Tag: Vichy Republicans

Republicans Are Bad Faith Political Actors On An Institutional Level

Republicans are bad faith political actors.
Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

I’m growing more confident in my view that Trump will ultimately be acquitted by the Senate. The “what he did was bad but not THAT bad” line will begin to take traction and the rest will take care of itself. We’ll be lucky to get a 50-50 tie.

Now, there are different reactions to this almost near-inevitability.

MAGA: They will see it as final confirmation that they are above the law. They are finally free of any political constraints. Trump will grow extremely brazen in his authoritarian actions. We won’t have a free-and-fair election in 2020. At some point in Trump’s second term, he begins to demand a Constitutional Convention to pass a balance budget amendment, and it goes rouge. American Carnage is codified in the Constitution, the Thousand Year Trump is founded and sometime about 2023 people like me are “vanished.” I am sent to a ICE camp and shot dead at some point. Luz?

Biden Democrats: They will somehow continue to fool themselves that everything is still normal. They will want to reach across the aisle to get things done. Republicans will laugh in their face. The macro problems in the country that impeachment accelerated will come to a head. In the end, the Biden Democrats will likely suffer the most when ICE camps are weaponized.

The point is, I would rather go down fighting and on a politically honest level than meekly give up and let Trump do what he’s going to do anyway. The only thing to date that has stopped use from becoming a Russia-style “managed democracy” has been that Trump is criminally incompetent. He will remain so, but he’s finally getting to the point that he understands how to abuse power more effectively.

Republicans are bad faith political actors, full stop. They’re little more than old school fascists. They see democracy as nothing more than a means to an end — obtaining and keeping power and obtaining as much money as possible as quickly as possible. They’re willing to say any lie, break any law and ultimately hurt anyone they have to hurt to do this. In hindsight, the Republicans are pretty obvious marks for the Russians — they are so blinded by absolute greed that they don’t even think about how accepting money from Russians is a betrayal of their country. It doesn’t even enter their minds.

As I keep saying, there are two “known unknowns.”

Trump’s mental state
If he finally snaps in a really public manner, then his acquittal in the Senate grows more debatable. I’m beginning to think this is just my own liberal fever dream in the midterm. He may go nuts, but I think he’ll be able to survive until his second term. House Trump will be so brazen by that point that Don Jr. may be the Crown Prince Veep. When Trump finally goes bonkers, Don Jr. becomes Emperor, er…President, and away we go.

Anti-Impeachment Violence
This is another thing I simply don’t know what to expect. We’ve reached enough of a stabilization in the situation that I’m beginning to think — thankfully — that such violence is unlikely. There may be some “false flag” attempts at violence on MAGA’s part, but overall I think we’re reasonably safe on that front.

So, I would say the real issue is to what extent does House Trump alienate progressive-liberals in Hollywood that they begin to leave the country en mass. Silicon Valley is probably much safer on that front. But a lot of very productive people are center-Left, so it’s possible that when ICE starts to shoot us in the back of the head, the people who can leave, will leave.

Wargaming The Coming Trump Whistleblower Clusterfuck

This is America.
Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Some observations.

This news broke the night before the first serious impeachment vote. This gives all House Republicans more than enough cover to vote against it.

Republicans may have learned the wrong lesson from the Mueller Report. They think this will drain support for impeachment. They think everything will go back to normal and Trump will be politically pardoned AGAIN so he can turn around and to exactly the same shit by Friday afternoon. While this is — I guess – at least a possibility, it seems at least from what I can tell that the impeachment train has, in fact, left the station.

There’s a real danger Trump is both so stupid and so craven that he will tweet out a 21 Century version of, “Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?” He will “accidently” dox the poor guy and he ends up dead. The Republican talking points will be three fold. Trump was “joking,” he can’t be held responsible for the actions of a mentally ill person, and we have to end the impeachment process because people are starting to die.

This may work with The New York Times‘ Maggie Haberman for about 24 hours. But I suspect that this won’t hold much water with the average person who is isn’t on Twitter and is too busy paying their mortgage to care about impeachment. Should there be any type of impeachment-related violence then guess who most people will hold responsible — it’s not going to be Nancy Pelosi. Though you know that’s exactly what every Republican is going to scream at the top of their lungs. I guess it might work? But I have at least a modicum of faith in my fellow Americans not to fall for that bullshit.

