There comes a point when you have to finally admit that the Trump is not a cause, but a symptom of deep-seated, existential problems with the United States’ political system. As such, the moment Trump’s acquitted by the Senate, the Republic has effectively fallen.
At that point, it’s simply a matter of how bad things get and for how long. This is when you have to take a deep breath and realize that there’s a real risk that MAGA will rapidly mutate and go full Nazi very, very soon. If The Kooch or Kris Kobach becomes Trump’s Veep, not Pence, this is all but assured. All Republicans have to do is get Trump past Election Day 2020 and they’re set for a generation, if not more.
They can weaponize ICE camps, round up everyone they don’t like and start the American Killing Fields. I wish this was hyperbole, but, alas, it’s not. It’ll happen in fits and starts, but it will happen. Once Trump — or his successor — starts ranting about the need for a Constitutional Convention to “pass a balanced budget amendment,” then, well, American Carnage is here for good.
There are any number of really dark scenarios you could pace out at that point. The literal end of the world. Millions dead. A Thousand Year Trump that lasts at least until global climate change shakes things up enough that the regime buckles.
I wrote all that to lay out what I believe will, in fact, happen, over the course of the next few years. But there’s one major unknown unknown — Trump’s mental state. It’s rather dark and tragic that in the short term, the only way that the Republic stands is not because we all come to our senses, but because Trump loses his so quickly — and manages to bring Pence down with him in a very quick series of events — that President Pelosi serves as a caretaker president simply for there to be a free and fair election in 2020. But that is so completely unknown — he could simply be a puddle in 20202 and still re-election — that I would not bet on it as saving us.
But it is, at least, something to think about. I just hope ICE lets me finish the novel I’m writing before they drag me out of my bed in the middle of the night.
So MAGA is waiting with baited breath for the Durham Investigation to save Der Fuhrer from being impeached. This is very possible. The impeachment is supposed to wrap up on Dec. 9th as I understand it. It could drop a big turd in the impeachment process and Trump will yet again survive to tyrant another day.
If you are looking forward to this, please eat shit. Fuck you. Rot in hell. I say this only because Trump is such a racist misogynist tyrant that if you support him you’re a piece of shit.
But the question is, of course, will the Durham Report do what MAGA expects it to do? Given how Trump was able to escape justice after the Mueller Report — only to turn around and do the same thing 24 hours after the “poor optics” of Mueller’s testimony to Congressional pardoned him — I’m inclined to think that our criminally incompetent “president” is likely to escape even being formally impeached.
It’s all very tragic. The only thing keeping us from going full autocratic plutocratic theocracy is, well, Trump’s a piss-poor president. I’m not saying he won’t somehow manage to pull this off in his second term, I’m just saying it may be The Kooch, or Kris Kobach or Tom Cotton that history ultimately decides finished the job.
As such, I’m patiently waiting for an ICE agent to track me down at some point in Trump’s second — or third — administration put me in a camp and murder me after torturing me for some time. I’m a man of peace, words and ideas, so all I can do is just work on my novel and brood. I feel a little like the Man in a High Castle in that respect. Whenever I get mad about how fucking insane Trump is on a criminal level, I use that as motivation to keep plugging along on the political thriller I’m writing.
There are a number of different possibilities. One is that the plot works. Another is it all just gets muddled and yet Trump is still at least impeached. And, lastly, it’s possible that 60% of the population realizes the whole thing is bullshit and it doesn’t work.
The key issue before us is the Republican Party has finally, officially come detached from any connection to liberal democracy. On an institutional level, it’s the Trump Party now. The Republican Party is so completely consumed by Trump’s ideology — or lack thereof — that they simply don’t care about anything other than defending Trump em masse. They have a short term goal, and that’s it: successfully get Trump acquitted in the Senate by any means necessary, even if it means destroying civil society in the process.
