Category: Cold Civil War

The Great Political Conundrum Of 2019

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

We’ve officially entered that strange twilight period in the Trump Era when on the face of it, we know Trump faces some existential threats to his administration, and yet the Democratic leadership of the House is sitting on its hands for various reasons.

The divide between what we know and what Democrats in the House are willing to do politically is beginning to grow so deep and large that whenever things snap back into place, it could be pretty astonishing.

What I mean by this is — while the House Democratic leadership is beginning to look into the vast amounts of crimes and abuses of power on the part of Trump, they continue to wait for the ostensibly “objective” Mueller Report to “force their hand” on the matter of impeachment. For various macro reasons, they feel as though only after the Mueller Report is released can they actively move to impeach Trump.

Alas, I fear that’s going to be quickly seen as quaint thinking soon enough. I have long believed that the moment the House begins to do its job, the political momentum for impeachment will race out the gate. The issue, of course, is about 37% of the electorate — the people who elect Republicans and vote for them in primaries — is so cult-like in their support for Trump that it would be some outside force, not anything that Trump may have done that would ultimately lead to his impeachment and potential conviction in the Senate.

Ultimately, it will be the economy. If No Deal Brexit happens and the consequences of it are as bad as we fear, then that, no anything Mueller may report to Congress, will be what drives Trump out of office.

And that doesn’t even begin to address the cold hard political fact that if Trump’s fate isn’t actively being decided in the Senate by August 2019, we’re going to have to wait for “the people to decide” in 2020. And, as we all know, America is now a corrupt autocratic plutocracy, not a democratic constitutional republic and as such, Trump is likely to cruise to a fairly easy re-election.

If Trump is re-elected in 2020 (which as of now looks like a political absolute certainty) he will likely go full autocrat and pardon everyone he needs to pardon and get his proxies on TV to say, “the people have spoken, they don’t care, let’s move on. Besides, shouldn’t we be at work with Iran by now?”

And, yet, there may come a point between now and August 2019 when a tipping point occurs and there simply is no escaping the absolute need to impeach Trump in the House. The worst case scenario in the Senate being, of course, that they will punt the whole thing and not even take up the articles of impeachment against Trump in the first place.

So there’s a very real possibility that the absolute worst case scenario for all involved is Trump eludes conviction in the Senate, he gets re-elected and then the economy tanks in a massive way…and even though his approval rates drop down to the flat earthers, Qanon believers and anti-Vaxxers, there simply will be no political will to do anything about it and the entire country will grind to a halt for about three years until we start fighting over Trump’s “legacy” in 2024.

What’s worse, should the good guys “win” and Trump be somehow miraculously convicted in the Senate, I believe Trump won’t physically leave the Oval Office without the “assistance” of Federal Marshals. In that case, it would be the most devastating domestic event in American history since 9/11.

I guess what I’m saying is I have no idea what the endgame to all of this is and there are a lot of real nasty ones you can think up. It could be that all things considered our best bet is some sort of extreme version of Iran-contra whereby we all know Trump should be impeached and convicted and somehow that is enough to maybe, just maybe allow a progressive liberal to be elected in 2024. (If we still have elections at that point.)

But if you literally use that as political history roadmap, it’s not exactly all that encouraging — Bush won in 1988 and Clinton only won because of the dead hand of history. Given that the youngest of the Baby Boomers won’t start to die for another 20 years, there’s a good chance it won’t be Trump who finally pushes until to a “managed democracy” like Russia, but his younger, more competent and indological successor.

Idle Mulling On Why We’re Probably Never Getting Rid Of Trump

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

People who are opposed to Trump often times miss some basic facts about modern American political life, chief among them being that as it stands it is nearly impossible to hurt Trump politically in any traditional sense.

In other words, Trump has a base of about 35% and it’s not going anywhere.

Ever.

Trump is so obsessed with placating the CPAC base that what was once MAGA ideology is now bordering on a theology. The distance between Trump literally being an American Fuhrer for that base is, well, pretty finite at this point.

So, I saying that if you sketch out the future given what we have on hand now, we aren’t going to be fighting over impeachment in 2019, we’re going to be fighting over Trump’s “legacy” in 2024.

There’s a pretty good chance that in the end, the whole thing is value free. It’ll be as if Trump never existed. He, of course, is likely to damage basic political discourse in America for the rest of my life, but should a progressive liberal win the presidency in 2024, the now-MAGA “deep state” will do everything in its power to destroy him or her while at the same time former MAGA Republicans will act like everything they did in defense of Trump is “old news and they were just trying to get elected.”

