Category: Cold Civil War

Helter Skelter, 2018– From Charlie Mason to Donald Trump

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

As you may — or may not — recall, Charlie Manson was fond of The Beatles song Helter Skelter because he saw it as sort of the anthem of a coming race war in the United States. I would propose that you can make the case that there is a spiritual bridge from the Manson Murders to the Trump MAGA fuzzy collection of hateful ideas that now run the country.

Let’s take a look at what was going on in 1969. The whole point of the Manson Murders, as I understand it, is Manson thought if he murdered some people and somehow magically pinned it on African Americans he could start a race war. I would suggest that now 50 years later, we essentially have Donald Trump as the spiritual successor to Charlie Manson as president.

Trump is using the power of the bully pulpit to divide the United States in a way that’s not been seen since the Civil War. He really seems like he’s itching for a race war. And, you have to admit that while Trump may not be a psychopath like Manson, he sure damn well is a sociopath. the man is completely devoid of empathy.

Once you look at Trump and Manson critically, it definitely seems as though the dark vision of Manson saw 50 years ago is coming true under Trump’s watch. The extreme Right definitely seems one step away from itching for a race war, is all I say. They really want a white ethno-state replacing the “city on a hill” that I was told America was when I was growing up. Maybe Trump’s Manson-like worldview is watered down, but it’s definitely there.

Both Manson and Trump see as America as intrinsically white, the only difference is the means they use in an effort to divide the nation. Manson used brutal murders, while Trump uses Twitter. But their goes are identical — establish terror in the hearts of the white majority towards the goal of a dystopian white ethno-state. If I worked at The New Yorker or The New York Review Books, I would write about 3,000 words on this.

Alas, I’m just a loser nobody working on a scifi novel that provides me 200,000 words to do much the same if in an extremely diffused manner.

Shelton Bumgarner is a writer and photographer living in Richmond, Va. He is working on his first novel. He may be reached at migukin (at) gmail (dot) com.

‘Sisters’ — #Lyrics To A ‘Purposeful Pop’ Song

As you may know, at the beginning of the American Civil War, one of the slogans floating about was “wayward sisters part in peace.” Given all the drooling that Right Wing Nutjobs seem to be doing about a new civil war, these lyrics are about what’s going on right now, with the country seemingly tearing itself apart.

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

the news today is scary as can be
proud dudes knocking heads
telling me to run away
but I’m going to stand my ground
even if one day I wake up and hear
wayward sisters
part in peace

be sure to stay safe my friend
things could get hectic
talking heads want to yell

wayward sisters
part in peace
wayward sisters
part in peace
wayward sisters
part in peace

I’m not ready to give up
no matter how much hate is lobbed
we’re going to have to stand and fight
even when the chips are down

not afraid to speak my mind
boys wanna tell me to hush
wanna bum rush the stage
but they’ll end up in a cage

be sure to stay safe my friend
things could get hectic
talking heads want to yell

wayward sisters
part in peace
wayward sisters
part in peace
wayward sisters
part in peace

[bridge]
my siblings will stay I believe
won’t leave our union
it won’t get that bad
unless my thoughts deceive

be sure to stay safe my friend
things could get hectic
talking heads want to yell

wayward sisters
part in peace
wayward sisters
part in peace
wayward sisters
part in peace

The Need For Pop Art To Address The 2016 Election & Its Consequences

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

I am writing a scifi novel and as I do, it’s gradually becoming not only something a personal critique of the Trump Era, but also allegory of the 2016 presidential campaign. I have set the events of the story during a presidential campaign for no other reason than it seems what happened in 2016 is ripe for pop art to address in some manner.

Pop is how we process recent history. For me, at least, I find myself looking around as I work on this novel and seeing that what happened in 2016 is something so fucked up and dramatic that it’s perfect for the work of mass, pop art I hope to produce. I want to write a rip-roaring yarn that not only has action and adventure but is thought-provoking along the way. As I mature as a fiction writer — which, to be honest, is a much bigger process than I ever imagined going into this — I begin to understand why it’s so difficult to address something as culturally potent as the 2016 election directly.

Pop art has to deal in allegory because on a basic level because talking about something like the 2016 election directly is kind of like staring at the sun on a creative level. It takes time for passions to subside enough that you can entertain people talking about something as divisive as 2016’s presidential politics.

