Category: From The Editor

Coming Soon To A Talking Point Near You: The Pence Pivot

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Ok, maybe it won’t be all that soon, but it does seem inevitable that at the very moment people like me get to gloat that everything we’ve been saying about Trump from the beginning is true, the GOP will pivot to Vice President Mike Pence and say Donald Trump was worth it because Pence will now be president.

Whoa buddy.

Like I said, we got a ways to go before that happens. It could be years, in fact, before the Vichy Republicans finally, finally get a backbone and start to think about getting rid of Trump in any meaningful manner. That doesn’t begin to address any number of twists and turns that could happen between now and then. A wag the dog major regional war in Iran or North Korea. Or any number of other distractions that will draw out and prolong this tragic episode in American history.

But there will be people the moment it is obvious that Trump is doomed — probably whenever The Resistance happens to flip Congress enough to do the deed itself — who won’t blink an eye in going from defending Trump to singing the praises of Pence.

While there are some advantages to Pence like he’s sane and he actually has a traditional conservative ideology that he follows, there are some serious downsides that will probably lead to trouble down the road. He is so extreme in his conservative ideology that nothing good will come of it. The divisions that Trump has stoked and benefited from will still be there under a Pence administration. I mean, it’s not like all the people who have been alienated because of politics are suddenly going to hold hands around a campfire the moment Pence becomes president.

And, remember, should Pence become president, it will be after a long, drawn out and devastating scorched earth political war on the part of Trump and his ilk. I just don’t see Pence being up to the challenge of healing the wounds that Trump has caused.

Apparently, Pence’s favorite president is Andrew Johnson and it would be truly ironic if, by the time Trump finally is impeached and convicted that The Resistance is so riled up that they come after Pence for no other reason than, well, they’re pissed off. This would bring up the bizarre situation — should the Senate be so polarized that they can’t approve his replacement — that we might have effectively a legal, Constitutional Coup whereby the Congress gets rid of Pence for political reasons and Nancy Pelosi becomes president.

This is a huge longshot. It’s very, very unlikely to happen. As is, in real terms, the likelihood that Trump will be impeached and convicted in the first place. But it is, at least possible. Though I side on the possibly that the Vichy Republicans would be more likely to impeach and convict Trump between election day and the new Congress being sworn in late 2018 just so they would have the opportunity to seat the new veep.

Though there is the huge, huge longshot that maybe, just maybe, the Vichy Republicans in late 2018 out of sheer desperation might convince Trump to step down in exchange for Pence naming Ivanka Trump as Veep. That would be really bad, but if things got desperate there’s a small chance it might happen.

But the whole point is — there isn’t likely to be any healing over Trumplandia because there will never be a point when Trump supporters admit that this whole experiment was an abject, avoidable quirk. This has got to be the worst mistake by the American electorate since Prohibition and there will never be that moment in time when both The Resistance and Trumplandia agree that Trump was a tragic mistake.

What will happen, instead is, The Resistance will be celebrating the end of Trumplandia at the very moment Trumplandia will morph into Pence-istan. Or something. A new, just as divisive concept will rise from the ashes of Trumplandia as all the Bible-thumpers run around like a chicken with its head cut off praising Jesus that a New Age has arrived where all there home school children can finally be forced into gay conversion therapy should they come out.

So we will go through all this rigmarole politically, probably for years and we will never have that moment of bi-partisan clarity when we realize, together, as a nation, that Trump was a fluke, a horrible mistake that we now have to somehow fix the damage that was caused by it.

Instead, we’ll go to our individual corners, lick our wounds and go back at it. It will probably, at least on Twitter, take a few seconds for that to happen. Probably the duration of time between when the Senate finally convicts Trump and when Pence is sworn in.

Let that sink in.

Shelton Bumgarner is the editor and publisher of The Trumplandia Report. He may be reached at migukin (at) gmail.com.

The Struggle Is Real (Redux): How To Address Trump In Art

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

I am struggling to write a novel that addresses, head on, this new era of Trumplandia that we live in. It’s kind of a scifi satire, of sorts, and I just when I think I’ve figured out how I’m going to write is, Trump does something so batshit insane that I realize it’s much more difficult than expect to do anything with all of this.