As long as the economy continues the way it is, Trump is a king, an emperor, and elected dictator. For about 35% of the electorate, Trump could literally declare himself God King of the United States and all people like me would get from MAGA is cry-laugh emojis.

The only possible existential threat the Trump Administration faces at this point is something like No Deal Brexit will be sufficient shock to the global economy that Trump will go from a base of 35% to maybe 20%. But even then, Trump’s not going anywhere.

In fact, I would go so far as to say that all our worst fears about Trump could be proven absolutely right AND the economy could collapse and the only way he leaves office before 2025 is Republicans in Congress begin to believe they would have a better chance keeping the executive if Pence was the incumbent.

That’s it. That’s all I got.

Trump’s combination of zero shame, an absolute craven desire to put self-interest ahead of the needs of the nation and the religious devotion of his base is more than enough to keep him in office even if he strangled someone, anyone, in Times Square, married Ivanka, gave the nuclear codes to anyone interested, whatever, you name it.

Trump. Is. Not. Going. Anywhere.

All I can say is I hope the political fates prove me wrong. I really do. But Trump is such an absolute avatar for the feeling of disenfranchisement for a lot of white America that, well, the only reason why I stay angry is I can’t help myself.

Some Wholly Unsolicited Advice For AOC

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

I hate to break it to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, but she’s hurtling towards a unique position in modern American political history which lies at the confluence of politics, celebrity and, alas, gender politics.

And, as such, I feel like — for no other reason than no one reads this blog — make a few gentle suggestions about what she should do next.

First, I think she needs to accept that her old life is over. She’s no longer simply a House Representative, she’s a cultural figure. She now lives under the rules of a modern celebrity, not that of a lowly freshmen in Congress. The tipping point is rushing towards us where some pretty basic issues about her private life are going to come into focus.

Chief among them being, her romantic status. Apparently she has a long-term boyfriend, which would account for the lack of sizzling bikini pictures being leaked of her. If she had a string of boyfriends in her romantic wake, one of the would have been a big enough dick to release a sexxxy snap or two of her by this point.

But, thankfully, that hasn’t happened yet and maybe never will.

As an aside, it’s amusing that when she wore white for the State of the Union address for political reasons, the white pretty much made it clear she’s a stunning woman. She usually wears dark colors in an effort to hide how drop dead gorgeous she is. The white, however, especially at such a public event, may be looked back upon as one of several tipping points in her career.

And, yet, the issue of how hot she is remains and she’s going to have to simply do some triage on that front rather than ignore it altogether. There’s going to come a point where people are going to want to know her boyfriend’s name, when — and if — they’re getting married and if they plan to have children. (And how many!)

If I were her, I would get way ahead of this issue by getting her PR people to setup a value-free, vacuous profile of her and her boyfriend for, say People Magazine. A huge amount of pressure would be eased once a lot of people on both sides of the political spectrum knew off the top of their head who she was involved with.

As it stands, a lot of horny old Boomer Men are watching FOX News to learn about her because in a very Jungian (Freudian?) way, they are lusting after her because they believe she may be sexually available.

But it’s established she’s dating someone and has been for some time, that will dodge a huge issue for her down the road. Her physical attractiveness is something that is, to date, unprecedented in American politics because she’s of an age where a lot of MAGA Masters of The Universe in NYC could honestly imagine they could play a Mr. Big role in her life, given the opportunity.

As I said, no one reads this blog and I feel reasonably comfortable I can give this advice and no one will listen to me. I mean, they don’t listen to me about anything else, do they?

V-Log: Trump As Political Avatar

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Some thoughts.

V-Log: My Hot Take On The Fate Of The #MuellerReport

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

I don’t believe we’ll ever see the Mueller Report, and if we do, it will be politically moot by that point. In fact, the way things are going, Trump is going to survive and prosper the next 5 or so years and, what’s worse, he is going to lay the groundwork for an even worst Republican president down the road.

Of course, there are some potential curve balls that I simply can’t account for, the chief among them being No Deal Brexit. If that happens and there is a significant shock to the global economy because of it, then there’s at least a chance Trump’s popularity sink down to the 20% of the population who think the world is flat.

But, in a sense, I think Trump will be looked back upon by many in the Republican Party as something of a bizzaro Ronald Reagan in the sense that his “legacy” will be to shift the political center of the country to the Right in a pretty significant manner.

V-Log: My #Thriller #Novel’s ‘High Concept’ & Ranting About ‘Blue Check’ Twitter Liberals

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Some interesting thoughts.

The Vision Thing — A #Startup Codenamed ‘Irredenta’

By Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Gab is this insane cesspool of hate frequented by alt-Right mouthbreathers. But it does fill a niche. And as, such, I suggest that there are a lot — a lot — of Twitter users who, if they were given a viable option would at least try it out.


