dumbest Timeline: I Fear Trump Is Mar-A-Lago ‘Patient 0’

Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I don’t wish any physical harm against POTUS, no matter how much I want him to spend the rest of his life in prison. He is the president and as such his physical well-being is of the upmost importance.

But we have to begin to prepare ourselves for POTUS as Patient Zero of the Mar-A-Lago outbreak. If numerous people around him are testing positive, then it seems logical that it’s not THEM, it’s HIM we have to worry about. The reason Trump isn’t getting tested — as far as we know — probably has less to do with his health and more to do with the rape case he’s facing right now. He doesn’t want his DNA floating around to be subpoenaed.

What does all of this mean? Well, if we’re lucky, nothing. He might get the sniffles and we’ll never know one way or another. But if, God forbid, the worst happens, then we’re in for some crazy times. Even if Trump simply is incapacitated for a few days because of COVID19, that would be the biggest political story of the year, even more so than impeachment. Pence might play Regent and there would be talk that it should be Don Jr., NOT Nikki Haley should be his VEEP for his second term. All Don Jr. has to do is move is legal residency to, say, Montana and the rest takes care of itself.

Any time anything physical happens to POTUS, it’s a serious affair. And, given how taunt the American political system is, it goes without saying that there will be unprecedented political violence if anything physical happens to Trump. The Far Right already thinks COVID19 is a plot between the Chinese and the Democratic Party, if something physical happen to Trump, that would be pouring gasoline on that particular conspiracy flame.

As such, I think for all considered, let’s just hope nothing physical happens to Trump in the next few weeks because of COVID19. If Trump grew ill on the Ides of March, then, well, the 2020 writer’s room really is full of hacks.

Slow Your Roll, Twitter Liberals #COVID19

Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Trump isn’t going anywhere. His presidency isn’t over. He’s well on his way to losing the popular vote and winning the Electoral College. Or he’ll bribe Electors or dox them, or intimidate them on Twitter. He’s going to dump Pence and name Don Jr. his VP. Or Steve King.

He’s just not going anywhere. Ever. Period.

Or, put another way, things would have to get so bad for Trump to finally have any form of political accountability that it would be a historic national tragedy of such proportions that neither side would be able to find any reason — any reason — to find any political advantage from it. For Trump’s core base of 35% of the electorate to go down in any way, we would be facing nothing short of the Apocalypse. Or it would have to feel like it.

And, really, there would have to be a very specific set of circumstances such that Tom Cotton or Kris Kobach or The Kooch or name your young fascist wannabe wouldn’t be able to somehow rise to power to do everything Trump has wanted to do but was too old, unfocused and incompetent to do. I honestly don’t even know exactly what that would look like.

In general, the current crisis is only going to accelerate and deepen our decent into dystopian authoritarianism. We may be identical to Putin’s Russia in a few months. ICE will be weaponized. Any dissent will be crushed or managed out of existence. I have no hope. It’s over. We’re in political hell.

Just trying to imagine any scenario whereby we abruptly go back to any sense of the American we had before Trump came to power is a struggle. I guess, maybe, if Trump lost his mind and started using the Presidential Alert System to shoot out dickpics to people’s cellphones on a daily basis, then maybe we might get his support down to about 30%. But his enablers have invested so much of their self-identity in MAGA that even that probably won’t phase them. MAGA is a death cult, pure and simple.

And, really, even if Trump was, say, blamed for 1 million unnecessary, preventable deaths, House Trump might get the wind knocked out of it for one election cycle. They’d come back in 2024 with Don Jr. and act as if nothing happened. Any Democratic president will be impeached the moment Republicans control the House and be hobbled politically during the second half of their four year administration.

Things would have to be a singularity of the horrific for House Trump to have any form of political accountability. It would have to be a waking nightmare. So bad that political level the entire country, both Red and Blue would feel as though they were being horrifically tortured specifically because of things we could prove House Trump did.

