Month: January 2018

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

So, the latest weird, surreal conspiracy theory is something to do with Sean Hannity’s Twitter account vanishing after tweeting something about “Form Submission 1649” three times. Apparently, this has something to about theft of government property. Or something. Though, I have to say, it Hannity may have come up with a new type of rage quitting Twitter, whereby you say something really dramatic and then quit, leaving people to focus on the last thing you tweeted.

This is mysterious to say the least, but at this point, Trump has so proven himself to be a monster — if an incompetent one — that I’m fed up with any arguments about how we should “lock her up.” Clinton lost. She’s not president and likely never will be. So, in a sense, the numbnuts of the Right have won that particular argument. And, yet, because they can’t in good faith defend the actions of their God-king Donald Trump, they bob and weave, they rhetorically shadowbox every which way in an effort to avoid directly addressing what a shit person and president Trump is.

What’s worse, sometimes instead of shadowboxing, they pull the most ridiculous argument out of their ass. In my view, that’s the most dangerous aspect of all of this. It’s like the Trump base is a cult. That’s the only word for it I can think of. It’s a cult. The Trump base is so completely detached from reality that there’s no debating anything with them. They simply refuse to admit any flaw with their God-king and they’re willing to take the entire country down with them in an effort to see their agenda implemented.

Something pretty epic is going on in American politics that we are lurching towards a Russian-style authoritarian “managed democracy” so quickly. I just don’t get it. I just don’t get what’s going on. One possible explanation is the Great Man theory of history. That all of this is a fluke caused by some extraordinary circumstances. It is very similar to what happened with Hitler, sad to say. While Trump is a strangely adept politician, he’s really shitty, really incompetent at governing. So right now that’s the only thing protecting us from a bull-bore fascist take over.

This is happening because all of the usual suspects on the Right who would otherwise scream bloody murder are completely co-opted, completely complicit. The entire system is out of whack. It’s really sad. It’s really tragic. There are no easy answers. I don’t know what happens next, honestly. Even if Mueller manages to find actual wrong-doing on the part of Trump, America is so divided that I honestly can’t see any scenario that includes Trump resigning or being impeached and convicted. So, as such, we’re fucked. We’re stuck with him at least four, if not eight years. The only question is, what will be his ultimately legacy?

Either the next president is a real leader and cleans up this mess, or the entire process is officially broken and we’re never going to have another free and fair election, at least as long as I’m alive. That seems like a very real possibility, sad to say. Remember, the Reagan Revolution lasted for 12 years and only then ended because Bill Clinton was such an expert politician that he was able to slip through using the Third Way political ideology. So, there is a real possibility that because of the quirks of the Electoral College the Trump Revolution could last at least as long as that.

Again, I just don’t know what happens next. The Trump base has some legitimate complaints, but they take what they’re willing to do to address those problems with the modern world to completely bonkers lengths. It is a very real possibility that instead of the usual ebb and flow of politics on a macro level that we’ve entered a new age where there’s no longer free and fair elections and there will be a complete disconnect between the will of the people and the government. It has already happened with the smash and grab tax cut the Republicans passed, so there is no reason to think they won’t do it with everything else they want in the future.

The Trump base is such a fetid, rancid thing on an ideological level that it was inevitable that they would gain power and fuck things up. It is up to all of us, now, to see what we can do to mitigate the damage they inflict on the nation before it’s too late.