Month: June 2017

Of ‘Safe Spaces’ & Rightwing Nutjobs In The Age Of Trumplandia

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

I read Andrew Sullivan’s piece on New York Magazine’s Website today with great interest. He’s a great writer and he always evokes thought. Among the things he touched on was he trend of Social Justice Warriors on college campuses. I’m kind of meh about such things. It seem as though SJW are a made up threat by Rightwing Nutjobs who need something to get upset about.

One thing that does bother me a little bit as moderate liberal is how while on the Right there is a surreal, hysterical and Darwinian death match for the most extreme opinion to win out, on the Left there is an equally corrosive concept known as “safe spaces” meant to prevent people from being “triggered.”

I ran into the concept of safe spaces when I, for about 24 hours, used a would-be Twitter killer known as Mastodon. It seemed like a really cool service at first until Children of The Corn-like I realized that a significant portion of the user base — for whatever reason — wanted the entire service to be a safe space that would prevent them from being triggered.

After it became clear that nothing I did was going to fix the problem, I stopped using the service and never looked back. It is sad that something that we very much need — a Twitter killer — is stymied from development because of such issues. It wouldn’t be such a big deal for me when it came to the service being a safe space if I had some idea what was going to trigger people in the first place. It seemed as though the mere mention of politics was enough to cause people to freak out.

Regardless, the the main problem is these extremes on the Left and Right only make Trumplandia stronger. As I keep saying, we need to engage. We need to cross the divide that things like safe spaces on the Left and the hysteric of the Right are causing.

Sullivan also noted that there is a very real chance that Trumplandia may be the final death blow to the global liberal order that we’ve taken for granted for about 70 years. I don’t know what to say. He definitely has a point and yet because of tribal politics like what I mentioned above, it’s very possible that Trumplandia will not only survive but prosper.

The Day Trump Shrugged: FOX Americana & The Paris Accord

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

In yet another example of liberal outrage, the Rose Garden announcement by Donald Trump to pull out of the Paris Climate Accord has evoked much gnashing of teeth. Now, I consider myself a moderate liberal, but I’m really growing tired of such behavior.

In an extremely well written piece, Esquire writer Charles Pierce summed up liberal outrage stating:

I didn’t think he could top his ghastly American Carnage inaugural address for sheer fact-free and paranoiac mendacity, but he managed to do it on Thursday. By announcing that the United States was withdrawing from the groundbreaking Paris Accords regarding the world climate crisis, the president* wallowed in rank, xenophobic victimhood while basking in the scattered applause of the otherwise unemployable yahoos whose self-respect is sufficiently low that they still work for him. Any doubt that Steve Bannon is running this White House now, either personally or through his finger-puppet, obvious anagram Reince Priebus, now has evaporated. The transformation of the American government into a Breitbart comments thread is complete.

But it’s time to stop getting upset about how Trump is causing America to go to hell in a bucket, and it’s time to start thinking about how you can, on a personal level, do something about it. Just getting upset at yet another horrible thing Trump has done doesn’t help anybody or anything.

I know why this keeps happening. It keeps happening because liberals after eight years of “No Drama Obama” assumed that progress was a given and that it was a fundamental tenet of reality that the liberal worldview was simply to be accepted. Meanwhile, of course, on FOX News’ Bullshit Mountain the residents grew more and more thirsty for blood.

Hence, once someone like Trump was given to them as an option in the primaries, they didn’t really care what he believed as long as he could win. And once he bested 15 other professional politicians, and the choice came down between him and someone they absolutely despised, Hillary Clinton, the decision was easy. And, so the land of Trumplandia with its FOX Americana agenda was born.

FOX Americana as articulated by Trump seems to be completely indifferent to the broader needs of the international community. It’s Darwinian and America First and simply horrible to anyone such as myself who would like there to be some order in the world. If nothing else won’t get you to slip some whisky into your coffee in the morning, let this sink in: pretty much not sense the period between World Wars has there been this chaotic a power vacuum caused by America pulling an Atlas Shrugged and deciding to ignore its responsibility as a world leader.

While I doubt we’ll have any nuclear exchanges anytime soon — though the Indian subcontinent could always flair up — it’s more likely that Russia will simply find it impossible not to make some sort of land grab in Ukraine or the Baltic. Should Putin attack a Baltic nation and one of those nations cry out for help from NATO, invoking Article 5…and the United States just shrugs, that would be significantly more profound than pulling out of the Paris Accord.

That would be the nightmare scenario. Allowing the Russians to take a Baltic nation would completely, fundamentally scramble the post World War II global liberal order. That would be something we could all point to and say that is definitely something Hillary Clinton would not have done. That is why I kept saying during the campaign that while Hillary Clinton was a horrible candidate, at least she wasn’t an existential threat to the Republic like Donald Trump.