I guess the reason why I’m having trouble grappling with Trumplandia is it seems ever-changing, ever shifting in is exact nature. There’s no set ideology and so it’s difficult to figure out how to satirize it. it’s difficult to take it to its logical extreme when you don’t know what it is in the first place.

But this brings up the broader issue of how art can and should address Trump. As I have written several times before, it seems as though the art world is so busy raging against Trumplandia that it isn’t actually producing much art that helps us process it.

What’s worse, when art does do things to help us process this weird, tragic, bizarre era we are in — like, for instance Shakespeare In The Park — the Right loses its shit. The Right is so absolutely hell bent on establishing an autocracy in the United States, they are so humorless and mean spirited, that nothing less than absolute devotion to the Dear Leader, Donald J. Trump, in all aspects of society can be tolerated.

It’s all very sad.

It’s also kind of unnerving. Art is something that despots of all stripes want to control or destroy and the fact that Donald Trump now that he’s in power can’t handle it is disturbing to say the least. That quality is another aspect of all of this that makes it so difficult to get a grasp on.

As I understand it, before Trump went nuts later in life, he was something of a patron of the arts in the New York City area. Weird. Just too weird. Don’t understand what happened. Something happened to Trump over the last 20 years that is inexplicable. He turned from a self-aware celebrity to a ranting, conspiracy theory loving unhinged madman.

Really, I guess I’m trying to do my part with my novel. I’m trying to channel what artistic ability I may have into something productive art-wise. As I have mentioned before, the big dogs seem rather quiet about Trumplandia. Though I am heartened by the notion that there are here and there a few signs that Hollywood and Broadway are beginning to do the art that we need right now.

I still think Hollywood should do something with The Mule part of The Foundation Saga. That is really weirdly timely in this era of Trumplandia. And, as I have mentioned before elsewhere, there are any number of different other works of art that could be used to address Trump. It’s just a matter of someone doing it.

It will be interesting to see when the protest songs will begin to pop up. Though there have been a few “woke” pop songs produced since Trump came to office, none of the has gone full protest. I think it’s going to be one of those things that we may have to wait until Trump — God forbid — wins re-election and everyone is weary of Trumplandia before we’ll get any real protest art.

Anyway, like I said, I’m doing my part. It’s a struggle, but I’m at least trying. In some ways, it’s a lot of fun working on a novel that deals so directly with the zany nature of Trumplandia. We’ll see what happens, I guess.

The Continued Absence Of A Spy Magazine-Like Anti-Axios Is Curious

By Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

It is very curious that we’re this far into the Trumplandia era and someone, somewhere with the means, motive and opportunity hasn’t founded a Gawker or Spy Magazine for this new age. I just don’t get it. It’s really weird.

The Atlantic, strangely enough, is doing a really good job providing people like me with the thought provoking content that I’m looking for during this Cold Civil War. And Crooked Media, too, with its podcasts is doing a good job giving me content that enrages me, if nothing else. It enrages me because I feel like they’re telling us how Trumplandia is successfully destroying America and there doesn’t seem to be much we can do about at this point. New York Magazine’s site also does a good job, but it’s a little bit bland liberalism for me. And The New Yorker and Vanity Fair continue to do yeomanly work.

But these are general sites, general news organization. They’re not devoted to specifically tearing Trumplandia to shreds. That’s what I want as a reader. That’s what I’m interested in right now. The closest thing I have at this point is Twitter, but that’s just because of who I follow.

Meanwhile, Axios is everything a Gawker or Spy Magazine would be against. It’s access journalism that sucks up to Trumplandia in the effort to get a steady flow of scoops. But there’s no opposite. There’s currently no snarky, rough-on-the-edges journalism site that’s popular enough to get the media world buzzing. Vox is meh.

I want a site like Gawker in 2003 or 2004 that you woke up excited to read. I want a site that really tears into Trumplandia in a way that makes people like me cheer. I have suggested that Playboy might be the news organization to do what I want, but I’ve heard crickets. I mean, I’m a nobody. No one listens to me.

Maybe it’s because in the last 10 years or so, the online media world has changed to such an extent that it’s just, in real terms, impossible to start a blog like Gawker. Maybe that’s what is obvious and yet I can’t accept it for some reason. It could be that moment in time has faded and will never return.

Oh well.

