Tonight is something of both a test and a milestone. It’s a test because other than one pretty big issue, I’m like Burgess Meredith at the end of his most famous Twilight Zone episode: I have all the time in the world. The question is, will I figuratively break my glasses or not? If I don’t hit the ground running pretty soon, then, well, I guess we know our answer.
But I don’t think that will happen. So tonight is a milestone. I plan on being a lot more serious with development starting tonight. I may play a little bit by writing on this blog, but I hope to throw myself into development tonight. I have a few concerns — I may have a cavity I have to deal with in the near term — but I hope I can at least wrap up development of the first act this weekend to such an extent that I can start to do a lot more practical research starting now.
I am using Audible to force myself to at least be exposed to some of my mindshare competition — I can’t simply flip through The Girl Who Played With Fire as a textbook forever. And there continue to be some lingering existential issues with the novel that I am very well aware of. The story is great, and, yet, it’s not Network. I name names (in a way) and that is simply not done in Network and other similar political works of art.
Or, put another way, while I’m trying very, very hard to appease MAGA with this novel on an existential level, given that MAGA is a fucking cult and any criticism of Der Fuehrer can never be brooked, well, there you go. That’s probably the biggest lingering existential problem — I could probably take out the conspicuous finger pointing of our current POTUS, and, yet, it’s my abject creative rage against the Trump Administration that has given me the energy to keep going with this novel long after I might otherwise have given up. If I can find a beta reader willing to help me figure out how to lop off the most obvious political aspects of the story, I’m all ears. I want this to be as big a tentpole as possible. As it stands, I got nothing. Introducing our deranged Chauncey Gardner president as a super-massive black hole that comes near to the plot at a crucial moment raises the stakes about as high as you can get. If the stakes get any higher nuclear weapons or aliens will be involved.
So, as of right now, things are going good-to-great. A lot, A LOT, can go wrong now. But I hope all the potential disasters can simply delay, not end, my quest to write a timely political guilty pleasure techno-thriller allegory for woke Park Slope Brooklyn moms. If I manage to write an American response to The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo AND give the Latinx community a fictional folk hero AND tell MAGA to FUCK OFF, all the fucking better.
The point of this is it’s supposed to be vague enough that it might be about a couple’s break up on a romantic level. There’s a bit of deflection for poetic effect. I have no idea why write these lyrics. It’s a complete waste of time. I don’t know anything about music and, besides, the entire system is designed to prevent people like me from breaking into it — especially at such an “advanced” age. But this idea came to me and I thought I’d share. Maybe someone, somewhere, can do something with hit. I would, at least, like credit.
Remain lyrics by Shelton Bumgarner @sheltgarner please give credit if you produce or perform
things were never good but never this bad it’s breaking me up making the dust scatter as my state of mind feels a death rattle I just want you to remain remain remain remain
remain it’s not a complaint just a statement of faith remain, remain, remain, remain
we’re going buckle the order and sow discord just because of the lies we told my health is getting worse no funds to pay for an upgrade why did it have to end this way I just wanted to say remain remain remain
remain
it’s not a complaint
just a statement of faith
remain, remain, remain, remain
(bridge)
I’ll leave ’cause I must
my heart has spoken
but my mind is a bust
this union end’s is hard
no deals left to make
I just wish we’d remain
together
Today is crucial because, in a sense, it’s a new era in the novel’s development. I’m going to try to wrap up the scene summary on a scene-level ASAP. No later than my birthday in late February. But this could be a pretty rocky point in the year for me for a number of reasons and everything could be thrown out of whack in an rather dramatic and unexpected manner.
Or not.
One thing I’ve noticed about Stieg Larsson’s first book, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is that the first 132 pages or so are dead boring. Once you get past that point, however, the rest of the series is a lot of fun and zooms past at lightening speed, much to the detriment of your sleep schedule. I don’t know what happened at that point in the writing of that first novel, but something changed. My guess is he wrote and re-wrote those pages over the years to such an extent that it completely drained the work of any entertainment value. He came back to what he had written at some point with fresh eyes and simply used what he had when things started to work far, far better.
