Category: Hindsight 2020

A Modest Proposal: Chelsea Handler Should Run For President

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

While I frequently suggest that someone like Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert run for president, given the crisis we’re in and the current political climate, it seems as though center-Left people should go for broke and get Chelsea Handler to run for office.

I say this because any candidate that any candidate that the Democratic Party fields will be attacked in such a manner that whomever the candidate is would needs to be tough as nails. The only person I think of who could give as good as she got is Chelsea Handler. She has a rapier whit and she could eviscerate the dogs of rhetorical war that would be let loose against anyone in her position.

Now, there are some obvious issues: like Donald Trump, she has no governing experience. There is also a sex tape of her released by a vengeful ex-boyfriend to deal with. But given how batshit insane it is that Trump became president, that probably wouldn’t be as big a deal as you may think.

A lot depends on the state of affairs in 2020. If Trump has managed to plow through all the scandals and the Democratic Party is completely prone, it seems that things will be so desperate that people will be willing to give her a chance.

Also, a lot depends on the state of politics in 2020. Will we be tired of celebrities being president, or will we have fallen off the cliff and now that’s what we expect. That’s something I just can’t answer at this point.

Is It Even Possible To Engage Trump Supporters At This Point? #Resist

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Something I struggle with is engaging Trump supporters. I struggle to understand their psychology. I worry that if people like me dismiss Trumpist out of hand, that will lead to some very bad things down the road. Like, actual violence in the United States as the county finally tears itself apart like a sinking Titanic.

It is really easy — intellectually lazy, even — to do just that. To simply wince, wave your hand and assume that because Trump supporters continue to be sycophants for a racist, misogynistic bigot that they aren’t worth talking to.

I have struggled to talk to them since Trump got elected and more often than not, I just got angry. One of the more difficult issues to address when it comes to Trump supporters is their America First isolationism. For a “globalist cuck” like myself, it’s difficult for me to grok someone who completely rejects something that seems pretty self-evident: that the United States having a proactive foreign policy is a force for good across the globe. How do you engage someone who rejects 70 years of conventional wisdom? That particular issue is so difficult for me to process that I simply don’t know where to begin.

I don’t know if I’m not smart enough or what when it comes to this particular issue. How do you address the world view of someone who rejects the basis of Pax Americana? They want America to turn inward in a way not seen since before World War II. I just don’t have a ready argument for people who reject any source of facts I might produce on the matter as “fake news.”

But I think some of it all boils down to the absolute rage and feeling of disenfranchisement that that core group of 37% of the electorate that supports Trump no matter what feels. It now, in hindsight, is obvious that because of technological and economic changes that someone like Trump was inevitable. Someone was going to see an obvious political opportunity and strike. Little did we ever imagine that it would be a celebrity TV gameshow host who would do it. And with the help of the Russians, no less! But it happened.

That Russian interference is something that should give all patriots pause for thought. That American conservatives are so detached from the world I know and love, that they feel so disenfranchised that they would willingly ignore what is tantamount to treason on the part of the Trump campaign simply because they want to turn back the policies of the first African American president is pretty mind boggling. The only thing I can compare it to is Vichy France.

We need a national conversation between the rural Trump supporting world and the urban progressive world. We can’t just give up. If we give up we’re doomed. We’re doomed to a civil war. Any student of history will tall you that in the late 1850s, a similar dynamic was afoot in the American body politic as the industrial North with free labor grew increasingly distant from the slave based South.

I love America and I don’t want a civil war. So, that’s why myself and people like me who consider themselves center-Left have an obligation to try to engage Trumpists. We have to figure out how to engage them without compromising to such an extent that we give up everything we believe in. It’s extremely difficult, however.

The crux of the problem we face is just that. Technology has made is so easy to live in our own little bubble that that we aren’t forced to come up with arguments to use against people who disagree with us the most. Bac 30 years ago, we all had a common reality and could agree on the facts. Now, too often, at least with Trumpists, anything they don’t agree with is “fake news.”

When I’m feeling in a particularly bleak mood, I think a civil war is inevitable. It definitely seems that way right now. But if the right leadership arises maybe, just maybe, I’m wrong. We need leaders willing to unite us, not divide us. But it could be we’re doomed and we’ll look back at this era in our history as the precursor to a civil war or worse.

#Trump, A Reassessment: Mulling The Long Con #Resist

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

For about six months after Trump’s election, I was so angry that I seethed with rage. Now that I have calmed down considerably, I find myself struggling to understand why Trump won and what is continued appeal is for roughly 37% of the American electorate.

We have to understand that Trump is a product of social media. Something about the rise of social media has made people extremely partisan. Some of it has to do, I think, with how easy it is to block or otherwise avoid people who disagree with you. So, both sides simply wallow in an echo chamber of things they agree with, leading to the breakdown of the traditional basic need of democracy to have consensus, compromise and synthesis. Throw in dark money, gerrymandering and Russian meddling through bots and paid trolls and you have us where we are today.