Still think Playboy should do it, though. The have the most to gain from doing as I suggest. It would really give them a purpose that the currently lack. They have the name and the resources, they could do something really cool if they came out swinging against Trumplandia on a daily basis.

If such an organization ever did get founded, I would probably bug the crap out of them to write for them in some capacity. They would get a huge amount of buzz and I think the advertisers would come with the associated traffic. It’s just a matter of someone with some vision and resources to actually make what I suggest a reality.

Cold Civil War: If Trump Fires Mueller…Holy Shit!

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

I am just a lowly hayseed rube in a flyover state and even I would be aghast if Trump somehow managed to rationalize the firing of Independent Council Robert Mueller. That would truly be a shot across the bow of, well, pretty much everything.

But apparently — a least according to my Twitter feed — there is growing movement in conservative media for Trump to do just that. The only way to fix such an horrible act would be for Congress to pass a new Special Prosecutor law and given that the GOP controls Congress, that is highly unlikely to happen anytime soon.

Yet this could very well happen and it would be yet another battle in the on going, slow moving Cold Civil War that the United States is engaged in. It would delay justice, of course, but I’d like to think that eventually, when it still matters, justice will be served.

I guess the game plan of the Right is to push the issue so far into the future that Trump wins re-election and it all gets sorted out just about the time he leaves office and so it’s moot and the damage will be done. Trump is nominating insanely young and conservative Federal judges at an alarming rate, so they just want to be sure to hold on to power for at east years, if not four, six or eight.

We can’t give up hope. But it’s tough. It’s tough not to get tired of it all and feel sad. But we’ve got to keep going. We’ve got to keep fighting the good fight. We have to. We just have to.

Shakespeare In The Park & Art In The Trump Era

By Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

I have addressed this before, but the fact that people are getting all bent out of shape over a modernized version of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar makes me reflect on it yet again. To me, art is supposed to be not only provocative but a reflection of its times.

So, it seems in the specific instance of Shakespeare in The Park, we should judge the play on its artistic merits more than how inflammatory it is because of how it portrays Caesar. It is also quite ironic that while the Right accused people like me of “snowflakes” who need “safespaces” so we’re not “triggered,” they, in fact, are the ones who seem so easily upset when it comes to thought provoking art.

But that is becoming a cliche, given how often people like me are forced to make mention of it. So, for me, it’s more an issue of the play is supposed to not be all that good as opposed to how horrible it is that Caesar is portrayed as a Trump like character.

Anyway, what this means to me in the long run is in the culture wars, in this slow moving political Cold Civil War that we’re experiencing, the greater entertainment business has a responsibility to produce quality, through provoking art that helps us process this event.

As I keep saying, I continue to suggest that someone, somewhere use “The Mule” portion of The Foundation Saga to explain Trumplandia. But given that not only do I not have the rights to is, but I’m not a good enough writer to do it, anyway, that is just going to have to stay something of a daydream.

I continue to be puzzled by how quiet Hollywood is on the subject of Trump. It takes time for scripted material to get developed and produced, so maybe that’s the delay, not any kind of “shock and awe.” It will be interesting to see if a year from now there are lots of TV show and movies like the Shakespeare in The Park production or not.

Only time will tell, I suppose.

How Will This Cold Civil War End? Some Scenarios

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

It is pretty obvious that, as someone on Twitter recently said, we’re in a “Cold Civil War.” So, without further ado, here are some back-of-the-envelope suggestions as to how this clusterfuck will work itself out.

1. Dystopia: The Bad Guys Win
In this scenario, there is no impeachment, no nothing. All the lying works and the United States settles into a Russia like “managed democracy.” The Resistance kind of peters out simply from outrage burnout if nothing else. The States will become not-so-quasi-autocracy and will be so for the foreseeable future. This will all come about when we prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that there was collusion between Trump’s Campaign and the Russians and the Vichy Republicans just shrug and because of gerrymandering and dark money nothing changes. Nothing changes at all.

2. Things snap back into place
Now, when I say this, I mean it in the context of general trends that have been ebbing and flowing in American history for decades. So, while it’s possible that things will “snap back into place,” it’s not like our gradual march towards a quasi-autocracy in all but name isn’t going to continue. That’s just a problem with late-era empires like ours. But, if we’re lucky, Trump might be a one term president and the next president will pick up the pieces and we’ll just look back at this four year period as a very strange aberration in our history.

