Category: Tsar-A-Largo

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

There are two absolutes in American politics right now.

One is Trump will never resign. The other is the Senate will never convict Trump.

So, really, any talk of impeaching Trump is moot. It would be little more than a slap on the wrist. Trump will see his inevitable aquittle as an exoneration and use it as the centerpiece of his re-election campaign.

Given that populist autocrats never lose, we are safe in assuming that Trump will “win” re-election somehow. He will use his second term to consolidate power. The United States will no-so-gradually (or quietly) drift into a Russian-style authoritarian “managed democracy” and that will be that.

But, for the sake of entertainment, let’s suppose somehow the impossible happens. Let’s suppose somehow miraculously Trump leaves office between now, and, say, the Feb-March timeframe.

We’re going to assume that Pence becomes president. Any talk that Pence is also involved in the current imbriglio, while likely true, simply at this point is too insane to speculate on.

The first issue is a pardon. Most likely, President Pence would made inane, general statements on this issue for the duration of the campaign. But, of course, he would pardon Trump at some point early in his first full term. His hope would be it would help “united” and “heal” the nation. But his real goal would be do to it so early that by the time he ran for re-election in 2024, it would be a long time ago and wouldn’t matter.

Another issue is the 2020 race. Pence is a much more conventional politician than Trump. Is only discernible weakness is he’s so fucking conservative that he is unlikely to get a lot of moderate swing voters. But he, much like Trump, wouldn’t really care about that. He just needs to tip the right swing states just enough to win their electoral votes. (Sorry California.)

One enormous issue that I can’t figure out is if our democratic norms would snap back into place or if things have been so fucked up that there’s no going back. Probably it would be some sort of muddled in between. That is until, of course, Tom Cotton becomes president with the same agenda as Trump only in a much more focus manner.

The Democratic 2020 field is not prepared to run against a President Pence. It would totally throw the entire thing for a loop. The absolute worst case scenario — and thus the most likely — is just about the time Democrats pick a challenger to Trump, Trump somehow leaves office.

Anyway, this is never going to happen. Never. NEVER. Trump is an elected dictator and the only question at this point is if he will ever leave office willingly, Constitution be damned.

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

We’ve come to the point where we have to admit what is obvious: Trump is never going to get impeached because Democrats don’t want to impeach him.

The reasons for this are extremely complex. So complex that I fear my writing is good not enough to convey the situation properly. But, in general, it boils down to a crisis of leadership and playing six dimensional chest in the middle of a gun fight.

First, Speaker Nancy Pelosi has framed the debate such that Democrats have a vested interest in Trump not being impeached and rather pinning the fate of the nation on Trump losing. This is the so-called “self impeachment” she keeps talking about. This has led to such foot dragging that we’re well past the point where we can impeach Trump in his first term. The 2020 election cycle has begun. Neither the time nor the political will exists to do something that is little more that a super censure at this point. In the eyes of House Democratic Leadership, it’s bad politics to send articles of impeachment to the Senate where they will promptly die.

Second, there’s the issue of the Democrats thinking we’re still in a normal liberal democracy. They are completely oblivious to the fact that MAGA is a cult. It’s logic is recursive. MAGA’s whole point is destroying liberal democracy in the United States and installing a Russian-style autocratic “managed Democracy” here. So, when Democrats somehow come to believe that their best case scenario is they don’t impeach Trump and he loses, well, Huston, we have a problem. This makes some massive political assumptions that simply aren’t true. House Democrats believe that if they impeach Trump and he loses he will become a political martyr that will hurt them politically long-term.

This completely ignores that MAGA is a lost cause. In the unlikely event that Trump loses — impeached or not — they are going to pull something, anything out of their ass to explain it away. Trump is an avatar for systemic, existential problems in the American political system. And, in a sense, Trump is more proof that the water is boiling and the frog is dead than he is anything else. If one of your major parties doesn’t believe in democracy anymore, then it’s inevitable that they will make sure there’s no more democracy at every turn.

