Author: Shelton Bumgarner

I am the Editor & Publisher of The Trumplandia Report

The Talented Ms. Tavi Gevinson


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Before I begin, I will note that Ms. Gevinson is 25 years old and in the public eye. As such, it’s not like I’m being a creepy middle aged man by simply having a hot take on her. So, please, spare me, Mr. FBI Agent In DC putting this post in your file of me. (If it exists.)

Ms. Gevinson is living the Life of Riley right now. But she’s also extremely lucky. She hit the media zeitgeist at just the right moment in time when she was growing up. What makes her so interesting to me is she does, in fact, have talent, unlike a lot of other young people in the public eye who appear to be famous for being famous.

But Ms. Gevinson is a construct of a very specific area of the media universe. If she didn’t exist, someone like her would be created. As best I can tell, she’s analogous to a blonde, American version of Britain’s fashion It Girl, Alexa Chung.

And, yet, I don’t think the average American understands what a potent cultural force she is in the rarified halls of Elite Media. She’s apparently in a Gossip Girl reboot and she definitely seems to be heading towards being a movie star soon enough.

Yet, again, I don’t know what to make of her. Something about her rapid ascent rubs me the wrong way. It’s like The Powers That Be in New York Media have decided she’s going to be A Thing for decades to come, even if hayseed rubes like me don’t quite get it.

But it could be worse, I guess. She serves a function and she does, in fact, have talent. I think maybe some of my annoyance comes from how precocious she’s been and how a lot of adults who should have known better — at the time — took her way, way too seriously. At the onset of her career as a little tyke she was something akin to Rushmore.

I need to get over myself, though. I just hope she’s grateful that she’s been given some pretty spectacular opportunities at such a young age.

America’s Path To Autocracy Goes Through Texas


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

If you want to understand the political, historical and demographic forces at work in the United States right look no further than Texas. The Lone Star State is the place where we see America’s overall decent into autocracy in the micro. For a generation, people have been talking about how Texas is “shifting Blue” and there will, at some point, come a moment when it’s no longer reliably Red. Such an event would be huge — Democrats with the failsafe of Texas on the electoral board would be in a very good position going forward.

There’s a huge problem with this, however — Texas Republicans know this, too.

As such, Texas is thus one of a number of states around the Union where the Republican Party has grown hysterical and autocratic. They will do anything to keep power, to the point where they don’t blink an eye at running roughshod over democratic norms.

So, when you talk about the political future of the United States, you have to take into account that the Republican Party is, well, fascist. They are laying the groundwork for forcing the issue: we will either become an autocratic managed democracy or we’re going to have a civil war.

And Texas is a prime example of how the Republican Party, on a systemic level, would rather destroy democracy than do any soul searching so they could continue to win elections fair and square. They would rather destroy the whole system than risk such forced existential introspection. We have get woke to the very real possibility that at some point between now and January 2025, the United States will become, on a political level, Texas.

The anti-democratic moves that the Texas Republican Party is doing on a systemic level will be applied to the United States by the national Republican Party for the very same reasons — Republicans know they have unpopular policies and the only way they can stay in power is to cheat via turning the country into an fascist autocracy.

There are no easy answers. Either the autocratic forces at work within the Texas Republican Party — and beyond — win the day, or we have a civil war. That’s it. That is our choice.

The Earth Is Broiling & Yet It’s Still A Lulz?


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Reality is very important to me. So when I find myself surrounded by people who are denying a concrete reality that is all around us, it makes me very angry. What sparks me thinking about this is how it’s now very clear that the earth is heating up at an alarming rate.

And, yet, because how since about the 2000 presidential election, anything to do with global climate change is seen exclusively through the prism of partisan politics. Because of the broader problem of negative polarization, people on the Right are denying empirical evidence that global climate change is real. They do everything in their power to conflate, or mitigate or rationalize out of existence the very cold hard facts that we are now confronted with on a daily basis.

Even if you pin these people down, the pretty much just throw up their arms and say, something like, “humans have nothing to do with it” or “what do you want us to do about it.”