But that could be complete bullshit. Who knows.
That’s unlikely to happen to me because I’m doing so much development instead of “just writing” as so many people want me to do. I think if you were to study the structure of the completed novel — whenever that happens — you will definitely see how much work I put into the first act. I’ve obsessed over the first 20 scenes so much that there is an exacting sequence of events that get us to the inciting incident.
Anyway. I have no idea what I’m doing and I haven’t even really started writing seriously on the first-but-really-second draft yet. I have no idea how successful any of this is going to be because, well, I’m doing it in a complete vacuum.
It is growing more apparent on a daily basis that Trump is losing his fucking mind. Now, if he was still a Right wing celebrity Twitter troll then this would not be a big deal. It would be dealt with in private and Access Hollywood might made a passing reference to Trump retiring from public life to “spend time with his family.”
But, fuck, man, the guy’s president. So, it does not take much to pace out a scenario where Trump is so out of it that out that out of sheer incompetence there’s some sort of “limited”nuclear exchange between the DPRK and the States. The only reason it would be “limited” is if for some reason Russia and China sat on their hands and watched the whole thing go down.
It could go down like this — Trump is so totally out of it that he boxes in Kim for no damn reason. Things get really, really tense and Kim feels he has no choice on an existential level but to take down as much of the States as he can. Kim lobs a few ICBMs at the States, maybe blowing up — if he’s “lucky” LA, Chicago, DC or NYC. I have my doubts on how many of the intended targets would actually be successfully struck. Remember, it’s generally assumed that the DPRK has H-Bombs, so in theory we’re talking a citykiller bomb exploding over Hollywood or Wall Street.
Trump nukes the shit out of the DPRK and that’s that.
Several million (5+) people are dead and we, at last, end Trump’s reign. Though, it is just as likely that we’re already in the dystopia and, well, even though Trump gross incompetence was the reason for a few million American deaths, this will be used to abolish the Constitution and, well, we’re just as fucked as we would be anyway.
All I know is it’s self-evident, at least from Trump’s Twitter feed, that he’s not well and he’s getting worse every day.
Remember, war doesn’t happen in a vacuum. If, say, Iran and Israel go at it and Israel uses a few nukes on Iran, that would likely be such a staggering historic event that both the Indian subcontinent AND the two Koreas may go poof (and take a us with them.)
I have no idea what I’m doing. And, in a sense, I think what’s happening is my natural inclination to write a screenplay is pretty much completely taking over development of a novel. So, in a sense, I’m obsessing over an aspect of the novel that in real terms won’t really make much sense until it’s somehow miraculously made into a movie.
The “heart” of this novel is my extensive knowledge of pop rock music published in the last 60 odd years. Or, to put it another way, pop rock music is to me what pop culture reference are to Ernest Cline. The vision I have for this novel, however, is so different than Ready Player One that the only reason why this analogy might be made is for marketing purposes. Other than that, the two books share nothing in creative purpose.
One thing that’s really helping me ground my characters is I’m really nailing down what type of music they listen to and the exceptions. I have a lot of real-life experience in this kind of stuff and I can make some of the more unexpected situations I need to have happen believable because of that. I have to keep an eye on the plot. I can’t get too bogged down in being a pop rock show-off. But the whole structure of the novel is built from the ground up as to make music an existential feature of the story.
The surreal thing is my development is reaching Gillian Flynn levels of thinking things through, and, yet, my native writing ability simply isn’t as good as hers. The whole process is being slowed down considerably, and, yet given that I am, in fact, pushing myself to my personal creative limits the end product has to be, at least, not embarrassing? Right? Right?
But I have to stay focused on tone, theme and mood. I can’t let my natural inclination to write an updated version of The World According To Garp take over. This needs to be a dark, fast, accessible ride with the occasional moments of levity. I’m trying to force myself to study John Connolly, Gillian Flynn and a few other writers who manage to do that in a pop-art fashion.
