Month: May 2017

Don’t Rage, Engage: Hollywood, Do Your Fucking Job

By Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

The whole Kathy Griffin kerfuffle is yet another reminder that Hollywood has been oddly silent about Donald Trump in the way that matters most: actually producing content that helps civil society process what the fuck is going on. That’s the whole point of Hollywood.

Currently comedy on TV has been picking up the slack for Hollywood. Be it Full Frontal, or Saturday Night Live or The Late Show, late night comedy is where right minded people go in America to try to figure out how to understand this horrific dead-end that we’ve found ourselves in.

Both a market and an audience exists for movies and TV devoted to being metaphors for Trumplandia. I know I would shell out $11 to see a movie that addressed what a fuckwit Donald Trump is. Or maybe a remake of 1984. Or a remake of Being There. Hell, even a movie about The Mule portion of The Foundation Saga would make me feel better at this point. This is pretty basic stuff. If me, a hayseed rube in a flyover state can figure this out, then I’m sure someone at Miramax or Paramount can figure something so basic out.

But what do we have right now instead of quality content? We have silence. I have not heard of hardly any films in production and there are only a spattering of TV that are obvious meant to direction address Trumplandia. It makes you wonder why this is.

You would think that something as momentous as the rise of Trumplandia would inspire the Hollywood scribes and producers to generate all kinds of content. But all we get is Kathy Griffin pretending to cut off Donald Trump’s head. Everyone would be served if she were to not rage against Trumplandia in such a stupid manner but rather write a TV script for a sitcom about dealing with Trumplandia. Something, anything to bring people together, instead of dividing them.

The only thing I can think of is that producers are skittish about offending people, by, well, losing money. In other words, stars feel obliged to be offensive on a personal level, but the people with money who maybe oppose Trump aren’t willing to take the risk that Trumplandia will freak out if you produced a movie that obviously attacked Trump in some direct manner.

That’s the only thing I can think of. That makes the most sense. There might be something to the fact that Hollywood is still in shock that Trump won in the first place and they just haven’t gotten over the shock enough to begin writing scripts that directly tough that live wire.

But I think it’s the money situation. Corporate types think differently that the artists they support, so that reluctance to lose money by offending the ever-so-touchy Trumplandia base probably is the reason. As someone pointed out to me recently, Watergate really only produced one movie and that was after it was over. So maybe it makes a lot more sense that I realize for there to be no movies about Trumpandia produce while it actually exists. And, really, if you think about it, it took decades before there was a movie that dealt with the Vietnam war directly, though Apocalypse Now was produced a few years after the fact. The closest to a TV show about Vietnam was that occured while it happened was M*A*S*H.

And, yet, Trumplandia is a significantly more weighty event than Watergate. Trumplandia, at least to me, seems ripe for a great movie or TV shows right now. We live in a different era than the 1960s and 1970 and I think audiences would flock to see a movie about a Trump-like character. I keep thinking of The Mule from The Foundation Saga, but it’s possible that because of Star Wars stealing so much from that series that that isn’t really applicable anymore.

Regardless, it would be sad if we had to wait 20 years before Hollywood addressed in metaphor Trumplandia. I really don’t want to have to keep seeing liberal Hollywood actors destroying their careers by raging against Trumplandia in a stupid way. Don’t rage, engage.

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

Progressives, Trumplandia & Jon Stewart As A Leader Of The Resistance

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Since dirt, there has been a struggle for the heart of America when it comes to the Progressive movement. Just about twice century or so, the stars align just right and the Progressive movement pops out of a long-dormant state and pushes through a huge amount of much needed change.

The weird thing is, you could make the case that the rise of Trumplandia is a sign that maybe the Progressive movement may be about to have it’s time in the sun again. The issue is Donald Trump obvious tapped into a populist rage. A smart politician, one with some vision, could use the populist rage of Trumplandia as a stepping off point to energize the Populist movement.

Of course, it there wouldn’t be a straight line. You would need leadership and vision. Right now, you have the Democratic Establishment, which is pretty much the bastion of the “Third Way” vision of Hillary Clinton and the base The Resistance which is much more in tune with the social democratic vision of Bernie Sanders.

But it’s pretty obvious that there’s a close correlation between the populist rage of Trumplandia and the near constant Progressive outrage of The Resistance. There is a possible opportunity to transform Trumplandia from its current bigoted, racist, misogynist decaying corpse and turn it into a vibrant Progressive base.

