How Does Trump Wiggle His Way Out Of Having Top Secret Nuclear Documents At Mar-a-Lago?

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

As of this writing, Trump has announced on Truth Social that he is going to “encourage” the release of some of the legal documents associated with the FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago.

Ok, at the moment, things look kind of dark for that fucking malignant dingus. But, to date, Trump has always, always, ALWAYS escaped justice. So, how does he do it this time?

Announce
One idea is, if Trump realizes he’s done a Big Boy Crime and he’s in Serious trouble, that he can always simply tell the Republican Establishment to fuck off and announce for 2024, like, NOW. This would blow out the newscycle for 24 hours and, lulz, by the time we get our bearings again Trump will say no matter what he has absolute immunity because he’s running for POTUS.

Fuck You, Lib
In this scenario, he simply shrugs the whole thing off. He knows his base and, in the end, he has Hitler-levels of fidelity from MAGA and all that happens is the two sides difference of opinion about Trump grows more and more sharp and severe. And, in the end, if he gets indicted, he just uses it to fundraise off of and to cry about how he’s being “canceled” by the “woke cancel culture mob” that wants to turn everyone gay. Ugh.

Something Else Happens
Never count Trump out. This is August, after all, and there’s a good chance that something huge could happen that diverts our attention from Trump and his stealing (and selling?) of secrets long enough that he escapes, AGAIN. This is not really a strategy on his part, but it is something that could very well happen at any moment.

Go Transactional
This is probably the darkest of the possible scenarios. Trump, in a panic, freaks out and tells his followers to get violent. The only reason why I say this is even a possibility is — what if this is like the Access Hollywood Tape situation where he didn’t really take it seriously at first…until he did? It could be the same thing. It could be that he’s going to lulz this…and then when he realizes that it’s actually gaining some traction, he freaks out and sicks his “shock troops” on the government. And then, at last, all the people who come to this site looking for information about a Second American Civil War will get their wish.

He Doesn’t Escape
This is the least likely of situations. It’s so unlikely, that I don’t even know what it would look like. Though, I suppose, it might look a lot like what never happened while he was in office — The Pence Pivot. In this case, it would be the DeSantis Pivot or something. After a brief freak out — in silence — on the part of the Republicans, they would pivot to Ron DeSantis as the standard bearer and they would act like Trump is a lulz from the distance past.

Frankenstein’s Monster
In this scenario, the absolute worst happens — at least for Republicans. He both becomes extremely radoactive (no pun intended) and, yet, refuses to go away. In fact, the fact that he’s indicted will only make him more angry and, in his own way, stronger. The base will forgive him for being a fucking traitor and if you throw in how we’re an anocracy not a democracy — he fucks with things to the point that he wins in 2024. His veep will be Gen. Mike Flynn and we all sit around waiting for the Russians to Red Dawn us.

The End Of The Beginning Of The Trump Impeachment Process

Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

It seems to me that we’ve crossed into a new phase of the pitched political war between Trump and his growing numbers of foes. Trump’s growing more noticeable in his mental instability. Not a lot, but some of his diction in his tweeting is growing a little more panicky.

I stand my prediction that this is a better-than-zero chance that Trump’s finally going to lose his shit in a rather spectator fashion before this is over with. So much so that when the history books of this shit show are written, they will note that but for Trump’s insane reaction to impeachment, he likely would have survived.

That is, of course, in a sense a little bit of my own liberal wishful thinking. It’s very possible that Trump will manage to hold it together just long enough to be acquitted, replace Pence with Kris Kobach, win the general — by any means necessary — then finally collapse into a puddle at some point in his second term so Kobach can establish The Thousand Year Trump.

Or, put another way, I wouldn’t start jotting Trump’s political obit just yet. But Trump’s already fragile mental state is going to be pushed to the limit as the existential nature of the threat he now faces grows large in his mind. If his usual mindfuckery doesn’t work and he gets impeached, he may be so far gone by that point that he isn’t even able to be acquitted by his Republican lackeys in the Senate because he’ll just be totally fucking bonkers.