And all of this wouldn’t happen in a vacuum. If NATO no longer had American teeth to back it up, any number of other hot spots across the globe would flare up, most notably Korea. I still think it’s likely that Trump would wag the dog with the DPRK and while that happened, Putin would, in turn, attack Ukraine or NATO.

So, in a sense, leaving the Paris Accord is just the tip of the ice burg when it comes to the irrecoverable damage that the Trump Administration can inflict on both the Republic and the globe. But, as I keep saying, we have to stop laughing at stupid tweets, or being outraged at this or that horrible thing Trump does.

If you consider yourself a member of The Resistance, you have to pause for a moment and think how you, on a personal level, can engage. You have to think how you can make a difference, however small, and stymie the seemingly unstoppable progress of the slow moving autocratic “managed-democracy” drive that Trumplandia represents.

I continue to believe that the American spirit is simply too strong. I continue to believe that Americans won’t stand for a Russian-style “managed-democracy” no matter how hard the forces of Trumplandia may attempt to impose it. We have to believe. We have to engage, engage, engage. Our future, and the future of the Republic depends on it.

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

The Conundrum Of ‘Preventive War’ & The DPRK

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

I’m really digging The Atlantic right now. Their vision is very similar to my vision for a new startup that serve as the “voice” of The Resistance. As I have noted elsewhere, there use of video, in particular, is really cool.
This video by Peter Beinart got me thinking about my own views on a war with the DPRK, or North Korea.

My view is I am against starting a war against the DPRK unless we’re provoke. Or should a war happen because Donald Trump is such a dumb ass the he pokes the North Koreans into a war, then I will have to support the war because I feel the South Koreans have the right to defend themselves.

In other words, I’m against any war as long as it’s simply a scenario, but the moment it’s real, then will have to support it. This, of course, makes the prospect of the Trump Administration wagging the dog a very real possibility.

If an avowed anti-Trump person like me is willing to support something as drastic as a war against North Korea once it starts, then from a strategic standpoint it makes a huge amount of sense for Trump — and “President Bannon” to do just that should the need arise.

It doesn’t take too much thought to imagine a situation, say, late 2018, where the Trump Administration is down for the count and needs a sudden jolt of support. Launching a “preventive war” against the DPRK might do just the trick to save Trump in such a situation.

The reason why such a preventive war would make so much sense from Trump’s strategic view is there is a legitimate reason to want to liberate the people of North Korea. It’s just that even the most cursory attempt at a cost benefit analysis would warn you off. Too many people would die and everyone — other than the people of North Korea — have a vested interest in things staying exactly the way they are.

But if Trump did decide to say “fuck it” and do a preventive war against the DPRK, there would be some pretty spectacular images of people being liberated from concentration camp type conditions. This works on the condition, of course, that the Chinese would allow the Americans to get anywhere near there boarder. That is an issue is very much up to debate at this point.

What happens next is anyone’s guess. It could be that things will continue the way they are, or they could explode into a full scale war. This is pretty much the way they’ve been for about 60 years now, so all we can hope that nothing will happen anytime soon.

The Atlantic Talks Of Our Dark, Darwinian Global Present.

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarl

I am really impressed by The Atlantic’s use of video, though I think it would make a little bit more sense to have the author’s of articles talk about the article in an inline video, as opposed to having a separate place for video. But maybe they know something about how people interact with content that I don’t.

Regardless, I really liked this video that Atlantic staff writer Uri Friedman did about how Donald Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris Climate Accord is a really dangerous sign of his world view because it means Trump embraces a dark, Darwinian view of international relations.

This, of course, is in step with my own personal view of things. I have long held that we’re in unprecedented times and it doesn’t take much to imagine a scenario whereby we might have two regional wars — Ukraine and Korea — that would be marketed as “World War III.”

Despite how much nerds like me may be aghast at Trump’s decision, the base of Trumplandia probably is pretty pleased with Trump’s decision. There political views typically barely make it beyond a guttural grunt and it makes total sense that they wouldn’t understand the subtle symbolic importance of the United States pulling out of the Paris Accord.

It is all too easy to just say we’re fucked, but, alas, that seems to be where things stand right now: we’re fucked. My only hope, and at this point it isn’t much of one, is that maybe eventually there will be some sort of political cost that Trump will have to pay for his behavior.

It’s unlikely that is going to happen anytime soon for various reasons, chief among them being that the Vichy Republicans are so obsessed with tax cuts for the wealthy and making abortion illegal that they’re totally cool with being callow in the face of Trump’s tyrannical madness.