It would be so bad that liberals would look back and think we would have been better off if the pandemic never happened and Trump cruised into his second term. MAGA people would have to proof that they, personally, had loved ones who died directly and specifically because of Trump. But they’re a death cult, so lulz. I just don’t see a million preventable deaths being enough for them to stop worrying about the browning of America, or feminists or transgender Olympians.

And, really, they would simply gloat that they got what they wanted — a massive tax cut and young hack MAGA judges. The moment we all came to our senses after a horrific few months — if it ever came to that — they would bounce back and act like nothing happen. Or they would blame liberals, or Asians, or whomever. MAGA is all set to murder liberals in cold blood in a Little Terror if need be. They just aren’t functioning in reality anymore.

Prove me wrong.

If you think I suffer from “Trump Derangement Disorder,” you can fuck off, you shithead fucktard cocksucker. Eat shit.

#COVID19 #Pandemic Scenarios: How A Continuation Of Government Crisis Might Play Out

Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It’s very possible that all of our events at “blunting the curve” will work and we’ll walk away from our current panic rather unscathed. Trump will crow that he was right all along, indict Joe Biden, and lose the popular vote and win the Electoral College. That’s a very real possibility at this point.

But let’s assume the absolute worst happens. What are some the different ways we might find ourselves wondering who, exactly, the president is in the next 10 days or so.

Since “death be not proud” there are a lot — a LOT — of different combinations and spectrums that might occur. Everything from Trump being the last man standing, only to go completely bonkers, to Nancy Peolosi serving as a caretaker president for a few months to ensure we have a functioning government so we can have free-and-fair elections in the fall.

But those are just the most obvious.

There are also so pretty some surreal situations. Depending on how quick the crisis developed and the exact sequence of events you could have everything from President Hakeem Jeffries to, glup, a more obscure member of Trump’s shitty cabinet being president during a period of unprecedented rebuilding. I could even see severe political violence over the issue of who, exactly, president is if there was some question in the context of replacing a lot of SCOTUS. That would be a recipe for something akin to a civil war, in fact, given how absolutely obsessed the most extreme sides of the two parties are about its make up.

If things got bad enough, it’s within the realm of possibility that out of sheer desperation the military might step in and tell everyone to cool it just long enough to stabilize the country so the Census and the 2020 Election can take place in peace.

Or, if you really want to get into the absolute worst case scenario, you might have Trump finally fucking snap in a rather spectacular fashion and Congress is so sick that it can’t summon the energy to do anything about it. We find ourselves being bombarded with racist rants and cockpics for a few weeks in the middle of a pandemic crisis via the Presidential Alert System. There simply wouldn’t be anything we could do until the people who might impeach-and-convict Trump got well enough to physically be in the same place at the same time to do it.

But I can’t predict the future. I have no idea what’s going to happen. For the time being, all I can say is it looks as though Trump will, AGAIN, escape any form of political accountability, no matter how many people die uncessary deaths.

There’s just no political will to do anything about him until sometime in his second term.

#COVID19 Threat Assessment For March 12th, 2020: This Seems Sub-Optimal

Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

While the country is beginning to buckle, for the time being, it seems to be purely a psychological event brought about by criminally poor leadership on the part of House Trump. What’s happening is we’re in something of a panic because people realize we can’t test enough and so we just don’t know the extent of contagion’s spread in the country.

We’re finally doing what we need to mitigate the situation as much as possible, but it’s more a matter of a collapse in public confidence as opposed to a controlled shut down in “an abundance of auction.” As of right now, there’s a good chance that we’ll escape the fate of Iran or even Italy. In ten days, we’ll realize we’re safe and Trump will crow that he “meant to do that” and he was right along and fuck you liberals.

But I have no idea if that’s going to happen. It seems self-evident that we’re a crisis. If we begin to see medical situations that indicate that some of my worst fears are coming true, then that’s a different matter all together. As of the moment, this very well could just be “The Small One.” But a combination of Trump screwing everything up, the Gray Plague and the “WuFlop” might take this otherwise manageable situation to the next level so we have THE BIG ONE on our hands.

