Month: March 2019

Apocalypse Maybe

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

I can’t sleep tonight and for some reason I have the Watergate Saturday Night Massacre on the brain. I have no inside information and I’m pretty much just feeling a bit uneasy for no reason.

Some of my uneasiness comes from how relatively quiet things are.

The only reason why I don’t think there is likely to be another Saturday Night Massacre is two fold — one, Trump has already done a slow-mo version of it and two, even he knows firing the Special Council would be a bridge too far, especially given that the House is now in Democratic control.

And, really, Trump is far more likely to pardon everyone he needs to pardon than fire Mueller. It would have made a lot more sense to fire Mueller months ago instead of waiting this late to do it.

While Trump is demonstrably stupid, he does have his political wiles and as such he’s not going anywhere unless some outside force changes the equation.

Strategically, Things May Be About To Get Very Messy For Democrats

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Between now and January 2021, the Resistance is going to face some pretty messy strategic decisions. If Trump survives until his second term — and I think he probably will unless No Deal Brexit causes the global economy to come to a screeching halt — then either he will talk about how he’s been “redeemed” or we’ll finally learn that his crimes against the Constitution are so egregious that he has to be impeached, if nothing else.

And, yet, I don’t know. There’s simply no easy answer.

No matter what Democrats in the House do, Trump is going to scream at the top of his lungs. Unless they act like Republicans, that is. Then he’ll be sweet as can be.

Movie Concept: ‘Pizza Guy’

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Given that Trump is establishing a dystopia — and Russia is working towards regulating their Internet — it seems like an interesting movie would be a movie where the only thing not regulated on the Internet is porn.

As such America regulates the Internet and in the near future, The Resistance starts producing all this porn and the “pizza guy” in the porn spouts off anti-government propaganda.

And away we go!

No Deal Brexit & The Ides Of Mueller

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

The interesting thing is we have a chronic problem of the Mueller Report being both about to be released and not about to be released. What is so interesting to me is all the chatter of it about to come out is coming from the intelligence community.

That members of the IC are so absolute in their belief that not only is the Mueller Report coming out soon, but that some “name brand” members of the Trump orbit will be indicted is odd, to say the least. I have no ready answer for what all that means.

I still think nothing that happens domestically is going to determined Trump’s fate. It’s going to be something macro, like No Deal Brexit, that will be the thing that decides what happens to Trump. As such, it won’t be anything Mueller reports that will bring Trump’s downfall, but rather the economic consequences of No Deal Brexit on the global economy.

But, again, I just don’t know what the endgame to all of this is. Nothing as of yet has occurred to change my view that Trump is a modern-day Reagan in the sense that 20 years from now he will be as revered by Republicans as Reagan was..until Trump came around.

We are so fucked.

Some Idle Thoughts

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Now that I’ve actually started writing the novel, here are some observations.

— There’s a reason why they say don’t worry about the first draft being perfect. No one other than yourself — hopefully — will read the first draft, anyway. The whole point of the first draft is to just get the story down.

— Not every scene in the first draft is going to go as well as you planned. Given that everyone thinks I suck for various reasons, I did a lot more development than maybe some people would have liked. As I keep saying, those people can suck it. They are toxic and I don’t want them in my life anymore.

— I still don’t know what happens in the 50 scenes of the first half of the second act. But I still have time to figure that out. (I hope.)

— It’s growing pretty obvious that to do this right, this is going to take a lot longer than I first imagined. So long, in fact, that I can’t simply put my life in neutral for months to do it. I’m going to have to suck it up and look for a new job soon. I don’t want to, but it’s inevitable.

I’m Nervous About The DPRK

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Donald Trump is a big old doofus and as it seems the DPRK may be preparing a new missile test, there’s a chance that they’ve finally realize this as well.

If they did start shooting rockets off and testing H-Bombs again, everything would change pretty quick. And this would be the backdrop to Trump going to war against the Legislative Branch. Leave it to Trump to cause a nuclear war between the United States and the DPRK through sheer incompetence, then turn around and use it as his personal excuse to go full dictator.