The sooner we stop laughing at Trump, the sooner we take Trump as a serious threat to the Republic, the sooner The Resistance can figure out what makes Trumplandia tick and prevent the World War III that I suggested might happen.

The Surprisingly Hot Julia Ioffe Talks Trump As ‘Captain Chaos’

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

I’m quiet impressed with The Atlantic’s Website, which I think recently got a major revamp. When I was growing up The Atlantic and Harper’s were to magazine that only nerds read because they really didn’t seem to have much point, though I always did like Harper’s Index. That was cool.

Well, things have changed.

Now, The Atlantic is kicking ass and taking names and they’re doing a lot of the things that I think a site that would purport to be the “Voice of the Resistance” would do. Great articles dealing with how to address the rise of Trumplandia and content that would help you make sense of it all. I think either a startup or a retooled Playboy be ideal to do be such a site, but if it turns out to be The Atlantic, that’s great.

I am impressed by The Atlantic’s embrace of video. In the below video the surprisingly hot — and smart — Julia Ioffe talks about Donald Trump as “Captain Chaos” who is giving Russian President Putin exactly what he wanted when he meddled in America’s election in 2016 to begin with: someone who would royally screw up America’s position as the leader of the free world.

The only reason why I even mention Ms. Ioffe’s appearance is I don’t see her on TV that much and her Twitter avi isn’t of her, so each time I do see her actual appearance it takes a moment for me to realize that someone so hot is also really smart and witty, at least on Twitter.

Dystopia Watch: We’ve Gone From Pax Americana To FOX Americana

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

I am not the person who thought the phrase found in the title of this post up — that inspired word choice goes to someone on Twitter — but it does seem to sum up where we are right now. Not only is FOX News state media, the president seems to be the editorial vision of FOX News squeezed out of a TV in an old folks home and turned into a living, breathing, pussy-grabbing person.

It seems as though the United States has decided to end its moral leadership in the for the sake of, what, ratings? Pandering to a few thousand coal miners in West Virginia? It is all rather staggering. It is enough to knock the wind out of you if you give it too much thought.

Of course, what I’m noticing is the power of Baby Boomers. They are so wrapped up saving for the Apocalypse that FOX News says is about to come, so fearful that the first black president might take their guns, that they are totally cool with a racist, misogynist, bigot being president and ruining the country in the name of MAGA.

This, of course, begs the question — what happened? What happened to all those hippies 50 years ago who wanted to save the world? How is it that the very generation that thought they could levitate the Pentagon with chill vibes, now are hell bent on using the Pentagon to destroy peace and inflict as much damage on the global order as possible

I know that everyone grows more conservative as they grow older, but the bizarre transformation of Baby Boomers into red cap wearing MAGA supporters is pushing it. It does seem as though the late Roger Ailes saw all this coming and realized he could make money and weld enormous power along the way. It does make you wonder who is zooming whom, though. How much of what we’re seeing with FOX Americana is Ailes’ fault and how much of was inevitable given demographic trends.

It’s all very puzzling. There don’t seem to be any answers.

If ever there was a sign of FOX Americana, it’s the fact that Trump allegedly called a FOX News on-air talent to discuss his decision to pull out of the agreement. It seems to be every old codgers wish come true, to be able to talk to the hotties on the teevee about scary things like that damgum Paris Accord.

It’s way too easy to get depressed. It’s way too easy to just want to hide. But we can’t do that. Only by staying engaged can we possible make the difference we need to make to get rid of Trump, even though even if we try with all our might, there is still a decent chance Trump simply isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

But we have to believe, we have to hope. To do otherwise is madness.

An Idle Shout Into The Void: Playboy Should Be The Voice Of The Resistance

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

I have talked about this at length before, but I figure if I talk about this enough maybe someone, somewhere connected to Playboy Enterprises might at least humor me. I am doing my part for my little corner of the media world with The Trumplandia Report, but I don’t really have the resources to do it right.

In my mind, however, I can see that there is a niche in the media ecosystem that is not be served. That niche is a site that would serve as the effective voice of The Resistance. There are any number of sites right now that I go to, The Atlantic, New York Magazine and The New Yorker to name a few. But none of them have the biting snarkiness of the late Gawker.com.

That’s what I want, I want a site that is snarky, edgy and informative. And, given Playboy’s history of progressive values, it would make a lot of sense if it positioned itself to do as I suggest. It seems inevitable that if an established media company like Playboy doesn’t do what I suggest, then a scrappy startup may do it.