So all the tut-tuting of Republican logic by Blue Check Liberals on Twitter is wasted time. This is not about logic or facts, this is about white knuckled political tribalism — identity politics for angry white male Baby Boomers, if you will. Throw in plutocrats, the Religious Right and gun rights advocates and well, here we are.
All of their talk about “letting the people decide” is a bad faith argument to its core. Given what Trump’s accused of — bribery, extortion and political cheating on a strategic level in the upcoming 2020 election — they know the moment Trump’s acquitted he will pretty much go full Putin. He will pardon everyone he needs to pardon and he will instruct Barr to indict (criminal referrals) whomever needs to be indicted. He will, at last, be the authoritarian autocrat he’s always wanted to be. The only things stopping him will be his growing mental instability and his general criminal incompetency. That’s it. That’s why I think their next immediate goal will be to replace Pence with someone like Kris Kobach, or Tom Cotton or The Kooch. Someone who can take over for Trump in his second term should he turn into a mental puddle.
All signs are pointing to the bad guys winning. ICE will be weaponized and I will die in an ICE camp or maybe an American Killing Fields somewhere like upstate New York. So if you see this worst case scenario as your BEST case scenario, you can really just fuck off you piece of shit.
Having said all that, there are at least some known unknowns at this point. Republicans are so completely invested in Trump’s fate on an existential level that they have one of two high-risk endgames before them. Either they “win” and we become a Putin-style “managed democracy,” or they lose and the crisis grows even worse for everyone involved (in a sense.) A major political party can’t grow this radicalized so suddenly without a bolt popping of somewhere. But before we get to that point, let’s see what might stop Republicans from finally destroying the Republic.
Trump Loses His Mind This is a real wildcard. It’s a big deal because it’s a lingering issue that may pop up at any moment in a fashion that would throw the country into an unprecedented crisis. It could be today, it could be tomorrow, it could be July 2020 (if he’s still in office.) In real terms, it’s the most likely thing that would force him out of office politically anytime soon.
Major Anti-Impeachment Violence On The Part of MAGA I used to think this might happen. Now, not so much. But if it did happen, that would be one of those impossible-to-spin-but-they’ll-try-anyway things that would really ramp up the political pressure to end Trump’s presidency sooner rather than later.
His Taxes This is one of those things that is so important and yet may only happen after he’s acquitted so it’s a lulz.
Unexpected Testimony Don McGahn or John Bolton or one of the Russians involved in Rudy’s “drug deal” unexpectedly testifying in a timely fashion would definitely put a different spin on things going forward.
But the thing is — a growing number of people not in the Republican criminal cult are flabbergasted at their complete refusal to see what’s going on with Trump. Americans are not Russians. While as of right the moment I think Republicans have a 110% chance of burning the whole fucking country down and successfully protecting Der Fuhrer — and indirectly leading to my death in an ICE camp sometime no later than maybe 2023 — there is also a greater-than-zero-sum chance that some pretty shocking things might happen in the near term to at least make that now near-inevitability a bit more complicated.
What those “shocking things” may be, I simply have no idea. But the conditions are there for political events the likes of which we’ve only seen rarely in American history. I’m talking 9/11-levels of shock to our political system. And maybe more than one! The sad truth is no matter what happens in the next few months, the nation is in a new political era. It’s up to us if it’s a good or bad one.
Shelton Bumgarner is writing his first novel. He may be reached at migukin (at) gmail (dot) com.
It’s over. We lost. The bad guys won. Gradually, over the next few years, the political system of the United States and Russian will become identical. While Republicans may keep the House as something of a political pressure valve, even that may make them uncomfortable.
ICE will be weaponized and I’ll end up dead in a ditch. Once Trump is acquitted by the Senate, he will be a dictator. He will again be unbounded and he will destroy any chance of a free and fair election in 2020. It will happen in fits and starts, but it will happen.
