Let me be absolutely clear — I have only the highest respect for the Marines and Sec. James Mattis. At the same time, on a political level, Mattis is a coward.
The only person I can compare him to in this political war we find ourselves in is George McClellan. McClellan found himself on the wrong side of political history and he paid dearly for it. So spare me your indignation over me being shocked that Mattis continues to be mum about Trump’s attack on the Republic.
If Mattis joins William McRaven in addressing how bad Trump is, then I take back everything I just said. But, for the time being, Mattis is a political coward. He may be the best general since Patton on the battlefield, but he is not showing much vallor on the field of politics. And it would be so easy for him to fix this situation. Go on TV and simply tell what is self-evident. He would instantly be a civilian political hero.
Again, I’m just a global cuck. What do I know. I think I’ve made myself clear about exactly what I’m trying to say. The time for silence is over Mad Dog. The people need to hear from you.
Let me be clear — I’m no big fan of Nancy Pelosi. Even for me, she’s a bit too “woke” for modern American retail politics. But she is a leader and she does have what it takes to be a caretaker president simply so we can have a free-and-fair election in 2020.
If this was a normal Watergate-level scandal, then I would be content with President Pence. He’s conservative as hell, but for the sake of the country, simply pushing Trump out politically would be enough to right the ship of state at last. But, given that this is the biggest existential threat to the Republic since states started leaving the Union after Lincoln’s election, President Pence won’t cut it.
He’s too wrapped up in the criminal fascist conspiracy that is the current Trump Administration. Pence needs the old heave-ho too. I have no idea how this could possibly happen given that Pence has no shame, but sometimes it’s good to dream big politically. We need to set our sights on getting Pelosi into the White House as soon as possible using the framework that exists within the Constitution. In fact, I only even suggest this because it’s the only acceptable outcome if you take this clusterfuck seriously.
It’s too easy to imagine that Pence becomes president and lulz, Barr and Pompeo remain in office and we simply slide into a theocracy. I don’t know about you, but I’m one of those “secularist” Barr and Pompeo bemoan and I don’t particularly feel like finding myself in a weaponized ICE camp in some sort of surreal mixture of The Plot Against America and The Handmaid’s Tale. Pence’s vision of America is based on hypocrisy and the enslavement of women. If that’s not enough to actively work to politically shank him, I don’t know what is.
But, to be honest, the only way we get a President Pelosi is a Radical Resistance. We throw down the gauntlet. Pelosi takes up the moral mantle of the show president by pounding away at the entire corrupt, fascist Trump Administration on a daily basis. We’re in enough of a crisis that she needs to scare the shit out of people. Use inherent contempt to arrest Rudy. Lobby Obama to speak out. Maybe even get Jon Stewart to go on an impassioned rant on The Late Show.
Or, put another way, Pelosi needs to set the national agenda everyday. Trump and Pence are like characters from the movie Scream. They are attempting to tag-team the destruction of our Republic into some surreal dystopia.
I have my doubts, however, that Pelosi is up to it. She’s too conservative on a Constitutional level. Too reluctant to be political aggressive in any way beyond her status as a Constitutional officer. We’ll see, I guess. Stranger things have happened. Maybe she’ll at last rise to the occasion in the manner the nation needs her to.
I’ve seen some talk on Twitter about how Nancy Pelosi was “right” and huzzah, leave it to a woman to save the day. While I do believe she’s the right leader for the moment I call bullshit on any notion she right to be so extremely reluctant to give the pre-whistleblower impeachment cause any support.
By the time Trump got his political pardon when Chris Wallace bemoaned the “poor optics” of Mueller’s testimony to Congress in the summer, there was a very, very strong case for impeachment. Politically what was needed was Pelosi to rally the troops and lay out the case to the American public. No one had any idea — especially her — that Trump would take his “pardon” as a gimme to do the exact same thing all over again.
Even then, there were unprecedented obstacles to the whistleblower’s effort to get the authorities to look into the situation in the first place. So, in a sense, it all came down to Trump’s vainglorious behavior and dumb luck. Pelosi is not a mindreader and she’s not a clairvoyant. She could have even have had a very good read on Trump and STILL not be in the right to risk the fate of the entire country on her “hunch” that Trump would self-own. I just am not willing to give that to her. She was wrong, in that sense. At least in my opinion.
