Trump Bit Bonkers – Page 10 – The Trumplandia Report

‘We Have Seen The Enemy & They Are Us’ — The Dark Truth About Impeachment

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

I love running informal scenarios in my mind. All the scenarios I have come up with in regards to impeachment lead to one thing — the America we once knew is over.

I say this because even if we somehow magically rid ourselves of Trump politically — likely because he goes bonkers — we will earn ourselves only a brief respite from an inevitable descent into autocracy. The MAGA base will remain and half a dozen would-be younger, more passionate and organized successors to Trump will be waiting in the wings. And that doesn’t even begin to address all those young hack MAGA judges who will do everything in their power to make sure Trump’s vision of American Carnage is finally a reality.

What’s more, I coming to believe that the Republican Party will embrace impeachment-related violence. Hell, they may even do it themselves. Their partisan devotion to Trump is now absolute that the decision for 20 Republican Senators to vote for acquittal is now a very simple political equation. They feel the MAGA will support them as long as they vote to acquit. Republican Senators will believe time is on their side and independances will have forgotten their vote for acquittal whenever they have to run in a general again.

And, really, the only reason I think Trump has any chance of possibly losing in the Senate is his mental state will explode. He will have a very, very public meltdown as impeachment proceeds and there may come a point where his behavior grows so fucking alarming that Republicans will feel absolutely forced at last to The Pence Pivot. Even then, Moscow Mitch might feel as though he’s finally gotten as many young hack MAGA judges on the Federal bench so, lulz.

In other words, we can delay the inevitable by a few months or years, but when half the electorate is MAGA friendly to such an extent that they don’t really care about facts then, well, I don’t know what to tell you. There’s going to come a point far sooner than any of us realize when leaving the country might be one’s best course of action if you’re center-left.

The Coming Of The Republican Gotterdammerung Impeachment Strategy

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

I continue to struggle as to what the endgame for this catastrophic clusterfuck is going to be. All things being equal, it would appear that Trump will be impeached and acquitted in the Senate. He will grow even more brazen in his tyranny afterwards with election meddling and Republicans will finally get the Russian-style managed democracy they so desperately crave.

And yet.

Something surreal is going on with Republicans. I can only suspect it has something to do with Trump freaking out at the prospect of getting impeached at all. This is yet another indication that Trump is not, in fact, the political genius that New York Times Trump Whisperer Maggie Haberman would have haysee rubes in flyover states like me believe. That he would grow so completely rabid at the idea of even being impeached does not bode well for anyone involved.

So I might suggest that you pause to consider that what may bring down House Trump — and Pence for that matter — may not be impeachment but Trump’s reaction to it. Or, more specifically, it won’t even be Trump’s reaction to it, it will be the violence associated with it. To put it another way, we are racing at an alarming rate towards people dying in a Republican Gotterdammerung strategy. Their thinking is that if they can inflict enough pain on the opposition in guise of people dying that that will cause the whole impeachment process to come to an end. They will make the case that we can’t even impeach Trump because people are dying. This is, of course, a completely fucked up, bonkers line of reasoning that comes more from House Trump believing its own FOX News coverage than anything else.

I find it dubious that if there was some sort of co-ordinated, violent and bloody attack on the part of MAGA truebelivers that average Americans would throw up their hands and give up on impeachment. What’s more likely to happen is the 60% of the population that isn’t MAGA would flip the fuck out. The political ground under the entire House Trump would buckle.

It would not happen right away. Republicans would for about 24 hours tell us all that they can’t be blamed for the actions of “mentally ill” people. The moment, however, that they started to say, “Of course we can’t impeach Trump if people are dying” is the moment they may, for once, face serious political consquences.

Remember there may come a point where the absolute fear of Republican Senators of being primaried from someone on the MAGA Right will equal their absolute fear that they won’t win a general election. It’s that type of high stakes conundrum that leaves me scratching my head. They have no shame and only care about power for power’s sake. So there’s a least a small chance that their high stakes gotterdammerung strategy might not QUITE work out the way they hope.

Who knows. I know I don’t.