The only thing that mitigates this clusterfuck for the time being is Trump is criminally incompetent. So, really, he just has to make it into his second term and Kris Kobach, or Tom Cotten, or whomever he picks to make sure American Carnage becomes the law of the land. He can turn into a mental puddle any time after Nov 2020 and, well, that’s that. The end. Fascism, darkness, descends upon America.
I don’t know what to tell you. I guess if you’re center-Left, leave the country if you can. If you don’t, you may be taking your own life in your hands.
I’m not feeling so great about the chances that Trump will be convicted in the Senate. I say this because Republican defenses for Trump right now are pretty much just, “You don’t like our politics, fuck you.” So, all the Twitter liberals you attempt to use any fact-based logic with fucking fucktwit Republicans are wasting their time. Republicans are such cult that the moment a Democrat ever happens to be president again, they will impeach him or her the moment they have the power to do so. They will want to prove the point and also take some of the sigma away from being impeached so Trump doesn’t look so bad.
Not that I think there will ever be another Democrat president the way things are going. The dystopia is here. The bad guys have won. For the autocrat, all that matters is remaining in power. Everything else is a lulz. So we could have Trump dead-to-rights (which we do) and he will be acquitted and turn around and do the exact same thing. He will grow even more brazen to such an extent that election 2020 will be American Brexit. The whole thing will be such a massive clusterfuck — that Trump will win in the end — that it will be pretty self-evident our democracy, our Republic, is dead.
Trump will push for a Constitutional Convention at some point in his second term and I will promptly be “vanished” by a weaponized ICE.
Now, having said all that, there are still a few issues that I simply don’t know how they will play out. Trump’s mental state is getting worse and Republicans are so bloodthirsty on a rhetorical level that some pretty tragic things may happen when someone takes them both seriously and literally. Those two issues might be the things that bring down Trump at some point.
And, really, if you are MAGA reading this because my worst case scenario is your best case scenario — you’re a piece of shit.
But I think while it is exciting and interesting to see the impeachment process take place, we have to prepare ourselves for the absolute worst. MAGA will start murdering people in cold blood soon enough. Those of us lucky to be able to leave the country when that starts to happen will do so.
If there’s any justice in this world, at some point very soon Marie Yovanovitch will be named Secretary of State. Given all the misogynistic criminal bullshit she’s had to go through, it would be a great way for her to cap off her long years of public service. But generally the world sucks and the badguys win, so I don’t see that happening.
But tomorrow (Friday) she’s supposed to testify in the impeachment proceedings. Apparently her closed-door testimony was rather emotional at times. As such, there’s a chance that NBC News will get the theatrics it feels are necessary for anyone to care. If the woman breaks down into tears a few times and Republicans are completely oblivious to it the optics of that will be less than optimal for House Trump. It will only get far, far worse for them when they rant on FOX News that we can’t take her as a credible witness because she was too emotional. THAT will go over well with white women in the exurbs of Philadelphia ages 35 to 42.
Yet, I think tomorrow may be something of a battle royale in more ways than one. Republicans probably want a few political wins going into the Sunday morning political shows and as such may pull of some stunts to explode the hearings. Nothing is off the table. They may finally get their craven wish to out the whistleblower. Anything is possible.
I keep saying I can’t predict the future and this is no different.
I just don’t know how the political fever that has gripped the nation is going to break. Either Trump escapes AGAIN, or we careen into something tragic and messy that at least heralds a new era.
A little background. I’m a political child of Watergate. Well into my teens, I felt the political echo of Watergate all around me. I watched a lot of mid-80s TV and there were an array of characters from Watergate who were all over the place on my screen. I did not know the context until much, much later. But now that I do, I realize that even under the absolute best of circumstance for the Republic a lot of very profitable political careers have already been made as part of the Trumplandia clusterfuck. Really, the only issue is context
Anyway, the point is, we’ve now reached the stage in the impeachment process where it might have suddenly dawned on House Trump that this is, in fact, an existential threat. They are going to bend every rule, break every law, say every lie they have to extricate themselves from a potential political death spiral. It’s at least possible they will win. In a sense, I would much rather we fight to win then lose than simply meekly allow the criminal fascists in the Republican Party to burn the Republic the ground in the name of “civility.”