Or, put another way, I’m willing to give her supporters the facts that support their case. But my interpretation of those facts is dramatically different. That says more about my personal relationship to power than anything else. I just don’t believe in any form of blind faith. To say Pelosi “knew stuff” is the liberal version of MAGA cult blind-faith in Trump. She didn’t know jack shit.
She was very lucky –very, very lucky. But now that she’s won the historical lottery she is, in fact, just the leader we need to expunge Trump from our political system. Hopefully.
For me the notion of “Radical Resistance” is simply an update of the Radical Republicans of Reconstruction. House Democrats need to knock some heads. They need to do whatever they have to do put the fear of God (or the Constitution) into the heart of House Trump.
I would not do this willy-nilly, however. I would be methodical. I would have Nancy Pelosi on TV on a regular basis laying out the case for why Radical Resistance was an absolute must. I don’t know if she would want to adopt the moniker — Americans are spooked by “radicalism” — but the end result would be the same.
Whenever the case is made for a vote on a formal impeachment inquiry, the same day I would ram through a change of the rules so the House could deputize its Sergeant at Arms to start arresting people. I would start with Rudy and go from there. House Trump is no longer moored to any form of democratic norms, so fuck’em. Let’s rock.
House Democrats would simply have to be prepared for Trump to finally be transational in his bloodlust. If they use inherent contempt, he might very well tell his MAGA cult to take up arms against House Democrats and, well, kill them. Or, he would “joke” that something bad should happen to the “traitors” involved in an “unconstitutional coup.” The Right has already adopted his messaging, probably because they not-so-secretly hope that if people start to die the momentum for impeachment will come to a grinding halt. (I have my doubts.)
But I just don’t think House Democrats have it in them. Or, if they do, it will be too late. They need to radicalize…NOW. Like, TODAY. This is a political war and the sooner they start to see it as such, the better. The only thing keeping the Constitution in effect right now is Trump’s criminal incompetence at being a lawless tyrant. If we were dealing with President Kobach or President Cotton, we wouldn’t be having this discussion in the first place. There would be no window of opportunity.
I have no ready answer to any of this. I just know Nancy Pelosi should throw down the gauntlet. Congressional Democrats should shut down the government until Congressional Republicans stop with the pretence of caring about liberal democracy in the first place.
I know this is a crisis because I have no idea what the endgame of all of this is. All I know at this point is whatever the outcome, we’re in a new era. This is no ordinary scandal. This is the biggest Constitutional crisis since late 1860 after Lincoln was elected president and states started to leave the Union.
But let’s wargame from the badguy’s point of view. By doing so, maybe we can be ready for their strategies when they arrive.
Change The Narrative This Republican strategy would be to get access journalists at The New York Times to coo that the super-secret information found on Joseph Mifsud’s Blackberry proves, PROVES that the entire basis of the Mueller probe was a setup by the Deep State. Barr drops a slew of criminal referrals and Trump pardons half a dozen people in quick succession. We’re all left shell shock as The New York Times drops its interest in the sweeping corruption and criminality of the Trump Administration for fawning declarations that Trump has been vindicated. Doesn’t matter if any of it’s real. All that matters is Maggie Haberman keeps her status as “the Trump Whisperer.”
If there is any civil upheaval, Trump uses the Reconstruction model to dissolve Blue State governments. The ICE camp infrastructure is weaponized and I find myself rotting in a camp somewhere. It doesn’t even matter that it all turns out to be bullshit. The media narrative has changed and Trump wins.
Response: This is such a drastic — but highly likely — strategy by House Trump that the risks would be so extreme to their absolute need to maintain power and as such grift that really its implementation would likely be the absolute end of House Trump. But I guess House Trump could pull it off with their New York Times lackies. Republicans sold the Big Lie of WMD in Iraq, so I guess they could do the same with extra-Constitutional despotism. Probably they wouldn’t be quite so drastic as I fear. Something more incoherent and incompetent might occur. But House Trump definitely has a taste for blood right now. It will be interesting to see the reaction when people actually start dying.
Tribalism This would be the Republicans finally stop pretending that there is actually anything you could possibly say to get them to impeach and convict Trump. This is within the spectrum of, “Ok, well fucking convict him.” They simply don’t even try to give any type of cogent defense of Trump. Republicans simply look at you blankly and say, “So?” This seems like a very viable response on their part.
Response I would say this one is the press’ responsibility. Get Republicans on the record as simply not giving a shit. Eventually, maybe, they might begin to realize that 60% of the electorate thinks they’re a cult and hates their guts. But, lulz, the bad guys always win, right?