The key point is the nation can’t sustain this state of crisis for any long duration of time. The fever is going to break one way or another. Either with people getting hurt or Trump finally be forced out of off, or maybe both. All I know is I hope no one gets hurt. But I’m not going to let insane Republicans cower me into submission either.

Republicans Are In A Panic — But Trump’s Not Bonkers… Yet

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Republicans are just about at the tipping point where they see what’s going on with Trump as an existential threat. Almost. They haven’t quite gotten to the point where they are willing to cane people on the Senate floor, but they’re getting there.

So, in a sense, the flop sweat is about to kick in with Republicans who realize they have a very weak hand at this point. They are going to do everything in their power to gummy up the work of the impeachment process. They will lie. They will cheat. They will intimidate. I would be prepared to suggest that these tactics will work in the end but for one thing — Donald Trump.

Though Trump is finally beginning to realize the existential nature of what’s going on, he’s still reasonable cogent. And he hasn’t gone transactional with his abuses on Twitter. I used to think Trump would implode on a cognitive level and some sort of Regency might be established in private. Now, I think he will EXPLODE in a very public manner and Republicans will continue to kowtow to Trump’s every whim.

Trump will suggest MAGA take up arms against “the enemy of the people” Press or House Democrats, or whomever. He might even dangle pardons to people willing to use their precious AR-15s to make it clear they don’t want Trump to go anywhere. We’ve gotten to the point where there’s a real chance that while the MAGA base of about 35% will feel quite content with all of this the rest of the electorate — and I mean EVERYONE ELSE — will be so full of rage over actual physical harm being inflicted because of a defense of Trump that we may see some rather surreal things begin to happen. More so than we already have.

There may come a point where Republican talking heads defend murder in the name of Trump. They won’t say that, of course. What they’ll say is obviously the “optics” of hundreds of people being slain by a crazed MAGA person with a AR-15 are so bad that we should stop impeachment and “let the people decide” in 2020. Meanwhile, Trump will have finally snapped to such an extent that a lot of people will begin thinking about his continued possession of the nuclear codes.

This is a different type of crisis from the 2000 post-election debacle. This is a hot crisis. You can feel the tension in the country building to something. Something big. What that might be, I don’t know. But I do believe something spectacular is going to happen in the guise of MAGA’s final attempt to save Trump’s presidency. Something jaw-dropping that it will equal 9/11 in its historical significance. I hope what I fear will happen won’t happen.

But who knows, folks. Who knows.

Thinking The Unthinkable — What Happens When There’s Impeachment Violence?

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

It pains me to no end to have to talk about this. But we have to prepare ourselves for impeachment-related violence. This is a classic desperate move of extremists — they think that if they raise the stakes high enough that the general public will cower in fear and stop the impeachment process altogether.

The only problem with this strategy is it’s a high risk – high reward one. And violence of the sort Trump supporters want is almost totally alien to the American political experience. While substantial impeachment-related violence might dominate a news cycle or two, there would come a point when a lot of people who have previously tuned out would suddenly sit up and take notice. And not in a way that Trump would like.

This is yet ANOTHER example of how Trump is NOT a political genius as The New York Times‘ Trump Whisperer Maggie Haberman would have us believe. Trump is so stupid — and rapidly cracking under the strain of impeachment — that he sees violence in his defence as a quick fix that will make all his troubles go away. He is so stupid that he doesn’t realize that his firebreak is the average person’s general political indifference. As long as the economy is going well they generally don’t care. If people start dying as part of some crazed gotterdammerung strategy on the part of House Trump, there’s a real chance of radicalizing — at least momentarily — a huge swath of the moderates who otherwise would give Mad King Trump a pass at least until election day 2020.

In other words — when politics involves death and destruction, Americans generally don’t appreciate it. Violence that can be directly pinned on the overheated rhetoric of the Right will initially give us as nation pause for thought, yes, but the moment the Right goes from, “Can’t blame us, it’s just crazy people!” to “Well, guess we can’t have stop the impeachment process now…” they’re likely to get considerable pushback.

But the key issue is — it’s only going to get worse as we grow closer and closer to Trump actually being impeached. In fact, that’s pretty much Trump’s last trick — to go transactional in his crazypants tweets. While I’m reluctant to count Trump out, when he is directing MAGA to kill people in his defense via his Twitter feed that would, well, take things to the next level.