But of all the media outlets out there, it seems Playboy is sufficiently desperate for relevance and buzz that it might be willing to do as I suggest. Doing following the vision I am trying to articulate comes with a certain amount of risk.

There is a very real possibility that you would turn off a lot of readers. But I am of the belief for every reader you’d turn off, you’d pick up two or three more who, like me, are energized in their opposition to Trumplandia and they want quality content that would help them make sense of it all.

But let me stress, no one listens to me and so all of this is an enormous waste of time. Yet is is fun to articulate a vision. It is fun to see if I can catch the attention of someone at Playboy Enterprises, see if I can get someone to listen.

This video goes into a little bit more detail, and I suggest you watch it.

Today Was Surreal, Even In The Age Of Trumplandia

By Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

We have grown accustomed to surreal things happening in this Age of Trumplandia, but today was even more surreal than usual. The big news, of course, was Donald Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris Climate Accord. In a Rose Garden address, he gave a pretty bullshit filled explanation for why he did it. It’s my impression that he, as usual, use the opportunity to explain how great and wonderful his administration has been to date. I don’t know this for a fact because I couldn’t bear to watch the address and so I got my information about it second hand from Twitter.

Generally, Twitter was aghast at Trump’s decision. One thing I’ve been reminded over and over again of late, however, is that just because Trump’s lost Twitter — at least the portion of it I follow — doesn’t mean he doesn’t still have a lot of hardcore followers — Trumplandia, if you will.

So the people of The Resistance on Twitter can circle jerk their anger at Trump all they want to, if they want to effect change, if they want to do anything about Trumplandia, they’re going to have go outside their comfort zone and wade into the surreal crazy waters where Trump is still popular. I say that to myself as much as I do anyone else. It’s tough though, really tough.

Meanwhile, in other surreal news, Devin Nunes, who allegedly had recused himself from leading the House investigation into Tsar-a-Largo, apparently issued some subpoenas not to get to the bottom of that problem, but of another problem dear to his heart — the notion that there was some evil “unmasking” that took place on the part of the Obama Administration. It really is enough to make you say, “Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

Put these two events together and you really have a surreal day. We can laugh all we want to at covfefe, but the time for laugher or rage is over. We need to start getting a lot more serious about how we act towards Trumplandia. We need to realize that there is a very real chance that Trump will eventually manage to mitigate, if not overcome his staggering malfeasance to such an extent that he is able to take the damage he’s inflicting on the nation at home and abroad to the next level.

There are alarming signs that he may be able to do just that sooner rather than later. No enormous bombshells have gone off for a few days and he continues to mull a major shake up of White House staff. As people keep saying, a fish rots from its head, so there is also the possibility that Trump can shake things all he wants and his personal inability to be a good president will get in the way.

One thing we can not assume, and that’s the Trump is going anywhere anytime soon. He’s not quitting and he’s not getting impeached. And even if he did get impeached, he’s probably not going to be convicted. We’re stuck with him. We’re stuck with him for at least a sold two years, and I only mention that because the 2018 mid-terms are the first opportunity The Resistance has to do anything about Trump.

But history does not go in a straight line. Russians could hack into the election system again. Trump could wag the dog in the DPRK or Iran. Any number of different things could happen would allow Trump to ease on past the 2018 mid-terms and sprint to 2020 and beyond. That’s why we have to stop raging and start engaging. That’s why we have to stop laughing at Trump and start taking his policies seriously.

The sooner we do these things, the sooner we can put Trumplandia behind us and get to work making America great again, the greatest it had before January 20, 2017.

Complicit: Jesus, Jared & Ivanka Can Suck It

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

The fact that the Trump Administration announced that it’s pulling out of the Paris Accord is a death blow to the notion that Ivanka and Jared will be some sort of moderating or mitigating influence on this dumpster fire of a would-be autocracy.

In hindsight, it was all very naive of us to think that just because the couple was apparently, well, sane and urban that they could single-handedly prevent their racist, bigoted, misogynist, nativist relative from swerving the greatest nation in the world into a geopolitical ditch.

I have to admit that I had hope. I had hope that, for no other reason, a woman as smart and attractive as Ivanka wouldn’t allow her dear old dad monumentally fuck things up. And yet today’s announcement lays waste to any hope that that might be the case.

We officially have our answer. Either Ivanka and Jared are completely complicit in the worst aspects of Trumplandia, or they have zero real power. Neither one of these possibilities put the couple in a good light. If they’re complicit, then we have to see them as a part of the problem. If they’re powerless, then we can sit around hoping they will prevent, well, prevent events like pulling out of the Paris Accord from happening.

This tweet doesn’t really make me feel any better.

