In normal times, Republicans would have a reasonable case to make that given how close we are to the 2020 election that we should “let the people decide” Trump’s fate.
Alas, we are not in normal times.
Can lose an election if it’s not free-and-fair.
Remember, the whole reason why Trump is in trouble is that 24 hours after he got an effective pardon due to the “bad optics” of Mueller’s testimony to Congress, he was on the phone with Ukraine looking for dirt on Biden. So, if we let Trump off so the “people” can decide, it may be a Russian person who makes the decision.
What’s more, this is another attempt to move the goalposts because if Trump wins the election on strictly Constitutional grounds — that is the actual humans who make up the Electoral College vote for him, no matter why — then they will say Trump won legally and why we even talking about this anymore.
Or, put another way, election meddling is obviously Trump’s thing. It’s his jam. Why give him a THIRD chance to fuck with an election? Why not let the people decide through their elected representatives as is stated in the Constitution?
Unless someone, somewhere, starts showing some courage, it looks like that’s exactly what is going to happen. Moscow Mitch blocks a trial in the Senate and Trump gets off so he can rig the 2020 election. Remember, Republicans no longer believe in liberal democracy and crave power for power’s sake.
If Trump turns the United States into a Russian-style “managed democracy” after the 2020 election, it’s a win for Republicans. And, really, the only potential flaw in this long-term strategy is Trump may go bonkers during the process that leads up to him having a 10 minute trial in the Senate.
I take Mitch McConnell’s threats to derail any attempt to have a impeachment trial in the Senate very, very, very seriously. He has proven himself to be an astonishingly destructive Constitutional force and all things being equal, he’s got about a 99% chance of coming out on top.
But for one thing….Donald Trump.
Now, it is imperative that we impeach and convict Trump as quickly as possible. As I’ve said for three years now, he’s an existential threat to the Republic. And, in a sense, both he and Moscow Mitch are more avatars for how fucked up things are in the States than they are any sort of evil on a personal level.
What I mean is, if it wasn’t them fucking up everything else, it would be someone else. The Republican Party on an institutional level no longer believes in liberal democracy and so fuck you. So, in a sense, if Trump survives, then the last vestiges of the Republic fall aside. We are simply a Russian-style managed democracy and that’s that. Republicans flip a switch on the existing ICE camp infrastructure and people like me conveniently “vanish.”
That’s got about a 99% chance of happening at this point, matter how much liberals may think we “finally got” Trump.
That sole percent is a powerful one, however. Trump is so bad at his job, so erratic and such a monumental self-own artist that there’s a 1% chance that by the time the issue of impeachment finally get to the Republicans, the possibility of bringing down Trump won’t be a liberal fever dream. It will be a force of history.
We’re likely to know one way another how things are going to sort out when Trump actually is formally impeached. If he finally cracks under the pressure then, well, oooooooh boy.
But don’t get your hopes up just yet. Sometimes, the bad guys win and you just have to figure out how you’re going to survive.
I don’t know what’s going on with the two major Anglophonic democracies right now, but someone needs to to the LHC on and off again or something. But let’s step away from the ginormous clusterfuck that is whatever it is that’s going on in the United States right now.
I dunno.
The limeys across the pond also have a crisis coming to a head. As I understand it the other blond fascist doofus in charge of an Anglophonic democracy is now challenging the Queen to fire him. He’s not so much challenging the Queen to fire him, he’s really threatening the very existence of the Monarchy itself. The moment she does it — and I think she will — she becomes exactly what she’s work so hard not to be: a political figure.
Once she’s a political figure, then Brexiters will want to get rid of her and Remainers will want to keep her. And, really, there’s one simply solution to all of this — abolish the Monarchy. I simply don’t know enough to give you any opinion that isn’t simply for entertainment value, but it seems the moment she does fire Boris, her fate is sealed.
It’s eerie that things seem to be careening to a solution on both sides of the Atlantic. It’s likely to happen by Halloween, too. If I hadn’t gone through three years of Trump, I would be naive enough to believe firing Johnson might be just the catharsis needed to balm the problems in Great Britain. More likely, the bolts are going to pop off. I don’t know, I just don’t know. It definitely seems as though the Brits are careening towards a solution, I just struggle to figure out what it is and exactly what it will look like.
At least in the States, we’re beginning to have some sense of the crisis going down a well-trod path. That Trump will panic enough to attempt to pin the blame on Rick Perry of all people is all anyone needs to know the state of things right now. I don’t know what’s going on, but there definitely does seem to be some sort of direction towards an endgame in both the States and the UK.
Trump was greeted today by a woman blowing a whistle. If enough of us follow her lead, we can save the United States from a Russian-style “managed democracy.”