It would take leadership to do that because there are so many wedge issues that Trump uses to divide the populace that might otherwise have things in common that don’t fit the obvious Left-Right divide. The issue is, The Resistance has to stop simply being outraged all the time and figure out a way to engage Trumplandia in a constructive manner.

All of this is very complex and fraught with peril because you might tear the Democratic Party asunder in such a way that Trump easily walks to reelection in 2020. One problem is we have to deal with Trump’s surreal Being There ability to succeed politically despite himself.

While it is very much likely that we’ll reach a moment of outrage burn out, but if we can find the right leadership then maybe that energy won’t burn out, but rather will grow in power. Of all the leaders I think could maybe ride the nascent growth of a Progressive movement as part of The Resistance, Jon Stewart seems like the perfect person to do it.

Though it seems like a joke, Jon Stewart has the perfect skill set to be a major leader in The Resistance. As anyone can tell you, the only person who stands up to a middle school bully is the class clown. Jon Stewart is great at articulating a vision and we need to take a serious look at him as a candidate. I’d like to think he’d run for governor of New Jersey, but I’d give him a pass and let him run for president right away if that’s what I had to do to get him to stop petting rescue animals at a zoo.

If the rise of Trump and Trumplandia has taught us anything, it’s that the Great Man theory of history is now something we really need to start to think about again. So, maybe Jon Stewart has significantly more power in his hands than he realizes. Of all the Progressive leaders out there such as Al Franken and Elizabeth Warren, it seems only Jon Stewart has just the right touch to, through effective leadership, bring the goals of the Progressive moment to the fore again.

The reason I say this is because though Sen. Franken is an entertainer like Stewart, he doesn’t seem to have the passion for the Progressive movement that the younger Stewart has. Warren faces the same misogyny that Hillary Clinton faced, so the forces against her as an effective Progressive candidate are even stronger than they would be otherwise.

So it seems Jon Stewart might be the person to pull what I suggest off.

But this begs the obvious question — is it actually even possible for even an effective leader to bring Trumplandia to its senses. The power, the sway that Trump seems to have over Trumplandia is so astonishing that something truly extraordinary may have to happen for them to stop seeing him as some sort of Dear Leader figure.

Things like automation and AI could pose a serious threat to the economy of the Western World and as such, if the Progressive movement is ahead of the curve, maybe, just maybe, these titanic forces may cause Trumplandia to evolve into a base not for the bizarre Trump, but for the more logical and reality-based world of the Progressive movement and Jon Stewart.

We live in extraordinary times and it seems as though anything is possible right now. So, it’s possible that in 2020 there could actually be a way for the Progressive faction of The Resistance to gain the upper hand. And, yet, it’s also possible that we’re no longer a democracy but rather a “managed democracy” like is found in Russia. If that’s the case, then no matter of engagement on the part of the Democratic base will make much difference, sorry to say.

Things like “dark money,” gerrymandering and active voter suppression may mean that the will of the people will be stymied to such an extent that we really will be left with only civil society to defend us from autocracy. If that’s the case, may God have mercy on our souls.

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

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.

Talk To Me Internet: The Covfefe Debacle

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

In today’s Talk To Me Internet, I talk about the new world in the English language, “Covfefe.” I think it’s really an example of how we need to stop laughing and address the pink GOP elephant in the room: Trump’s nuts. And he’s the leader of the free world.

Meanwhile, I’m also interested in Labour maybe winning the upcoming British general elections and events happening in Ukraine and North Korea. We’ll see what happens.

Will Labour Rise Again?

By Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

The only reason why I address British politics — something I honestly don’t know that much about — is it definitely has an interesting dynamic in the context of Trumplandia. It appears as though, from what I can discern from a little light reading on the subject that it is within at least the realm of possibility that Labour might win.

I don’t know enough about this subject right this second to give you an intelligent explanation of what it would mean for Great Britain should Labour win, but I guess the point of this post is to tell you I’m monitoring the situation.

As I understand it, to put things in perspective, if Labour won at this point, it would be kind of like Mondale winning in 1984. It would really shake things up in British politics and it would be a return to the more traditional democratic socialist views of Labour’s past.

Apparently, one outcome is a hung parliament. It just seems as though in this age of Trumplandia that the most outlandish things are happening on a regular basis. I don’t know what to say. I am going to try to bone up on this subject had have a better understanding of what’s going on by the time the actual election happens.

Stay tuned.

Trumplandia & The Age Of ‘Covfefe’ — We Need To Stop ‘Falloning’ Trump

By Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Twitter is, well, atwitter with the latest screw up on Twtter on the part of Donald Trump. Since Trump’s phone apparently doesn’t have spell check, he tried — we think — to say “coverage” in a tweet and it came out “covfefe.”

