by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls
It is growing apparent from the chatter in the extreme Right’s echo chamber that there is one reason and one reason only why they want to know the identity of “Orange Crush.” Once they know who the whistleblower is, they use the messaging tools they feel were used on Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearings.
They don’t want to talk about anything the cold hard, collaborated facts that are an existential threat to Trump’s presidency — they want to talk about anything Orange Crush has ever done wrong in their entire life. Because a majority of Republican Senators agree with Kavanaugh’s actual judicial policies, the fact that the nomination was in trouble because of something that happens when Kavanaugh was a young man has led many Right wing commentators to wash their hands of liberal democracy altogether.
So, in the eyes of MAGA, the moment they know who Orange Crush is, they have a strategic messaging roadmap — you scream at the top of your lungs that Orange Crush smoked pot at a college party on Twitter instead of addressing what they proved to be correct about Trump. This is something similar to the “but her emails” line of argument.
There’s really only one major problem with this otherwise fool proof line of reasoning — the conventional wisdom is beginning to form that Orange Crush is a patriot. Every day the Republican Cult lacks a strategic response to what’s going on is another day closer to this actually, in fact, being an existential threat to not just the Trump Administration, but the Republican Party itself.
They could still very well pull it off. I know a decent amount about American presidential history and if the facts that we know hold up, what Orange Crush exposed would be, in fact, the biggest political scandal in American history. In fact, the only scandal I can compare it to is the circumstances surrounding the founding of the Anti-Masonic Party. As I understand it, that party was founded because the Masons used their power in New England to get a Mason off for murder.
The TrumpUkraine scandal takes that quantum leap forward in gravity. It’s not a problem of a secret society in New England overreaching, it’s that the leader of the country, a duly elected president of the United States would go to a foreign power to influence an election. What makes this even worse, is he did it 24 hours after the “bad optics” of Bob Mueller gave him a political pardon. And what’s even WORSE, is he is inching towards getting Orange Crush murdered because of a “joke.”
In the end, this may very well be The Stand of American History. The lines between Good and Evil will be clearly drawn. And, I hate to break it to you, the good guys don’t always win. Just ask he Jews of Europe in September 1939. Or the French Third Republic in 1940. Or the people of Eastern Europe after WWII. Or the people in the graves of Cambodia’s Killing Fields.
Either we’re careening towards darkness, or some sort of national absolution. If I knew which one, I would be working at the RAND Corporation, now giving a TED Talk and smelling my own farts.
Again, no one is going to save us but ourselves.
Shelton Bumgarner is writing his first novel. He may be reached at migukin (at) gmail (dot) com if you’re not insane.