And, yet, we have one significant thing to be thankful for: Trump has no political ideology. He has no strategy. He’s all about the tactical win. He’s all about winning the moment. If Trump had the rock-hard ideology of, say, Pat Buchanan, we would be in serious trouble indeed.

But, as it stands, there is no Trumpism without Trump. Whatever magical mystery power Trump has over a sizable chunk of the electorate is attached to him personally. So, really, the only way to get rid of Trumpism is to completely vanquish Trump personally as a political force. That is quite tricky because the American Republic is on such shaky legs for various reasons that the core problems that allowed the Trump caner to fester will remain for many years to come.

One issue is people like me are too quick to enrage and not engage Trump supporters because, well, we’re at a loss as to where to begin. Where do we begin to engage people who we feel support a racist, misogynist bigoted nativist? I struggle to do that for various reasons. I closest I can come is seeing that the blind rage of people in rural areas about the modern liberal order was so great in 2016 that they were willing to overlook any flaw on Trump’s part because they thought he would, in fact “drain the swamp.”

That’s the thing that I think people like me have the most difficulty understanding: that core group of people who support Trump really do support the authoritarian chaos that he has caused since he came to power. That’s what they wanted. It’s difficult for secular humanists like me understand why “values voters” could possibly support the thrice married Trump. But they do. They do because they know that while he’s using them for his own political needs, he will, in fact give them the reach around that they have longed for so desperately. He gives them a sense of power that they haven’t felt in decades, if ever. The fact that it’s all a gross political ploy doesn’t phase them.

Another thing people like me struggle to understand is that fact that rock hard core group of Trump supporters that aren’t going anywhere really do think a Hillary Clinton administration would have been worse. They actually, to this day, really think that. They may be a lot more quiet than they were election day night, but they still think it.

Which raises an interesting counter-factual. What if Clinton had won? What would the world look like a year after the election? Probably something like this: instead of Trump’s tweets causing chaos from the White House, they would incite the Republican Congress to look for any number of different reasons to impeach Clinton and they probably would have gotten pretty damn close.

But Trump won. So we have to deal with the consequences. One of the crucial unknowns is will things snap back into place once Trump finally leaves the public sphere, or are we doomed. Are we going to suffer a Russian-style autocracy from now on because of the damage that Trump has inflicted on our body politic, or will we go back to some semblance of normalcy once he’s gone?

The answer to this question lies, in great part, to who succeeds Trump. If it’s Mike Pence, probably things will be more likely to snap back into some semblance of being normal. However, if Trump manages to last a full term, or even get re-elected, all bets are off. It is possible, probably probable, that we’ve reached some sort of event horizon whereby the realms of celebrity and politics are so muddle that they are indistinguishable.

It may be that the person who manages to heal the divides caused by Trump — and they are many — won’t be a traditional politician at all, but a liberal celebrity who manages to bridge the gaping wound that Trump has caused in our national psyche. The longer Trump stays president, the more likely it will be, say a Stephen Colbert or Jon Stewart who succeeds him. I like to think that the only person who stands up to the middle school bully is the middle school class clown and it would make a lot of sense if someone like them took up the challenge of bringing down Trumpism. Though of late I’ve begun to think that the only person who could handle the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune any Democrat would suffer at the hands of FOX News’ bullshit would be someone tough as nails like Chelsea Handler.

The most ominous aspect of all of this is it’s possible we’re doomed. It really is possible that the United States is now a failed state and the only thing keeping it together is Trump himself. It’s possible that Trumpists are so completely deluded and brainwashed by their bullshit bubble that once he’s no longer in power things will grow dire indeed. And that doesn’t even begin to address the possibility that someone really dangerous — a charismatic Right-wing nutjob with an ideology — may learn from the mistakes of Trump and inflict the final death blow to the American Republic. That we really may fall of the precipitous into a dystopia.

I would like to think I have some hope that that worse case scenario won’t happen, but I don’t. History doesn’t go in a straight line and there are absolutely no assurances that the good guys will win. All we can hope is that some sort of sanity will return to American political discussion sooner rather than later.

Shelton Bumgarner is a writer and photographer living in Richmond, Va. He can be reached at migukin (at) gmail.com.

Talk To Me Internet: #TrumpRussia #DPRK #GunControl #Podcasting

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Talk to Me Internet
In this one, I go into a kinds of things. I talk about #GunControl, #Trump, #AI, and #TrumpRussia. I also talk about a possible war with #NorthKorea and its consequences. I also talk about potentially #podcasting at some point in the near, near future

Why Chelsea Handler Should Run For Office

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

With the announcement that Chelsea Handler is going to end her Netflix show to “concentrate on activism,” it is timely to raise the notion that she should run for office, maybe even for president. In this post-Trump era, she has all the skills needed to be an effective candidate.