This led to any number of different funny hot takes by the chattering class on Twitter. Which is all well and good — I enjoy a good crack about Trump being an idiot as much as the next guy — but there comes a point when we have to stop “falloning” and start to address the serious issues caused by Trump being, well, Trump.

To me, “to fallon” has two meanings. The first, most obvious meaning is to try to make a monster like Donald Trump warm and cuddly by making him a lovable fun character. But there is a second, more urgent meaning as well: to get so wrapped up in making fun of Trump that you lose sight of how dangerous he is.

So, there comes a point when the time between when we make fun of something stupid done by Trump and we wake up to this horror grows significantly shorter. It seems to me that the issue right now is comedy is how civil society is dealing in a most immediate manner with Trump. We’re still getting used to the end of the “No Drama Obama” era and the struggle to process that is coming out in comedy.

But I’d like to think eventually we’ll wake up and things will take a significantly more serious edge. We’ll stop laughing and start engaging. Maybe more serious forms of entertainment, like a good movie that serves as a metaphor for Trumplandia, or a great protest song will come out.

And on an even more serious note, maybe if we quit falloning, more center-Left people would run for office. Or try to cross the political divide and figure out what the fuck is wrong with people who are now comfortably in the mental country of Trumplandia. I still haven’t figured that out, and I’d like to think it’s even possible to do so. If we don’t figure out Trumplandia now, we’re all pretty much doomed.

We absolutely have to stop falloning sooner rather than later because this is all deadly serious. The entire post-WWII global liberal order is beginning to unravel before our eyes and if we don’t start to engage politically, we risk laughing ourselves into oblivion.

So, laugh while you can. I don’t know when things will begin to change. Maybe what I suggest is just too difficult right now. Maybe the changing of the guard is just to profound for our collective psyche to comprehend in any way other than comedy. But I have to have hope.

If we don’t do something soon, eight years will have elapsed and while we were laughing, Trump will have ruined the country and maybe even the world. Then we really will have to find some one to make America great again.

Don’t Rage, Engage: Trumplandia, Tribal Politics & Misogyny

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Today, I have been reminded twice there are two Americas right now and they hate each other. There is The Resistance, which is found largely on Twitter and moves at light speed when it comes to observing the latest Trump catastrophe and Trumplandia.

Trumplandia is a mythical, surreal land closed off from any rational thought and the electoral victory of Donald Trump is constantly relitigated and rehashed.

Being an ardent member of The Resistance, I sometimes find myself making some conclusions about other people that obviously I shouldn’t be making. Two events today reminded me that the United States is in deep trouble politically and things aren’t going to get any better any time soon.

For instance, I put out a call for writers on Craig’s List on a lark hoping I might find someone, somewhere who would be willing to work for free — at least for the time being — to help me build this site. My lone response so far, is this:

I will help you write about Hilary Clinton in a snarky manner.

I know Trump is an unpolished goof but I will take him to the alternative.

If you want insight into how grave things are in America, look at that quoted text. The entire post World War II global liberal order is quickly becoming a dumpster fire and the only critisim of Trump I can get out of this guy is Trump’s an “unpolished goof.” I find this staggering. This just blows my ever living fucking mind.

And, yet, I have to reflect on this mind set. I can’t just rage about it. I have to at least attempt to engage in some sort of understanding of the mindset that would cause such a comment. This bring me to the other interesting thing that happened today. I shoot out all the posts I write here to Twitter. In one of today’s headlines I asked why everyone hates liberals. Someone on Twitter saw this and wrote, “They’re losers and anti-American.”

Whoa buddy.

So, when we write the obituary of the America Republic, we’re going to have to address how it is that not only is the misogyny against Hillary Clinton such that people were totally blinded to her obvious experience, skill and ability, but also that the FOX News echo chamber made Trumplandia so apoplectic in its rage that people had reached the point where they hated liberals without any rational. They hated them because they hated them.

I am not a huge Hillary Clinton fan. I thought she was a weak candidate and probably should have been indicted because no person is above the law. But she wasn’t and when given the opportunity between what I saw as the potential of her steady hand and that of, um, a “unpolished goof” I had no qualms about voting for her. But she lost. And now we have to deal with the consquences.

But the weird thing about Trumplandia is they totally don’t realize they won. They don’t realize that when you’re in power anything that goes wrong is your fault. It all kind of blows my mind. What is the origin of their hatred for modern norms? How is it that they would see the person I see as a racist, bigoted, misogynist demagogue as simply an “unpolished goof.” How can the residents of Trumplandia be seeing what I see and come up with such dramatically different conclusions?