If that tweet is accurate, then I guess we have our answer: they’re complicit. When the history books of this time are written, hopefully this mystery of how it is that people like Ivanka and Jared could allow themselves to be sucked into the black void of Trumplandia. How did this happen?

What is even more of a struggle to understand is how in Trumplandia a Jewish holiday can be so significant to policy making…and yet Donald Trump is best buds with an avowed anti-Semite like Steve Bannon. It is a struggle for me to grapple with this paradox. It seems as though in the world of Trumplandia you really can have it both ways.

Your daughter can be Jewish and you can associate closely with anti-Semites. That is one of the many ways Trumplandia is ideologically perplexing and slippery. It is easy for Trumplandia apologists to say both things that I just suggested can’t be true. And, yet, it is self evident that they are, in fact, true.

If all of this means anything, it’s that there will be no secret saviors in the Trumplandia Era. Our only hope is to engage, to organize, to fight and to have hope that despite everything, despite the obstacles, that the moral arc of history does, in fact, bend towards justice.

If we assume that anything else is the case, then we’re deluding ourselves. We have to fight the good fight. We have to, on an individual level do what we can to make sure that in 2018 we flip Congress. There are no assurances this will happen, but we have to have hope. We have to.

Don’t Rage, Engage: Who Are The People Of Trumplandia?

By Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

As I have mentioned before, I am looking for to help me write this blog.I have very low expectations for various reasons and at this point, I don’t even know how much longer I will find the energy to continue such a seemingly meaningless exercise.

But this blog still a little bit fun despite virtually no one reading it, and I posted to Craig’s List recently, hoping to find someone willing to write for free while I grew the product. Well, all I can say is apparently only Trump supporters are willing to write for free.

Everyone who has answered my call for writers have in very eager, earnest ways explained that they’re only interested in attacking, well, people like me. I feel like shooting off an email telling them, “You’re everything wrong with America right now,” but that wouldn’t be cool and would only make things worse.

So, I am quiet.

But it does make me a little bit uneasy. It reminds me that just because all the people I follow on Twitter agree with me, doesn’t mean there is any universal consensus about Donald Trump. In fact, it’s abundantly clear that Trumplandia is a live and well.

There continue to be a surprisingly large number of people who really support Trump to this day and they are eager to say so. People like me got burned during the 2016 campaign cycle by bots and paid trolls, so we have come to assume that anyone who disagrees with us is one of those two options.

Yet, obviously, that is not the case. Obviously, there are, in fact, actual live human beings who continue to support Trump despite everything. Despite all the cold hard facts that would seemingly make it impossible for any right minded person to continue to support Trump, there are, in fact, people who do.

This is the point where I scratch my head and don’t know what to say. We have reached a level of polarization in the United States body politic, a level of tribal politics that I can’t even grasp the logic behind someone supporting Trump. It’s gotten to the point where I can’t empathize with a Trump supporter because I can’t grasp their world view in all its surreal glory.

Given that civil discourse in a liberal democracy requires that the center-Left and the center-Right be able to talk to each other at least to the extent necessary to come to some sort of synthesis, some sort of compromise, this is a dangerous realization. If a person like me — who strives to attain some sort of understanding of people I disagree with can’t understand the reasoning of people on the other end of the political spectrum, we’re all completely fucked.

And, really, that’s where Donald Trump gets his power. You can tell me all you want to about how mean liberals like me cause “Trump curious” people decide to throw their lot with Trump completely, but the people of Trumplandia have to, at some point, take responsibility for this problem as well. It would be a lot easier for me if Trumplandia people would, like, chill out and at least attempt to form an opinion based in fact, not some sort of guttural opposition to progress.

But it doesn’t seem like this is going to happen anytime soon. Trump isn’t going anywhere anytime soon and the sooner people like me understand that, the better. It’s going to be tough, though. People like me too easily assume Trump will quit or be impeached and convicted and all of this will go away like a bad nightmare.

That, sadly, isn’t going to happen. This is a nightmare that we can’t shake. I wish there was an easy answer to these problems that we face, these difference of opinions that divide The Resistance from Trumplandia, but that is just not going to happen anytime soon.

We’re going to have to find a way to meet the residents of Trumplandia halfway. Only by doing that will we be able to mitigate the tribal politics that give Trump his power. If we don’t crack this nut soon, we may wake up eight years from now with Trump doing a victory tour and someone even worse than Trump by his side, accepting the Republican nomination.

If that doesn’t clear the mind, I don’t know what will.

Shelton Bumgarner is the Editor and Publisher of The Trumplandia Report. He is always looking for new writers. He can’t pay, but you’ll get experience. He may be reached at migukin (at) gmail.com.