I hope that first thing New Year’s Day, I can get back into developing the rest of the novel at the scene level. Once I wrap that up — hopefully no later than my birthday in late February, then I will plunge back into writing the first-but-really-second-draft again.
Since I can’t do what I want to do — which is go to NYC for NYE — I splurged on Amazon. Now that I understand the characters, plot and vision of the novel, I can start to do some basic research that a lot of people would have done a lot earlier in the process. The biggest addition is to my growing pile of books is, well, how to write a police procedural.
I started this process being lazy and not wanting to go outside my comfort zone of my personal journalistic investigation knowledge. But I now realize that was dumb. I need at least a subplot where I see what the cops (or cop) are doing. Given how high the stakes are in all of this,however, I may have to talk to the FBI’s PR guy / gal. They must have someone you can talk to to simply get some sense of what they might do in to investigate a fictional crime. This is a side of the story I’m so completely clueless about that I’m going to have to be kind to myself creatively — more so than I am usually — and allow myself to make dumb mistakes without feeling existential angst.
This novel’s conceit is improving significantly. The question, of course, is will my native writing ability be up to it? I honestly can’t answer that question right now. At this point, I really just don’t want to embarrassment myself. To date, everyone — including my own brother! — is obviously barely even humoring me.
Every once in a while, I re-calibrate this novel and the last few days has been once of those times. I now realize that while the whole thing is getting much, much better, it is also going to take a lot longer that I had hoped for a number of reasons. Several issues are slowing me down. One, I have no friends and this is all happening in a vacuum. Two, the original concept was so poorly thought out that it’s taken me a year to sort things out in large part because of one.
But I definitely know the general plot of the novel. I’m giving myself no later than my birthday in late February to start actively writing again. I’m hoping that it will happen a lot soon than that.
I am not one for personality cults, regardless of ideology. Just not my scene. And I continue to believe that Nancy Pelosi had no plan when it came to Trump’s creeping tyranny — she was just lucky when his natural tendency to self-own finally happened to get bad enough that he was impeached. She had no idea when this would inevitably happen. We could be in the middle of his second term and still be waiting. Pelosi probably knew he would do it, but she had no “plan.” It was all just dumb luck. I, for one, would rather NOT have the fate of the Republic hinge on dumb luck. She could have been a LOT more aggressive on the Mueller front in January 2019, but did nothing.
Anyway, here we are.
It definitely seems as though Pelosi not giving something Trump assumed was his — easy “vindication” in the Senate — is beginning to eat away at him. So, it’s at least possible that Pelosi had a hunch this would happen. It’s at least possible that this IS a part of a “plan.” Now, again, we simply don’t know when — if ever — Trump is going to snap because of this Tell-Tale Heart situation. It may never happen. Trump runs on “vindication” no matter what, cruises into his second term, get a Constitutional Convention convened to “pass a balanced budget amendment” and away we go.
But there’s also a chance that Trump’s feeling of powerless may get the best of him in a pretty astonishing fashion. He may just lose his shit so bad that it’s THAT that leads to his conviction in the Senate. He finally becomes such a ranting insane person that Pelosi strikes — she sends the Articles of Impeachment to the Senate and Trump’s removed from office not for any political reasons but because the 25th Amendment is a dead letter.
There is the risk, of course, that given how fucked up MAGA is, they could very well simply use this theory of mine as their “stab in the back.” In other words, they will whip themselves up into an apoplectic trance at the idea that if ONLY Nancy Pelosi hadn’t driven the Dear Leader bonkers, there could have been a Golden Age of American Nazism or some such bullshit. Fuck those guys. Fucking Nazis.
Anyway, here’s some other relevant writing I’ve done on this matter.
I hate to break it to you, folks, but if impeachment really does reach a tipping point we’ve entered the darkest timeline. It won’t be impeachment, it will be Trump’s reaction to it that we’ll be talking about.
