Tag: We Are So Fucked

#COVID19 Threat Assessment For March 11th: ‘It’s Not A Toomha’

Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I am feeling pretty good right now. Now that understand what’s going on happen — there’s going to be a sharp, brief spike in cases across the country before the situation stabilize — I’m not feeling as nervous. At this point, the only reason why I’m really concerned at all is what’s going on in Italy and Iran. China and South Korea have proven that with the proper measures, you can have a suddenly severe spike in cases that subsides to a manageable level rather abruptly. We’re probably going to get the shit scared out of us on an unprecedented level nationally, but we will live to fight another day.

At least, that’s what should happen.

The biggest threat to American security right now is not COVID19, but our own president’s reaction to it. He’s probably going to switch gears tonight and go full paranoid racist demagogue on the situation. He will see this pandemic as an opportunity to further consolidation power, not to bring the nation together.

Trump never loses on a political level because of his nature as an avatar for the MAGA base’s hatred of liberals, the browning of America and feminists. So, for the time being, Trump, is as always, his own worst enemy. In a sense, Trump may become a “War President” and, as such, he will have far more power than he might otherwise. If he really was the “very stable genius” that he and Maggie Haberman would have us believe, he would be in a very good position to dominate Joe Biden. Trump’s dream of losing the popular vote and winning the Electoral College in the fall would be a foregone conclusion.

But.

This is Trump we’re talking about, so he’s going to self-own. I’m not prepared to say his self-own will be existential. He’s just too lucky for that to be an issue. But the context of his ultimate, inevitable victory in the fall may be a bit more different than he would like. He’s such a malignant force in American politics that 60% of the electorate is going to be seething about House Trump’s surreal control of America going into his second term. How that might manifest itself is anyone’s guess.

My best guess is he gets impeached again at some point in his second term, but by that point, Don Jr. or Steve King will be his veep so, lulz.

Another option is Trump implodes or explodes on a mental level just as the crisis reaches its denouement and there’s a momentary pause in the rise of the Fourth Reich and the Thousand Year Trump. I don’t want that to happen. I really don’t. That would be among the absolute worst case scenarios out there — I mean, do we really want all 328 million of us to see a picture of Trump’s cock on our phones via the Presidential Alert System?

Or, to put it another way, the only way House Trump doesn’t endup on top because of this crisis is Trump himself. That’s it. Otherwise, no matter what, they will be far more powerful, far quicker than they might have been otherwise in two years.

But, sadly, there are some other things that could make what might otherwise be a short, scary event in our nation’s history turn into not The Little One, but, THE BIG ONE. Besides Trump’s generally fuckery, there is The Gray Plague and the WuFlop to worry about.

If the Gray Plague begins to strike in any big fashion, then that would be a preventable tragedy of such proportions that I don’t want to think about it all that much. It definitely would give one pause for thought. The WuFlop, too, would likely cause so much panic in the United States if a recorded instance of it showed up on TV that the nation might buckle for a few days in abject terror.

Or, put another way, there are simply too many wild card known unknowns for me to properly gauge what is going to happen in the next, say, 60 days. In general, we’re going to get the shit scared out of us a few times, but House Trump will simply grow stronger and more hateful in the end. But if history decides to wake up in a big way, we all –even me — may be shocked by how surreal, how weird things get in a rather abrupt, unpredictable fashion.

History, Please Stay Asleep

Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m enough of a student of history to know the conditions are there for the next, say, 60 days, to be some of the most surreal, jaw-dropping days in American history. I say this only because of what’s happening in Italy. Italy is imploding and it could very well be they’re us in about 10 days.

I refuse to articulate what I fear my happen because it would be bad taste. But I will note what has happened to Iran because of COVID19 — the entire power structure of the country is now wrapped up in the contagion. Maybe it’s because I like scenarios and to think up stories, but it definitely seems as though it’s possible we may want to slow our collective roll and what may — or may not — happen in American politics long term.

I have no inside information. I’m not a part of the Deep State. I just am well enough versed in the conditions of the pandemic bouncing around the planet right now to know that anything is possible. The Gray Plague. The WuFlop. If either one of those two things make a significant appearance the entire context of the 2020 campaign might not be at all what we think right now.

I don’t want to be right. I really don’t. But I do want to simply prepare myself for the possibility that the best laid plans of mice and men often go astray.