I’m old enough to remember the TV show America Held Hostage, which would turn into Nightline. I’m saying we’re in a similar crisis and, as such, have a similar opportunity. But there’s more to the story than just that.

A lot of different things are happening right now and I suggest that a new app could address than all in one fell swoop. People want a viable option to Twitter. A growing number of people, given the opportunity, would be interested in an app that would help facilitate massive protests against the Trump Administration to end it once and for all. And, lastly, the online news business is suffering a historic contraction.

So, the app I propose, which goes under the codename Irredenta, would address all those issues. The app would be designed in such a way that you would, essentially, pay a core group of users to break news using it. But, get this, much like the Usenet of yore, you have inline editing of that content so the comments are actually inside full page posts using groups. Or, put another way, that’s what you work towards. That’s what you grow into.

The basic app would be a lot like Crooked Media’s Vote Save The People but with a news service of sorts attached to it. It really isn’t that hard to imagine. You just need just the basic vision and resources to pull it off.  I have the vision, I just don’t have anything else.

So, unless I get some traction on this, I’m probably going to shut up about it soon enough.


Trump’s Loss Of The Mandate of Heaven & A Radical Resistance #Startup Code-Named ‘Irredenta’

By Shelton bumgarner
@bumgarls

Trump’s defeat at the ends of Nancy Pelosi today jiggles things in more ways that one. In a sense, the jig is finally up for Trump. He’s always been one of those bullshit artists who get way, way, farther than they should because they’re so devoted to, and so good at, “owning the moment.”

Given that Trump could very well face a challenge from the Right on immigration — I’m looking at you Rep. Steve King — our perception of Trump has enter a new phase. Trump’s neo-Reagan mystique has been popped, shattered, ended, however you want to couch it. Trump now enters his Jimmy Carter II phase. But it’s doubtful it’s going to last too long, unless, of course, the “resistance” becomes the Radical Resistance.

The Radical Resistance is more focused, more organized and more ideological than the “resistance.” As I keep saying, it seems to me that we could get a core group of people to go all 300 on Trump in defense of the Republic, then we could, on a political level, end this surreal tragic nightmare once and for all.


We design an app, one that I would code name “Irredenta,” that on one level is a Radical Resistance response to Gab, on another a “Twitter Killer,” on another a way of mobilizing and informing the Radical Resistance and on yet another way disrupt the news business online. This is such an obvious solution to a number of problems that is kind of bothers me that nothing will ever be done about it because, well, no one listens to me. Also, I have no money, can’t code and don’t want to learn.

The irredenta app I’m thinking of would be marked as both a Radical Resistance version of Gab and means to organize and inform the Radical Resistance should the opportunity arise when people are willing to, actually, like, take to the streets on a regular basis to get rid of this tyrant. I honestly don’t believe this would happen for no other reason than it takes time to design an app and if we don’t do it now, we won’t be ready when the opportunity arises.

A lot depends on how long Trump lasts. If he survives into 2021 and beyond, then the protest app becomes very much more possible. Though, as I keep saying, MX (AR / VR) is hurtling towards us so there is a very narrow window of opportunity for the Irredenta app. By the end the next recession MX will reset the media equation online and, well, then we’ll be talking about that.

This is one of this times when I come up with something really cool and interesting and because I’m little more than a rando Internet crank relative to, say, the bluecheck liberals of Crooked Media, no one will listen to me or if they do they’ll steal the idea and not give me any credit.

But fuck those guy. This is a cool, timely idea.

I just wish someone would listen to me.

A Call To Arms: Design An App To Disrupt Politics & Prose

By Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

As I keep noting, three things are currently happening at the same time and if you simply had a little vision, you could make a lot of money AND disrupt both politics and communication of news online.

Here are the forces at work — 1) Twitter sucks 2) you need a way to mobilize and inform a Radical Resistance to Trump 3) the online news business is in serious contraction because it’s base on a lie.

So, what you do is, think completely out of the box. There is a very narrow window of opportunity for an app to do as I suggest before the end of the next recession when MX (AR / VR) takes over everything and resets the the entire media equation not seen since about 1996.

Really, it would be so easy. The app would initially be marketed to the millions of people who are growing alienated by the spread of Right wing hate speech on Twitter. Tell them it’s a Twitter Killer for liberals. (Or the liberal-progressive answer to Gab.)

Here’s the outside-the-box angle. You use the basic general concepts of Usenet in such a way that seed the service with actual journalists who get paid to break news via the app. (Yes, this sounds a lot like Reddit in its own way, but if you have any idea of how much more robust this vision is, you wouldn’t say that.)

