Category: Cold Civil War

Tipping Point: Dark Forces Are Aligning Against Trump & Using Stormy Daniels

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

I am just the right age to remember what was going on 20 years ago with then President Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. There came a point, a tipping point, when the scandal took on a life of its own and it just blew up far faster than anyone could have possibly have imagined.

I feel as though we’re lurching towards a similar tipping point with Donald Trump and Stormy Daniels. I say this only because this scandal isn’t going away, at least for the time being. I think some of it is how simple this scandal is, how traditional it is — it’s a presidential sex scandal.

As such, the mouth breathers out there who don’t care or understand TrumpRussia, are able to wrap their dumb minds around it in a way they can’t with the rest of the dumpster fire that is the Trump Administration. Something feels different about the Stormy Daniels mess. It seems as though dark forces have aligned to bring down the Trump Administration in a way none of us could have possibly expected.

That’s thing thing about what happened to Bill Clinton. The whole thing really was a witch hunt because a small group of people had a personal hatred of him. Linda Tripp, the Goldberg family and Matt Drudge used Monica Lewinsky to put Bill Clinton in a logic trap, one that nearly cost him his presidency. I’m suggesting that it’s possible, not probably, that a similar situation is afoot. It’s possible that some very powerful people have finally grown fed up with Trump and they believe they’ve figured out how to get rid of him: a traditional sex scandal.

But I have no inside information, it’s just a hunch. So only time will tell. I will suggest, however, that if you combine Stormy Daniels with Bob Mueller’s TrumpRussia investigation the Trump Administration is facing an existential threat in a way none of us could have expected.

Only time will tell, I guess.

#MAGA, The Blue Wave & Trump’s Coming Preemptive War With The DPRK

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

If you wanted to get all reflective about things, one might say that had Hillary Clinton won the Electoral Vote and was president now, things would actually be worse. I say this because Trump would have the best of both worlds — he could bitch an moan on Twitter all day about how bad things were, but wouldn’t have to actually do anything about it. Add to this how he probably would start Trump TV and you can see how things could be worse. And, what’s even worse, the same insane nutjobs who wanted to march on Washington and establish a deathcult in late October 2016, would be growing ever more hysterical.

As it stands, however, what’s going on is this: the Resistance needs time to rebuild its ranks of leadership. So, it’s going to be a while. The earliest anything is going possibly change is November 2018. Even then, between November and January, the lame duck session of Congress probably is going to cram in as many insane Federal judges as it can. But given that I think Trump is going to short-circuit the Blue Wave by starting a war with the DPRK between now and August, it could be much, much longer before anything changes. In fact, my big fear is the entire system is so broken that it could be a decade or more before The Resistance finally comes to power and even then everything will have changed so much that things simply won’t be able to snap back into place.

Having said all that, we need to think about that 35% of the electorate that continues to support Trump. It reminds me of the old SNL skit, “How’s He Doing” that had a round table of African Americans giving their views on Obama. I really think SNL needs to do a similar skit with Trump supporters. The issue is, and this is one I continue to struggle with: why is it so difficult for Trump supporters to see they’ve been duped.

This is not to say that they don’t have legitimate grievances, they do. They have a whole host of reasons why they should be upset with the existing order. I get that. But what I don’t get is their continued support for Trump personally.

And, really, the only thing that can give us any hope is that Trump doesn’t have any ideology other than winning the moment and whatever he tweets at any particular time. If he had an ideology he had thought through and was willing to defend, he would be a real danger to the Republic.

But, fortunately, he doesn’t have that. But what he does have as his fail safe is the ability to start a preemptive war with the DPRK. I still think that’s in his pocket. If things get too bad, he just arbitrarily starts a war with North Korea, kills about a million people needlessly and that’s that. We wake up in 2025 with President Tom Cotton getting sworn in.

Sadly, there’s no much we can do about it. I have proposed that the war with the DPRK will start between now and August 2018 and I have not seen anything to make me think otherwise. It has nothing to do with what is going on in Korea and everything to do with the continuing domestic crisis that is Donald J. Trump. A massive war with the DPRK will give Trump spectacular approval rating for a just long enough to prevent the Blue Wave from happening. That core 35% of the electorate who continue to support Trump no matter what will be the basis of a scary realignment of the American body politic as Trump becomes a war president.

And there’s not much we can do about it.

V-Log: Some Brief Words On How To Solve The NRA Problem

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Here you go. Enjoy.

The Anti-Masonic Party & How To Defeat The NRA

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Dire times call for drastic measures and I think maybe we can learn a lesson from the origins of the Anti-Masonic Party in New England. Essentially, as I understand it, the people of New England got fed up with the shenanigans of the Masons in New England and vowed not to vote for anyone who was a member.