But, really, the battle lines are now drawn. Either you are so partisan that you think it’s “game over” for impeachment because the whistleblower worked with Joe Biden and Susan Rice as part of his job, or you don’t. Either you believe in the rule of law, or your a Republican MAGA fascist.

We’re entering the political equivalent of Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s Two Tribes video. This is now a political war for the ages. I still suspect that Trump is going to completely lose his fucking mind in a rather spectacular fashion before all of this is over. But I could be wrong.

Buckle up.

The Tragedy Of Trump’s Impeachment

Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Trump’s impeachment is a tragedy. But not in the way that the insane fascists who continue to defend him would have you believe. It’s a tragedy because what should happen, won’t happen and yet Trump has to be impeached for history’s sake, if nothing else. In other words, Trump — at least as of right now — is going to get acquitted by the Senate because political tribalism in America has reached the point where there are two political worlds at cross purposes in America.

There’s the 35% MAGA electorate who feels so disenfranchised that willfully accept a government of grifters who run the nation like a smash-and-grab operation simply because they enjoy drinking liberal tears. Meanwhile, everyone else is astonished at the level of systemic criminality in the Trump Administration and struggle to understand why MAGA is willing to burn everything to the ground to protect a very lucky moron.

At this point, anyone who argues against impeachment either has some sort of vested interest in House Trump or they’re not working in good faith. Given that Trump is accused specifically of election meddling, the idea that we should “let the people decide” Trump’s fate is completely irrational. It doesn’t matter how long it takes (within reason) Trump has to be given due Constitutional process and convicted. If he’s not, he will be politically pardoned AGAIN and will grow even more brazen. Are we supposed to just sit back and let Trump bribe individual electors then pardon them? I mean, strictly speaking, in the eyes of fascist Republicans, such behavior would not be impeachable because “abuse of power is not illegal.”

So we’re going to have hearings. Both sides will make their case. Trump will be caught dead-to-rights for an array of “high crimes” that should remove him from office…and nothing will happen. Republicans will stand fast, babble about “letting the people decide” and then cackle in the darkness as Trump lurches towards full-blown Putin autocracy. That’s the point, that’s what they want. A Constitutional Convention will be called at some point in Trump’s second term and American Carnage will be codified. The ICE Camps will be weaponized and thousands of political prisoners will die in them.

And, so, really, impeachment is more about how we want history to remember us as a Republic. Did we submit to tyranny, or did we go down fighting?

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.

Trumplandia & The Curious Case Of The ‘Good Republicans’

By Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

From the way the mainstream press portrays it, Trumplandia is, at its core, a “basket of deporables” that lives in the darker corners of flyover states with lots of trees, lots of coal and an opioid problem that is out of control.

I call bullshit on this and I think it’s an epic cop-out by NPR types who don’t want to address the more chilling reality: the Trump supporter next door. Apparently a recent report backs me up, too. The report says something like the typical Trump supporter is — surprise! — pretty much your middle-of-the-road Republican who has helped elect Republicans since dirt.

So to put it another way, the real problem with Trumplandia maybe isn’t so much the rednecks clinging onto coal and racism as it is your bedrock Republicans who after Trump won the primaries held their nose and voted for a racist, misogynistic, bigoted demagogue.

Hence, I would lay the blame for Trump more on a broken primary system than I would Jim Bob in his wife beater drinking a cold one and thinking about the good old days when brown people knew their place. That begs the question — what’s wrong with the primary system and how do you fix it?

Just off the top of my head, I would say the primary system as it is now implemented obviously rewards the extremist. So few people vote in the primaries that only the most motivated people — the most hysterical in an already hysterical political environment — are willing to vote in the first place. And, remember, the primary system is almost like a summer blockbuster in nature: who aim to come out strong your opening weekend and worry about the rest later. So, Trump was a momentum candidate who won big and won big early. All of this, of course, doesn’t address issues of dark money.

It seems to me that it was just the Republican’s turn to win the general election as is part of the ebb and flow of history and unfortunately when their time came because of FOX News’ bullshit moutain they were surreally detached from reality. Why anyone vote for Trump in the primaries is — at least to me — a complete mystery and will probably be the subject of any number of books in the years and decades to come. If a nuclear war doesn’t come first, of course.