Possible Dangers Ahead #COVID19

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I can tell from the Webstats of this site that absolutely no one cares about anything I have to say on this matter, but I’m going to humor myself and layout the possible dangers ahead of us.

The key thing is — we’re probably in for about 60 days of exponential growth in COVID19 cases, then they will subside rather abruptly. That seems to be what has happened in China, Singapore and South Korea. It may linger and come back in the fall, but for the time being, this initial outbreak is on path to do something along the lines of what Trump rambled about. It may “magically” vanish sometime in May. Trump will use this as proof that he is, in fact, the Son of God and why even have an election?

Having said all that, let’s go through some of the risks of the next 60 days.

The Gray Plague (Rest Homes)
This will be a key element of how severe this particular outbreak of COVID19 is going to be. If it gets into the rest home system, what would otherwise be a painful, brief situation might turn into a real-life horror movie. There are 15,600 rest homes with 1.4 million residents. If what happened in Kirkland County is any indication of what is possible, then things might get really astonishly bad on that front at some point in the next 60 days.

The Gray Plague (Political)
This is probably the volatile danger we face. A lot of the levers of power in the United States are control by the statically elderly. If a large portion of the Federal government was culled by COVID19 in a very short amount of it in the next 60 days, it might throw us all for a loop in a rather historic fashion. Some pretty basic assumptions we are making about America’s political future over the next 18 months may be thrown into doubt. I’m not advocating, I’m just explicating. This is simply an unknown wildcard that could scramble things in some rather dramatic, unexpected and surreal ways. Or not. Who knows. I can’t predict the future. It’s just something to be aware of.

Violence (Racial)
We live in the dumbest timeline. When you have a deranged racist asshole as president, it’s not too difficult to assume that his moron MAGA followers may attack Asians for being “responsible” for COVID19 if things grow dire at some point over the coming 60 day crisis. It will be a national shame that will linger for decades and spawn a lot of hand wringing and political discourse. About 40 years from now, Congress will have to apologize at gun-point when AOC’s junta demands it after it overthrows President Barron Trump.

Violence (Political Mob)
The American political system is about as taunt as it could be. When Republicans gleefully — and conspicuously — embrace election help from Russian, then, well, lulz? If things get really bad, if only briefly, there could be some pretty surreal — and unprecedented — violence. I could see it go something like this — Trump goes bonkers and goes transactional on Twitter. His followers begin to attack celebrities and members of the press. I could see a mob of them rushing, say 30 Rock, and gutting it. Of course, the 60% of the electorate that is growing to hate House Trump would likely respond in kind and the offices of FOX News might meet a similar fate. Or something. There could be a brief, surreal “Terror” as the two sides piss each other off. It might even be The Little Terror, in the sense that while not that many people die, it’ll shock us that it happened at all.

Violence: (Governmental)
My home state of Virginia is a pretty much the sweet spot for some sort of brief, insane, attempt to overthrow the state government by moron Confederate gun nut cosplayers. I don’t know how exactly it would happen, but if there was, say a week or so when bonkers Trump was ranting about how much the Deep State was out to get him, I could see some sort of spontaneous attempt to overthrow the Virginia state government in Richmond. It would probably have a very John Brown at Harper’s Ferry vibe to it. But that’s really taking the what is possible and taking it to its logical extreme.

Economic
The fundamentals of the economy are fine. We’ll bounce back, probably pretty quick. But there’s a good chance that the economy will lock up and crash for the duration of the most severe part of the crisis. This would probably scare the shit out of the average person, especially since we have no leadership and what national leadership we have is racist and demagogic. I would go so far as to say that all is happening is a recession that may have already been brewing in the economy may happen a few months earlier than it might have otherwise have done. After the initial shock, the average might not even notice.

Wildcard: The WuFlop
If there are any major recorded instances of the WuFlop (or whatever you want to call it, I’m being racist, I just don’t know the scientific term yet), that might set off a major panic. If you see someone simply pass out out of the blue, that’s bad. But for them to go to next step and start to convulse uncontrollably, that’s even worse. That will be something of an eye raising event.

But, really, the issue is, while there are some major wildcards floating around, at this point, everything we assume will happen in the coming months will happen. Trump will lose the popular vote and win the Electoral College. He will consolidate power. He will weatherize the ICE Camps. There will be American Enabling Acts via a Constitutional Convention. The Thousand Year Trump will be established.