If you accept that MAGA is a lost cause, then impeachment is your only course of action. But it’s too late. If it happens at all, it will happen at some point in Trump’s second term. Or, more realistically, it will happen against a Democratic president after Trump leaves office (hopefully) in early 2025. Then dipshit Democrats will be shown — AGAIN — that Republicans have no shame and they are not dealing in good faith.

Republicans care about power. To them, power is the endgame. And, so, as such, within 20 years (less) something really big is going to happen. Either a civil war, or Republicans dissolve Blue State governments and replace them with military districts.

So while Nancy Pelosi is studying the tactical aspects of getting a few stray MAGA votes in swing districts, MAGA is burning the entire Republic to the ground. It’s not much of a fair fight. I used to have some hope that something would happen to Trump. That he might face some sort of political consequences. But no longer.

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

The America I grew up in is dead. The dystopia is here. I don’t know how long it will last, but if we’re lucky somewhere around 40 years. But it could be I’ll never know if and when it ends because I’ll be dead.

It’s over because no matter what happens with Trump, the forces in America society that caused Trump remain. And if it’s not Trump, it’ll be Don Jr., or Tom Cotton or someone equally authoritarian and nefarious. The chief reason why the dystopia is here is Democratic leadership did not take the rise if MAGA seriously. Though, in their defence, if Trump had not won in 2016, a MAGA-type person would have won in 2020 or 2024. It was simply a matter of time.

When one of a nation’s major political parties loses its mind, it’s inevitable that they will gain power at some point. And when they take power, they will never leave because they follow “new rules” that value power over everything else. Or, put another way, the intersection of power politics, absolute greed and Evangelical Christian obsession with bringing about the Second Coming produced a force of politics that only cared about obtaining — and keeping — power forever. Democrats are so busy worrying about their precious “agenda” and keeping moderates in their caucus happy that they’ll simply are not prepared to do what is necessary to defend American democratic traditions alive the 20 or 30 years necessary for the Browning of America to kick in.

So, really, the question is how quickly things go from simply norm destruction to actual changes in government. My guess is Trump is going to make a massive power grab at some point in the 2020 election cycle. If it goes wrong, there will be something of a revolt on the part of Blue States. He uses that as an excuse to abolish Blue State governments indefinitely. America will become a prison. The issue will become where all the creatives and information workers escape to.

Do they go to Canada or Europe? It won’t be thousands who flee, either. It could be millions. Until, of course, The Thousand Year Trump freaks over the brain drain and makes it impossible for the very people they hate so much to leave the country. Given human nature, of course, that won’t stop the United States from descending into something resembling modern day Venezuela. This will only hasen our collapse into authoritarianism. The camps for immigrants will simply become cames for anyone who crosses House Trump or its successor ruling family.

I used to think there was the possibility of some sort of happy endgame. I no longer do. At this point, I simply wonder if I die in a House Trump re-education came sooner or later. Will it be sometime in Trump’s second term or will it be closer to 20 years from now? Regardless, if Blue States try to leave the Union, House Trump will abolish their state governments. All those young hack parison judges that The Federalist Society has recommended to Trump will close ranks.

There’s a chance that freedom of speech will linger. But freedom of assembly definitely is done for at some point during Trump’s second term. There will be something akin to the failed coup in Turkey that Trump will use to purge the last vestiges of the “deep state.” Tyranny will descend upon the United States and we will be no different than the managed democracy of Russia. Remember, Putinism was originally a popular movement caused by divisions in Russian society. And to some extent is still is. The same with MAGA. MAGA doesn’t care about anything about absolute power. When a small — but wealthy and powerful — minority of your electorate no longer believes in the benefits of democracy, then there’s nothing you can do.

I knew the America I loved was over when I realized we have to fight so hard on a daily basis to simply have a functioning civil society. Darkness has fallen on the land. Democrats have failed us.

All I can do to vent my frustration over all of this is write a novel. That’s all I got. It distracts me from the political hellscape engulfing the country I love.

The end.