I would note in passing that we are now at a crossroads. We may be in the pre-pre-pre-pre-pre stages of fabled, mystical Pence Pivot. If Trump’s too discombobulated to fuck with the election in 2020, the Republican Party may think long and hard about how Pence is a rather traditional — if insanely conservative — pol and in comparison he’s likely to do a lot better than Trump.

But, again, nobody knows nuthin about what’s going to happen with impeachment, least of all me. I have a few educated guesses, but I just can’t pace out any sort of endgame right now.

We’ll see.

‘We Have Seen The Enemy & They Are Us’ — The Dark Truth About Impeachment

The End.
Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

I love running informal scenarios in my mind. All the scenarios I have come up with in regards to impeachment lead to one thing — the America we once knew is over.

I say this because even if we somehow magically rid ourselves of Trump politically — likely because he goes bonkers — we will earn ourselves only a brief respite from an inevitable descent into autocracy. The MAGA base will remain and half a dozen would-be younger, more passionate and organized successors to Trump will be waiting in the wings. And that doesn’t even begin to address all those young hack MAGA judges who will do everything in their power to make sure Trump’s vision of American Carnage is finally a reality.

What’s more, I coming to believe that the Republican Party will embrace impeachment-related violence. Hell, they may even do it themselves. Their partisan devotion to Trump is now absolute that the decision for 20 Republican Senators to vote for acquittal is now a very simple political equation. They feel the MAGA will support them as long as they vote to acquit. Republican Senators will believe time is on their side and independances will have forgotten their vote for acquittal whenever they have to run in a general again.

And, really, the only reason I think Trump has any chance of possibly losing in the Senate is his mental state will explode. He will have a very, very public meltdown as impeachment proceeds and there may come a point where his behavior grows so fucking alarming that Republicans will feel absolutely forced at last to The Pence Pivot. Even then, Moscow Mitch might feel as though he’s finally gotten as many young hack MAGA judges on the Federal bench so, lulz.

In other words, we can delay the inevitable by a few months or years, but when half the electorate is MAGA friendly to such an extent that they don’t really care about facts then, well, I don’t know what to tell you. There’s going to come a point far sooner than any of us realize when leaving the country might be one’s best course of action if you’re center-left.

Pacing Out Pence’s Political Strategy

Pence, Yeah You Know Me.
Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

On a surface level, VP Mike Pence is sitting pretty. He’s a Constitutional officer and all he has to do is not get fired from the ticket in 2020. That’s it. That’s all he has to do. As long he can swat Ivanka and Jared away long enough to be on the ticket again, he’s got a straight shot to the presidency in 2024.

And, yet.

There’s a problem. A big problem — Trump.

So, this makes things more complicated. If Trump gets both impeached and convicted, then Pence, in a sense, is the ultimate winner. But this “winning” brings with it some serious, complex problems. Pence if he wants to win as a conventional pol will have to at least attempt to reach out to the 60 odd percent of the electorate who are likely to hate his guts by the time Trump is finally removed from office by the Senate. At the same time, he has to worry about alienating the MAGA base of whom he really only has a solid claim to a subset of, the Evangelical vote. Compared to the always entertaining in a bonkers way Trump, Pence is actually just a very conservative traditional Republican.

A President Pence going into the 2020 election cycle would have half a dozen challengers coming at him from the MAGA right. All of them willing to be just a nuts as Trump, but also younger and more passionate in their hatred of brown people.

And, then, there’s the existential issue of giving Trump a Nixon-level pardon post presidency. That’s a question I simply can’t answer knowing what I know superficially. Logically, Pence would given Trump a full pardon and then simply try to tell it in a more articulate manner than Ford did. Or he could try to dodge the question until after the election and turn around and do just that. His thinking would be people would be luzling his pardon by the time he ran again in 2024. If he doesn’t pardon Trump and he is convicted by, say, the SDNY or New York State then, wow. That would be a pretty out-of-character and, relative to the base, dick move.

Pence wants it both ways. He wants to show absolute fealty to The Dear Leader while at the same time having the option of using his traditional pol skillset to hoodwink more moderate independants. The only problem for him there is, well, he’s so astonishingly conservative relative to the practical center of modern American politics that him trying to pull a fast one on enough middle aged center-Left women to get re-elected is debatable.