You know he would, too. If he managed to bungle his way into a shooting war with the DPRK and they managed to blow up, say LA or NYC or DC, he would likely declare martial law and hunker down for the rest of his life.

I have no easy answers on that one, folks.

But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe things aren’t quite as dire as I fear.

My Personal Solution To America’s Coming Existential Crisis

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

It seems to me that the United States is tearing itself apart and as such there’s only one logical solution — an economic union between newly independent Blue States and the rump United States.

This is how it would work out — Blue States would be able to leave the United peacefully, taking their huge economies with them. You might do this gradually over the course of about a decade. Meanwhile, as you’re doing that, you establish an EU type setup.

As such, Red States do what they want to do, which is become a totalitarian hellscape, while the Blue States would remain free to trade with Red States as needed.

Of course, the funny part about this is by the time you successfuly put this in place, Baby Boomers will be largely dead and America in general will be brown enough to make the whole situation moot.

Meh.

Watch Me Sing Karaoke

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

I sang some karaoke. Enjoy.

Why A Traditional Civil War In The United States Is Unlikely

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

While conservative nutjobs appear to be waiting with baited breath to let slip the dogs of civil war so they can finally have excuse to murder “libtards” in coldblooded rage, I suspect it’s not going to go down quite like that.

The reason I say this is simple: the American Military.

The thing people miss whenever they start stroking it over all the murder and mayhem a civil war will allow them to do, is the American Military is not only the lone institution most people respect, it’s also extremely apolitical. It sees itself as the guardian of the “American way” and I find it extremely doubtful that they would sit back and let the homeland descend into chaos. The thing about the first Civil War people forget is that the notion of “the United States” hadn’t even come into being yet. People often said “these United States.” As such, when the South left the Union, they took all their best generals with them.

This is unlikely to happen in the Second American Civil War.

What’s more likely to happen is the already tenuous — in real terms — connection between the civilian government and the military will completely evaporate and should the Federal government go completely nuts in the context of an impending civil war, it’s likely the military would step in, establish some sort of temporary junta, and then go back to minding its own world-domination business after a few months.

Also, all the Red State people who want to rise up and murder everyone who disagrees with them forget that it’s far more likely that Blue States would actually be the ones to leave the Union. And, as such, they would face an interesting conundrum — do they hate Blue States enough to say, “wayward sisters, part in peace,” or would they crave the economic power of the Blue States enough to kill the goose that laid the golden egg. All of this ignores the obvious likelihood of Purple States like Virginia which probably would devolve into bloody chaos as the population liberal portions of the state went at it with the rural MAGA parts.

But, in general, we’re fighting the last civil war, as it were. Yes, MAGA will likely have a window of opportunity to murder all the “libtards” on Twitter they hate so much, but in the end the military will likely step in now and again going forward (for the next 20 years) until the youngest of the Baby Boomers start to drop dead and the browning of America finally reaches a tipping point.

Of course, don’t get me started about how dystopian the Federal Judiciary is going to be for the next 40 years. I’m of the opinion that while conservatives will have a sold 20 years of making life hell for liberals, there might come a point when their macro gaming of the constitutional system might come back to bite them in the ass.

Or not.

We’re doomed.

This Is America — Mueller, MAGA and Trump As Elected Dictator

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Robert Mueller is a brilliant guy and as such he must know that there’s a good chance any report he sends to Attorney General Bill Barr may be extremely bowdlerize and otherwise hidden forever.

As such, it would make a lot of sense if soon — say Friday — he wrapped up his investigation by indicting a series of high profile, politically powerful people and then walking away. The report itself wouldn’t really matter that much because the crux of the report would be in who he indicted.

Now, let’s be honest — America is so politically divided right now for various reasons — and the economy is strong enough — that Trump is effectively above the law. And it’s likely he will be re-elected handily and we’ll be fighting over his “legacy” in 2024. So I wouldn’t get your hopes up that Trump is going anywhere.

