Tag: scandal

How Will This Cold Civil War End? Some Scenarios

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

It is pretty obvious that, as someone on Twitter recently said, we’re in a “Cold Civil War.” So, without further ado, here are some back-of-the-envelope suggestions as to how this clusterfuck will work itself out.

1. Dystopia: The Bad Guys Win
In this scenario, there is no impeachment, no nothing. All the lying works and the United States settles into a Russia like “managed democracy.” The Resistance kind of peters out simply from outrage burnout if nothing else. The States will become not-so-quasi-autocracy and will be so for the foreseeable future. This will all come about when we prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that there was collusion between Trump’s Campaign and the Russians and the Vichy Republicans just shrug and because of gerrymandering and dark money nothing changes. Nothing changes at all.

2. Things snap back into place
Now, when I say this, I mean it in the context of general trends that have been ebbing and flowing in American history for decades. So, while it’s possible that things will “snap back into place,” it’s not like our gradual march towards a quasi-autocracy in all but name isn’t going to continue. That’s just a problem with late-era empires like ours. But, if we’re lucky, Trump might be a one term president and the next president will pick up the pieces and we’ll just look back at this four year period as a very strange aberration in our history.

3. Progressive Revolution
One intriguing possibility in all of this is the possibility that The Resistance will decisively defeat Trumplandia and the pendulum will swing to the center-Left in a big way. So big, in fact, that a lot progressive goals will be achieved during the heady days after the defeat. Constitutional amendments will be passed, reforms will be enacted. It will be looked back upon as a Second Reconstruction.

4. Hot Civil War
It is very possible that the only way that there will be a end to the Cold Civil War between Trumplandia and The Resistance will an actual, hot Civil War where people die and get hurt. I have my doubts about this possibility, but it’s very real. I don’t know how it would work out. It’s a struggle to imagine how an actual Civil War would play out in modern America.

5. Stalemate / Trumplandia burnout
It could be that this will be a chronic problem for the next eight years. That the lying will work, but only so much. The problems with the system will be just enough to get Trump re-elected, but not enough to allow him to do serious, long-term damage to the Republic. He’ll leave office, a Democrat will come in and everything will gradually just continue as it has been, only with the continuing sector of Trumplandia in the background.

My bet is on a less powerful version of the progressive Second Reconstruction. It would all be on political terms, so it wouldn’t be as effective as the Reconstruction after the Civil War, but I have hope that the base, The Resistance will grow so angry over the next few years that the Blue Wave we all hope will happen, will happen. That’s my hope at least. Maybe.

Trumplandia: Life During A ‘Cold Civil War’

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Someone on Twitter mentioned that the United States is in the middle of a “Cold Civil War,” and I am apt to agree. I say this because I have been mulling how similar what is going on right now resembles a civil war in all but name and blood.

We have heroes, we have factions, we have shifting alliances. It’s weird how at this point there is little to distinguish the center-Right NeverTrump movement from the center-Left Resistance movement. Those two concepts now have common cause against Trump and the broader Trumplandia concept.

This works well with my personal belief that we really need to adjust to the new normal of Trumplandia. This is going to be a long, hard political fight and it may last about the same amount of time of a World War — four to six years. Let that sink in.

It is pretty obvious that the Vichy Republicans see Trump as a political gravy train and they’re not going to stop supporting him until long, long, long, long after we reach a devastatingly surreal moment in our nation’s political history. We’ve already reached that, but we’ve barely gotten to the end of the beginning of this political crisis.

It makes a lot of sense to see this as a Cold Civil War, at least in political terms. A war is easy to start and difficult to finish. And so, really, not until the base of the Democrat Party is as hysterical as the base of the Republican Party was in 2016 will anything change. We haven’t gotten there yet, I’m afraid. It’s going to take time. Probably four to six years. Let that sink in.

Remember, the only reason why Nixon was forced out of office was that there literally were tapes of him obstructing justice. Even if the pee-pee tape was real and we all saw it on FOX News, Trump would not be removed from office. And that doesn’t even begin to address the likelihood that The Resistance will be politically divided in 2020 and Trump will be re-elected.

There is just too much that could go wrong at this point when it comes to efforts to get rid of Trump through impeachment. In short, he’s not going anywhere for years. This really is a Cold Civil War and there are no assurances that the Good Guys will win.

All we can do is continue to fight the good fight.

While We’re All Distracted By Comey, Rome Is Burning

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

While we’re all eating our popcorn at the flaming dumpster fire that is the Trump Administration, the traditional social safety net that we’ve come to enjoy is being attacked in unprecedented ways. The issue for me is, regardless of whatever else is going on with Trump, his mere continued political presence is doing real harm to the American Republic.

An there is no reprieve in sight.