What’s more, there are some serious landmines lurking out there in the near future. Roe could be overturned. ObamaCare could be overturned. Or both of them could be overturned. If anything like that happened, it would roll the American political system in some unprecedented ways.

But, in general, I have no idea what’s going to happen. I have some hunches, but we’ll know more when Trump’s political fate is ultimately decided.

The Darkest Timeline

Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

No one listens to me. And generally no one reads this blog. But for my own peace of mind, I will make some observations about how bad things could get in the next few weeks.

As I’ve said many times, we’ve elected a deranged version of Being There’s Chauncey Gardner. Trump is not a political genius. Access journalists have had a vested interest in making us thinking this because if Trump really is just a lucky doofus then that means maybe going to Harvard doesn’t make them as cool as they think it does. Trump is not only a moron, he’s wilfully ignorant. He’s unstable, racist and misogynistic. The case could be made that only his love for his daughter — and maybe a native political skill — prevents him from being an anti-semite. Even then, I’m grading doofus on a severe curve.

Stephen King’s “The Dead Zone” may be a little too on the nose.

The worst part of all of this, the thing that makes Trump himself the biggest mistake in American history besides Prohibition and the Dred Scott Decision is we wilfully elected someone who obviously never took his oath seriously. He never took it seriously and he was wilful when given the opportunity to bring as may people down with him when given the chance. That Trump would wait 24 hours to call up the president of Ukraine after being given a political pardon by Chris Wallace because of Mueller’s “poor optics” in his testimony before Congress is the single biggest self-own in American political history.

Nothing comes close. Nixon not burning the tapes comes close, but it’s my understanding he had some health issues with his legs at the time and he was bed ridden and not physically up to doing it.

And so, this is where you need to take a deep breath and have a stiff drink. It’s going to get dark pretty quick. Trump is never going to resign and it’s debatable if Republicans will ever buckle. Or, if they do, Trump’s mental deterioration will have reached a point where we all throw up a few times at the realization that we don’t know exactly who is in control of the nuclear codes.

You Know It.

That we had a similar problem with Nixon during Watergate does not make me feel any better. Nixon — I think — began to act erratically enough that there was talk of the nuclear chain of command debated not being too quick to follow his orders. And Nixon raised our threat level — If I recall correctly — at a politically advantageous moment.

All of this leads to a very specific issue — if somehow Trump self-owns enough that the Senate actually convicts him, what’s the exact sequence of events then? If Trump isn’t at Trump Tower by that point, how, exactly, would we get him out of the White House? He is likely to have snapped by that point and he will have his Twitter feed to make himself feel better. Having an ex-president rage-tweeting all day and squatting in the White House doesn’t make me feel great.

I have my doubts that things will get that bad, and, yet, my general predictions about Trump slowly cracking up once the impeachment process began are holding up quite well. No one can predict the future, least of all me. But I do think we should change the way we look at all of this.

Oh boy.

This is not going to be a political process, this is going to be the entire nation holding its breath to see if Trump goes Howard Beale on us and how the system reacts. No government official can follow an illegal order in the American system — though Trump has “joked” about pardons. Lulz? So, I guess it’s at least possible Trump might begin to go full Nazi on us and simply tell people in a “joking” fashion that he’ll pardon them. (Come to think of it, the president’s all-powerful pardoning ability is a definite weakness in the American system of based on law.)

I just want to make this clear — take this seriously. We may be careening towards a mixture of the OJ Trial and 9/11 with a little bit of Network and I, Claudius thrown in.

Thanks for attending my TED Talk. Subscribe to my Soundcloud.

A House Trump Death Rattle (Maybe)

Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

I’m reluctant to say we’re in any type of late-stage Watergate situation just yet. Watergate’s conclusion came about because of a very specific set of circumstances that, because of a lack of precedent, we’ve come to believe is a forgone conclusion.

As I’ve written before, this is not 1974 and Trump is not Nixon. Republicans have no shame and crave power for power’s sake. As such, even though every other metric could be against Trump, Republicans could simply deny it all and stand firm. It’s hard for a liberal democracy to have a functioning Constitution when one of its major parties believes you can only impeach a president if they gain from it politically.