My chief concern right now is the Russia investigation report about to be released by the Justice Department. Even the lengths they are going to spring this thing on us out of the blue without any leaks, it’s likely to be a very authoritarian document. It will be such a bullshit turd that its findings give Republicans something to rant about whenever the subject of impeachment comes up. The real unnerving part is what happens if that DOESN’T work. What if they win a news cycle or two but in the end the impeachment inquiry keeps on moving. It’s when what the two sides are talking about are so dramatically different that the entire political system is disconnected that there’s a real danger of something unprecedented in American political life since at least the end of Reconstruction– political violence.
That it hasn’t happened yet is really quite heartening. Republicans are so wrapped up in messaging the base, they have become completely unhinged. Some pretty mainstream figures are now laying the groundwork for some MAGA nutjob to hurt a lot of people. Republicans will — without missing a beat — pivot to how this is proof we have to stop the impeachment process because “people are getting hurt” and what Trump did wasn’t really that bad afterall, especially given what the Justice Department’s report on the Russia investigation said.
I still can’t pace out an endgame in my mind right now. It’s not obvious to me how this is going to end. A few more shoes have to drop for me to have a better sense of how likely I will meet an untimely demise in a weaponized ICE camp in Trump’s second term is. We’re definitely in the danger zone of such things for the next few weeks. One issue is that Justice Department review of the Russia probe. That will be a huge test. I generally think we’ll fail. Impeachment will be seen by Maggie Haberman and The Vogel as politically nonviable and it will peter out. Trump will crow that he was right all along and Barr will hand down bogus criminal referrals for people like John Brennan. And that, will be that.
But I can’t predict the future. A lot of things could blunt — or end — our near-term march towards authoritarianism. Trump could go nuts. Trump could go transactional with his Twitter offenses and there be a big backlash. Enough people might be enraged over what Trump did that they see through the bullshit of the Barr Report and the impeachment process zooms along.
Yet I’m very weary to be too optimistic. The press is so wrapped up in “being objective” in an era of asystematic political radicalization that they take the House Trump bait hook, line and sinker and darkness falls. At least I have a novel I’m writing. Maybe I’ll finish it before ICE drags me out of my bed in the middle of the night, never to be seen again.
The darkly comical thing about Republicans is they are so craven that they give the plot away in what they accuse their opposition of doing. One can often get a lot of insight into the Republican fascist mind in the crazy things they accuse Democrats of doing. If they have this or that bonkers thing at the forefront of their minds, then you get the sense that THEY are they ones who want to do that. It’s almost a dog whistle to the base. In a sense, they’re saying, “Don’t worry, fam, we got you.”
Anyway, it’s interesting how completely fucking obsessed Sen. Lindsey Graham is with outing the whistleblower long after much — if not all — of what was in the original complaint has been confirmed. Given that Republicans like Graham are so deeply bad faith in anything they say or do, every argument they are giving for why they so desperately want the whistleblower’s name to be common knowledge is total and complete bullshit.
The reason — they crave the opportunity to “kavanaugh” the whistleblower as one of several last-ditch efforts to prevent Trump from even being impeached. They want the entire country to look at everything the guy has done in his entire life instead of all the very public criming that Trump has done over last 40 odd years. They were impressed with how effective the character-based argument were against Kavanaugh and they want the opportunity to do it to the whisleblower to prove a political point. In their instance, they want to switch out their own losing fact argument for simply making everyone talk about the whistleblower’s equivalent of Squee, “boofing” and Beach Week.