But as I get closer understanding what this novel is about, I realize I really want to use the conditions of the 2016 presidential campaign as a framing device of sorts. It’s the major subplot of the story is what I’m trying to say. I thought about making the entire novel an allegory, but I realized that’s not what this novel is about.

This novel is about what would happen if you forced a group of people to make some basic decisions when the stakes could not be higher. What would happen? The presidential election taking place is something influences the main plot, but it’s not the main point of the story. I have to say, however, that I find myself being really influenced by such a hodgepodge of other works of fiction as Stranger In A Strange Land, The Girl Who Played With Fire as well as the most recent Mission: Impossible.

Regardless, the novel I’m writing is really, really ambitious. I’m giving myself 200,000 words to work with because my favorite recent first novel, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is about that size. I really like the middle book in that series, The Girl Who Played With Fire. I wish I could come up with a character as special and unique as Lizbeth Salander, but she’s a one-in-a-generation creation. One thing I’m really interested in with this novel is representation. So, in that sense, this novel is kind of my personal globalist cuck equivalent of Alas Shrugged.

What I mean by that is just as Alas Shrugged really is an explanation of Objectivism, my novel aims to explain the moderate liberal worldview in a pop art manner that is easily to digest to the average mass market reader. I am no where near done with this novel — I’m just a month in to seriously developing at this point — but the process is a lot of fun and I can’t help by talk about whatever is going on in my life and right now what’s going on in my life is I’m writing a novel.

Anyway, no one is paying any attention to me. I’ll be pleased if I can get one person I don’t know personally to read this book I’m writing and demand to know what happens next. If I happen to explain my personal worldview — and give people a thought-provoking beach read along the way — all the better.

Shelton Bumgarner is a writer and photographer living in Richmond, Va. He may be reached at migukin (at) gmail (dot) com.

‘Florida Man’ — #Lyrics To A Rock Song

Just screwing around.

Florida Man
lyrics by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls
please give credit if you produce or perform

you got a spirit all your own
dance to a different beat
strange things are you fate
Florida man

you can a van cover in hate
hope is your enemy I’m afraid
at this late date we your plan
Florida Man

we’re all waiting for your next feat
when are your plans going to be complete
blowing up the land with your rage
trying to make the big, small

don’t know how to combat your words
your actions are for the birds
when will you listen to reason
I know that’s not your scene
Florida Man
Florida Man
Florida Man

[bridge]
gonna leave the sunshine
going to colder climes
to get away from you, man
hope you don’t follow me

Florida Man
Florida Man
Florida Man
Florida Man
Florida Man
Florida Man

V-Log: Why I Think #Trump Will Serve A Full 8 Years As President

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Idle rambling about Trump’s political fate.

If There’s A ‘Blue Wave,’ Trump Will Claim It Was Chinese Hacking

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

There’s a very good chance that if there is some sort of Blue Wave — which I refuse to believe is going to happen until a Democratic House (at least) is sworn in in January — that Trump will actively attempt to put doubt in his follower’s minds as to its legitimacy.

One reason why I think there isn’t going to be a Blue Wave is Trump dangled this idea out there for a day then dropped it just as suddenly as he introduced it. That leads me to believe his internal polling is showing things are fine for Republicans since the SCOTUS problem and he has nothing to worry about.

The end game to challenging the legitimacy of any possible Blue Wave is should he be impeached, Trump can scream bloody murder about how Congress has no right to do anything to him because of Chinese hacking. What’s more, in the extremely unlikely event that Trump is not only impeached but convicted, he will give himself every reason to simply ignore the Senate’s conviction. Or he’ll rally the MAGA base to come defend him at the White House.

Though one thing I think we’re underestimating: simply because you impeach a president, doesn’t mean you convict him. And given what a wily politician Trump is, I have ever reason to believe he’s going to be more Reagan and less Nixon in the sense the center of gravity for the American political system is lurching to the Right in a big way and there’s no going back. It’s going to be 20 to 30 years before the “browning of America” slowly begins to wear away at the damage Nixon — > Reagan — > Trump have done to the United States over the last 50 years.

Trump & The ‘Petite Singularity’

by Shelton Bumgarner
@sheltbumgarner

I have struggled for some time to articulate the significance of technology in aiding and abetting the the rise of Trump. I thought maybe one might called it a “Creeping Singularity,” but Singularities, by definition, are not something that happen over time. But having said that, it definitely seems we’re feeling the influence of a “Petite Singularity,” if nothing else.