But, really, this is an issue of these people getting so wrapped up in the immediate political future that they’re willing to embrace nihilism. So, you can tick off all these different things that we should or could do to save ourselves, because of the absolute addictive power of negative polarization people on the Right will never, ever change their point of view on this subject. To the point that we could all be forced to move to Canada, Russia and Antarctica and these people would still be complaining about the Green New Deal banning cows because of their farts.

All of this points to not only how fucked we are, but there’s a severe problem in our political system that is putting the entire existence of humanity at risk. And the one thing that would fix this problem — leadership on the Right — is just not something that is going to happen anytime soon, maybe ever.

As it stands, people on the Right are looking at global climate change exclusively through the lens of partisan politics and economics. To the point where, like I said, they’re nihilistic. They would rather own the libs than risk, in any way, figuring out a way to save humanity through the group effort of a common front.

So, I don’t know what to tell you. Get ready to broil, I guess.

The UFO Conundrum


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The core reason why UFOs collectively cause us all a huge problem is it’s easy for us to get all worked up…and then nothing happens. That’s why it’s so difficult for UFOs to be taken seriously. Over the last 70 or so years, we’ve all been left waiting for something to happen…and it never does.

I would say at the moment, all we can confirm is that there have been credible reports of things flying around in the air that we can’t explain. That’s it. We don’t know what they are and we don’t know where they came from. Because of the magical thinking associated with conspiracy theories, it’s natural for people to make the leap into, “Well, obviously, the government has made First Contact and is hiding it from us.”

When, that is a leap with absolutely no evidence to back it up. It’s a shit tone of wishful thinking. Though, to be fair, every once in a while, so old guy high up in a government here or there around the world will give something akin to a deathbed confession where he goes on at great length about what appears to be some rather fantastical post-secret-First Contact things.

But even under the most charitable of circumstances, without any proof that any of this is real, there are simply way, way too many hurdles to overcome. For such things to be real, not only would aliens have to be real, have been interested in humans enough to come to earth, but the government would have had the wherewithal to keep the whole thing secret and THEN somehow manage to have astronauts in tunnels under Mars.

As such, again, it’s safe to assume that there are, on occasion, things whizzing around the world’s skies that we can’t explain. That’s it. That’s the extent of what is safe to believe.

The Problem With ‘Red Pill’ Culture


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

As I understand it, there’s a whole on-boarding system that exists for disenchanted young men to “red pill” themselves. When this happens, they start to rant about how women and minorities control everything. But this usually doesn’t happen overnight. They start by watching videos on YouTube about how much Star Wars producer Kathleen Kennedy sucks. Then they start to get into Joe Rogan.

Before you know it, they turn into incels who are MAGA friendly.

There is so much wrong with this. The key issue for me is we, as a society, are not doing enough to educate young men about the New Normal we live in. Nothing’s right or wrong but thinking makes it so, as the Bard would say. So, in a sense, it doesn’t have to be this way.

I’m of the general opinion that a number of things have led to “Red Pill” culture. One is, the lack of a draft to force young men to do Man Stuff with other men from all over the country. Having some sort of unisex National Service would do a whole lot to helping the United States avoid the existential choice of autocracy or civil war. But, sadly, it’s too late now.

Another problem is young blue collar men find it difficult to find high pay jobs that would allow them to fit into the traditional norm of breadwinner. In other words, they find it difficult to get laid, get married and have kids the way their parents did.

Throw in a rather abrupt shift in women’s self perception associated with the #MeToo movement and you have a recipe for a lot of young (white) men to “Red Pill” themselves and radicalize.

There are no simple answers to any of this. I understand things like media narratives and so forth and even I get really irritated with some modern changes, like how Victoria Secret is just about done for.

But, at the same time, I’m educated and refuse to go down the Red Pill rabbit hole so I come out the other side a deranged lunatic. I do think, however, that everything is going to sort itself out between now and, say, January 2025.

We may not like what we have to go through to solve Red Pill culture. It’s going to suck.

Don’t Sleep On The DPRK


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Things are too quiet. The last few months have been eerie in how peaceful and quiet they’ve been. Given that we’re just about due for a Once A Generation Event, there are any number of things that could throw everything up in the air in a rather abrupt fashion.