3. Progressive Revolution
One intriguing possibility in all of this is the possibility that The Resistance will decisively defeat Trumplandia and the pendulum will swing to the center-Left in a big way. So big, in fact, that a lot progressive goals will be achieved during the heady days after the defeat. Constitutional amendments will be passed, reforms will be enacted. It will be looked back upon as a Second Reconstruction.

4. Hot Civil War
It is very possible that the only way that there will be a end to the Cold Civil War between Trumplandia and The Resistance will an actual, hot Civil War where people die and get hurt. I have my doubts about this possibility, but it’s very real. I don’t know how it would work out. It’s a struggle to imagine how an actual Civil War would play out in modern America.

5. Stalemate / Trumplandia burnout
It could be that this will be a chronic problem for the next eight years. That the lying will work, but only so much. The problems with the system will be just enough to get Trump re-elected, but not enough to allow him to do serious, long-term damage to the Republic. He’ll leave office, a Democrat will come in and everything will gradually just continue as it has been, only with the continuing sector of Trumplandia in the background.

My bet is on a less powerful version of the progressive Second Reconstruction. It would all be on political terms, so it wouldn’t be as effective as the Reconstruction after the Civil War, but I have hope that the base, The Resistance will grow so angry over the next few years that the Blue Wave we all hope will happen, will happen. That’s my hope at least. Maybe.

Cold Civil War:The Demise Of Blogging, & The Rise Of Trump In The Twitter Era

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

That a racist, bigoted, misogynist demagogue such as Donald Trump would become president in the wake of traditional blogging’s demise is an interesting and telling occurence. It raises some powerful questions for no other reason than we’re now in something of a Cold Civil War as America’s civil society struggles to understand what the fuck is going on.

For instance, when the president tweets, what is it? Is it “just social media” or is it an official statement from the President of the United States that should be treated as such. I lean hard on the latter. If the president writes it and it’s meant to be seen in public, then it’s an official statement.

But what’s interesting is Trump and his vile ideology prospers in a very narrow subset of social media. Twitter is kind of an interactive discussion between people’s bumper stickers. What’s even more interesting is you can, if you wish, block someone’s messages to you on Twitter.

The result of this is powerful. We come to expect that if we don’t like what someone is communicating to us, that we can eliminate that communication for good. That leads to a warping of the traditional communication cycle because people suddenly feel entitled to “safe spaces” because they’re afraid they’re going to get “triggered.” If they didn’t have the option of eliminating communication they didn’t like, maybe they would develop tougher skin and we wouldn’t be in half of the trouble we’re in currently.

Meanwhile, Twitter’s face pace and pithy style of communication has led to a Darwinian struggle of ideas. Instead of a marketplace of ideas, we have a jungle. Now only the strongest, more virulent strains of memes manage to grow in the Twitter jungle. There is a reason why we say a meme has gone “viral.”

So what does all of this mean in the context of Trump’s rise and the demise of blogging. Well, I am suggesting that if we still were talking about the once-powerful “blogsophere” that Donald Trump would not be president right now. Way back only a few years ago, before the rise of Twitter, you had the option of long, well thought out blogs that forced not only the reader but the writer to engage in something more than a bumper sticker’s wroth of communication. Instead of 140 characters, you had to wade through 500 or more words to fully process what was going on.

Is there any solution to all of this? Well, in my opinion, yes. I feel as though if Silicon Valley stopped being so obsessed with AR and VR long enough to revisit the issue of social media, maybe we might be able to dig ourselves out of this Cold Civil War. Silicon Valley made this problem, I feel it’s at least partially their responsibility to solve it.

I have gone into great depth on my Instagram account about how I, personally, would fix this problem but because I have no money, can’t code and don’t won’t to learn, I’m really just shouting out into the void. But let me briefly recap my concept. It’s very timely now, to say the least.