Who knows what happens next. I guess we’ll find out soon enough.

Why Nobody Knows Nuthin About How Impeachment Will Turn Out

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

While we’re in the worst Constitutional since late 1860 there’s no discernable endgame at this point. I just don’t know how it’s going to endup. It could end up either way. Either way, we’re not prepared for the new era. Either we convict Trump and hopefully put him prison after due process or he escapes and things get very dark, very quickly. Here are a series of reasons why I simply have no idea what is going to happen next.

Bill Barr
Barr has been very quiet. It’s very possible he’s going to strike at what he feels is the best time to cause the impeachment process to come to a grinding halt. I could see him thinking that if he dropped the smoke bomb of a wide-ranging list of criminal referrals connected to the Infowars-level bullshit theory that it was actually Ukraine and the Democrats who were the origin of the Mueller probe that all of Trump’s problems would go away. He might think this because similar bullshit messaging worked before with The Mueller Report so lulz. There’s a huge risk associated with this, however. The risk is that after about 24 hours of The New York Times buying into this bullshit ploy completely, other people might come to the conclusion that it’s a staggering abuse of power. So it would be used as yet another Article of Impeachment.

Asymmetrical Radicalization
One thing we all underestimate is how completely fucking insane the Republican Party became in the latter years of the Obama Administration. The Republican Party only sees liberal democracy as a means to an end — and that end is as much power as possible. So, while the Democrat Party sees itself as bound by the normals of a democracy, the Republicans just lulz that. So Republicans will crucify Democrats for the slightest infraction while they lie and cheat as much as humanly possible to keep Trump in power. This is a very real problem. Do not underestimate it going forward in the impeachment process.

Republican Senators — Mission: Impossible
There may come a point where 20 Republican Senators face an impossible political decision — the likelihood they will be primaried if they vote for conviction will be equal to the probability they will lose their general if they don’t vote for conviction. I honestly have no way of predicting how they would solve this problem. It’s simply impossible. None of them have any honor or courage — or at least have shown none to date — so, I don’t know. It could go either way.

Brexit
If No Deal Brexit does, in fact, finally happen on Oct. 31, then there’s a chance that will slow the global economy in such a way as to harm Trump’s political fortunes in a very unexpected manner. Trump’s got a base of about 35%. It’s rock solid. If the economy tanks that might change just a little bit.

Violence
Trump could very well up the ante and start transactional crimes with his Twitter feed. In other words, instead of dog whistling this or that thing, he might actually say: Do this. It could be anything from killing members of Congress to killing the whistleblower. You would think this would be bad for Trump — and it would be — but there’s also a chance that it will slow impeachment down just enough for Republicans to say, “Lulz, let the people decide in Nov. 2020.”

Trump Going Bonkers
This is a such a big known unknown that I simply don’t know how to gauge it. If Trump finally snaps in a very, very public manner, things could get very, very messy. But the gears of government are so fucking slow Trump could still make it until January.

Government Shutdown
It’s possible the government will shut down long enough that impeachment momentum ends. Trump survives and he rigs the 2020 election in his favor. Lulz!

Moscow Mitch May Feel Sated
It’s also possible that just as Moscow Mitch fills the last possible open position on the Federal bench with a young hack MAGA judge, he will find Trump having his trial in the Senate. Moscow Mitch will feel he has gotten the last ounce of blood from Trump and he’ll abruptly do the Pence Pivot. Lulz!

Republicans Now Have A Cogent Messaging Strategy … But Trump’s Still President

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

After letting a number of precious days slip past them, the Republican Party now has something akin to an overarching messaging strategy. Remember, the whole thing is based on an arbitrary Big Lie. It’s not as though facts are important or that anything they’re doing is thought up in good faith. They have one goal and one goal only — keep Trump in power.

With that it in mind, it seems as though Republicans have finally established their bullshit conditions for them to alledgly take impeachment seriously.