That is the crux of the crisis we’re currently in. And it’s not going anywhere.

If The Resistance is going to make any headway in the coming years, we’re going to have to understand exactly why Hillary Clinton lost. The process of doing that will probably rip the Democratic Party in two for at least one major election cycle as the progressives and the business friendly Wall Street liberals duke it out to see if Bernie or Hillary’s vision of the Democratic Party will be implemented. It is very likely that the Democratic Party will see the loss of Hillary Clinton as a sign that it should nominate a progressive like Sen. Al Franken in 2020.

Yet, at least in my opinion, a large part of Clinton’s defeat can be laid at the feat of misogyny. I think America choked. We had had the first African American president and the center-Right is still racist as fuck and they turned around and saw the prospect of a woman president and they just couldn’t handle it. That doesn’t even begin to address the general hatred of the Clinton family that, in itself, was a large factor in how passionate the Republican base was in 2016.

Meanwhile, much of that surreal world view comes from a general hatred of liberals. That one, too, kind of eludes me. It is obvious that eight years of “No Drama Obama” along with the rise of bubble inducing things like FOX News and Twitter caused the liberals to think there was some sort of assumption of slow, steady progress when in fact there far from that in some quarters.

This is what the Russians were able to so skillfully take advantage of during the 2016 election. The Republican Party had become so full of rage against the liberal mindset that they would rather vote for a quisling than vote for someone who was of the opposing party. And that doesn’t even begin to address what exactly the hold Trump had over primary voters was. That one still leaves me puzzled.

So where does this all leave us?

As I keep saying, if you’re not a member of Trumplandia, if you still care about America in the traditional sense, you’re going to have to put your outrage aside and engage instead. This is really tough. I don’t mean you have to give up what you believe. Far from it. But instead of just randomly being angry all the time, see this as an opportunity to engaged, to be excited and energized

See it as a chance to use your rights as a citizen in an effective manner. Trumplandia in all its delusional, surreal love of Donald Trump can take a lot away from us through gross malfeasance and gradual attacks on our liberties, but they can’t take the American spirit away from us.

Americans aren’t Russians. We’ve got spunk. We can do this. At least, that’s my hope. That’s all I got right now, is hope.

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

Today In Trumplandia: Darryl Issa On A Roof!

al about that.

Issa apparently, at least according to Think Progress, didn’t want to talk to his constituents, so he took pictures of them from a roof instead.

It’s all rather absurd and creepy and very much the world we live in today. What’s even more surreal is Issa eventually did come down to talk to the crowd and gave an entirely different spin on things.

According to Think Progress:

But the congressman portrayed the encounter as far more amicable, tweeting that he “spent the morning talking to constituents.”

From Think Progress

Engage, Don’t Rage: Kathy Griffin, UR Doin It Wrong

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Oh boy. Kathy Griffin what were you thinking. I have made it clear that I believe that the time for raging against Donald Trump is over. We need to dry our tears and get down to business. If you have a talent, use it, don’t just be outraged and thrash around in anger.

So, what does Kathy Griffin do? Does she tear into Donald Trump with a great comedy special? Write a great movie or TV show for the Trumplandia Age? No. What does she do? She takes a picture of herself with what appears to be a decapitated Donald Trump.

Not cool, lady.
serves to confirm the worse assumptions of Right wing nutjobs when it comes to evil liberals and it doesn’t do anything to improve engagement between The Resistance and Trumplandia.

So, I don’t know. It will be interesting to see what happens to her career after this. Either she goes down in a ball of flames, or not even this can get her out of the murky z-list celebrity zone she seems to reside in. I just hope we can put this behind us.

From The Editor: A Call For Writers

By Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

About once a year, I start a new blog and have all these grand visions of how I’m going to make it a success and then within about a month I get tired of it and that’s, that. So, with that in mind, let me do it again.

I can’t pay, so no one is going to listen to me, but should someone actually be interesting, I do have a lot of publishing experience and I promise you’ll have a good time. I’m looking for someone, anyone, to help me build this Website into a site that would kind of be the anti-Axios.

Axios does access journalism with the Trump Administration and my vision for this site is it would be like the old Gawker. It would be snarky and fun and analyze the minutia of the Trump Administration in a compelling manner.

But, like I said, I can’t pay. So I don’t expect anyone to take me up on this offer. I just thought I’d ask, regardless, just to see if there was a chance, however small, that someone might take me up on the offer.

You can reach me at migukin (at) gmail.com.