Put your lips together and blow.
Whistles are an effective direction action form of protect because they’re non-violent, but annoying as hell. And, really, all you have to do is be anywhere near Moscow Mitch or Steven Miller or Dracula for it to be effective. And you could also just use your fingers in your mouth — or just your mouth — to whistle. That’s really hard to control. You don’t have to be in their face and risk arrest. Just blow anywhere near them and the idea of a whistleblower will be stuck in their mind.
If they can’t go anywhere, be in DC or a Congressional Town Hall meeting in their home district, without someone, somewhere blowing a whistle, that might at least, if nothing else, remind them of their failure to live up to their oath of office. And, you will have the satisfaction of making their live miserable.
Will this work? I don’t know. It does risk an escalation because MAGA may, in turn, just start murdering people with AR-15s. By as my Dad always says, no one ever got anywhere in this world without taking a risk.
It’s up to you if you feel having some agency in the fate of your nation is worth the risk or not.
No is going to save us. I guess the case could be made that the military might step in, but even that is a questionable line of reasoning. These days I swing wildly between assuming everything is going to work out and knowing that in the end I’m going to be just another of the “disappeared.” That House Trump would be acting so blase about what’s going on indicates to me that Trump, himself, is a coup.
What this means is Trump is the worse case scenario. The Republican Party doesn’t believe in liberal democracy or the rule of law — or the Constitution for that matter — and so, really, the entire fate of the nation hangs not on our political process but Trump’s likely continued mental decline.
Or, put another way, darkness has fallen. We pinned all our hope on Mueller saving the day, which only gave Trump time to learn how to use the levers of power. With the House under Republican rule for two years, he was given absolute power. It wasn’t until he was finally give a political pardon by the “bad optics” of the Mueller’s congressional testimony that he finally self-owned to the extent necessary for the House to get some backbone. But by that point it was too late. That Trump was so arrogant as to think that releasing what he did about the phone call to Ukraine would exonerate him gives us all the insight we need into the worldview of House Trump.
I find myself thinking how, exactly, America will finally descend into tyranny. It seems that what will happen is Trump will not be convicted by the Senate and then he will turn around and make absolutely sure that there is no free and fair election in 2020. It doesn’t matter how it happens, it will happen. If all else fails, he’ll get Putin to directly hack into the election. Trump’s failsafe will be doxing or bribing individual Electors. He pardons everyone as needed and then that’s that.
The next logical step will be to weaponize the existing ICE camp infrastructure. In his second term, he will grow so brazen as to be darkly comical. He will simply round up anyone he doesn’t like and either murder them or put them in a camp. All Trump really needs is a war or a major domestic terrorist attack to make this a reality. All things being equal, as of October 2019, Trump has an open road to finally getting what he wants — the right to be a fascist autocrat.
Again, like I said, there’s only one likely to make this difficult — Trump himself. If Trump finally snaps or does something so completely indefensible that he finally loses Republican support, I honestly don’t know what will happen. Republicans already are effectively using the, “Ok, so convict him and fuck you” defense. They don’t say it — yet — but that’s the effective consequences of their behavior.
Moscow Mitch has already suggested that he will actively squash any real attempt to try Trump in the Senate. So Trump even make it absolutely impossible for Republicans to defend him and still get away with it all. I always thought Trump would snap and there would be some sort of Regency. Now, I realize I was being surreally naive. Trump’s going to lose his shit and do it all in public. No one is going to say anything. Nothing will be done — at least within Republican circles.
So, it’s completely possible that Trump will escape justice AND be completely bonkers. He will be nothing more than King George III. A mad king. Very serious people will have spent so much time bickering about the subtle re-election strategy genius Trump has been playing that they will barely realize it when the are stood in front of a ditch and shot in the back of the head by an ICE agent.
The crux of this is we were so busy studying the exact nature of MAGA’s support for Trump that we completely overlooked that the entire Republican Party was being held hostage by Mad King Trump. When all of this first came out, I could not believe it. It seemed a little too on the nose. While it’s still possible Bill Barr is Q and he’s going to pop out and say “baba booey” that it hasn’t happened yet is a very dark sign. If this is all true and Barr and Pompeo are STILL looking for the supposed sinister origins of the Mueller investigation that will clear Manafort so Trump can pardon him then we are in very, very dark times.
And our only possible rescue is not anything we might do, it’s Trump finally going batshit insane to such an extent that Republicans finally, finally buckle just enough to convict Trump in the Senate. Then any number of potential would-be Trumps can jump into the arena and do it all over again. Only this time they will be younger, more focused and more passionate.