The Fortnight That Shook The World #COVID19

Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

“These are the times that try men’s souls,” as Thomas Paine said.

You could not write a more surreal, disturbing scenario as is about to begin. In large part, what we’re facing is a problem of perception. For the time being, we’re going to be in free fall until the psychological “re-calibration” that needs to take place is wrapped up. I am beginning to believe, however, that this is going to be a really bumpy two weeks on a global scale.

Things will stabilize after that, however. While there are a lot unknowns going forward, it’s possible that COVID19 really will begin to subside dramatically in April. Trump will crow that he was right all along and because of the personal fidelity of the MAGA base and his ratfucking of Joe Biden as part of the campaign, he will, again, cruise a popular vote loss and an Electoral College win. It may be just one vote, but he’s going to win.

But.

A lot can happen in two weeks. A whole lot. So, even if things stabilize sometime in April, the world may be so changed by that point that Trump may, at last, find a minor amount of “accountability” on his hands. He will still win the general election, of course, because, lulz, but the context will be a little bit different.

But.

If you really want to be a bit more adventitious in your scenario, you might two things might so shake up the whole world on a historic and political level in the next two weeks that when we finally catch our breath, we won’t recognize the world we now live in.

If the Gray Plague strikes, if even for a severe two weeks, that, in itself, is a wild card I can’t predict. If we count the dead in 10s of thousands, not hundreds, then, that’s kind of a bad PR situation for House Trump. Maybe. But MAGA is a death cult, so lulz.

But.

If the Gray Plague struck the right type of old person, then, that, too, might at least make House Trump a tiny bit more uncomfortable than it’s used to being. It’s not like their enables in and out of government are going to actually care that Trump’s historic, criminal mismanagement of all of this costs lives because, well, they’ve invested their entire life, entire identity into the Trump Train and, lulz.

But.

If things, even for about two weeks, grew extremely severe and not only did the Gray Plague strike, but there were multiple recorded instances of the WuFlop, then, and only then, might House Trump face an existential threat. It might be a little bit more difficult for Hugh Hewitt to defend Trump if 100,000 elderly people die in two weeks, but I’m sure he’ll try. Or he’ll just freak out and blame Asian people for and say they have to be put in the ICE camps for “national security” reasons. I’m not joking. That’s a very real possibility. The WuFlop, too, would likely highten the crisis to unprecedented levels. The bolts of our political and economic system might pop off. And even then, it would be, at most one election cycle. Give them four years and Don Jr. will, at last, wear the purple robes of the House Trump throne. So, we might have, about two years of a functioning government before the usual bullshit pops up again and the new Republican House impeaches the Democratic president out of spite.

But.

The last “but” is the darkest — Trump goes completely nuts at some point in the next two weeks. I have no idea what happens then. But I do believe Trump’s enablers would defend anything he did far, far, far longer than any of us might be willing to admit.

Lulz!

#COVID19 #Pandemic D-Day: March 9th

Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It is now the conventional wisdom of Twitter that today’s the day. Today will be the “event” that pushes us into the rolling crisis of the COVID19 pandemic. It’s the day that will be up there with Dec. 7th and Sept. 11.

The reason is, we finally have a metric that the average person who is otherwise preoccupied with raising their kids and paying their mortgage can understand: the economy .

Or, more specifically — the stock market.

And that’s why Trump is so obsessed with the stock market, it’s a metric HE can understand.

And, really, what people on Twitter are probably thinking is if the stockmarket crashes in a big way today, that will be the event that causes Trump to switch gears and go from ignoring the crisis to exploiting it in order to consolidate power.

The thing I missed in all my thinking about this eventuality is that very thing — I didn’t think about Trump’s natural inclination to scare the shit out of people to political advantage. So, in the end, it may be Trump himself who causes the most damage.

He’s going to be the one who scares people about Asian people by calling COVID19 “Wuhan virus.” It will be he who whips his followers into a frenzy such that they start murdering liberals — and maybe even staging coups at the state level.

But also, some of that talk is the basic acceptance that Trump is probably going to flip out today or sometime soon. He’s going to go transactional with his insanity out of fear of losing the 2020 election.