It seems to me that if you gave Verified Account holders a sense of stakeholdership in platform, then maybe they would generate better content and it would be less likely that celebrity trolls like Donald Trump would rise to prominence. So, I would give them the ability to create “Groups” in a service. The “Groups” would be given names devoted to any subject that a Verified account holder might feel their followers might find interesting. These “Groups” would be sub-divided into “Discussions.” These “Discussions” would be thread discussions made up of full pages posts about the topic of the “Group.” So, in a sense, you would kind of update the Usenet concept of 20 years ago. There are any number of concepts from that era that we’ve lost weirdly enough over the last few decades.

All of this would be even cooler if you had a newspaper chain like, say, Tronc, fund such a startup in the first place in an effort to self-disrupt the newspaper business. It’s a really intriguing concept to say the least.

The point of all of this would be that not only would it encourage better content, but given that the medium is the message, maybe if you had a full webpage to discuss a subject in the context of a threaded discussion, maybe it would be less likely that stupid, hateful, and loaded concepts like “Make America Great Again” would go viral and infect the body politic.

But, of course, none of this would happen in a vacuum. You’d have to design such a service from the ground up as something of a “Twitter Killer.” And it’s possible that Twitter isn’t going anywhere and all of this is pointless. Yet it is, at least, interesting to talk about.

I guess what I hope is if we somehow killed Twitter, provided a better, similar product that forced us to write in more than 140 characters, then then next adept politician who was adept at using social media might be a little less crazy. Of course, maybe I’m missing the bigger picture. It could be that we’re just going to have to wait until VR and AR get to the proper penetration in society before we have another shot at fixing the problems caused by existing social media. Or maybe social media video like Facebook Live or Periscope might be what we’re all talking about in four years during the next election cycle.

If we can’t kill Twitter, then it seems as though Twitter as a company has a responsibility to better handle its abuse by Russian-paid trolls and bots in four years. The Russians learned a valuable lesson in 2016, and they’re only going to come back worse and more determined in four years.

I just hope there’s something left in four years. There are no assurances that the Good Guys will win the Cold Civil War and it may still be raging yet in four or six or eight years.

Shelton Bumgarner is the Editor and Publisher of The Trumplandia Report. He can be reached at migukin (at) gmail.com. He is always looking for people to write for him, though he can’t, at this point, pay.

The New Normal Of Trumplandia: A Constitutional Amendment Is Needed

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

It seems pretty obvious that we need to stop raging against our loony, doofus of a president and settle for a long fight. This is not a sprint but rather a marathon and it should be treated as such. Donald Trump isn’t going anywhere and we need to realize he is going to do real damage to the country in the four to eight years he will be president.

Having said all that, how do we prevent something like Trump from happening again? It seems as we need an expansive, well thought out Constitutional Amendment directed at specifically fixing what we have learned about the problems in our presidential election system.

This proposed Constitutional Amendment would:

1. Overturn Citizens United
Only by managing the “dark money” associated with corporations being people can we begin to expect to have better candidates.

2. Tinker with the Electoral College
It is pretty much impossible to get rid of the Electoral College altogether because both parties have a vested interest in it continuing. But what if you said something like, if there was a problem with the voting on Election Day, that there was a mechanism to have a new election a few weeks later. That would mitigate, if not fix some of the issues we’ve had in recent years.

3. Lightly manage the First Amendment during the last days of an election
It wouldn’t take much, but maybe you could say access by people outside the American media would be lightly managed. Something to make it more difficult for Russians — or whomever — to screw with our otherwise free and fair elections.

It’s highly unlikely any of this would happen as I’ve suggested in previous posts, but it makes me feel better to vent about it.

Trumplandia As The Singularity’s Political ‘Event Horizon’

By Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

It seems very possible that the source of all the fear and “social anxiety” that has allowed an unstable racist, misogynist, bigot demagogue to rise to power in the United States might be laid at the feet of some sort of slow-moving technological singularity.

The reason why I suggest this is there must be some sort of reason for people being so afraid of the changes taking place in society. Those changes are happening so fast, in part, because of technology. So, maybe things are going to hell in a hand basket so quickly because, well, things are moving too fast for normal civil society to process it.

One could make the case that both Communism and Nazism came about by the fast pace of change that took place in the early 20ths Century. A lot happened technologically in the 1910-1940 period of time and since, say, about 1990 things have really begun to speed up again.