I have talked at great length about this and it’s very well developed in my head. But I have no money, can’t code and don’t want to learn. But the idea is pretty obvious given the three things I mentioned.

But no one listens to me.

Radical Resistance & The Vision Thing

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

This is just me playing pretend as to what I would do if given any real power when it came to thinking strategically about how to end this surreal political nightmare the nation finds itself in.

First, I would focus on what, exactly, the ideology of the Radical Resistance is. Though the use of the term “radical” is scary to a lot of people, a lot of other people, do, in fact, feel that Trump is radicalizing them on a political level. That’s why I think it’s inevitable that both Trump will use the term on Twitter for marketing purposes and blue check liberals will nervously oppose its use by fed up members of the now rather vague Resistance because they think it will scare off Republican housewives in the exurbs of Philadelphia. But we’re in a crisis and it seems to me if we design an ideology that makes it clear that the use of the term “radical” is more about walking in the tradition of Reconstruction’s Radical Republicans than it is, say, some crazy radical shit from the 60s. That would take some message management, especially given how hysterical Fox News will be once Trump finally gets round to using Radical Resistance instead of Radical Democrats.

I don’t know who would actually formalize the ideology of the Radical Resistance, which, for me, at least can be summed up as, “Do whatever it takes to get 67 Senators to vote for conviction on impeachment charges.” If you establish that as your “mission statement,” then trying to appeal to #NeverTrumpers who are great writers and thinkers — and know how conservative Senators think — makes a lot more sense. Remember, for me, the whole issue is simply assembling a passionate, focused coalition devoted to the specific political act of removing Trump from office Constitutionally as quickly as possible — preferably immediate.

That’s my personal vision for all of this, at least.

Meanwhile, after I got that settled, Iwhat I would do is design an app much like Vote Save The People from Crooked Media. That would be, going forward, the key to bringing down the Trump regime . I say this because right now we’re in this odd fuzzy world where 60% of the population is slowly beginning to cook with rage over Trump’s tyrannical behavior…but The Establishment is playing by “old rules” where you have to, like, at least pretend to get the lobotomized MAGA mouth breathers to the table before you can broach the subject of impeachment in any real way.

But, by definition, Radical Resistance rejects that view and says so what if we come off as hyperpartisan. It’s like Republicans weren’t potting to impeach President Hillary Clinton as soon as they could for “emails” or whatever else they could pull out of their collective asses.

Anyway, you come up with an app that serves the utilitarian purpose of kind of giving people like me a Deluxe MAGA-Free Twitter where we could plot our moves and mobilize en mass as needed. The app could start off basic and branch out as needed feature-wise. And if you should happen to design a Twitter Killer along the way AND save modern journalism, that would be pretty cool.


The issue at hand is the newspaper business is dying. It seems as though the best way to fix the problem is to completely re-imagine what a newspaper is. Newspapers have always been a platform for distributing news, but over the years they have come to have significantly great cultural meaning than that.

I propose we get down to basics and provide a platform for writers, photographers and videographers to contribute quality content to a social media platform and be paid for it. Now, if you did it right, it’d be a win-win scenario because content providers would get paid and you, the startup, would make money from advertising.

I propose you base your startup loosely on Usenet concepts. I’m the first to say something like that already exists — Reddit — but this would take the Reddit model to the next level in various ways. Producers of quality content would be recognized and monetarily rewarded. They would have to be in possession of a Verified Account, but after that things would be pretty simple.

One a Verified Account holder could start a new Group and within that Group start a new thread, which I call a Conversation. All content would be threaded and based on the Post, which would be multimedia and have a WYSIWYG editor built in. Reddit has kind of moved towards this and that would be a danger — that Reddit would co-opt all your features even if you had a lot of cool ones, but anyway, I have no money, can’t code and don’t want to learn, so this is just a daydream.

Shelton Bumgarner

Once you have the app in place, you use it to connect the more motivated members of the Radical Resistance to the average person who might want to use the app for no other reason than it is better designed than Twitter. Population mobilization on the DL, if you will.

Anyway.

But there’s a fatal flaw to this dream — unless something causes us to lurch into a very scary no-end-game-in-sight situation, you could produce the greatest app in history and…meh.

There would have to be a tipping point. And, right now, I don’t see it. We’re just going to muddle along for six more long years.

Feh.

But if you had those two things established already once the opportunity arose, then maybe something might happen. And, yet, like I keep saying, if we don’t get Trump by August 2019, we ain’t gunna get him for a long, long time.