I am very alarmed at the prospect of Trump / MAGA switching gears today and blaming Asians (and liberals) for all of this. That people like Hugh Hewitt are already laying the groundwork for that is pretty astonishing. MAGA really is a death cult. They really are prepared to get us all killed in the service of the Dear Leader.

It’s rather shocking, once you realize how obvious it is. Yikes!

‘危機’ — #Pandemic Era America #COVID19

Let’s rock.
Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

While MAGA “thought leaders” like Hugh Hewitt are begging us to remember that COVID19 came from Wuhan, China, that’s not the reason why I put the Chinese in the title.

As I understand it, ‘危機’ are the characters for “danger” and “opportunity.” In other words, while the next, say, two weeks are going to suck, there is also some opportunity for those willing to take a risk and show some courage and leadership.

The first thing to do, of course, is to admit that there is, in fact a crisis. Once you do that, you can readjust your thinking accordingly. We’re probably going to have something of a “re-calibration” of society and the economy over the next two weeks.

But the fundamentals of the global economy are strong enough that once the re-calibration wraps up, things will bounce back. Though, I will note, American psychology is pretty unusual. It is so extremely alien to us for there to be a mass, rolling crisis like this, which is comparable to, say, an invasion, that some pretty long-standing habits and traditions may simply melt away.

Add to this how polarized America is and how House Trump is prepare to lie, cheat and steal to maintain power and that “danger” character may get something of a work out. In other words, this could be the thing that doesn’t give us Universal Health Care, but Gilead.

It could really be that bad.

The point is — this is going to be a massive tragedy. So massive that we will only give it value long after the fact out of desperation. Hopefully, maybe, we might come together after it begins. But more likely than not, there will be political violence on the part of MAGA fucktards who think it’s all some sort of weird Deep State conspiracy.

Or people like Hugh Hewitt will endup stirring up forces they might — just might live to regret. If fucking MAGA decides to start murdering Asian people out of a fear of “Wuhan flu,” then, well, we will know whose hands that blood will be on. They will whine that they aren’t responsible for other people’s actions, but history will record the truth.

But once we make it through this crisis, we may have something of a return to the 50s as everyone decides they want to settle down and have kids after getting the shit scared out of them for 18 months.

‘Acceptance’ #COVID19

Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I feel I’m about two weeks ahead of everyone else psychologically when it comes to this pandemic. As such, I’m feeling rather calm. I’ve reached acceptance.

How Twitter Liberals view me.

The key thing is I accept that absolutely no one is going to give me any credit for, in a sense, calling some major elements of this crisis. I’m just a no body. I am an aspiring novelist and the I’m very pleased with what I’ve managed to develop so far. I am rather worried that its context will be dramatically different, however. Though given how overtly political and anti-MAGA it is (in a very diffused, non-preachy manner), I guess if we manage to make it through alive, there might be an audience for a rumination on the Trump Era hiding under the guise of a thriller.

I’m going to assume that’s the case gong forward, anyway.

We do have some significant milestones ahead of us. Trump hasn’t gone bonkers yet. We haven’t had The Event that will “re-calibrate” our perception of the world for years, maybe decades, to come. That Event will either be the first conspicuous culling of the elderly associated with The Gray Plague and / or recorded instance of the WuFlop somewhere in the United States. Given how fucking racist MAGA is, I probably need to stop calling it “the Wuflop.” It has an actual scientific term, but I don’t know how to spell it — yet.

Anyway. The issue at this point is how bad, exactly, is it all going to get? I could get a lot worst than we imagine right now given the cold hard fact that there are about 15,000 rest homes in the United States with a total of 1.4 million residents. Each one of those rest homes not only could potentially be felled by COVID19, but also serve as something of a “signal amplification” site for the virus because it’s not like prison where not that many people go in and out. People go in and out of rest homes all the time — often from outside the community — and, as such, well, yikes!

It may get very dark within the next two weeks until our minds acclimate to what’s going on around us. We haven’t even gotten to the part where global bad actors decide to strike while the going’s good.

And still Trump won’t be held politically accountable.

#MAGA Is A Death Cult #COVID19

Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It has taken me a little while, but I’ve figured out why so many MAGA people are interested in COVID19. It’s not that they’re oblivious to the fact that Trump is completely fucking up the handling of this pandemic. They just don’t care. That’s a lulz.