I guess what I’m saying is — the entire fate of the United States rests on Trump, well, being Trump. I would go so far as to say at this point it would actually be out of character for Trump not to do something so completely indefensible, so completely and demonstrably beyond the pale of any type of normal human behavior, that Republicans will find themselves at last defending the absolutely indefensible. If we’ve gotten this far into this situation and we’re not thinking that maybe the Deep State might be the good guys, well,oh boy.

In fact, I will go so far as to say we’re looking for the wrong signs. We’re looking for a major Republican to be Barry Goldwater. Nope. The best we can maybe hope for is a surreal version of The Pence Pivot. If Trump gets the whistleblower murdered, or tweets out a dick pic or tweets the n-word to Obama, Republican leaders will simply say they REALLY voted for Pence and why are you asking the question.

Even then, they won’t even hold an impeachment trial in the Senate.

Having said all that, I would like to tell AOC and a few other people floating around that there’s a chance that things are going to get so bad, so surreal that they are going to be given a masterclass on leadership in real time. I watched on 9/11 as then President Bush simply deflated. He ran away. The nation, for a moment, was leaderless. For a few crucial hours, Rudy was our president.

All I’m saying is, if things get as absolutely surreal as they look like they may, history is watching. They say one’s character comes out best in extreme situations. A few of our elected leaders may be given the opportunity to tell us who they really are, for better or worse.

But we’re not quite there yet. Maybe Bill Barr has proof TrumpUkraine is all an evil plot on the part of the Deep State. Again, at this point, Chris Wallace might suggest the “optics” on that one might not be so great for House Trump.

Maybe the Deep State is like the Second Foundation? Maybe they’re protecting the Constitution? We’ll see.

Republicans Are Careening Towards Only One Option In Their Defense Of Trump: Being A Cult

Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

I’m going to work with what I know as of the time I write this. Things are growing so extenstially bad for the Republican Party, I’m growing nervous that Bill Barr is Q and he’s going to jump out at some point and say “babbabooy.”

That that is growing to become the only good scenario for Republicans is very bad news. But let’s go through what I can tell of existing Republican defenses of Trump.

This Is A Deep State Attack
Their argument is none of this is valid because it’s a partisan attack on the president orchestrated by a deep state operative with a grudge against the president. It’s based on “hearsay.” Ok, this argument is bad for Republicans because it doesn’t really do what they need it to do — own the moment. Much of the complaint itself is being proven correct from other sources. And even if you could prove any sort of partisan motive does that mitigate what Trump actually did? If a Democrats sees a Republican murder someone, we don’t prosecute the Republican because the Democrat might gain a political advantage?

The Bidens Are Corrupt
While House Trump is great at branding, their ability to use their usual mind fucks on us is beginning to unravel a little bit. What they want to do is recreate the conditions of 2016 with 2020. But things are moving fast with TrumpUkraine. We’re pretty much in a political war and that particular type of messaging only works in political peacetime. If every time you get asked about TrumpUkraine you pivot to a non-existent scandal involving the Bidens, you got a problem. The sheer astonishing scope of the TrumpUkraine criminality overshadows anything the Bidens might be accused of doing. Again, if you commit a bigger crime to look into someone else’s crime, you still committed a crime.

Fuck You, The Base Loves Trump
If we get down to this argument, then the next step is The Pence Pivot. This argument removes any pretence of working within the bounds of a liberal democracy with a social contract and civil society. This is when the wheels fly off and we go from a pitched battle to all out political civil war. In a sense, this is something that the average person doesn’t realize. Something about Obama’s second term drove the Republican Party completely insane. It has no shame and it craves power for power’s sake. As such, if they run out of arguments, they simply deny that there are any arguments that they will listen to. The only reason why this might not work is if things have gotten this bad, Trump will be at the point in his cognitive decline where he’s tweeting out dick picks and tweeting out the n-word to Obama.

After that, it’s The Pence Pivot. They stop talking about Trump altogether and simply say they really voted for Pence. Though, in a sense, Trump will have lost the mandate of heaven even with Republicans, they will still support Trump staying in office. They just will talk about Pence whenever he comes up.