If you are old enough to remember 9/11, there was very much a Before and After feel to it. By the night of 9/11, everyone knew that nothing would be the same.

So, if you look around the world, there’s one place that is always on the cusp of fucking things up — the DPRK. Just today, the DPRK announced some sort of “problem’ with their COVID19 restrictions. This is not good.

But, even without that, the DPRK is ripe for something rather spectacular to happen. The DPRK is the geopolitical equivalent of, say, a zit that is always just about to get so infected that you have to go to the doctor. Anything that changes the current status quo with the DPRK would have massive, and I mean MASSIVE, implications for domestic politics in the United States.

In fact, I would say, in a sense a major regional war against the DPRK might be the only thing that could punt the current political crisis the United States is facing down the road a few more election cycles. It’s easy to imagine Democrats keeping Congress and the White House if Biden managed to guide us through a war against the DPRK.

But that would be a very, very risky thing to pin your hopes on. It’s too easy to imagine the DPRK freaking out and nuking a major city or two in the United States if there was any type of war between it and the US.

Anyway, the point is — don’t sleep on the DPRK. It might grow extremely unstable and problematic when we least expect it.

The Decline of Victoria’s Secret & ‘Cancel Culture’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

If anything can give us some insight into what “cancel culture” is — and isn’t — it’s the gradual decline of Victoria’s Secret. This legacy brand is very much a creature of the pre-‘cancel culture’ morality, so its decline in popularity is a helpful tool on that particular social front.

I’m male and of just the right age for Victoria Secret to be taken for granted as socially acceptable quasi-soft porn that takes the beauty pageant concept one step further. But the brand has had a lot problems of late, both internally and with women’s shifting self-perception.

I would prefer that we could come to some sort of middle ground whereby Victoria Secret could continue to do its pre-2020s thing in peace for people who enjoy it, but that’s not to be. That ship has sailed and now the whole endeavor is probably going to tank because “the center has not held.”

It’s difficult to sell the concept of Victoria Secret to wealthy women in major metropolitan areas when they’ve moved on to buy a Pelton or whatever. Or, put another way, in the public sphere at least, the Victoria Secret ideal is seen as an attack on the vast majority of women who don’t look like that. I’m obviously not a woman, but just casually observing things, it seems as though macro things are afoot that are leading us to a New Era — one without Victoria’s Secret.

But I will note that if you look at the broad swaths of human history, things don’t go in a straight line. Sex with always sell and all it would take is a Second American Civil War and we might come out the other side (if, thankfully, the Good Guys win) with a whole different set of priorities than we do right now.

I’m really pushing it with that bit of speculation, however. Just like how good movies and rock music have apparently faded into oblivion, so, too will Victoria Secret join them soon enough.

If Tucker Carlson Is So Worried About People Reading His Personal Shit — Wait Until He Hears About Tik-Tok


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

In a surreal turn of events, Tucker Carlson is now ranting about how the Biden Administration through the NSA is reading his “private emails.” Add this to how Fox News has turned on the U.S. Military in a rather abrupt fashion and it’s all very bonkers.

I think Carlson is spooked by something. A reporter somewhere is asking questions about something that makes him look bad and he’s freaking out, looking for some explanation for how they know what they know. So he’s blaming the NSA out of desperation, if nothing else. Or, the whole thing is just bad faith bullshit and he’s trying to recon something that is about to pop out in the near term.

Anyway, if Carlson is going to be all paranoid, he should at least be interesting about the idea that Tik-Tok, and Big Tech in general, may have the technology to read our fucking minds. While I don’t seriously think Big Tech can read our minds, they definitely have a spooky ability to figure me out in a very specific manner. Specific enough that I’d like bonkers Tucker Carlson to at least look into it and see what HE finds.

But, in the end, meh.

My Hot Take On ‘Cancel Culture’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I say the following knowing damn well that my own personal history — and views — don’t fit the media narrative and are, as such, ripe for me to be “canceled” rather abruptly if I ever make it big somehow.