What they’re more interested in is the idea that a pandemic will be the end of the global liberal order that has kept the peace for about 75 years. They’re looking forward to, what? I don’t know. A lot of elderly people dying unnecessarily? I thought angry old Baby Boomers were the core of MAGA. But, lulz. I guess the younger, more ignorant MAGA shitheads think that when the global order collapses and the poors are desperately searching for food while Peter Thiel snorts coke off a twink’s asshole that, what, their jobs will come back? That women will go back to being living gestation pods?

Some of it is that, by nature, many MAGA shithead fuckers are preppers who have been looking forward to the end of the world for some time — why else would they vote for the anti-Christ, I mean Donald Trump. They have been preparing for a post-apocalyptic hellscape for decades, so if Trump makes it closer to being a reality, all the better. All the more reason to support him, right, you fucking shithead KAG and MAGA fucks?

House Trump is going to lie and cheat as necessary in its craven need to consolidate power going forward. The Fourth Right is here. I just have to be sure not to die in an ICE Camp.

‘Accountability’ #COVID19

MAGA, 2020
Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

At the heart of MAGA is the idea that because they’re skart of women with sexual agency and the browning of America, Trump — as an avatar of their misogyny and racism — can pretty much rule as a tyrant because, lulz! Now, that ideology is being put to a test with the first real crisis Trump has experience that is not a self-own.

And it could not happen at a worst time. Not only has Trump already been impeached and acquitted, but we’re not well into the 2020 presidential campaign and so all things being equal, Trump could murder me live on Sean Hannity’s show ritual sacrifice style and, well, “let the people decide.” Add to this that generally exactly what I predicted would happen, is happening, the same political dynamic associated with global climate change is happening with COVID19 only with far more dire and immediate consequences is happening, well, we got a problem.

It’s very possible that after some thrashing about for the right strategy, House Trump will find just the right mixture of hate, racism, ignorance and “owning the libs” necessary to do exactly what he was going to do anyway — lose the popular vote and when the Electoral College. By one vote, if need be. In fact, as I keep ranting, Trump is fully prepared to dox, or threaten or bribe individual electors simply to get into office so he can fight another impeachment battle.

If you work on the assumption that the Russians are going to hack directly into our election computers, anyway, then, lulz. Even if we prove this happened, by the time we get around to fixing the problem it could mid-way into his second term. He could very well name Don Jr. his veep and, then, well, House Trump will have been founded once Trump is finally convicted in the Senate in, like, August 2023. Or he could use an actual American Nazi like Rep. Steve King as his veep to make the prospect of impeaching-and-convicting as nasty as fucking possible.

Or, put it another way — there is unlikely to be any accountability for Trump turning what could have been The Little One into THE BIG ONE. MAGA is a death cult. They would rather we all die that women have the right to choose or AOC have the political power she’s potentially going to grow into.

The Gray Plague Is Now A Very Real Possibility #Covid19 #CoronaVirus

How, indeed.
Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It is growing more and more apparent that something I’ve been ranting about for some time — The Gray Plague — is a very real possibility going forward. In fact, given how much of the levers of power are controlled by, well, old people, the way the general populace might wake up to the severity of the crisis we’re facing is the first wave of The Gray Plague.

I’m not advocating — it’s not like I’m rooting for this to happen, despite what Don Jr. might say — but we have to take this seriously. Should a number of older powerful people begin to drop dead, then, well, it’s not something we can just lulz. There will, in fact, be real-world consquences that change the lives of millions.

I will note, in passing that on a superficial level I’ve noticed a minor uptick in 80-year-old people dying. Jack Welch. James Lipton. A few others. It’s at least possible that a combination of family privacy and misdiagnosis is causing us to not to realize that The Gray Plague is ALREADY HERE. The death rate for people in their 80s is a brutal 15%.

Or, if you want to really think strictly from the metric of saving as many lives as possible, if the families of some of these 80s year old people would come out and say their loved one had died of COVID19, then, maybe, a lot more people would take this seriously and lives might be saved because of this. But that may be rather delusional this early in the process. It may take someone really powerful for that to happen, which, in itself, is rather tragic.

Anyway, maybe this is I’m just being hysterical as everyone keeps telling me. Trump tells me’s going to magically vanish in April and Little Big Man Mick Mulvaney said I should just “turn the TV off” if I’m worried. Right? Lulz.