Tag: Pod Save America

Not Great, Jon


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m a fan of Jon Favreau and Pod Save America, but today’s pod where they talk about what to do about the looming crisis of 2024 left me cold. What I fear is happening is I’m becoming subtly radicalized as it becomes clear that voting is slowly dying as a method to effect change in our politics.

When confronted with how batshit insane the events leading up to 2024 – 2025 might be, Favreau simply said we have to make sure our allies are in position to prevent the Fire Next Time.

There are a lot of problems with this type of thinking when Steve Bannon is out there doing the hard work in the real world of strangling our democracy on the local level. This thinking goes along with the, “Well, I guess we just have to win more elections” type of thinking that is going to do us no good going forward.

It is inevitable that the the Republican fascists will again get power. Then what. If you add aggressive voter suppression, the seizing of elections by Republican state legislatures and, and, and, and, then “just have more votes” is not a logical solution.

But what would be a logical solution?

Well, as I keep saying — I don’t write for VOX, so I don’t know.

On an abstract level, I would first figure out what you believe in enough in the real world to suffer for it — maybe on an existential level — if things get bad enough. Find people who agree with you politically and start to game out what you’re going to do in 2024 – 2025 if we really do face the existential choice of autocracy or civil war.

For the time being, I don’t have any concrete solutions for you.

Just get ready and prepare.

Pod Save America & A Potential Radical Resistance Movement

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

I’m decompressing a little bit again from developing the thriller I’m trying to write and as such I have a lot of urge to write about something near-and-dear to my heart right now — the possibility of a Radical Resistance and its ideology.

The main problem, as I’ve mentioned, is time.

The economy is doing too well and generally there’s no political will-power to do anything about Trump’s treasonous, felonious illegitimate and tyrannical regime, so I guess we’re stuck with it for the forseeable future.

Having said that, if the guys of Pod Save America might gently broach the subject of a Radical Resistance to their multitude of listeners, maybe the idea might strike a cord. Just because 37% of the electorate are in a lobotomized MAGA cult, doesn’t mean the rest of the population has to lie down and cover itself with leaves.

Right now, I feel a lot of high information voters feel like me, but they don’t quite know how to articulate their ideology. If the people of Pod Save America were to say if you want to say fuck it, demand Trump is impeached immediately, regardless of when it becomes politically viable under the cover of the magical mystery Mueller Report then you a Radical Resistor.

That’s it, that’s your ideology for the Radical Resistance.

It’s not violent at all. I’m thinking a lot less Weather Underground and a lot more, maybe using Rage Against The Machine’s Renegades of Funk or John Lennon’s Power To The People as protest anthems during the course of massive rolling — and peaceful — protests across the country.

Really, that is where Crooked Media sure could come in handy in making this vision a reality. Simply saying don’t be afraid to call yourself a “radical” in the sense that you are a one-issue voter for the immediate future — impeach Trump NOW.

We really need to channel our inner punks and AOCs and stop being, like, uh, Joe Biden? We need to say fuck the Establishment, fuck the Powers That Be. We need a radical centrist movement that simply says enough is enough — Trump, at the very least, has to be impeached by the House immediately and any Democrat who doesn’t support doing that risks being primaried by the base in 2020.

Though if Trump lasts to 2020, we really are fucked.

So, I guess if I could get a “many people are saying” reference on PSA, that would rock.

Not that it’s going to happen.

Friend Of The Pod: Pod Save America Creeps Towards Selling Out

By Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

In this era of Trumplandia, I find myself turning to podcasts for some relief to the insane world we now live in. So, I have been listening to Crooked Media’s Pod Save America on a regular basis. So, because I’m a “friend of the pod” I thought I’d try to start doing a regular post about the show.

The first thing we have to note is that it seems as though Crooked Media is selling out to the man when it comes to its advertising at the beginning. It used to be that the ads at the beginning of Pod Save America were really funny and loose. But I have started to notice that they’re getting a little bit more professional.

I don’t know if it’s because they are starting to make money or if they’re just taking the whole endeavor more seriously.