That Republicans like Graham are essentially hanging all of their hopes on this strategy is rather bonkers, surreal and tragic. I’m not saying it won’t work. There’s a good chance it will. But there’s also a good chance that if they go all-in on destroying the whistleblower for daring to sound the alarm over the Dear Leader’s criminal activity, things may get out of control and, well, dun dun dun.
Graham and the rest of the Republican Trump sycophants won’t miss a beat, of course. Within 24 hours of the whatever Very Bad Thing happens because of their own overheated and overwrought political rhetoric they will have talking points written up for the MAGA sheep to graze on. They will include:
Democrats have to stop the impeachment process immediately, people are getting hurt.
House Democrats are at fault for starting the impeachment process and some of them should be charged for “involvement” in the incident.
Blah, blah, blah, let the people decide, blah, blah, blah
There might even be even more slinging of civil war talk at this point as, well.
The Dear Leader
The point is, Republicans are so absolutely devoted not to their party, but to Donald Trump on a personal level and Trump is nothing more than a deranged version of Being There’s Chauncey Gardner, they setting themselves up for having to defend the absolutely indefensible. They will gleefully do it because, lulz, democracy and human decency are for low-T betas, amiright?
How confident am I that this absolute worst case scenario may happen? Not very. But there is a greater-than-zero sum chance something along these lines may happen as Graham continues to bang the drum to out the whistleblower.
History doesn’t repeat, but it does rhyme. Shelton Bumgarner
by Shelton Bumgarner @bumgarls
Well, one thing’s for sure, no matter what the outcome of the impeachment process, the political hangover is going to be a bitch. MAGA Republicans were already a hysterical lynch mob before this all happened. The process of impeachment is turning them into fascist radicals completely devoid of decency and absolutely dedicated to destroying the Republic in the name of power and greed.
You know what I can compare it to? The old JMU urban legend about a group of friends sitting around drinking when someone confesses that they stole the personalized New York State licence tags off someone’s car. They, being from Virginia, think its a lulz. The person at the party who learns this, being from New York State is enraged because of how expensive the tags are. This leads to a huge fight.
The same with Republicans. Trump stole America’s personalized licence tags and Republicans want to lulz it. They see democracy as solely as a means to an end. Everyone else, meanwhile, is like, “Holy shit!” So, if what Republicans hope happens — Bill Barr successfully plays the part of Q, or whatever — doesn’t happen, they are likely to grow so worked up rhetorically that they damage themselves politically for a generation. Let me quickly qualify that statement — the Republican Party ain’t going no where. They’re bad faith political actors on an institutional level and they’re base is cool with that. They are so radicalized, so criminal, so fascist, that they honestly do think a fascist theocratic state would be an “improvement” over the Godless transgender one we now have (in their eyes.)
Macro, systemic issues caused Trump’s election and they’re only getting worse, not better. We have a solid 20-ish years before the youngest of the Baby Boomers begin to drop dead just as the Browning of America begins to kick in. Throw in, like, Florida vanishing into the sea, and there are some major things that are likely to cause Republicans political problems in the coming decades. But they’ve been aware of this since at least 1974. Trump just happens to be the moron at the right place and time to make their plot against American democracy a reality.
But let me be clear — the best case scenario for non-hysterical Americans is simply the context of this clusterfuck is a bit different. Ford BARELY lost the 1976 election after giving a full and complete pardon to Nixon. Barely. It was a razor thin defeat. So, it’s very possible that we could get rid of Trump politically and either Pence wins the presidency in his own right or some batshit insane racist fucktard like Tom Cotton, Kris Kobach, Don Jr or Tucker Carlson does the same thing in 2020.
I still think that in a surreal way, our best case scenario might be a president Ivanka Trump. She’s such a doofus that not only would the MAGA base be happy, but she’s probably so ill-equipped to be president that she wouldn’t be able to conspire with a foreign power to throw the election. She would effectively be a caretaker president who would take the blame if the economy went south, giving Democrats what they needed to win the presidency.