So, one could argue that America is ripe for a nation-wide political boycott of the NRA. In essence, if the populace simply collectively decided to not vote for anyone who took NRA money, maybe the pols in Washington would sit up and take notice.

Now, of course, this would not come easy. It would take just the right political moment. It does seem, however, that we’re careening towards just that type of moment. You can’t stymie the political will for as long and as absolutely as the NRA has without there being a folk backlash at some point. People on a individual level might eventually get fed up so much that they actually evoke real political change.

I don’t exactly have the highest hopes that this will happen. But you can always hope.

Sean Hannity’s Twitter, ‘Form Submission 1649’ & The Trump Base As Cult #Resist

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.

V-log: Trump Supporters Are An American Embarrassment

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

I could go on at great length about how angry Trump supporters make me, but here’s a video that does just that. Trump is tearing this great nation of ours apart and there doesn’t seem to be anything we can do about it. It’s all very sad. Very tragic.

Far Worse Than Watergate, My Ass: How I Quit Worrying & Learned To Love Fuckwits

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

For otherwise grown adults, the Republican Party sure does collectively act like a bunch of little kids. They know the only way to get anyone’s attention is to cry and say this or that dumb conspiracy theory is “far worse than Watergate.” Republicans know they will catch liberals attention by invoking Watergate, even if it, in fact, has nothing to do with what’s going on.

I had a long, painful and weirdly insightful discussion with a Trump supporter recently that at first left me seething and now leavings me somewhat resigned. Talking to him about Trump was a textbook case of gaslighting and rhetorical shadowboxing. Even when I landed punches, he wouldn’t admit it. It was extremely frustrating.

But I did learn something about how to debate a Trump cult member. You have to give them specifics. You have to be prepared. If you’re going to engage, not enrage a Trump cultist, you need to be prepared. This is a really big mistake I’ve made in the past. Just because it’s self-evident to you that Trump and his ilk are bigoted, racist misogynists, doesn’t mean you’re not going to have to prove it to a Trump cult member.

The sooner we admit to ourselves that Trump supporters are in a deluded cult, the sooner we will better understand how to address them. They don’t see the fetid, rancid ideological dumpster fire of MAGA as that at all. All they care about is that the economy is “humming” and that ISIS has been largely defeated. It’s really weird that otherwise conservative people would embrace moral relativism in their efforts to support the Dear Leader, while a liberal like me has to stand on principle to get anything done.

Anyway, I guess the point is if you’re going talk to a Trump supporter, you can’t just yell at them the way you want to. You’re going to have to have cold hard facts — lots of them — at your disposal that you can throw at them. They will shadowbox, they will rhetorically bob and weave, but find your hill and die on it. Don’t get distracted by what a target rich environment MAGA is. Find a specific thing that really pisses you off about Trump, learn as much as you can about it and attack, attack, attack.

But we’re all doomed. I need some hope.

Mulling The Political Psychology Of A Trump Supporter

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

I had a long a painful discussion with a Trump supporter that just left me furious. It’s like they were living in a different universe than me. Their argument boiled down “Lulz, nothing matters” with a heavy dose of “the economy is doing well” and “Trump defeated ISIS” along with a side dish of “he’s securing the borders.”

What made me so angry was I would present the person with number of insane things Trump had done — things that would destroy any other politician — and they either lightly admitted it was outrageous or rationalized it out of existence.

The whole thing left me white hot angry that otherwise sane people could believe such stupid shit. It makes me so angry. I want to make Trump supporters furious. I want them to hate me. But weirdly enough they’re so numb to any disagreement that it’s like talking to someone in a well-medicated cult.

That’s really the only thing I can compare it to — a cult. Trump supporters are in a cult and they’re holding my country hostage. All I can do in response is vote. Maybe engage in some political activity to get help my little corner of the world.

But as of right now, things are looking kind of grim.

‘Shithole’ — The ‘City On A Hill’ No More: Reagan As A #NeverTrumper

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

I am not that old, but I am old enough to remember with the Republican Party was the party not only of Lincoln, but of Ronald Reagan. I came of political adulthood in the mid-80s, the height of Ronald Reagan as a near demi-god in Republican circles. I’m no conservative Republican, but I do remember some of the basic tenants of Reagan Republicanism.

Reagan was pro-democracy around the world, no matter what the costs. He saw the Soviet Union (Russia) as our chief geo-political foe and he had, first and foremost, principles he was willing to stand and die for in an ideological, rhetorical way. Or put another way, Reagan had an actual ideology, a vision, of America as “a city on the hill” that was a beacon to people around the world no matter what type of “shithole” they came from.