They open this show talking about the Trump’s foreign trip. They talk about what a disaster it all was. “Didn’t want to lecture the dictators, did want to lecture the democratic leaders,” is one of the quotes. They also talk about how Obama would have gotten a huge amount of shit for even the littlest amount of what Trump has done. They also talk about Trump’s refusal to re-endorse Article 5 of NATO as well as the Paris Climate Agreement.

“Posture is the most important thing,” says Jon Lovett when it comes to NATO and Article 5. They talk a lot about how Trump seems oblivious to how the American press keeps mentioning how Trump sleeps to slobbing the knob of Putin. They also mention that Trump maybe be signaling that maybe that Putin can take a big chunk of Ukraine if he likes. Which, I think, we need to keep an eye on that. Ukraine could be huge in the coming days.

There is some talk about how Trump’s talk of leaving the Paris Climate Accords. It is interesting that our friends Axios is brought up. “If he pulls out of Paris, this it means its hopeless,” is the general consensus about how the power of the “New York Cucks” may not be really there.

“You’re either a part of this monstrosity or you’re not,” is another good quote from this general moment.

Taking up my view that we need to stop falloning Trump, Lovett says we’re “in a major crisis.”

It is their discussion about Jared Kushner that makes me so angry and makes me wish Crooked Media would produce a blog like Gawker. They talk about all the dump, possibly criminal things that Kushner alledgly did. The thing that everyone is talking about, and thinking about — what was the deal with using Russian “clock and dagger bullshit” that Kushner wanted to do.

“It’s a backchannel to keep things from America,” Lovett says.

The possibly that the backchannel is maybe a way to get Trump to lower the sanctions against Russia at some point in the future. They also talk about the difference between Obama’s Iranian backchannel and Kushner’s efforts. “It’s unprecedented,” is the quote at this point about what Kushner wanted to do.

“It’s all a little to convenient and weird,” is another quote of note.

“It’s so awful, you don’t want to believe it happened,” Jon Faveau says.

The pee tape comes up, with Jon Lovett saying the Pee Tape would be better than if the Russians have some sort of fiduciary power over the administration.

“None of it makes sense without leverage, none of it,” Lovett says about Trump and Russia.

There was a lot of discussion about Kushner getting high-level security information is something they talk about at length. “It’s a risk question,” is the quote on the issue. As well the lack of a denial by Trump’s administration when it comes to the Kushner back channel. They also talked about how complicit the “real” journalists of FOX News are at this point.

“We’re not doing the basic things to protect our country,” is the quote.

The failure of the Vichy Republicans is also the subject of discussion. Lots of picking on Paul Ryan is done, but there is also discussion about Sen. Bob Cooker being enthusiastic about the Russian-Kushner backchannel issue. They talk about the hypocrisy of Sen. Cooker when it comes to Trump versus Obama. They note that Sen. Cooker is up for re-election in 2018 and they think maybe the reason for Sen. Cooker being so fawning about Trump could be he wants to win reelection by not “losing single base vote.”

There was so discussion about the need for a new message on the part of the Democratic Party. This is something I really agree with, but I don’t know what it could possibly be. They mention that the Democrats shouldn’t “over correct” about issues that really matter to the base.

They also talk about how policy is being clouded over by people hoping that the malfesence of the Trump Administration may bring it down. I really agree with this take on things. But I there are no easy answers. I don’t know what path The Resistance should take.

The issue of trying to get people who otherwise wouldn’t vote to vote for The Resistance is something they talk about, which I think is pretty important at this point. The difference between The Resistance and Trumplandia is so great at this point that. The disillusionment of the average person who just doesn’t want to vote is a very important issue.

“What’s next,” is an issue that is addressed and I think that’s really important.

There is an interview with Sen. Elizabeth Warren which you can listen to for yourself. If I get positive feedback for this, I might do something similar for the entire podcast. I really like Crooked Media and I really, really wish they would start an anti-Axios blog like Gawker. They really do a good job with their pods and it would be nice to have a go-to blog for the Trumplandia Era.

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