Editor’sNote: I am getting a minor trickle of interesting with this post, apparently from two types of people. One group is fucking MAGA shitheads who are spooging their pants at this worst case scenario. If that’s you — fuck you and eat shit. The other group seems to be people in the DC area who may — or may not — know something we don’t know about the upcoming Barr Report.
Also, two things have me questing this dire prediction. 1. Trump got briefed about it yesterday and was very angry for some reason. 2. Trump has been very quiet about it. If there was a lot of good news for him, he wouldn’t be able to contain himself — he would definitely be making it seem as though the deep state liberals who were after him were going to get their just desserts.
But it is still possible that this worst case scenario may happen. If you see that as something to look forward to, please, please, eat shit you fuckhead.
Remember, nothing matters in the modern political world but how optics and the media narrative work together. That’s it. Nothing else. So even though Mueller proved 11 instances of obstruction of justice, because Barr put out his “summary’ that sucked out all the air for impeachment that was that. And when Mueller did not give Chris Wallace the necessary “optics,” impeachment was dead.
And here we are a few months later and Trump is in deep trouble.
Yet, it appears as though Barr is lying in wait to drop a big old bomb that will change the narrative and save Trump. Here’s what is likely to happen — sometime very soon Barr will announced that he’s “proven” that the origin of the investigation into Trump was not the drunken bragging of doofus Papadopulos to the Australians, but that of the sooper-secret machinations Joseph Mifsud. Mifsud is some sort of spy or something. Trump believes that if he can “prove” this, then all his problems will evaporate. That’s why Barr and Pompeo have been bouncing around the globe looking for evidence to back this Infowars-level batshit conspiracy theory.
Everything will come to a screeching halt because instead of talking about the demonstrable evidence of impeachable offenses on Trump’s part, we’ll be talking about the criminal referrals that Barr has announced. We’ll also be talking about how Trump has abruptly pardoned Flynn, Manafort and a half dozen other people.
Chris Wallace will tut-tut everyone who thinks that Trump should be impeached, saying the optics are “horrible” and we should just move on. And the access journalists at The New York Times will nodded their heads in agreement.
Trump brazenly meddles in the 2020 election. If he has to dox or bribe individual Electors, he’ll do it. If he has to indict the Democratic nominee, he’ll do it.
Fuck MAGA. Fuck Trump. Fuck you if you support him.
We’re in a political war right now and I suggest we start to act like it. The sooner House Democrats take things to the next level by using their inherent contempt powers, the better. There are obviously some risks associated with doing this. Let’s look into them.
The biggest fear is Trump will flip out and drop an H-Bomb like weaponizing his Twitter feed even more than he already has. He might dox the whistleblower and “joke” that he should be “taught a lesson in 2nd Amendment Rights.” Lulz, right? That seems to be the biggest fear right now. And that is a very real possibility. But with any use of extreme force, there would likely be unexpected blowback. If you start ranting to your MAGA base about killing people, someone, somewhere might notice. Trump to date has cloaked his bloodlust in the guise of calling people “traitors.” But if Rudy is hold up in a jail somewhere, there’s a chance the man may finally snap and be far more direct.
Another fear is that this would shock the public and turn them off to impeachment altogether. That’s why I wouldn’t do something so drastic without prepping the way. I would have Nancy Pelosi get on TV and give a very solemn address explaining that things are so dire that a Congressional power not used in 100 years is an absolute necessity. I would also suggest you have some sort of uniform messaging on the part of the 2020 Democratic candidates. If Democrats can’t get their act together that much, then don’t bother.
But if they did manage to do this, I think seeing the surreal imagine of Rudy being tracked down and arrested by the House Sargent At Arms would be such amazing, memorable TV that it would likely lurch public opinion even more towards not only impeachment, but conviction. Of course, it would also harden the tribal divide we find ourselves in, but this is an existential crisis. You have to make decisions not based on fear, but on principle.
Anyway, I have my doubts. I continue to be reluctant that Trump will come anywhere near being convicted in the Senate. And, yet, there is the issue of Mad King Trump. It’s difficult for House Trump to found The Thousand Year Trump when its putative founder is bonkers. Trump’s very likely going to finally snap before the impeachment process is over and then the question becomes how much of the rest of the government — and maybe even world — he intends to take with them.
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