Remember, though, the clock would be ticking for any Democratic president sworn in on Jan. 20, 2020. They would have just over 2 years before Republicans would impeach them to make a political point. Republicans after Trump is somehow magically removed from office will be out for blood. They are going to lie in wait until they can strike and cause as much damage to a Democrat president as possible. Republicans have no shame. They will gleefully be huge hypocrites if it means they can bounce back into the White House in 2025.
But I’m getting way ahead of myself.
Even simply impeaching Trump at this point is still up in the air. It will be interesting to see how things play out.
The only reason why I rant against MAGA asshats on this blog these days is I get the sense from my Web traffic that a small portion of my microscopic audience comes from MAGA people spooging their pants at my dire worst case scenario pontification. There’s not much I can do but just tell them to fuck off and eat shit. You’re such a partisan that you actually want Trump to put people like me in an ICE Camp and murder me then, well, what more can I say but fuck of you piece of shit.
One thing I’ve seen up-close and personal by using Periscope over the years is there are some pretty fucking insane MAGA people. The vast majority of Periscope users seem to be MAGA dead-enders who should they see Trump murder me in cold blood would lulz it and say “at least they don’t have an Obama phone.” After the “poor optics” of Mueller’s testimony to Congress, these asshats gloated over Trump’s victory. That Trump would use this political victory to turn around and do the exact same thing within 24 hours apparently was lost on them.
The thing about many MAGA shitheads is they confuse a lack of political will with a lack of crimes on Trump’s part. So, what I fear will happen is at some point between now and Thanksgiving, a Barr Report will be released which somehow manages to implicate people like John Brennan in some sort of far-reaching conspiracy involving Ukraine, the Democrats and Crowstrike. These MAGA loyalists will cackle as Maggie Haberman or Chris Wallace say politically impeachment is dead in the water and, by the way, John Brennan, call your lawyer.
Given how dumb the conspiracy that Trump apparently believes actually is, what specifically the Barr Report will say is a struggle for me to imagine. But he’s going full speed ahead with it. The point is to so muddle the conversation about impeachment that we’re all debating the merits — or lack thereof — of the Barr Report and not all the very public criming Trump has done. So, really, Barr probably doesn’t have to do all that much. Any conversation that House Republicans are having about the bullshit findings of the Barr Report is a conversation they’re not having about Trump being criminally incompetent.
Or, more broadly, I think the issue for Twitter liberals is the Republican Party is SUCH a bad faith actor on an existential level that they are going to fight dirty. They are going to lie. They are going to cheat. They are going to get so wrapped up in their overwrought, overheated messaging of the MAGA base that they completely and totally lose sight that some idiot, somewhere will take their messaging seriously AND literally and someone who opposes House Trump is going to get hurt. I really, really, really, hope I’m wrong on this one. I want to beat House Trump on strictly a political level.
I honestly don’t know what’s going to happen at this point. There’s no ready endgame for impeachment. It could still go either way. Things have stabilized a little bit in the last few days, enough for me there may be some pretty big “HOLY SHIT” moments between now and the end of the year. What they might be, I have no idea.
But I am beginning to think Trump might not be as thrilled about being impeached by the House as Maggie Haberman would have me to believe in her soothing tweets she writes on this matter. I would go so far as to suggest that if, despite the Barr Report, Trump is still in danger of even being impeached, some pretty dark shit is going to happen because Republicans will suddenly realize what has always happened in the past is not going to happen this time.
Trump is going to, in fact, face some political consequences for being a moronic tyrant.
I just don’t know. I just don’t know how things are going to work out. Trump is apparently going to release another “transcript” on Tuesday (tomorrow) and that could be a series of FUD mindfucking on the part of House Trump to throw political roadblocks in the way of impeachment.
If Barr does fancy himself Q, then there will be two potential reactions. Either his bullshit works — again — or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t, then buckle up. House Trump is going to flip the fuck out in some pretty astonishing ways.
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