I hate horror movies. But we’re living in a political one right now. The end of Drag Me To Hell — a movie I’ve never actually seen — seems to fit what’s going on. Or maybe Deliverance. Any movie where one “subverts” the expectations of the audience.
I mean, we got Trump red handed and…nothing. Nothing’s happening. Barr, Pompeo, Mulvany, et al are still in power, still setting policy as if nothing has happened. The enormous abuse of power associated with trying to undermine the basis of the Mueller Report continues unabated. It’s all happening in broad daylight and there’s no sense of shame, no sense of the nation being in an existential crisis.
Things are weird.
This is a seriously fucked up situation.
What’s worse, even if we somehow magically extricate ourselves from the political cancer that is House Trump, there are a half a dozen would-be Trump’s in the pipeline who are younger, more focused and even more passionate in their hatred both of liberal democracy and brown people. In fact, I would go so far as to say what would have to happen to “save” us is so horrific that I don’t even want to think about it.
Let’s just say — it’s really bad. It’s so bad that, well, let’s just hope that doesn’t happen.
The only hope I have at this point is the cold, hard fact that the American Military is simply not going to do what Trump is going to want them to do very soon — purge Congress of Democrats and dissolve Blue State governments.
But even then, things are not looking good for our democracy. Moscow Mitch is already fundraising off his ability to obstruct Trump’s impeachment trial in the Senate. So, that definitely seems to indicate Moscow Mitch is prepared to do everything in his power to save Trump and destroy traditional American liberal democracy.
The aspect of this that should give you pause for thought is Trump is, in himself, an existential threat to American democracy. I’ve been ranting about this for three years to anyone who would listen and, well, lulz? In other words, if Trump isn’t removed then the United States is little more than a Russian-style “managed democracy.”
Now, remember, the moment Trump sees this for what it is — an existential threat to his presidency — he’s likely to snap mentally. As I have written repeatedly, it’s possible that we won’t save ourselves in the end, Trump’s mental instability will. But given the amazing extent of the cancer Trump has caused in the executive, we have to get rid of Pence too.
While a President Nancy Pelosi might make liberals spooge their pants — in real terms it would only be fun for about 24 hours. Then we enter a dystopian political hellscape as everyone turns on her for different reasons — many of them Democrats!
Here lies America. Also known as Columba. Once considered exceptional, a shining city on the hill for humanity. Now she lies in state to be honored one last time before slowly being lowered in the ground along with Athens, Rome and other, now, forgotten states that once claimed to serve the people not the powerful.
The end.
Birthed in New England after the shot heard ’round the world, she now is just another dead idea that has shuffled off the earthly plane. At previous junctures of note, leaders arose to save her from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. This time, however, was different.
How, you may ask, could such a powerful idea die so quickly? What “sudden illness” at last buckled her knees and had her bow, at last, to the dark forces of tyranny? Was it a “stab in the back” by nefarious forces? Was it a sneak attack from an unknown, external foe?
No, it was political leukemia. Though America has suffered the political terror of cancer before, this time was different. It metastasized so quickly and with such force that there was nothing to be done. By the time the condition was a last addressed using the wonders of modern science, America, also known as Columba, was laid low.
And, really, America had only herself to blame. Though she once banned the devil’s drink, her death came not from an excess of liquor. It came from a corrosive, deadly elixir made up of greed, power and wilful ignorance. The tribunes, who once fought so hard protect her ability to speak, at last traded their honor for access to the halls of power. When the death rattles began, they were too quick to adopt the messages of those who wished her ill, rather than realizing that the truth was their charge.
The hope of America has now been replaced by American Carnage. America allies herself with the forces of darkness around the globe. The rot of her civil society was to great, even for her once powerful Constitution. Thus, the dream of Father Abraham is now, at last over. His martyrdom and that of the multitude during the storm he successfully piloted his people through, is now just another death in vain.
All empires must fall and so too, has America.
The great tragedy of this once proud nation is its citizens did not even try to spare themselves from their fate. With their eyes wide open, they allowed themselves to led into the darkness to be slaughtered.
Things have gotten both so dumb and so existential when it comes to the impeachment and removal of the tyrant Trump that I feel things need to be explicated in a very simple fashion.
If you want to understand what’s going on in America right now, look at this clip from Animal House.
Bluto is the American public. He’s finally been roused from his sleep. He’s mad as hell and wants to do something about Trump. But for the moment he’s not really being listened to. He’s call a “moron” by The Cook Report and many in the press who would trade access to power for patriotism. He might not have all the facts down, but he has passion and principle.
It’s not until people who have something to lose decide to act that anything actually happens. And, so, we are a historic precipice where things could go either way. We could get pushed off the cliff into tyranny, or we could save ourselves.
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