She’s a celebrity, she’s caustic and she has some very well developed opinions. And I think she would give Trump — or one of his successors — a run for his money.

But we’ll see. Nothing fun-interesting every happens, especially if I suggest it.

Stephen Colbert For President

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Now that it’s been established that a complete imbecile, Right wing troll, celebrity can become president, why not a smart funny liberal one? I have suggested several times in the past that Jon Stewart would be the perfect person to run against Donald Trump in 2020, but he seems completely and totally uninterested in public life these days.

So, I find myself looking for someone else.

Oprah is an obvious choice, but I don’t know if she could handle the complete bonkers viciousness of the alt-Right who would probably come after her with Tiki torches should she run. So, looking around, there seems to be one person who could slay the political dragon that is Donald Trump. In real terms, the direct political equivalent of Donald Trump is Keith Olbermann. But Olbermann, while articulate, is a little too on the money as a Trump Leftist equivalent.

Stephen Colbert, meanwhile, would be a perfect political candidate for these bonkers, unprecedented times that we live in. One thing Trump is not is funny. He has zero sense of humor. That’s his weakness. I think someone with a real sense of humor could deal a serious blow to Trump in a head-to-head political fight. There are other funny politicians, like Al Franken, but he seems ambivalent, to say the least about running for president.

Colbert seems, at least to me, to be the perfect candidate for the modern political environment that we live in. He’s funny, smart, and extremely earnest. He has zero political experience beyond one faux political campaign, but the instant he announced for president people in the center-Left would get on board pretty quick. There would be a real movement quality to the whole thing, just as there was with Trump in the first place.

As I said more than once, the thing about Trump is, the only person who can defeat the middle-school bully is the middle school class clown.

The question, of course, is Colbert do it? I have a feeling, no. Not in 2020. But after eight years of Trump in 2024 — and after Colbert has about a decade as a late night host under his belt — maybe the siren call of politics might be too much for him and he might do it. But who knows.

Foresight Is 20/20 – The 2020 Election & Trump: Will Stephen Colbert or Jon Stewart Save Us?

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

I have to agree with Roger Stone that there is a real risk of political violence in the next four to eight years. I suspect what is going to happen is that 2020 will be the most consequential presidential election since 1860 and just as messy. I have a feeling that the two parties are going to split into four for similar reasons. The Trump base of the Republican Party will force the Romney establishment of the Republican Party out of the party altogether. Meanwhile, the Zuckerburg center-left of the Democratic Party will split from the progressive base of that party.

I still think that that someone like Stephen Colbert or Jon Stewart will throw their hat into the ring change everything. But that’s just me daydreaming. The video below goes into great length about what I’m talking about.

Talk To Me Internet: Joe Arpaio, Hope Hicks & #Writing A Short Story & #Lyrics

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

I am feeling creatively restless, so I’m going to try to do some creative things today and tomorrow. But we’ll see. Anything could happen, I guess.

Some Thoughts On Roger Stone & The Possibility of Civil War

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

I consider myself an amateur historian and it definitely seems as though the United States is hurdling towards some sort of armed domestic conflict because of Trump. What’s going on in the United State is much like what — after the fact — was obvious about the late 1850s — America is tearing itself apart.

It will be interesting to see how all this plays out. Things could get pretty hot over the next 10 years

Apocalypse 9/11 Redux: The Moment War Starts In Korea, Everything Changes

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

For those of us who were alive and politically active on that Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001, we remember what was going on when we opened our eyes that morning before the towers were struck. The Bush Administration was coasting on fumes as was the economy. It seemed as though we were about to enter a recession and Bush would get blamed for it.

Then everything changed.

We woke up eight years later and realized we had been in a waking dream, a nightmare we couldn’t escape.

Now, about 20 years later, we find ourselves on the cusp of a horrific war with the DPRK (North Korea.) Estimates are that 500,000 people would die the first month of such a war and who know how many could die if the war became protracted. And that’s working on the assumption that WMD aren’t used at some point. The DPRK has made it clear that they don’t even consider chemical and biological weapons WMD in the first place, so if they felt cornered they probably would use both gratuitously not just on South Korea but on Japan as well.

What makes all of this really scary is the United States has an unhinged president looking for an opportunity to fire Bob Muller, who may finally get to Trump’s tax returns. So, given how batshit insane the political calculus of the Trump Administration is, it wouldn’t take a lot to think they wouldn’t blink an eye at a cost of life and property needed to have the cover to fire Mueller and assure not only keeping Congress Republican, but come within shouting distance of winning re-election in 2020.

But, really, who knows.

It could go either way. But Trump’s behavior is sufficiently unhinged that it’s enough worry about. It’s enough to think seriously about a monumental wag the dog situation that would be a tragedy of unprecedented levels.