Trump has long had some sort of chronic mental problem. The stress of simply an impeachment investigation — which would likely take months — would, in it self, potentially cause him to decompensate. It’s would make a lot of sense if Trump found himself in something of a logic trap. He would absolutely feel as though he would survive an Senate vote. But he would also absolutely feel paranoid that he might not.
So he goes bonkers.
I therefore propose that in the end, it won’t even be impeachment that is Trump’s downfall — it will be his reaction to it. If Trump finally goes off the deep end, some astonishing surreal thing will happen. The first will be MAGA Stalwarts will find themselves defending ever-more demonstrably indefensible things on Trump’s part. First they will simply say he was “joking.” But there will come a point when they take the final plunge into their own destruction. Trump will tweet out a dick pic. Trump will begin to tweet out the N-word to Obama. And they will defend it, thinking that Trump, like always, will stay in control of the narrative.
And so, in the end, Trump’s tendency to self-own will get so absolutely bad that there might be an intervention, of sorts. They might propose to Trump that he gets to choose Pence’s replacement as veep. And maybe a promise of a full pardon after Pence wins re-election in 2020. Trump accepting such an offer would be the best case scenario for Republicans.
The worse case scenario is he won’t accept it. And in the end, Trump so far gone mentally that the Senate finally does, in fact, convict him not so much because of any particular crime, but for the complete failure of the 25th Amendment to work.
And then, I’m afraid, we have a once-in-generation event. Young people won’t reference 9/11, they’ll reference Trump’s downfall. It will probably play out a lot like the OJ’s slow motion police chase in a white Bronco. It will last days, even weeks. The entire country will grind to a halt as we attempt to lure Trump out of The White House.
It will be a dark day in our history.
Here is how it may play out. I wrote this some time ago, but the premise is the same.
9/10ths a story fragment of a possible near future by Shelton Bumgarner
April, 2019
The eyes of the world were on the White House.
Just moments before, President Donald J. Trump, 45th president of the United States, had been convicted by 67 members of the Senate for a whole list of high crimes and misdemeanors. Trump had for weeks now been ranting on Gab about his case in the Senate, bouncing back and forth between threats to start a war with Iran or the DPRK and not-so-subtle hints that he might take his own life should he be convicted by the Senate.
And, now, at last, the moment of truth had arrived.
Trump legally, at least, was no longer president, but he had been oddly silent since the verdict had been announced with great fanfare from the well of the Senate. Trump’s conviction had come after months of investigations on the part of the now Democratic Congress. The length and breath of Trump’s malfeasance discovered by these hearings had rocked the nation to its very core. On more than one occasion, MAGA talking heads on cable news had been interrupted by astonishing breaking news that left them, for once, unable or unwilling to defend the president.
The hearings had ground on for months to such an extent that Trump’s approval had slowly drifted to the 20s and stayed there consistently. Trump’s support was now made up of the very rich and the very poor. Oddly, despite Trump’s near constant demands on Twitter for violence on the part of his supporters, little, if any was reported. Trump had grown so frustrated that he had all but abandoned Twitter at one point for the more receptive Gab social media platform. Though on more than one occasion Rudy Giuliani had made it very clear it was within the rights of the president to declare martial law if he deemed it in the best interests of the nation. More than one delegation of Senate Republicans had gone to the White House to explain to Trump that he was going to be convicted, no avail. Trump made it clear to them, in not so many words that his simply living in the White House made him president, a sentiment best expressed by the legal saw that, “Possession is 9/10ths of the law.”
Finally, a post to Gab came out: “My so-called ‘conviction’ is the work of the Deep State and as such illegitimate. I remain president.”
This set off a chain of events, the likes of which Americans had never seen. Suddenly, everyone on Twitter became a Constitutional scholar as everyone studied the exact wording of the Constitution as to what happens if the president is removed from office by the Senate. The wording is quite clear: he or she is no longer president and that’s it.