I’m feeling rather calm right now and even I have to admit the prospect of an uncontrolled Gray Plague makes me rather nervous. If a huge number of elderly people begin to die on a daily basis, it would be a horrific tragedy of such a historical level it might take us a while to process it all. But it might not even be that. It might be that just the right people in power get sick, causing a sea change in our politics for no other reason than history has decided to wake up rather abruptly. Or, put another way, if we endup somewhere in the Italy – Iran spectrum of the contagion being spread here we all may have made some rather surreal days ahead of us.

The entire power structure of the United States may come to a grinding halt. Now, I will note, some young insane conservatives have “self-quarantined” because of their potential COVID19 expose at CPAC. So, it’s reasonable to assume that if the absolute worst happens on Capitol Hill, they would be the most able to swoop in and take political advantage of this situation. Now, I’m sure there are some of you who salivate at the idea of Ted Cruz suddenly going from Zero to Hero and, like, rebuilding America in the imagine of CPAC. If you are one of those people — please eat shit, you fascist fuck.

I say this for a number of reasons, one of them being Death Be Not Proud. It could be not Ted Cruz but, say, Nancy Pelosi who gets to play hero. And if that’s the case, all you shithead conservatives will do is bitch and moan about how everything was going your way until the media’s coverage of the contagion made people panic.

Anyway, we haven’t even gotten to the WuFlop part of all of this. If that starts to happen around the country, then what is, for the moment, a matter of criminally bad leadership on the part of House Trump will escalate to something far, far, bigger and darker in our nation’s history. If you’re not prepared to see the WuFlop you’re in for a surprise. When an otherwise healthy person passes out and starts to convulse on the ground, it’s rather spooky on a visceral level.

I have no idea what’s going to happen. It could still go either way. If it gets as bad here as it’s gotten in Iran, then, well, it may be such a massive tragedy that neither side will be all that happen with whatever policy advantage they gain from it.

And tomorrow is Friday the 13th.

The Gray Plague: A Historic, Preventable Tragedy #COVID19

Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I can’t predict the future. I don’t have reveled truth. But some pretty basic datapoints indicate that if we don’t realize soon how many elderly Americans in rest homes are at risk of dying in the United States (about 1.4 million), then, well, we’re going to have unprecedented national grief. I wrote the below some time ago in something of a panic:

The elderly 65+ are most at risk of succumbing to COVID19.
People in close proximity to each other (like a cruise ship or…a rest home) can be all infected quite quickly. (A mental institution in South Korea saw something like 90% infection rate).
We’re totally luzling this in the United States.
About 47 million Americans are 65+.

We already have a case of ONE rest home in Washington State being, essentially, a strategic super-spreader of COVID19.

So, logically, if we’re not taking this seriously and “jungle rules” are applying right now to the spread of COVID19, then, well, it’s looking pretty grim.

The thing I didn’t realize is one reason why The Gray Plague may be far, far more deadly than I initally realized is where the most at-risk elderly people in any one community are: all together in one spot.

A rest home.

And since I first wrote the above a few days ago, I’ve begun to hear rumblings about similar outbreaks popping up in other rest homes across the country. It seems as though if we don’t take this threat far more seriously that two things may happen.

One, a staggering number of elderly people may die early, preventable deaths. Like, close to a million in a very, very short amount of time.

Meanwhile, it’s possible that each of the 15,600 rest homes across the country that become COVID19 hotzones might serve as something of virus “signal amplifiers” across the country as people visit them and then go home and spread the virus in communities all over the country that might not otherwise be infected.

It does seem as though some effort is being put into saving these high-risk elderly people. But my concern is it’s too little, too late. My concern is we’re going to have to process a staggering number of elderly people dying over the next, say, 100 days.

But, who knows. I know I don’t.

Maybe I’m wrong. But I’m just a doofus in the middle of no where, right, Maggie Haberman? Go talk to her about this. She’s soul her sold for access to Dr. Trump, I’m sure she knows more about it than I do.