If I was going to fix the primary system, I might put my hands on the glowing magical orb and say we should have a national primary of some sort. The top two winners of the first national primary would go head to head in a second round two weeks later, maybe. But there are obviously problems with that, too, because that would reward the most organized of candidates, so you might endup with someone like Trump, only more organized.

And even if you did fix the primary system, you wouldn’t fix the tribal politics caused by a combination of FOX News, Twitter and some weird deep-seated hatred of Hillary Clinton that I can’t explain. Something extraordinary happened in 2016’s primaries and it leaves me gobsmacked.

But all of this doesn’t address what the fuck happened in the general election. How did your typical Republican do the mental gyrations needed to come around to voting for Trump and is there anything we can do about that now? It is pretty obvious that Hillary Clinton was a historically weak candidate for various reasons. She thought it was “her turn” to be president and that mentality was a little too close to monarchical for a lot of people. And she was the first woman to get a major party nomination, so she had a lot of people who were fed up with the first black president extremely leery of the first female president.

And that doesn’t begin to address the email hysteria stoked by Russian hackers who may have been colluding with the Trump campaign. And it definitely doesn’t address the Comey letter just a few days before the election itself.

But given that Trump was so obviously an existential threat to the Republic — as it is growing ever more obvious each day — it kind of boggles the mind that otherwise normal Republicans would turn into “Good Republicans” like the “Good Germans” of the Nazi era. That is why you can tisk-tisk Clinton for not giving enough attention to Wisconsin and Michigan and still not explain how she lost the hard fought Pennsylvania and Florida. I mean, what happen there? How did she lose those states given what was going on.

Her losing those states is pretty inexplicable, at least to me. So we’re going to have to address yet again, that we’re screwed now and we live in something tantamount to Vichy America because of the Trump supporter next door. People who are residents of Trumplandia who you would never think would vote for someone so crass, so horrible. But they did. They look at you across your well coiffed yard with the sprinkler system and ATM guard and the voted for someone who now startles us on a regular basis with tweets that are going less and less fun by the day.

The next question, of course, is now what. Will the Good Republicans ever get around to telling the Vichy Republicans in Congress to get rid of Trump, or will they sit on their hands as long as they get their agenda of lower taxes, less regulation and an end to abortion crammed through the government.

It’s all very chilling, at least from where I stand. The fact that otherwise sane Republicans probably _won’t_ demand Trump’s removal because of the very facts I mentioned above should trouble everyone. It’s all very scary. And there are no easy answers.

Pretty much all I got is “Don’t rage, engaged.” It’s the Good Republicans that are the least likely to troll you if they disagree with you. They aren’t alt-Right nutjobs. They’re God-fearing, America loving people just like you who mysteriously when push came to shove voted for a monster.

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

Eyes Wide Cuck: Trumplandia & The Origins Of The Vichy Republicans

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

When the history of Trumplandia is written, more than one chapter — hell, maybe a few books — will be devoted to how, exactly, an otherwise normal major party in a liberal democracy managed to succumb to the machinations of a racist, bigoted, misogynist demagogue.

Unlike, say, Hitler, Trump did not grow a small hateful party to dominance due to economic turmoil. On the contrary, Donald Trump like some sort of alien parasite exploded full grown out of the chest of a major party during relative property.

So, what the fuck happened?

One key issue we have address is that during eight years of “No Drama Obama” the center-Right in the United States grew hysterical. It grew hysterical for various reasons, including technologically facilitated bullshit bubbles found online as well as the biggest generator of bullshit out there, FOX News. One can not ignore some basic facts, as well — something about having the first African American president really evoked a visceral hatred on the part of the Republican base. Add to this the tax increases on the wealthy associated with Obamacare and the near light-speed pace of social change in the form of gay marriage, and you have the makings of a very volatile political situation indeed.

But just because the elements were there, doesn’t mean anything had to happen with it. It took a major global depression for Hitler to take over Germany and Donald Trump managed to do it during a time of relative prosperity. What’s more, he managed to take over the Republican Party from the inside and turn the establishment into Vichy stooges.