Nowhere in the Constitution did it explain what to do if the president simply decided to ignore the Senate. What’s more, nowhere in the Constitution did it state what to do with the nuclear launch codes should a president be removed from office and he refuse to accept the decision of the Senate.
The next few hours were chilling as they were surreal for millions of people not just in the United States but around the globe. The issue of Trump’s physical access to America’s nuclear launch codes was suddenly at the forefront of everyone’s mind. Though it was finally announced that while the nuclear football remained in Trump’s possession, Sec. of Defense Mattis had ordered the American armed forces to stand down for the duration of the crisis.
Trump, on Twitter, was as defiant and unhinged as usual.He threatened to kill himself. He threatened to start a nuclear war. He vowed to declare martial law.
The usual suspects on cable news did their best to spin all of this for Trump. As an anxious nation waited for the now former president to leave the White House, a cavalcade of former Republican Senators and Trump White House staffers attempted to make the former president’s case. Their final argument was that for the good of the country, Trump should be allowed to remain president, despite his lawful conviction by the Senate.
Things began to move rapidly at this point.
Vice President Pence was sworn in but Chief Justice Roberts in a dark, somber event in the Old Executive Building. Meanwhile, it was learned Trump had quietly replaced his Secret Service detail with a private security force that made it clear it was prepared to defend Trump until the bloody end.
At this point, two things happened. A final bipartisan delegation of Congressional leaders came to the White House grounds under the flag of truce. During the course of an hour-long meeting, Trump screamed at them that they had never supported him and the world would be better off if it just ended instead of allowed the forces of the Deep State to ruin America. He made it absolutely clear that he would never leave the Oval Office willingly.
With that, they left.
Next, a surreal, bizarre event, the FBI slowly began to surround the White House. There was much debate online and on TV about how long the nation should wait for Trump to leave the White House. CNN went so far as to do a deep dive into the exact amount of food the White House grounds might have available at any one moment.
Finally, shots rang out from the White House as the battle was joined. It took several hours but in the end, the FBI was finally able to secure the facility. Nearly a dozen personnel on both sides died during the course of the Battle of The White House.
In what would become ionic footage, Trump was quietly escorted from the White House grounds. He spent the remainder of his days ranting on Twitter and Gab that he was the rightful president.
I really hate it when people in the so-called “writing community” on Twitter and Instagram preen about how many words they’ve written or what their hero looks like. Fuck that. Serious novels, at least in my experience, have far more intangible metrics. A novel needs some serious development before you worry about things like that. While I have the utmost respect for “pantsers” who just dive into writing a novel, I’ve discovered that I’m the exact opposite. Because my internal editor is a vicious, brutal and sadistic taskmaster, I’ve spend a year in breach-birth development hell. But things seem to be stabilizing — maybe — so I thought I’d allow myself to indulge in a bit of preening of my own.
The thing about Hollywood actors — who I’m using for inspiration for my characters’ physical appearance — is the guys I like, like Daniel Craig — are way too old. My Hero is 40 when the story opens and as such I need someone about that age to study to use as inspiration. One issue is my Hero is Southern. So the ideal person to play him in my mind is Matthew McConaughey, but he’s 10 years too old, just like Craig. Given what I imagine my Hero looking like, I think Bill Hader is just the right age and has the right countenance to be who I think about when I am writing my Hero. Hader is also from Oklahoma, so he might have some sense of Southern life and where the character is coming from. But, again, that statement is more a testament to my personal daydreaming than anything connected to reality.
But that’s simply a general guide in my mind. I *am* writing a *novel* and *not* a screenplay. While I may write a screenplay at some point, I want to write a novel because I have absolute control and I can simply sit down and start writing without worrying about buying Final Draft. The real issue for me at this point is establishing tone. I, by nature, want to write an early John Irving novel. But I need to read Gone Girl and Girl On The Train to hone closer to the tone needed and expected in the type of novel I’m developing.