Quid Pro Quo Has To Be Established.
This is complete bullshit because Trump and his cronies keep giving up the game on this one. But this is a key talking point right now. Even though we have all we need to prove an impeachable offense in rough transcript — quid pro quo or not — Republicans have set an impossible standard that they can then hammer home whenever asked. They’re messaging to the base that only if Trump actually uses the actual words quid pro quo does the House investigation into this situation come close to not being a “witch hunt.” This is total bullshit on their part because they honestly don’t give a shit about anything but keeping power and grifting. So Trump himself could do exactly this one thing they absolutely demand and they would simply pivot to the next talking point. They just don’t care. They don’t care about liberal democracy anymore. Fuck you, see if you can convict Trump in the Senate is their real agenda.

After this main talking point, they seem to have a hodge-podge of other, less important ones they reference as needed to “own the moment.” They rant about Schiff “lying.” They think it’s all a Deep State con job – entrapment. Everything they say is complete bullshit because we have Trump dead to rights and now it’s simply a matter of waging a pitched political war for the next few weeks. Republicans will destroy the Constitution, the Republic and whenever the fuck else they have to do keep Trump in power, even if he finally goes completely fucking insane.

As I’ve said before, I always though Trump would lose his mind in private and then a secret Regency would be set up. Now I realize Trump could very well snap and we’ll have a madman as president until the wheels of government finally grind towards some sort of endgame. Trump is obviously bonkers now, but he’s a least reasonably cogent and reasonably in control of his absolute worst instincts.

It definitely seems that Republicans are also doing their best to egg the base on into some sort of violence. They really, really, REALLY want MAGA people all over the country to start killing members of the media or Democratic member of Congress. They, of course, will say these people are mentally ill and it’s not their fault. But they will also use the death and destruction as a cover for telling us we have to end impeachment and “let the people decide” in 2020. This is fucking bullshit not only because Trump will simply bribe Electors or directly conspire with the Russians, or the Saudis or the fucking North Koreans to hack into the voting booth, but there’s a good chance that even if Trump loses fair and square, that they want violence then, too, so they can keep power.

The sooner we realize that the entire Republican Party is now a criminal fascist organization, the sooner we can be honest with ourselves about the stakes we face and what really is actually likely to happen.

And, really, the entire fate of the United States as we know it now rests on Trump losing his mind in some manner that is so completely fucking spectator that somehow 20 Republican Senators miraculously decide maybe Pence wouldn’t be such a bad president after all. That’s it. That’s all the hope I got right now.

The Republicans hate democracy so much that they will fight dirty, they will lie, they will cheat, they will burn everything to the ground simply to keep power. They are only interested in democracy as a transactional event. They want to abuse it to regain power if they lose it.

I don’t know, folks. Now what.

Idle, Incoherent Rambling About #Writing A #Novel & #Impeaching #Trump #RadicalResistance

Some thoughts.

Wargaming House Democrats Using ‘Inherent Contempt’

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

We’re in a political war right now and I suggest we start to act like it. The sooner House Democrats take things to the next level by using their inherent contempt powers, the better. There are obviously some risks associated with doing this. Let’s look into them.

The biggest fear is Trump will flip out and drop an H-Bomb like weaponizing his Twitter feed even more than he already has. He might dox the whistleblower and “joke” that he should be “taught a lesson in 2nd Amendment Rights.” Lulz, right? That seems to be the biggest fear right now. And that is a very real possibility. But with any use of extreme force, there would likely be unexpected blowback. If you start ranting to your MAGA base about killing people, someone, somewhere might notice. Trump to date has cloaked his bloodlust in the guise of calling people “traitors.” But if Rudy is hold up in a jail somewhere, there’s a chance the man may finally snap and be far more direct.

Another fear is that this would shock the public and turn them off to impeachment altogether. That’s why I wouldn’t do something so drastic without prepping the way. I would have Nancy Pelosi get on TV and give a very solemn address explaining that things are so dire that a Congressional power not used in 100 years is an absolute necessity. I would also suggest you have some sort of uniform messaging on the part of the 2020 Democratic candidates. If Democrats can’t get their act together that much, then don’t bother.