But, having said that, to me, it’s a clear mark of someone with very simplistic and recursive political views if they ever start ranting about “cancel culture.” I say this because most of the people who rant about cancel culture don’t even really know what the fuck it is. In general, I think, they see it as evil liberals destroying the lives of conservatives like themselves for just being conservative.

Things grow a lot more muddled, however, when inevitably these “canceled” people either pop back into the mainstream media world after a little while or if you look into why these people were canceled. The vast majority of the time, the conservatives who were canceled for just being conservative usually did something that they deserved to be “canceled” for. They used the N-word. They were forcing women around them to jerk off, they were being over-the-top abusive in some way. Or, they were just assholes who happened to be conservative, too.

But the reason that the abstract fear of “cancel culture” resonates with the average conservative is ever since about 2012, America’s culture has been changing at light speed relative to what your typical conservative thinks of as “normal.”

So, what you often find happening now is conservatives are told by their thought leaders to live in abject fear of the abstract concept of being “canceled” when the average person just living their life — even conservative people — don’t really have much to worry about. All the instances of conservatives being “canceled” I can think of off the top of my head, they were assholes who deserved it.

The abstract concept of “cancel culture” is now something for really earnest, really masculine men to hide behind whenever they “red pill” themselves and start ranting about this or that fucked up thing. The worst part of all of this is I agree that a lot of people have grown too sensitive at the edges of social and political debate. But I think that is more a problem that is a sign of our late-stage Republic than anything else.

Once we either become an autocracy or we have a civil war, shit like “cancel culture” is going to be, well, uh, canceled. When the autocracy comes, we’re all going to be so worried about not getting pushed out of windows by ICE that we won’t have time to worry about who got canceled. Or, if we have a civil war, by the time it’s over, cancel culture will be the least of our worries.

But something about how people who are into Joe Rogan’s podcast getting all bent out of shape about “cancel culture” and seeing it as some sort of vague monster that is holding them back really fucking gets on my nerves.

Twitter Chatter: Something ‘Big’ Is About To Happen (Lulz?)


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Here and there these days, you see cryptic Tweets from major “resistance” people on Twitter saying something about how something “big” is about to happen. I’ve grown extremely jaded about such things — Trump is politically above the law — so I pretty much think any such talk is either bullshit, delusional or something that should evoke a lulz.

But, for the sake of argument, let’s pretend something “big” is about to happen. What could it be?

First, I don’t know. Second, there’s only one thing that I would consider “big” at this point — concrete evidence that some big names in MAGA, including Trump, actively worked with the January 6th insurrectionists with the specific goal of a successful violent coup.

But even absolute, rock hard evidence of this would only last one Twitter news cycle at this point. Historical determinism — the dead hand of history — has kicked in. There simply is now no escaping the existential choice of autocracy or civil war. Something’s gotta give.

I say this because even if you knock out Mad King Trump as a viable political force, a dozen other would-be autocrats are lurking in the shadows to finish the job he started. And all it takes in one of them winning one presidential election and that’s it, that’s all she wrote — we become a white Christian ethno state. The center-Left has been proven to be completely ineffectual in protecting liberal democratic norms and a President Pompeo or President Cotton (etc, etc, etc) will flip a switch and turn us into an autocracy.

The media will be purged, one way or another, the ICE infrastructure will then be weaponized and people like me will mysteriously begin to fall out of windows. At this point, it’s just an issue of how long things stay “normal” before we wake up in a dystopian autocracy hellscape. Though, given how MAGA dark money craves a Constitutional Convention, it may that which is our absolute last gasp of freedom.

Having said all that, the other option is MAGA will bungle our inevitable transition into an autocracy and we have a civil war. A very nasty, very bloody mess of a civil war that will involve WMD domestically and WW3 abroad. It will be so horrific that everyone — even, hopefully the “good guys” who win — will regret it happen and in desperation will give it some sort of narrative and value after the fact. (Like what happened after the end of the First American Civil War.)

The key takeaway from all of this is nothing is going to save us. Even if we knock Trump out politically, the same rot that caused him in the first place is still there and someone else will use what they learned from Trump and finish the job. Or we have a civil war.