I have given it some thought, and the modern era really began with wide-spread adoption of the smartphone. And, really that’s the thing that allowed modern social media to take off. And this, of course, doesn’t even address the secondary effects of this slow moving technological Singularity that I suggest is taking place. I mean, self-driving semi-trucks haven’t hit the road yet, but we all know they’re coming.

Additionally, things like 3-D printing and nanotechnology will bring even more political change in the coming years. It isn’t too difficult for someone to wrap these technological changes up in an ideology and use them as a blunt force against the traditional post-war neo-liberal capitalist system.

The only thing that has saved us from that potentially destructive thing happening right now is Donald Trump and by extension Trumplandia doesn’t have an ideology.It’s just a rage against all change and it would make sense that the change it’s raging against is, in fact of a Singularity-like change.

So not only are people raging against the fast pace of social change caused by us approaching the Singularity, their rage, in a sense, is being channeled by the very technology that’s causing the trouble in the first place. Social media is not only causing great social change, it is also causing a Darwinian battle in the market place of ideas whereby only the strongest, most extreme ideas thrive.

Thus, the tribal politics that has infected American civil society could best be described as tech-tribal politics. In a way, one could say that while we’ve not reached the Singularity by any means, we have reached its Event Horizon. We’re now finally eternally locked in its gravitational field. Or put another way, we might, in a 100 years, look back and say the election of Donald Trump was the moment when the soon-to-come Singularity started to warp civil society in a demonstrative manner.

To go back to the issue of how this might be used in an ideological manner, it would make a lot of sense if today’s Trumplandia turned into something even more destructive, even more corrosive and even more dangerous to the world order. The barbaric populism and nationalism of Trumplandia might eventually evolve as we grow ever-closer to the Singularity into something more akin to technologically Maoism or Trotskyism. That these long-dead and horrible ideologies might pop back up is shocking to thin about, of course, but I doubt any of us have really given the political power of the Singularity a lot of thought.

We’re so busy daydreaming out how we’re going to upload our minds into computers and live forever, that we totally miss the idea that a demagogue like Donald Trump might lead a nation like the United States down a dark and scary path once the Even Horizon of the Singularity has been reached. You can tall about a Universal Basic Income all you like, but given the tribal politics of the United States, it’s highly unlikely to ever happen, even once automation and robotics take all the jobs.

That is, of course, when we all look at each other and ask, “Now what?”

Answer that question will be the biggest problem faced by modern liberal democracies in the years and decades to come. There just isn’t an easy answer and into that void someone like Trump — or hell, even Trump himself given how fast things are moving now — will come crashing in and lead us all into a dark, scary time not seen since the 1930s.

Interestingly enough, once this process is over, the very idea of the nation-state may fade and the world will be divided into ethno-spheres. But the process of cracking the existing order to do that might involve huge numbers of people dying.

Hopefully the process will be significantly less destructive than what brought about today’s existing order, but there are no assurances. Trumplandia has sped up our political hurdling towards the technological Singularity and we all have to be prepared for the shake up that is to come.

We live in extraordinary times and Trump isn’t going anywhere. By the time the system finally gets unglued, no sooner than two years from now, some truly momentous things may have happened. Weirdly enough, for a movement build on rejecting the fast pace of change during the Obama years, Trumplandia itself is now set to really shaking things up in a manner that may take decades for us to process.

Shelton Bumgarner is the editor and publisher of The Trumplandia Report. He may be reached at migukin (at) gmail.com.

Vichy Republicans & The Fall Of The American Republic

By Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Someone said on Twitter that it felt like Trumplandia was “cratering” tonight. I would strongly say the opposite. Because of the callow, craven nature of the Vichy Republicans that have essentially given absolute control to Donald J. Trump, things are only going to get worse for the foreseeable future.

Only if something really, really telling happen, like a Jeremy Corbyn win in Great Britain would I sit back, rub my beard and mull the possibility that maybe that things have gone to far. Something like that would give me some hope that maybe the pendulum is swinging back toward some form of sanity. I say that as someone who fears if Corbyn won you’d have to que the Benny Hill music when it comes to British politics. It’d be kind of nuts, if fun, if it happened.

Sorry for the noise in the background on this one.

