Tag: leadership

Trump’s Twitter Freak Out Over The London Attack Is Not Productive

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

So our ever-so-esteemed 45th president, Donald J. Trump did not send his “thoughts and prayers” to the victims of the recent terrorists attack in London. No, instead of doing that he freaked the fuck out. It really makes you wonder what he will do when a real tragedy strikes American shores.

As an American, I find this embarrassing. We have a president who obviously is completely unhinged and is bringing down the dignity of the office every day he continues to serve in his present capacity. And there doesn’t seem to be anything we can do about it. The Republicans are completely callow and Vichy and that is why we are in a surreal and chronic Constitutional crisis.

That is why things are so difficult and aren’t going to get any easier any time soon. The normal levers of power just aren’t working. And not until the mythical “Blue Wave” occurs in 2018 will anything change. And, at this point, it’s very mythical and hypothetical. There’s just no evidence at all that Trump is going anywhere for the next four, if not eight years.

We need effective leadership and that’s just something that Trump can’t provide us right now. He feeds off of fear and division. He feeds off of us fearing “the other” and watching too much FOX News. I just don’t know what we can do to fix this problem anytime soon.

There are some titanic things afoot in the American political psyche that can’t be fixed easily or, even at all I’m afraid. The Baby Boomers are growing older and more conservative every day. Trump and Steve Bannon are surprisingly adept at playing to the base and keeping the opposition divided. These are all basic issues that we’re just going to have to deal with.

As I keep saying — a lot — the only thing we can really do is not rage, but be engaged. If we do our personal part to keep civil society intact while we suffer through the Trumplandia era, then I think maybe things might work out. But it’s tough. It’s tough not to think that someone who simply disagrees with you isn’t trolling you. Maybe they’re not. Maybe they honestly just disagree with you.

So, keep engaging is all I can say at this point. Keep fighting the good fight. That’s all we got.

So, Like, How Would Trump Handle A Major Crisis?

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

To date, most of Donald Trump’s disasters have been self-inflicted. His gross incompetency is such that it’s pretty obvious he has no clue what he’s doing and it that’s unlikely to change anytime soon. That, of course, raises the question: what happens if there’s a major external crisis that he had nothing to do with?

Given that the major Western leaders now think Trump is a complete nincompoop, that is a very real question with very real consquences. If, say, Russia was to attack Ukraine in a major way or the DPRK finally attack South Korea, I just don’t see how Trump at this point could lead the free world. And those are just the man-made crisis I can think of off the top of my head. God only knows if there was a Hurricane Katrina level level event or even “the Big One” in L.A.

We are in unprecedented, uncharted territory. There just is no easy answer to any of this. The rank inability of Trump to lead himself out of a tweet, much less a major global crisis is something we all may have to deal with at some point. Trump can only delude the base for so long.

There is going to come a point when the cold hard facts of the modern world will come crashing down on the Trump Administration. The question, of course, is what do we do? Probably what will happen is, as with 9/11 leadership will come from unexpected places.

It could be a mayor, it could be a Senator, it could be a governor. You just don’t know. Or, if you really wanted to rejiggle the international order, it could be the leader of France or Germany who lead the free world to confront some horrible new event.

One thing is for sure, if there isn’t a major crisis in the next four to eight years, we’ve been very, very lucky. My only fear is if it’s a terrorist attack, Trump will use it as an excuse to impliment the darker aspects of his vision for the United States and beyond.