We’re Looking At Impeachment All Wrong

Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

I hate to break it to you, folks, but if impeachment really does reach a tipping point we’ve entered the darkest timeline. It won’t be impeachment, it will be Trump’s reaction to it that we’ll be talking about.

Trump has long had some sort of chronic mental problem. The stress of simply an impeachment investigation — which would likely take months — would, in it self, potentially cause him to decompensate. It’s would make a lot of sense if Trump found himself in something of a logic trap. He would absolutely feel as though he would survive an Senate vote. But he would also absolutely feel paranoid that he might not.

So he goes bonkers.

I therefore propose that in the end, it won’t even be impeachment that is Trump’s downfall — it will be his reaction to it. If Trump finally goes off the deep end, some astonishing surreal thing will happen. The first will be MAGA Stalwarts will find themselves defending ever-more demonstrably indefensible things on Trump’s part. First they will simply say he was “joking.” But there will come a point when they take the final plunge into their own destruction. Trump will tweet out a dick pic. Trump will begin to tweet out the N-word to Obama. And they will defend it, thinking that Trump, like always, will stay in control of the narrative.

And so, in the end, Trump’s tendency to self-own will get so absolutely bad that there might be an intervention, of sorts. They might propose to Trump that he gets to choose Pence’s replacement as veep. And maybe a promise of a full pardon after Pence wins re-election in 2020. Trump accepting such an offer would be the best case scenario for Republicans.

The worse case scenario is he won’t accept it. And in the end, Trump so far gone mentally that the Senate finally does, in fact, convict him not so much because of any particular crime, but for the complete failure of the 25th Amendment to work.

And then, I’m afraid, we have a once-in-generation event. Young people won’t reference 9/11, they’ll reference Trump’s downfall. It will probably play out a lot like the OJ’s slow motion police chase in a white Bronco. It will last days, even weeks. The entire country will grind to a halt as we attempt to lure Trump out of The White House.

It will be a dark day in our history.

Here is how it may play out. I wrote this some time ago, but the premise is the same.

9/10ths
a story fragment of a possible near future
by Shelton Bumgarner

April, 2019

The eyes of the world were on the White House.

Just moments before, President Donald J. Trump, 45th president of the United States, had been convicted by 67 members of the Senate for a whole list of high crimes and misdemeanors. Trump had for weeks now been ranting on Gab about his case in the Senate, bouncing back and forth between threats to start a war with Iran or the DPRK and not-so-subtle hints that he might take his own life should he be convicted by the Senate.

And, now, at last, the moment of truth had arrived.

Trump legally, at least, was no longer president, but he had been oddly silent since the verdict had been announced with great fanfare from the well of the Senate. Trump’s conviction had come after months of investigations on the part of the now Democratic Congress. The length and breath of Trump’s malfeasance discovered by these hearings had rocked the nation to its very core. On more than one occasion, MAGA talking heads on cable news had been interrupted by astonishing breaking news that left them, for once, unable or unwilling to defend the president.

The hearings had ground on for months to such an extent that Trump’s approval had slowly drifted to the 20s and stayed there consistently. Trump’s support was now made up of the very rich and the very poor. Oddly, despite Trump’s near constant demands on Twitter for violence on the part of his supporters, little, if any was reported. Trump had grown so frustrated that he had all but abandoned Twitter at one point for the more receptive Gab social media platform. Though on more than one occasion Rudy Giuliani had made it very clear it was within the rights of the president to declare martial law if he deemed it in the best interests of the nation. More than one delegation of Senate Republicans had gone to the White House to explain to Trump that he was going to be convicted, no avail. Trump made it clear to them, in not so many words that his simply living in the White House made him president, a sentiment best expressed by the legal saw that, “Possession is 9/10ths of the law.”

Finally, a post to Gab came out: “My so-called ‘conviction’ is the work of the Deep State and as such illegitimate. I remain president.”

This set off a chain of events, the likes of which Americans had never seen. Suddenly, everyone on Twitter became a Constitutional scholar as everyone studied the exact wording of the Constitution as to what happens if the president is removed from office by the Senate. The wording is quite clear: he or she is no longer president and that’s it.