Personally, I lay the blame on the primary system. There were 16 Republican candidates and Trump managed to best 15 of them through sheer force of will, rhetoric and an unexpected adept political touch. If you wanted an example of the Great Man Theory of political history at work, Donald Trump is it. But for Trump personally, we probably would now have President Marco Rubio and Vice President Ted Cruz. You can almost see how Trump warped history. It’s not difficult. Rubio, but for being bested by Trump in the primaries had all the apparent characteristics needed to win. He was young, articulate and of Hispanic background. And he blew it. He totally blew it. He blew it because once middle school bully Trump called him “Lil Rubio,” and Rubio could not come back with an effective rebuttal, he was doomed.

So, Trump, personally, managed to completely fuck up everything because he understood the base better than anyone else. He understood them because, in a sense, he _was_ the base. He was wealthy, but crass. He seemed to “get” the needs of the common man, even though unlike all the other professional Republican candidates he had no ideology at all. His only ideology was whatever he happen to tweet that day.

And don’t ignore one basic fact: the base of the Republican Party, after having consumed epic, delusional amounts of bullshit, were hysterical. They wanted to shake things up in Washington in a big way and that one one of the reasons why they latched on to Trump, became of a part of Trumplandia: he had his weaknesses, but he was definitely going to be a change agent, no matter what.

So, I suggest that Trump’s ultimate victory came in large part from the particular quirks of the American primary system. If there were national primaries, it’s far less likely Trump would have won. I keep going back to this comparison because it seems so obvious to me: Trump’s winning of the primaries was biggest co-opting of an established political order since the Fall of France in 1940 and the establishment of the Vichy France government.

The effects of that fall of the Republican Party continue to echo to this day in enormous ways. But more about that in a moment.

The second part of this historical clusterfuck is Trump’s actual winning of the general election. It goes without saying, at least in my view, that Hillary Clinton was a historically weak candidate. One of the complaints by center-Right people was that she saw it as “her time” to be president. That was a little bit too close to a monarchy for a lot of people and they got turned off. So, given the choice between electing a perceived quasi-queen and a Russophile autocrat, they picked the latter. Let that sink in for a moment.

Additionally, it is pretty obvious that Trump’s win was aided by the Russians. That didn’t help Hillary Clinton’s chances any. Neither did then FBI Director James Comey’s letter regarding e-mails just a few days before the election. And all of THAT doesn’t even begin to address the wide-spread misogyny directed against Clinton on a personal basis. A lot of center-Right people had already gotten burnt out from having the first African American president and the first female president was just a bridge too far for them at that particular historical moment.

But, really, there remains a very specific group of the electorate whose reasoning for voting for Trump remains elusive to me. Let’s call them “the Good Americans.” These are your traditional establishment Republicans who historically have been the kingmakers in American politics. They go under different names. Sometimes they’re called Reagan Democrats. I am probably stumbling across a well known segment of the political spectrum that I just don’t known the proper nomenclature for.

Regardless, I just don’t get how it is they voted for Trump. How is it that these otherwise sane people voted for someone as ill-suited for the job of president, especially against someone as well qualified — at least on paper — as Hillary Clinton. The only thing I can think of is they “came home” when push came to shove and they held their nose simply because they couldn’t bear to see the Clinton’s come back into office. But I still feel that doesn’t really explain things.

Having said all that, the issue now is what does The Resistance do? How can The Resistance defeat Trumplandia in the various elections to come. That is a very difficult question for a number of reasons, chief amongst them being is I fear the United States isn’t really a democracy anymore. We’ve lurched towards something akin to the “managed democracy” found in Russia.

We haven’t completely gotten there, but we’re working on it. Really, the only reason why the process hasn’t been completed is the United States’ strong civil society. That’s it. So, really, if you don’t want to live in an true autocracy, thank late night comics, or a song writer or a movie producer. They’re our last hope to maybe organize some sort of collective rejection of Trumplandia’s final consumption of the American Republic.

But another thing I would suggest is, be engaged, not outraged. The Resistance has to figure out how to bridge the gap between itself and Trumplandia. Just assuming that someone who disagrees with you in a trolling you just plays into Trump’s hands.

This is very difficult for me to accept, myself. I really just want to ignore anyone who disagrees with me, but that way lies political failure for what I feel is important. Eventually, maybe not immediately, I am going to force myself to engage people who disagree with me online. It’s going to be tough, but I’ve got to do it.

And I would suggest you do the same. We’ve got a lot riding on it.

Shelton Bumgarner is the Editor and Publisher of The Trumplandia Report. You may reach him at migukin (at) gmail.com.