I have several conservatives in my immediate family. I love them dearly on a personal level and they’ve been very, very gracious to me over the years. They aren’t really MAGA people but they love, love, LOVE Trump’s policies and so any debate with them on a political level is rather moot. They will concede that the Dear Leader is, in fact, fallible, but that’s about it.
They either feign political indifference or they say “they don’t know who to believe.” Both of these statements are extremely unacceptable to me because they’re pretty much just a modern, American version of the “Good Germans” of Nazi Germany. In other words, as we careen towards an American Reich their unwillingness to take a stand against the rise of American fascism is growing ever more alarming. This is because their willingness to act on a personal level to help me from dying in a weaponized ICE camp is growing less by the day.
A conversation tonight was very troubling. My conservative relative simply waved away my concerns that once Trump is inevitably acquitted by the Senate that he will turn around and run on a plank of calling a Constitutional Convention to “pass a balanced budget amendment.” What is so troubling him equating my fears with InfoWars rhetoric during the Obama Administration is I’m not pulling this out of my butt. Trump is notorious for cherry picking concepts from the loony far Right and doing just as I suggest fits his MO perfectly. He already jokes about running for a third term and the groundwork is lain for Trump to do exactly as I suggest — we’re already just a few states away from a Constitutional Convention as it stands.
So once Trump wins re-election — through whatever illegal or corrupt means — he will babble about the need for a Constitutional Convention to balance the budget. The fact that Republicans gave a huge windfall to plutocrats doesn’t matter. MAGA has no shame and all they care about is power and cold hard cash. As best I can tell, members of the Constitional Convention would be named by members of individual state legislatures. As it stands, the vast majority these bodies are Republican. As such, the members of the newly convened Constitutional Convention would have a huge amount of incentive to codified the “American Carnage” of MAGA into the Constitution itself. This series of events is not InfoWars level bonkers. This is actually extremely likely given Trump’s autocratic leanings.
I would go so far as to say all MAGA needs is to get Trump into his second term. It doesn’t matter how. Trump could dox or brazenly bribe individual Electors. As long as they vote for him and get him into a second term, Trump’s new veep — be it The Kooch, Tom Cotton, Tucker Carlson or Kris Kobach will be the person who uses Trump’s blood-lust for Constitutional-level Enabling Acts to establish an American Fourth Reich.
Once they are successful, then we’ll enter about 1935-1937 in the Nazi takeover of Germany. And, I hate to break it to some people, but I don’t care how much Trump wants to fuck his Jewish daughter, once Trump’s peacefully shuffled off this mortal coil, some of the nastier aspects of MAGA will take over the whole movement and history will, in fact, repeat itself.
I would suggest you leave the country immediately if you have the means.
The only thing that may delay — but not stop — the rise of the American Fourth Reich would be Trump abruptly losing his fucking mind in a very, very dramatic fashion at some point between now and Election Day 2020.Here are some extended thoughts on that.
I hate to break it to you, folks, but if impeachment really does reach a tipping point we’ve entered the darkest timeline. It won’t be impeachment, it will be Trump’s reaction to it that we’ll be talking about.
Trump has long had some sort of chronic mental problem. The stress of simply an impeachment investigation — which would likely take months — would, in it self, potentially cause him to decompensate. It’s would make a lot of sense if Trump found himself in something of a logic trap. He would absolutely feel as though he would survive an Senate vote. But he would also absolutely feel paranoid that he might not.
So he goes bonkers.
I therefore propose that in the end, it won’t even be impeachment that is Trump’s downfall — it will be his reaction to it. If Trump finally goes off the deep end, some astonishing surreal thing will happen. The first will be MAGA Stalwarts will find themselves defending ever-more demonstrably indefensible things on Trump’s part. First they will simply say he was “joking.” But there will come a point when they take the final plunge into their own destruction. Trump will tweet out a dick pic. Trump will begin to tweet out the N-word to Obama. And they will defend it, thinking that Trump, like always, will stay in control of the narrative.