But if they did manage to do this, I think seeing the surreal imagine of Rudy being tracked down and arrested by the House Sargent At Arms would be such amazing, memorable TV that it would likely lurch public opinion even more towards not only impeachment, but conviction. Of course, it would also harden the tribal divide we find ourselves in, but this is an existential crisis. You have to make decisions not based on fear, but on principle.

Anyway, I have my doubts. I continue to be reluctant that Trump will come anywhere near being convicted in the Senate. And, yet, there is the issue of Mad King Trump. It’s difficult for House Trump to found The Thousand Year Trump when its putative founder is bonkers. Trump’s very likely going to finally snap before the impeachment process is over and then the question becomes how much of the rest of the government — and maybe even world — he intends to take with them.

V-Log: Idle, Incoherent Rambling About #Writing A #Novel, #Trump & #Feminism #WritingLife #AmWriting #WritingCommunity

Some thoughts.

Downfall, Maybe: The Constitution As Trump’s ‘Operation Barbarossa’

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Comparing Trump to Hitler is something I have done a lot of in the past, but let’s look not at his policies, but Trump the tactician. It’s eerie how well one could overlay the progress of Hitler’s career in Europe over that of Trump’s political career to date.

Hitler believed in the “leadership principle.” He thought as leader he had a near God-like ability to lead the Fatherland to his dystopian vision of Europe free of Jews, Bolsheviks and Slavs. The Arans would turn Pols and the French into little more than slave labor. Most of Russia west of the Urals would be repopulated with the Master Race.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves a little bit. Hitler was not insane. He was a very evil person, but he was not insane — which makes him worse. He was very lucky, too. His biggest mistakes were not really strategy, but bending the needs of the war effort to those of his own ideological desires. It was his invasion of the Soviet Union, Operation Barbarossa, that was his downfall. He could have gone south east through Turkey into the oil fields of the Middle East and into India. But his kooky ideas about the Jewish-Bolsheviks of the Soviet Union forced his hand in a pretty astonishing fashion.

Now, let’s look at Trump. The interesting thing is Trump is a moron. He’s simply a symptom of some fundimental rot in the American political system. So, you could say that his victory in 2016 was almost like Hitler’s surprise victory over the French in 1940. So, for the last few years, Trump has dominated America much like Hitler did Europe after the fall of the French Third Republic.

This grows even more interesting when you realize that while Hitler had his craven desire to murder people for ideological reasons as an existential flaw, with Trump it’s cheating to win. Combine his stupidity and cluelessness with a deranged 2-year-old’s need to win at any cost and, well, you have him calling up the president of Ukraine 24 hours after Chris Wallace gave him a political pardon after the “bad optics” of Mueller’s testimony.

So, while it’s definitely an extended metaphor, you could argue that the Constitution itself may be Trump’s Russia. It’s not kids in cages. It’s not the 12,000 lies. It’s not the harsh and cruel policies that Trump loves, loves, loves. It’s Trump himself. It’s Trump’s complete inability to uphold his oath of office. His complete, criminal inability to “grow into the office” that might, just might, be his downfall.

And with that, we reach the final question of this gratuitously extended metaphor — what will be Trump’s Stalingrad? What will be the final thing to break his iron hold on the cult that was formerly known as the Republican Party?

Well, as of right now, it doesn’t look like that is ever going to happen. Moscow Mitch will have a 20 minute trial, the Republican line will hold in the Senate and I find myself in a re-education camp just about the time I had hoped to try to sell my spec novel.

But Stalingrad did, in fact, happen. So there’s … hope? All I can think of is Trump again owns himself. But this time he loses his mind. He finally snaps. He goes completely bonkers to such an extent that the normal laws of American politics begin to finally, finally snap back into place. Or maybe after weeks of enormous revelations as part of the House’s impeachment proceedings the sheer absolute pressure of the rage of 60+% of the electorate is enough to wipe the perpetual smug grin off Moscow Mitch’s face.

I just don’t know. I’m not prepared to predict the endgame, either way. All I can say is, though, if we can’t convict Trump in the Senate then that’s all she wrote. Start making contingency plans for hiding in people’s attics if you aren’t MAGA.

Would be pretty funny, though, if both Hitler and Trump were brought down because of shenanigans in the general Ukraine area.

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