Regardless, domestically, at least we can only take solace in the fact that it appears as though Trump has lost Twitter. Or, maybe, the Russian hackers that manipulated Twitter aren’t getting paid anymore so they’ve moved on. It used to be that you couldn’t have an actual serious conversation about Trump without whack jobs popping out of the woodwork all but demanding you bow down before Trump as Lord Zood. But that has changed in a weird way. It’s the silence that’s really weird. Trump hasn’t lost Periscope yet, so I guess he has that to be thankful for. Periscope users are still completely nuts.

I continue to be really unhappy with where things are going with Trumplandia. The Vichy Republicans are to blame for this and nothing is going to change as long as they’re in power. So, we’re stuck with Trump for a solid 18 months, at least, and that doesn’t even begin to factor in the errant power grab on his part caused by a major crisis that may happen with, or without, his approval and goading.

The Vichy Republicans are allowing Trump to sow division both at home and abroad. They are completely complicit n all of this and I pretty much think we’re on track for the fall of the American Republic. By that, I mean, like the frog in the slowly boiling pot, we may very well wake up one day soon and some pretty basic right will be gone. I don’t know how exactly it will all happen, but it will happen.

Why am I so sure? Well, the silence on the part of the Vichy Republicans is so loud and the cancer on the American body politic that is Trumplandia seems to be metastasizing so quickly that what other inevitability could there possibly be? Not to sound too much like a Debby Downer, but I really need some hope. I need something to latch on to — like a Corbyn win — to give me some indication that there will be a happy end to this dark period.

I place all our problems at the feet of the Vichy Republicans. If they would put country over party, then the system of Constitutional checks and balances put in place by the Founding Fathers would actually, like, work and stuff. But as it stands, we have a tyrannical, would-be autocratic madman at the center of the nation’s political universe. What’s worse, he keeps alienating everyone but is base through erratic tweets, pulling out of important international agreements, and generally being a monumental dick.

But because the Vichy Republicans are addicted to power above all else, and the Republican base that elected Trump and continues to support him has absolute sway over them politically, there is nothing that might induce them to have anything resembling a backbone. It’s just not going to happen until they’re kicked out of office. I’d like to think that a Blue Wave of The Resistance might do the trick, but may be deluding myself. Given that people are dropping out of Congressional races due to death threats, that pot may be a lot closer to boiling than
I would like to admit.

Really, it seems as though if power is the only thing that the Vichy Republicans care about, then the only time they may get a backbone is about a year from now should it appear as though they are going to lose “bigly” in the 2018 mid-terms. If that doesn’t seem to be the case, they won’t say a peep. But if things take a dramatic turn for the worse between now and, say, July 2018, there might, just might, be an unprecedented series of events where by the Vichy Republicans finally grow a pair and demand some accountability from the Trump Administration.

Even more interesting, as I have mentioned before elsewhere, if the Vichy Republicans lose Congress in November 2018, there might be a battle during the lame duck session of Congress between Republicans and Democrats to see who gets to impeach Trump first. The reason being, the Republicans would want the right to approve now President Mike Pence’s replacement.

And that doesn’t even begin to address my true nightmare scenario for 2019 whereby Trump would simply pardon everyone involved in Tsar-a-Largo — including himself — and hold up on the White House with the nuclear codes and dare anyone to come after him. A shoot out between the Secret Service and FBI on the White House lawn would be, uh, unique from a historical standpoint.

I guess all of this comes back to the point that we shouldn’t assume history goes in a straight line. We could very well be at the end of the road for the American Republic as we have conceived of it for about 240 years now. This could be it. The end. We could be, from now on, a semi-autocratic quasi-religious imperial system with only the assurance of an open presidential seat every eight years being our last foot hold to our republican past.

It pains me to suggest such a thing, but we can’t delude ourselves into thinking the Vichy Republicans will ever grow a backbone. We could be stuck with Trumplandia for four or eight more years and then we really would need someone to make America great again.

All I can say is what I’ve been saying — stay engaged. Don’t rage, engage is the catch phrase I’ve come up with. It’s a pithy explanation for my personal vision for how we dig ourselves out of this hole. There are no easy answers when it comes to Trumplandia.

We just have to have hope that the American spirit is stronger than a despot who would aim to inflict a “managed democracy” on us from above. Don’t take anything for granted, folks. This party has just begun.

Shelton Bumgarner is the editor and publisher of The Trumplandia Report. He may be reached at migukin (at) gmail.com.