And so, in the end, Trump’s tendency to self-own will get so absolutely bad that there might be an intervention, of sorts. They might propose to Trump that he gets to choose Pence’s replacement as veep. And maybe a promise of a full pardon after Pence wins re-election in 2020. Trump accepting such an offer would be the best case scenario for Republicans.
The worse case scenario is he won’t accept it. And in the end, Trump so far gone mentally that the Senate finally does, in fact, convict him not so much because of any particular crime, but for the complete failure of the 25th Amendment to work.
And then, I’m afraid, we have a once-in-generation event. Young people won’t reference 9/11, they’ll reference Trump’s downfall. It will probably play out a lot like the OJ’s slow motion police chase in a white Bronco. It will last days, even weeks. The entire country will grind to a halt as we attempt to lure Trump out of The White House.
It will be a dark day in our history.
Here is how it may play out. I wrote this some time ago, but the premise is the same.
9/10ths a story fragment of a possible near future by Shelton Bumgarner
April, 2019
The eyes of the world were on the White House.
Just moments before, President Donald J. Trump, 45th president of the United States, had been convicted by 67 members of the Senate for a whole list of high crimes and misdemeanors. Trump had for weeks now been ranting on Gab about his case in the Senate, bouncing back and forth between threats to start a war with Iran or the DPRK and not-so-subtle hints that he might take his own life should he be convicted by the Senate.
And, now, at last, the moment of truth had arrived.
Trump legally, at least, was no longer president, but he had been oddly silent since the verdict had been announced with great fanfare from the well of the Senate. Trump’s conviction had come after months of investigations on the part of the now Democratic Congress. The length and breath of Trump’s malfeasance discovered by these hearings had rocked the nation to its very core. On more than one occasion, MAGA talking heads on cable news had been interrupted by astonishing breaking news that left them, for once, unable or unwilling to defend the president.
The hearings had ground on for months to such an extent that Trump’s approval had slowly drifted to the 20s and stayed there consistently. Trump’s support was now made up of the very rich and the very poor. Oddly, despite Trump’s near constant demands on Twitter for violence on the part of his supporters, little, if any was reported. Trump had grown so frustrated that he had all but abandoned Twitter at one point for the more receptive Gab social media platform. Though on more than one occasion Rudy Giuliani had made it very clear it was within the rights of the president to declare martial law if he deemed it in the best interests of the nation. More than one delegation of Senate Republicans had gone to the White House to explain to Trump that he was going to be convicted, no avail. Trump made it clear to them, in not so many words that his simply living in the White House made him president, a sentiment best expressed by the legal saw that, “Possession is 9/10ths of the law.”
Finally, a post to Gab came out: “My so-called ‘conviction’ is the work of the Deep State and as such illegitimate. I remain president.”
This set off a chain of events, the likes of which Americans had never seen. Suddenly, everyone on Twitter became a Constitutional scholar as everyone studied the exact wording of the Constitution as to what happens if the president is removed from office by the Senate. The wording is quite clear: he or she is no longer president and that’s it.
Nowhere in the Constitution did it explain what to do if the president simply decided to ignore the Senate. What’s more, nowhere in the Constitution did it state what to do with the nuclear launch codes should a president be removed from office and he refuse to accept the decision of the Senate.
The next few hours were chilling as they were surreal for millions of people not just in the United States but around the globe. The issue of Trump’s physical access to America’s nuclear launch codes was suddenly at the forefront of everyone’s mind. Though it was finally announced that while the nuclear football remained in Trump’s possession, Sec. of Defense Mattis had ordered the American armed forces to stand down for the duration of the crisis.
Trump, on Twitter, was as defiant and unhinged as usual.He threatened to kill himself. He threatened to start a nuclear war. He vowed to declare martial law.
