Category: Trumplandia

My Hottake On H.R. McMaster Leaving The White House

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

This is one of those times when either it means something or it doesn’t. Either Trump picks warmonger John Bolton as his National Security Adviser or he doesn’t. So, for the time being we’re in limbo. We’re both going to war with the DPRK and who knows who else, or we’re not.

At this point, there are no easy answers.

My gut tells me John Bolton — sans weird mustache — is going to get the gig. And then all hell will break loose. If Bolton gets the gig, then my prediction that we’re at war with the DPRK by August is on track. If he doesn’t get the gig, then we can all take a huge sigh of relief and go about our business being angry about other stupid shit on the part of the Trump Administration.

My gut tells me it’s going to be Bolton, but my gut has been wrong before. So, we may get to the precipice and then walk away. I only say all of this because if Bolton has Trump’s ear, then a preemptive war with the DPRK seems like a very real possibility. That, at least, is Bolton’s reputation. I could be wrong. Maybe he will surprise us.

But that would make no sense given his history of touting war.

We just don’t know yet. It could go either way. He hasn’t gotten the job yet, so there’s still a chance that sanity will prevail and we won’t have to worry about any of this. But time will tell.

The Coming Korean Nightmare #Resist

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

I’m still of the opinion that we’re on track for a war with the DPRK by August 2018. I believe one of two things will happen if and when Donald Trump meets with North Korean leader Kim Jung Un: either Trump gives the DPRK everything they want unilaterally and we’re all left aghast at how crazy it all is, or the whole thing is a complete disaster and we lurch towards a needless war the likes of which we’ve not seen since World War I.

I have no inside knowledge, so I don’t know which one it will be. That, in itself makes me nervous. It makes far more sense that Trump would storm out of a meeting with Kim as opposed to hug him. Keep an eye on John Bolton. If John Bolton becomes National Security Adviser, then we’re going to war.

We’re going to war because Trump needs a “big reboot” desperately. He needs a 9/11 size event so Stormy Daniels and any number of other scandals fall into the memory hole. And, remember, if Trump starts a war in August, it will likely be wrapped up by Veterans Day and that will make his fucking parade evening bigger and more popular.

I only say any of this because it just makes too much strategic sense. I’m not suggesting a conspiracy, I’m just saying if you’re Donald Trump — and lack of basic human empathy — and you finally feel comfortable with traditional statecraft, it makes a lot of sense to “wag the dog” in a pretty epic manner.

And Trump is going to get away with it. We’re going to wake up in 2025 and see President Tom Cotton being sworn in. There really isn’t much we can do about it, sad to say.

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.

Fail Safe: Trump Will Start A War With The #DPRK By August To Stop The Blue Wave

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

While it seems as though peace has broken out in Korea, I have some serious doubts. I still believe that for cold, hard political reasons, Trump will start a war with the DPRK between now and early August. What may or may not be actually happening between the two Koreans has zero to do with what Trump knows in his gut: if he starts a war with the DPRK all his problems with Mueller will vanish and we’re headed towards an Iran-Contra style wrap up of the issue. In other words: squat happens.

So, hang on to your hats, folks. The Blue Wave won’t happen because of an epic wag the dog operation the likes of which we’ve never seen. A quick, bloody war will happen in Korea and by November, Lee Greenwood will have popped out yet again from his hole and be belting out “God Bless The USA.”

I hope I’m wrong. I really do. It will be a historic tragedy if I’m right.

V-Log: A Preemptive War Between #DPRK & USA Is Inevitable By August 2018

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

This is a really long, but interesting v-log of me walking and talking about why I believe war between the US and the DPRK is all but inevitable by August, 2018. Enjoy!

Why I Think We’re Going To War With The DPRK In 2018

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

All strategic, long-term indicators point to a preemptive war between the United States and the DPRK. I say this because everywhere I look, it seems, I see a new slight turn towards this inevitability. It just makes so much sense on a macro level.

We have, in the guise of Donald Trump, a mercurial, bonkers egomaniac leading the United States with historically low poll numbers going into a crucial mid-terms knowing that if he loses the House and or the Senate he could very well be impeached and convicted. It is simply to logical to think that Trump would see a quick, massively bloody war with the DPRK as his “fail safe.”

One thing we have to remember is, in the lead up to the Iraq War, there was all kinds of frantic diplomatic efforts to avoid war. But the fix was in. President Bush II wanted a war and he got one. So I wouldn’t get too excited if the DPRK frantically has high level talks with South Korea. The key thing to remember is the DPRK has an absolute need for security guarantees. The very thing they will never give up — the ICBM technology combined with their A-bomb technology — is the very things that Trump sees as his “red line.”

So, we’re hurdling towards a fish or cut bait moment.

Either the United States accepts the DPRK as a nuclear power and uses the age-old tactic of deterrence or it doesn’t. And by “doesn’t,” I mean we have a bloody, tragic preventable war in Northeast Asia with God-only-knows what kind of results.

Trump’s logic of war is that if he picks just the right moment to start such a war, that Lee Greenwood will be crooning “God Bless The USA” just about the time that voters are going to the polls in November. What I fear is that in hindsight, this could be a pretty enormous miscalculation. While the DPRK doesn’t want a war, if it feels as though the war is inevitable, things could spin entirely out of control. By that I mean, as the old adage goes, wars, like romance, are easily started by difficult to end.

The DPRK has had over 60 years to prepare for its final gotterdammerung. Besides the wide range of WMD options the DPRK has at its disposal, there are more unconventional options such as sleeper cells that would wreak enormous havoc domestically in the United States. Should a war with the DPRK start and DPRK sleeper cells be activated and thousands of Americans die across the country, that might make the Trump “fail safe” belief seem rather quaint.

As I understand it, there are about 100,000 American civilians in South Korea and countless more in Japan. And there simply is no easy way to bug out that many people without spooking the DPRK so much that they don’t start the war themselves. Thus, it seems as though we’re hurdling towards a situation where a war might start pretty abruptly and countless scores of American civilians will come back to the States in bodybags.

But I can see the appeal of a preemptive war with the DPRK for Donald Trump. He knows 500,000 or more people could die in the opening days of such a war and he simply doesn’t care. He lacks all sense of empathy and sees things in the cold, hard terms of white knuckled politics. He really, really wants Lee Greenwood crooning his hits on TV as people leave their house to vote in November, so once he knows for a fact that the DPRK has crossed his “red line” it is inevitable that a war will happen, it’s just a matter of how and when.

Therefore, I believe that at some point between now and November 2018, we’re going to war with the DPRK for no other reason than the North Koreans are never going to give up the security that being a nuclear power would provide.

Hold on to your hats, folks, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.

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.

Some Additional Thoughts About #Writing A #Screenplay In The Age Of #Trump

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

I continue to cool my heels creatively as I save up for a high-end digital camera and I also continue to work on developing a screenplay about the Trump era. But it’s tough. I really like how collaborative a screenplay is and I see working on a screenplay at all as just the first step towards getting my foot in the door.

But, whatever, this is just a bucketlist kind of thing. I have very low expectations in general. I just want to actually complete a creative project for once.