#COVID19 Threat Assessment For March 11th: ‘It’s Not A Toomha’

Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I am feeling pretty good right now. Now that understand what’s going on happen — there’s going to be a sharp, brief spike in cases across the country before the situation stabilize — I’m not feeling as nervous. At this point, the only reason why I’m really concerned at all is what’s going on in Italy and Iran. China and South Korea have proven that with the proper measures, you can have a suddenly severe spike in cases that subsides to a manageable level rather abruptly. We’re probably going to get the shit scared out of us on an unprecedented level nationally, but we will live to fight another day.

At least, that’s what should happen.

The biggest threat to American security right now is not COVID19, but our own president’s reaction to it. He’s probably going to switch gears tonight and go full paranoid racist demagogue on the situation. He will see this pandemic as an opportunity to further consolidation power, not to bring the nation together.

Trump never loses on a political level because of his nature as an avatar for the MAGA base’s hatred of liberals, the browning of America and feminists. So, for the time being, Trump, is as always, his own worst enemy. In a sense, Trump may become a “War President” and, as such, he will have far more power than he might otherwise. If he really was the “very stable genius” that he and Maggie Haberman would have us believe, he would be in a very good position to dominate Joe Biden. Trump’s dream of losing the popular vote and winning the Electoral College in the fall would be a foregone conclusion.

But.

This is Trump we’re talking about, so he’s going to self-own. I’m not prepared to say his self-own will be existential. He’s just too lucky for that to be an issue. But the context of his ultimate, inevitable victory in the fall may be a bit more different than he would like. He’s such a malignant force in American politics that 60% of the electorate is going to be seething about House Trump’s surreal control of America going into his second term. How that might manifest itself is anyone’s guess.

My best guess is he gets impeached again at some point in his second term, but by that point, Don Jr. or Steve King will be his veep so, lulz.

Another option is Trump implodes or explodes on a mental level just as the crisis reaches its denouement and there’s a momentary pause in the rise of the Fourth Reich and the Thousand Year Trump. I don’t want that to happen. I really don’t. That would be among the absolute worst case scenarios out there — I mean, do we really want all 328 million of us to see a picture of Trump’s cock on our phones via the Presidential Alert System?

Or, to put it another way, the only way House Trump doesn’t endup on top because of this crisis is Trump himself. That’s it. Otherwise, no matter what, they will be far more powerful, far quicker than they might have been otherwise in two years.

But, sadly, there are some other things that could make what might otherwise be a short, scary event in our nation’s history turn into not The Little One, but, THE BIG ONE. Besides Trump’s generally fuckery, there is The Gray Plague and the WuFlop to worry about.

If the Gray Plague begins to strike in any big fashion, then that would be a preventable tragedy of such proportions that I don’t want to think about it all that much. It definitely would give one pause for thought. The WuFlop, too, would likely cause so much panic in the United States if a recorded instance of it showed up on TV that the nation might buckle for a few days in abject terror.

Or, put another way, there are simply too many wild card known unknowns for me to properly gauge what is going to happen in the next, say, 60 days. In general, we’re going to get the shit scared out of us a few times, but House Trump will simply grow stronger and more hateful in the end. But if history decides to wake up in a big way, we all –even me — may be shocked by how surreal, how weird things get in a rather abrupt, unpredictable fashion.

History, Please Stay Asleep

Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m enough of a student of history to know the conditions are there for the next, say, 60 days, to be some of the most surreal, jaw-dropping days in American history. I say this only because of what’s happening in Italy. Italy is imploding and it could very well be they’re us in about 10 days.

I refuse to articulate what I fear my happen because it would be bad taste. But I will note what has happened to Iran because of COVID19 — the entire power structure of the country is now wrapped up in the contagion. Maybe it’s because I like scenarios and to think up stories, but it definitely seems as though it’s possible we may want to slow our collective roll and what may — or may not — happen in American politics long term.

I have no inside information. I’m not a part of the Deep State. I just am well enough versed in the conditions of the pandemic bouncing around the planet right now to know that anything is possible. The Gray Plague. The WuFlop. If either one of those two things make a significant appearance the entire context of the 2020 campaign might not be at all what we think right now.

I don’t want to be right. I really don’t. But I do want to simply prepare myself for the possibility that the best laid plans of mice and men often go astray.