Month: May 2018

This Is America

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

It was inevitable, given the ebb and flow of American political history that someone like Trump would become president. Trump just has put his own idiosyncratic spin on things. It’s not like if Hillary Clinton had won that we’d be in much better shape, given that the entire Right is based on a hysterical belief that it’s being oppressed.

I have said for two years that Trump is an existential threat to America and it definitely seems as though he’s getting worse. He’s starting to figure out what being president means and he’s kind of a surreal, malevolent version of Bill Clinton at this point. Clinton, too, had a lot of chaos at first in his administration and then he figured out what he was doing.

The issue now is there anything that can stop him. What’s the end game. Does Trump signal the final lurch of the United States into it’s late imperial stage or he a blip. In other words, is Trump founding a new Trumplandia or is he a Caligula. All signs are he’s growing stronger by the day and we risk losing sight of what really make America great to begin with.

Things are growing more and more dark. I’m the product of a precocious child watching too much Cold War liberal TV news. That’s my frame of reference. Mid-80s TV news liberalism. That’s the America I know and love and I don’t know what happens next. It seems as though the volk has an almost endless ability to process Trump’s dumpster fire of an administration.

When the final history of the United States is written, Trump could be the moment when we finally succumbed to our worst instincts. I like to think the individual rises to the occasion and given the opportunity he or she will show their true colors. They say history is but the biography of great men (or women) for a reason.

What would Lincoln have been without the opportunity and crisis of the Civil War. I mean, hell, Grant was a listless drunk for about a decade before fate happened to tap him for greatness. So there’s still an opportunity for individual greatness in America. Trump hasn’t sapped that out of us quite yet.

But it’s going to get worse before it’s get better — much, much worse.

It’ll get worse because Trump has no shame and will never quit and the Vichy Republican Congress will never impeach him, no matter what he does. So, we’re stuck with Trump for the time being.

Only time will tell if we can save ourselves from ourselves.

V-Log: Idle Rambling About New York City

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Just idle rambling about New York City.

#FOTUS: All The President’s Hens

By Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Just call me Martha Mitchell.

She was nuts and she was telling the truth. They even named a syndrome after her.

Ok. Broidy was rich. Bechard was pregnant. End of story.

But explain that $1.6 million pay off to me. That’s just weird. That’s odd. Everything else you can rationalize out of existence. Everything else can be a figment of my deranged drunk mind. But that datapoint pops out. That’s an enormous sum for a babydaddy issue.

Trump paid Story Daniels $130,000 right before an election to shut up about one raw dog event. That story coming out could have cost him the election. He would be just a failed presidential candidate ranting on Twitter at this point if that story had come out. So you’re telling me that given all the connection to Trump that Broidy — a nobody in real terms — would pay out $1.6 million simply to get rid of a babydaddy issue.

I don’t believe. I just don’t believe it.

Give me proof that’s the going rate for a babydaddy situation in LA/NYC and I’ll walk away. I’ll be happy. That $1.6 million lie is out there, dancing naked.

Closure: A Tale Of Two Tales

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

When I was in college my algebra teacher gave us the cold, hard statistics — about 20% of would fail no matter what and would never pass college algebra. I scoffed at this notion and was determined to prove her wrong. Well, she was right and I wrong.

So, with that in mind, this evening I was at work and I thought I had everything figured out. I thought Trump, not Elliot Broidy, had to be Bechard’s babydaddy because of cold, hard logic. There was no way that Broidy would pay $1.6 million independent of Trump because of the connection of Keith Davidson and Michael Cohen. It seemed I had cracked the nut. I had figured out what no one else had managed to do.

For one, bright and shining moment, I was happy.

Unfortunately, I sent a few stray emails at this moment in time that in hindsight I probably shouldn’t have sent.

This is because the liberal fever dream broke and reality sank in.

Broidy’s rich and Bechard was pregnant.

That’s it. That’s the story. The rest was just noise.

The end.

Things Are Pretty Boring

By Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

I’m going to have to move on with my life. It’s pretty obvious that barring something dramatic and unexpected pretty soon, that we’ll never get a proper public explanation of what resides in the Big Black Void. That’s fine. If Broidy is the babydaddy I will be content. At least, I have to keep telling myself that.

I have to go to work this afternoon and so I’m going to be off the grid for a few hours. I’ve been so disappointed over the last few years that I’m pretty copacetic about all of this now. Really, as I have mentioned before, it’s not so much proving that it’s Trump who’s the babydaddy as it is giving me a datapoint that proves Bechard and Broidy were lovers or at least romantically attached. But I’m a nobody without any resources that would be expecting way too much.

And the argument could be made that what’s going on is Keith Davidson really is the go-to guy for women looking for representation in an NDA and the Trump connection is more about Davidson knowing Cohen than it is Bechard knowing Trump. That doesn’t properly explain the complete silence from people who are not prevented by the NDA from throwing up their hands and saying, “Look, you shithead, here’s proof!”