I say this because really, Trump is not going anywhere. The Vichy Republicans are so prostrate, so callow, so complicit in their support of someone — Donald J. Trump — who could be, in fact, effectively a foreign asset, that they are using whatever they can get to destroy important aspects of our government.

Or, put another way, it was inevitable that Republicans would again, at some point, be in power again by winning a presidential election and because of technology and the bullshit mountain known as FOX News, so the victory of Trump only, in a sense, sped the process up.

There is a more fundamental issue at work. That issue is because of tribal politics, we are, for the foreseeable future, going to swing back and forth in extremes. This all goes back to the question of, what exactly is the source of this. Why is the right so hysterical? Does it only have to do with the changing demographics of the United States?

The rise of Trumplandia is truly a nightmare scenario. That a major liberal democracy would fall under the sway of someone like Trump, for whatever reason, is pretty mind boggling. I am trying my best to avoid invoking Hitler’s name, but I can’t get around it. There is nothing else I can think of to compare it to.

Or put another way, the only thing that’s stopping Trump from being an American Hitler is he’s so completely incompetent that he can’t effectively impliment is more fascist, autocratic desires. That’s it, folk. That’s all that stands between America and fascism — Trump isn’t up to the job.

So, really, we are just going to have to wait until the mythical “Blue Wave” flips Congress before the pendulum swing back to sanity. It is to be seen how much damage Trumplandia will be able to wreak on the Republic. Probably significantly more than we ever imaged.

But I still have hope that once we finally do flip Congress that things will sort themselves out. But we have a long, long, long time to wait. We really need to just keep our powder dry and try to stay engaged. Don’t allow yourself to get burnt out from all the drama. That’s what Trumplandia wants. They want us to succumb to a “managed democracy.”

America has the strongest civil society in the world, so the cancer, the infection that is Trumplandia is being fought off as hard as possible by its antibodies. But there is only so much those antibodies can do. We’re just screwed.

At least in the near term, we’re screwed. Just try to stay engaged with people who disagree with you. That’s pretty much all we can do at this point. Trump’s sway over the nation is complete giving how Vichy the Republicans are and so for the time being he effectively has no check, no balance.

So try to keep focused on the real issues at hand. Keep an eye on what the Vichy Republicans are doing when it comes to Dodd-Frank and Obamacare. Once Trumplandia is finally vanquished, we’re going to have a lot of work to do to make America great like it was before Trump became president.

A Hot Take On James Comey’s Testimony

by Shelton Bumgarer
@bumgarls

While in some ways today lived up to the hype, in other, more fundamental ways I found it rather underwhelming. I found it underwhelming because the thing I had hoped for — some sort of iconic statement that would prove the final death knell of the Trumplandia experience simply did not happen.

And, alas, it seems as though it just isn’t going to happen.

What is really beginning to sink in — yet again — is how difficult it is to get rid of an American president once he’s in office. So, as long as there are no tapes — be they of a pee nature or otherwise — I have a growing fear that Trumplandia will be a fixture of the American political landscape for at least two years, if not much, much longer.

It seems to me that we’re in for a chronic case of Constitutional Crisis that will flair up every once in a while for the forseeable future. We’ve entered the age of tribal politics and the Republicans are so Vichy, so callow, so complicit in the rise of Trumplandia that they simply won’t do anything to ameliorate the situation until they are absolutely forced. It will nearly take the hand of God himself for Vichy Republicans to look past the base and put country over party.

It’s a sad fact, but given how it seems as though the GOP is hellbent on dragging James Comey’s reputation through the mud that that is exactly what is going to happen. There just aren’t any easy answers to how to fix the problems associated with Trumplandia. We’re stuck with it.

So, while the Comey hearing was dramatic and riveting, it did not really give me the political release that I was looking for. I didn’t get that perfect moment that could be used to end the cancer that is the Trump Administration.

If anything, it reminded me that we’re barely at the end of the beginning when it comes to this scandal. And, remember, to date, most of the damage inflicted on the Trump Administration has been self-inflicted. So, even though a fish rots from its head, it is almost inevitable that Trump will eventually untangle this clusterfuck of a presidency enough to survive, if not prosper.

Really, all we need is a war with the DPRK or Iran and suddenly everything will have worked itself out and the Tsar-a-Largo problem will be put on the backburner to such an extent that we won’t even remember it. And, remember, if a hayseed rube like me out in the sticks and see that possible out, then definitely Steve Bannon sitting in the White House can see it.

Thus anyone who is getting all excited about the prospect of getting Trump anytime soon should chill out. It’s just not going to happen for at least two years. That is the bare minimum. He could be around a lot longer than that. Much longer.

Therefore, all I can say is if you really want to end the Trumplandia Era, you need to engage, not rage against people who disagree with you politically. That’s it. That’s the only way it’s going to happen. It will be tough and you’ll be called a cuck and much worse by members of Trumplandia, but in the end it will be worth it. I swear.