The usual suspects on cable news did their best to spin all of this for Trump. As an anxious nation waited for the now former president to leave the White House, a cavalcade of former Republican Senators and Trump White House staffers attempted to make the former president’s case. Their final argument was that for the good of the country, Trump should be allowed to remain president, despite his lawful conviction by the Senate.
Things began to move rapidly at this point.
Vice President Pence was sworn in but Chief Justice Roberts in a dark, somber event in the Old Executive Building. Meanwhile, it was learned Trump had quietly replaced his Secret Service detail with a private security force that made it clear it was prepared to defend Trump until the bloody end.
At this point, two things happened. A final bipartisan delegation of Congressional leaders came to the White House grounds under the flag of truce. During the course of an hour-long meeting, Trump screamed at them that they had never supported him and the world would be better off if it just ended instead of allowed the forces of the Deep State to ruin America. He made it absolutely clear that he would never leave the Oval Office willingly.
With that, they left.
Next, a surreal, bizarre event, the FBI slowly began to surround the White House. There was much debate online and on TV about how long the nation should wait for Trump to leave the White House. CNN went so far as to do a deep dive into the exact amount of food the White House grounds might have available at any one moment.
Finally, shots rang out from the White House as the battle was joined. It took several hours but in the end, the FBI was finally able to secure the facility. Nearly a dozen personnel on both sides died during the course of the Battle of The White House.
In what would become ionic footage, Trump was quietly escorted from the White House grounds. He spent the remainder of his days ranting on Twitter and Gab that he was the rightful president.
I am toying with the idea of having a num de plume. For me, it’s proof to myself that I’m taking the development and writing of this novel seriously. If I’m able to think up a new, better name — inspired by my legal name — then there’s not more can I can do.
I’ve been in development hell for about a year now. I am giving myself the deadline of Jan 1st, 2020. Whatever I have done in development at that point I’m going to use to either start working on a serious first draft or turn my attention elsewhere. I’ve learned a lot over the last year and could easily use the skillset I’ve developed to write a much simpler novel far quicker. And, yet, I’ve invested a year of my time into this — and I’ve actually reached the point where the framework exists on a structural level to tell my “Apocalypse Now” for the Trump Era that it really doesn’t make any sense to stop at this point.
Two things stick out. One, I simply did not think through this novel very well when I started. In fact, it was so poorly conceived a year ago that had I had anyone in my life to talk with about it, they would have either told me to not do it, or they would have had to have been very active in the development process. As it stands, I had no one to tell me “no” and so I spun my wheels for a year because I have a very brutal self-editor and I my hatred of MAGA is so intense that whenever I felt like dropping the novel I realized there was so much I could do with it that I kept going.
But I am going to make some changes in an effort to be more “serious” with this project. I have half a dozen novel writing “how to” books to read next to my computer. I need to start reading them in earnest. I also need to start thinking outside the box. I’ve already had to change some major structural aspects of the story in the last few days simply to get past the inciting incident.
One issue with this novel is it’s too grounded in reality for it’s own good. I never mention Trump in the novel, simply saying it’s “a” president, not “the” president. But, really, anyone who reads the novel will check when it’s set and know who “Individual #1” is. So, in a sense, that’s my Fleabag risk. I’m taking a pretty big risk that since I’m essentially attacking a real administration that could still be in office when I try to sell it that anyone will take it seriously. If someone had written a political thriller during the Obama Administration that made it clear he was the president in question, people would think the author was a nut.
And, yet, I think if I am careful that there might be “serious” Verified Liberals who might at least give me a page or two to make my case. I could probably strip the direct attack on Trump out of the story, and, yet, given that was the whole point of writing a novel to begin with — and, well, I’m not that smart — I guess that’s a risk I’m willing to take going forward. Though there is still a chance that if I do really well with the first and second draft that a Beta Reader my take pity on me and suggest how I could do that very thing and still stay true to my original vision.
I really love several of the characters I’ve thought up. I love them so much that I’m willing to keep going, to give them a chance to at least stand on their own in the marketplace of ideas.
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