So, that’s all that’s going on right now. I guess this is the end. I’m going to probably keep writing about this off an on for a few more days for no other reason than residual cognitive dissidence. But I think tomorrow I’m going to starting thinking serious again about the novel I want to write and I’m definitely going to start actively looking for a new job. I have to. I absolutely have to.

#FOTUS: Slow Burn

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

I have come up with a lot of dumb ideas over the last six years since I came back from South Korea the last time. So many that the #FOTUS Theory has, to date, followed the same script. I come up with a crazy idea, obsess over it for about a week until finally either someone yells at me for being wrong or I get bored and move on.

I’ve not reached the point where I’m prepared to say this time it’s different because of basic confirmation basis and how much being right has the potential to change my life on a pretty basic level. I’ve really put myself out there beyond what in the moment any person would rightfully feel you could go and if it was proved by a reputable news organization that I had been prescient then, well, there you go.

But if this is just another dumb idea there are at least a few pings from the big black void that are enough for me to take notice. If the dragon of #FOTUS being true is sleeping out there in the big black void, I’m at least hearing an echo of it snoring on its nest of gold.

Wow, what an extended metaphor.

I used to have cognitive dissidence about the #FOTUS theory. Now I have closure. I know nothing I do is going to finally answer the question in any official way. The theory that Peter K. Stris knows it’s Broidy and his legal and media strategy is to lay low until this blows over makes total sense. It’s viable logically to such an extent that I’m prepared to stop talking about the entirely — at least publicly — and start looking for a job and go back to being an anonymous failed drunk ranting reporter.

And yet.

I feel as though my subconscious mind has decided that having accessed the information that it feels the only logical explanation is that Trump is the babydaddy and everything else is result of not properly putting the pieces together or active disinformation from people who at least in the short-term have every reason to make me believe this is an open and shut case.

During the course of a day I bounce back and forth on it being Broidy or Trump about 100 times. If it is Trump, Trump and Cohen were either stupid, brazen or panicked at the time they thought up this cover story. I would even go so far as to say Bechard and Broidy knew each other enough that when TrumpCohen was looking around for fall guys he was prefect. I mean, if Broidy is the fall guy, why him of all people? Why pick Broidy unless from their point of view there was a logic to it.

But again, for the time being it’s Broidy. My heart screams that its Trump, but for now, I have closure. It’s Broidy and I just need to move on with my life. I need to accept that it was Broidy and that nothing I do is going to determined the solution of this mystery one way or another.

Idle Mulling of John Lennon & Trump

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

I sometimes find myself thinking about how John Lennon would have reacted to Donald Trump. Would he have been on the front lines of The Resistance, or more darkly, would he have been a supporter for no other reason than he would be in his 70s now and maybe his more irascible qualities would have finally taken over his personality.

Despite all of his 1970s “househusband” views, John Lennon was something of a dick.

If you wanted to get really sadistic, you could even say Lennon might have gone into British politics himself, but not as his “give peace a chance” self, but a more populist “power to the people” version. It would not take too much for one to believe the Lennon of 2018 would be a British version of Trump who wanted to give power to the people by ending the tyranny of the European Union.

And, in passing, one might note that rumor has it that Lennon was a secret Reagan supporter right before his death in 1980. Any belief that he would be a big old Leftist hippie in his 70s assumes he would still be with Yoko and would not have grown more conservative along with the rest of the Baby Boomers.

Of all The Beatles to turn his back on his youthful ideals, John Lennon seems to be it. He was the most political of The Beatles and as an iconoclast he could very well have surprised us all by turning into the UK’s very own Trump. And, unfortunately for the UK, they don’t have a written Constitution, so if you really wanted to dark, PM John Lennon could have become something of a populist tyrant.

But we’ll never know. Lennon’s legacy is safely escond in his martyrdom.

‘Old Europe’ — #Lyrics To A Pop Song

This song is about how Barbara Palvin was discovered in Budapest. I only write this because I’ve figured out a hook. Again, she just inspires me. She’s gorgeous and she deserves a song or two written about her, or at least the lyrics to them.

Old Europe
lyrics by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls
please give credit if you produce or perform

on the streets of Budapest
a beauty was discovered
her eyes blue shone like crystals
forged deep in the earth
only to burst forth with great force
she’s a new beauty from

old Europe
a stunner to the eye
brings men to their knees
seeking to please
hoping for a smile

old Europe
old Europe
we’re all a bit more alive
because of the beauty of
old Europe

whisked away to Asia
she grew up with style
divine as can be
what’s a man to do
but admire her from afar
think of as a star

old Europe
old Europe
we’re all a bit more alive
because of the beauty of
old Europe

[bridge]
she’s out of your grasp
never to arrive
she’s a part of the stars in the sky

when all our fears flee
it’ll be time for her to leave
missing your wish
that she might stay a bit