by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls
Occasionally, I have brief flashes in my mind of a post-Trump Era that doesn’t involve America devolving into Trumplandia. For a brief second, I see America in which House Trump is no longer ascendant. Maybe Tucker Carlson or Tom Cotton may be waiting in the wings to fuck everything up again, but for a moment, at least, America isn’t run by a lawless tyrant.
I doubt this situation would last very long, but for a few months, at least, maybe America might right its ship of state. The thing is, if this were to actually happen, we would look back on the Trump Era in awe. The whole thing is such a catrastrophic culsterfuck that it’s difficult to comprehend that it really did, in fact happen.
There are reasons why this repsite would likely be counted in days or weeks, not even months. The shock of House Trump losing power in some spectator fashion would strike the country totally unprepared. If the mythical Pence Pivot actually did happen the tectonic forces that would be unleashed would be awe inspiring. What’s a personality cult without its personality ? Trump is likely to push positions on both sides as he goes down to some really astonishing extremes. So much so that a lot of pretty prominent MAGA talking heads might have overnight conversions to politics a little less crackpot. If it happened, it would be probably the most astonishing political event of my lifetime. You don’t live a political lie so publically for so long without there being consequences with the normal world snaps back into place.
If you really wanted to drop acid, if somehow even Pence left office abruptly for political reasons, President Nancy Pelosi would have her hands full. Though it would probably make everyone pop a gasket, ideally she would pardon Trump and Pence and vow not to run for the nomination in 2020.
But the idea that not only both Trump and Pence would be pushed out before the 2020 election is, at this point, so completely ridiculous given available datapoints that it’s comical. The Republican field would probably be as big as the Democrat field is right now. Of course the biggest fascist would win and we’d have to fight tooth and nail to prevent Trump from happening all over again in 2020.
In all honesty, I refuse to get my hopes up. The DNI will testify on Thursday, we’ll have a repeat of Mueller’s testimony and darkness will gradually fall on the nation I love so much.