A series of long term technological trends are crashing into each other. Things like VR, AR, crypto, AI and automation are all going to come to a head probably within the next, say, 5 years. Of course, it’s something much more prosaic than that which has given rise to Trump — social media. But social media is definitely a precursor to the Petite Singularity. It’s a forerunner to a world that is likely to be transformed dramatically in ways we can barely begin to comprehend.

When all those low training, high wage jobs transportation jobs like semi truck driver vanish in the coming age of automation, that is likely to cause any number of significant political shifts that we can only barely begin to comprehend. One of the central issues of the day is while Trump is making a mockery of our political traditions, he’s pulling a huge fast one on us. He’s pretty much fucking ruining everything we hold dear while we’re running around struggling to understand how such an asshat as he is could be our “leader.”

And, honestly, there simply isn’t anything we can do. Trump is an avatar for some titanic, tectonic shifts in the American political system and he — or someone like him — was obviously inevitable. Really, his only saving grace at this point is he’s really old, really bad at his job and completely devoid of an ideology. As such, I am more worried about what happens when someone who doesn’t have those problems is president than I am Trump, no matter how completely horrible everything about him is.

But back to the Petite Singularity. It’s likely being the asshole demagogue that he is, Trump will exploit the social displacement of the Petite Singularity rather than see any political harm from it. I’m not feeling very optimistic at this point. Makes me want to leave the States as quickly as possible and never fucking come back.

Idle Rambling About Kavanaugh & Usenet

by Shelton Bumgarner
@sheltbumgarner

Now, I did a quick search of Google’s Usenet archive and I didn’t find anything to indicate Brett Kavanaugh used Usenet while in college. So, that’s pretty conclusive evidence that my barely-a-hunch that he might have used it while he was in college didn’t pan out.

I guess what made what made that whole thing a least a little bit interesting was the fact that if you could find Kavanaugh Usenet posts from his college days, it would be a unique snapshot of his mentality during the period of time everyone is concerned about. Usenet was pretty free wheeling at that moment in its history and the conditions, at least, are there for us to get some sense of his drinking and other behavior.

But, like I said, doesn’t look that my hunch paid off. The only way I could possibly see it panning out would be if you were with a major news organization and you could talk to Google directly about its archive and see if maybe they could find any archive evidence from Yale specific newsgroups. That might be something that might have a greater likelihood of panning out. But barring something pretty dramatic, this definitely seems like a dead end.

There’s just no there there.

But it definitely was an interesting idea for a moment or two. If you could have found Kavanaugh Usenet posts, that could have really changed the game. It would have been pretty dramatic.

V-Log: My Only Hope For The 2018 Mid-Terms Is Women Will Save Us

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Some thoughts.

Thinking Seriously About A Second American Civil War

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

I am not the first, and definitely will not be the last, to ponder what a possible Second American Civil War might look like. It seems pretty obvious that America is hurdling towards some sort of armed conflict for no other reason than much of the same mentality that existed in the 1850s exists today in the United States.

Really, all that blocks armed conflict at this point is that Democrats and The Resistance are still playing by the “old rules” of politics while the Republicans and MAGA are playing by the “new rules” of running slipshod over any and all opposition using white knuckled hard ball politics.

Once that changes, once both sides play chicken with the government in an absolute rage, then the entire system freezes up and we have the “politics through other means” that Mao mentioned. But what are some of the scenarios one might concoct about an actual modern Civil War in the United States?

Well, here’s the thing: Republicans have land mass, while Democrats have concentrated population. While Red States are contiguous and Blue States aren’t, the sheer concentration of people in Blue State areas will make any attempt to quell them should a war break out. I’m not entirely sure that outside of some “purple” states that there would even be any violence at all. If the two sides grow so polarized that they simply have nothing in common politically or culturally, there’s a good chance whomever is running the government when the actual split happens will do the whole “wayward sisters, part in peace” bit.

It definitely seems at this point that the trends are Blue States will leave the Union and work actively to align themselves with Canada. That definitely seems like one scenario. Again, I doubt seriously there will actually be violence if things get bad enough that individual states want to leave the union. This is where who happens to be in control of the government would have a lot to say about the outcome of these events.

If it’s a Democratic president and Republican states bold en mass, things will go a lot differently than if its reversed. Really, it could all be avoided if we had, like, effective leadership in the first place but that’s not going to happen. It definitely feels as though the United States is careening towards some sort of division on the state level, the exact nature of which is still very much in the air.