Even the most ardent Trump supporter, I suspect, would have difficulty telling me what Trump’s ideology is other than “make America great again” and building that fucking wall. The idea of American exceptionalism, that we are a city on the hill that not only defends freedom around the world but is a place open to people from any “shithole” around the world seems to have been cast aside like so much unwanted trash by Trump people.

It all kind of boggles my mind. The whole thing is bizarre. If you have any the tiniest bit of historical perspective on things, Trump’s rise is such an aberration relative to the previous path of the modern Republican Party that it’s enough to leave you a bit stunned. Republicans as recently as 20 years ago, were a party that had, like, principals and stuff. The were the comfy home of “values” voters who supported a witch hunt against Bill Clinton because, well, they hated his guts on a personal level because they felt “character” counted enough to warrant looking for something, anything to impeach him for. They got their wish, of course, be he managed to escape conviction.

Now, I don’t know what the fuck is going on. Everything is turned upside down. Things are surreal. Republicans are soft on Russia. They scoff at the notion that America not only would defend freedom but that our doors would be open to outsiders who are the lifeblood of our continued prosperity. It’s all very surreal for someone like me who actually has enough personal memory to remember the Cold War.

The question, of course, is what the hell happened?

The only answer I can think of is, maybe, Trump is an example of the “Great Man” theory of history at work. I struggle to imagine this clusterfuck happening without someone like Trump being the unique vessel of the resentment of the common man against the evil liberal elites. But Trump is so unhinged, so erratic and so devoid of any type of specific ideology that even though I fear he will be a two-term president, there is a chance he may be the historical equivalent of a Chinese food. Soon enough, we’ll struggle to remember exactly what all the fuss was about.

That’s not to say that, in a way, Trump is already America’s political-historical herpes. All those insane, young judges he’s appointing aren’t going anywhere. They are going to do real harm to the American body politic for decades to come and there’s not a damn thing we can do about it. I am still unconvinced that there will be a “Blue Wave” in 2018. I think Trump will attack the DPRK or do something equally nefarious and not only survive, but prosper for a full eight years.

The real question, of course, is what happens after Trump. Do things snap back into place, or are we fucked for good? Because of the coming of the Singularity and other long-term issues, I am more inclined to think we’re fucked. The question, of course, is, exactly how fucked are we?

The Possible Iran-Contra Endgame For #TrumpRussia

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

For all the liberal fever dreams about how Trump will eventually be impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate, we have to accept that by the time Robert Mueller finally presents his conclusions to the Congress, things could be so completely muddled that it will be a moot point.

Add to that the cold, hard fact that Trump’s poll numbers are creeping up and Trump could very well pull an epic wag the dog by starting a preemptive war against the DPRK and you have a recipe for a Iran-Contra type endgame for #TrumpRussia.

It’s a classic instance of history maybe not repeating, but definitely rhyming. Iran-Contra was a huge Constitutional clusterfuck for several different reasons and the president at the time, Ronald Reagan managed to escape relatively unscathed. So, it’s very possible that if the economy continues to do well along with a strategic and timely war with the DPRK (and maybe some painful, uncharacteristic groveling) Trump could not only escape serious political harm, he could manage to prosper enough to have a second term.

The only reason why I suggest Trump might do the required public self-flagellation needed for the Iran-Contra endgame to come to be is what he did as part of the Access Hollywood tape scandal. He said he was sorry and he was able to go about his business. And, if Trump does, in fact, find himself at risk of being impeached, I have a feeling he’ll bend his knee to the public to save his job.

Though, I have to note, presidential second terms are not known for being all that great. The usually are pretty shitty compared to energetic first term. Usually, by the middle of the second term, Americans begin to grow unhappy with an president and weird things begin to happen. Trump, himself, is a manifestation of this. So, should Trump slouch towards a second term, some seriously fucked up shit might happen.

My biggest fear is that America’s already broken democracy is finally shatter altogether and there’s no going back. We will finally enter an era of fully “managed democracy” like they have in Russia. I used to think that could never happen, that America has too much spunk. But I’m afraid I’m beginning to lose hope. I’m beginning to fear that we’re fucked. I’m beginning to fear that there will never be a free and fair election in the United States in my lifetime. Or, if a Democrat wins it will be because of a really bizarre fluke.

It’s all very unfortunate, very sad and tragic. The major problem is we’re in an extended Civil Cold War with no end in sight. In fact, I might suggest that only a real civil war might end this turmoil. But the greater tragedy may be that when push come to shove there won’t be a war at all. The states will split peacefully for no other reason that they have, at last, nothing in common.