In fact, let’s address that. A lot of Republicans say that all the investigations into Trump is simply warmed over sour grapes and we should simply leave Trump alone. “He won, he’s president, the economy is doing well, fuck off,” is essentially their line of reasoning.

There’s not a lot you can say about that. Though my response is that is only half the story. Trump has done a lot of impeachable things since he became president and as such if you can’t seen past your own partisanship, then there’s not much point debating anything, now is there.

With that in mind, I fear all we can hope for is FOX News simply being quiet for about 24 hours while they process whatever big name indictments Mueller may hand down. That’s it. Then after that 24 hours, they’ll take their cue from Trump’s twitter feed and after about a week of people being angry on Twitter the whole thing will fade and Trump will divide-and-conquer his way to a 2020 re-election.

But I like to play pretend, so let’s step away from the what will actually happen and talk about what won’t happen — Trump actually faces a real existential threat to his presidency.

This is where things get difficult to predict because we just don’t know how far Trump would be willing to go to defend himself. If he simply plays the greatest hits, then he’ll be impeached in the House and acquitted in the Senate. He’ll then turn around and say he’s been vindicated and there will be absolutely nothing anyone can do about it.

But let’s walk even farther away from what will really happen. Three things might change things in unexpected ways. One, if Mueller indicts some really big names, there’s a chance Trump will completely lose it and overplay his hand to such an extent that his support begins to wane a little bit. While the flipping out bit is possible, I just don’t see anything getting him below 37% of the electorate. The scary thing is, even if he does over play his hand with 60% of the electorate, there would be people who got off on that and people would start to die in the streets — or shit might get blown up — MAGA finally gets radicalized to such an extent that it has real bloodlust.

Meanwhile, there’s No Deal Brexit that likely to happen in a few weeks. If the impeachment process has finally begun to pick up steam in the States and suddenly the global economy comes to a grinding halt because of No Deal Brexit, that might push Trump’s support down to anti-Vaxxers, mouth breathing gunnuts and flat-earthers. But, like I said, even then if MAGA has gotten radicalized enough, the violence they inflict might be enough that there is never the political willpower to get rid of Trump, even if his actual poll numbers are in the 20% range.

The last thing I might speculate could pose an existential threat to Trump’s administration is there might come a point either sometime next year or sometime in Trump’s second term, when things get so absolutely bad in real terms that the Republicans do some white knuckled political calculus in their soulless minds and do the PencePiviot.

In other words, they wouldn’t even blink and eye in their move to Pence, saying, “Shut up, libtard, I really voted for Pence in the first place.” But that’s only at about maybe 10% probability. The sequence of events that would lead the Senate to convict Trump should he ever be impeached in the House is so unlikely as to be nearly impossible. Trump’s not going anywhere and there will be a lot of talk in 2023 that MAGA should push for either Trump to ignore the Constitution and run for a 3rd term, or he should push for a change of the Constitution so he can run. The only thing that might reduce that momentum is Trump picked some young, passionate — and competent! — ideological MAGA firebrand as his chosen successor. So, in that sense, we would look back at Trump as simply the bridge between the democratic America of the past and the “managed democracy” of the present and future.

Lastly, let’s play pretend even more. There’s only about a 1% chance Trump will not be a two term president in my opinion. I say this because Trump is an avatar for some pretty massive structural problems in American political life. But let’s say for the sake of argument that the asteroid strikes Planet Trump, then what? I would expect Trump to tweet all day in an extremely passive-agressive manner, to rally MAGA to the White House to physically protect him and for there to be an actual armed, deadly battle on the White House lawn as we figure out how to get Trump physically out of the Oval Office. It would be the most tramatic event in American history since 9/11.

Like I keep saying, however, Trump’s not going anywhere. He’s an elected dictator and things are probably only going to get worse, not better. I have no hope. We’re in a dystopia. This isn’t really a matter of hope as it is simply an observation — no one can predict the future and the deadhand of history always has a few tricks up her sleeve.

America 1776-2019.

RIP.