Nowhere in the Constitution did it explain what to do if the president simply decided to ignore the Senate. What’s more, nowhere in the Constitution did it state what to do with the nuclear launch codes should a president be removed from office and he refuse to accept the decision of the Senate.

The next few hours were chilling as they were surreal for millions of people not just in the United States but around the globe. The issue of Trump’s physical access to America’s nuclear launch codes was suddenly at the forefront of everyone’s mind. Though it was finally announced that while the nuclear football remained in Trump’s possession, Sec. of Defense Mattis had ordered the American armed forces to stand down for the duration of the crisis.

Trump, on Twitter, was as defiant and unhinged as usual.He threatened to kill himself. He threatened to start a nuclear war. He vowed to declare martial law.

The usual suspects on cable news did their best to spin all of this for Trump. As an anxious nation waited for the now former president to leave the White House, a cavalcade of former Republican Senators and Trump White House staffers attempted to make the former president’s case. Their final argument was that for the good of the country, Trump should be allowed to remain president, despite his lawful conviction by the Senate.

Things began to move rapidly at this point.

Vice President Pence was sworn in but Chief Justice Roberts in a dark, somber event in the Old Executive Building. Meanwhile, it was learned Trump had quietly replaced his Secret Service detail with a private security force that made it clear it was prepared to defend Trump until the bloody end.

At this point, two things happened. A final bipartisan delegation of Congressional leaders came to the White House grounds under the flag of truce. During the course of an hour-long meeting, Trump screamed at them that they had never supported him and the world would be better off if it just ended instead of allowed the forces of the Deep State to ruin America. He made it absolutely clear that he would never leave the Oval Office willingly.

With that, they left.

Next, a surreal, bizarre event, the FBI slowly began to surround the White House. There was much debate online and on TV about how long the nation should wait for Trump to leave the White House. CNN went so far as to do a deep dive into the exact amount of food the White House grounds might have available at any one moment.

Finally, shots rang out from the White House as the battle was joined. It took several hours but in the end, the FBI was finally able to secure the facility. Nearly a dozen personnel on both sides died during the course of the Battle of The White House.

In what would become ionic footage, Trump was quietly escorted from the White House grounds. He spent the remainder of his days ranting on Twitter and Gab that he was the rightful president.

Beware ‘The Pence Pivot!’

Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls


I’ve written about this before, but it’s ever more timely. There’s a greater than-zero sum chance that very soon a lot of people are going to The Pence Pivot. This is when at the very point you would otherwise agree with me that maybe Trump was mistake in the first place, you, without missing a beat, say, “It doesn’t matter. Trump’s gone. I support Pence. I didn’t even vote for Trump, really, I voted for Pence.”

This is an outrage on any number of different levels. The chief amongst them being, your previous support of Trump becomes little more than your similar support for the Iraq War based on the lie of WMD. You never have to “own” (as MAGA people are so fond of saying) the fact that you did, at one point, support Trump. And you would still support Trump but for the fact that he’s become so politically toxic that it’s difficult for you to do so. Since you now have a more traditional pol like Pence to support, you have a ready off-ramp for your original insane support of Trump. You don’t have to “own” the political hell you put us all through because you were in a MAGA cult.

Who gets possession of the MAGA cult should the House Trump implode and The Thousand Year Trump doesn’t last…quite…as long is up for debate. A lot it depends on how, exactly, Trump might leave office (By the way, this is impossible. Trump will never resign and he will never be convicted in the Senate.) Really, the only way I could see Trump maybe leaving office is if he could get a full pardon and the right to choose Pence’s successor as veep. If he got that, then either Don Jr. or Ivanka might become veep and be in an ideal position to run for president in their own right to protect Trump’s “legacy.” Ivanka would be a strange one to do that, but you do you daddy’s little girl.

But as of right now, I just don’t see anything coming of TrumpUkraine in the first place. This is probably just another Trump scandal that gets people like me excited, only to fizzle out as the Stormy Daniels Playbook is used ever so effectively.

The Moment Someone Mentions The ‘Pence Pivot,’ I’m Going To Lose My Shit

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

It goes without saying that we’ve finally achieved dystopia. This has happened in large part to complete complacency of the “Lulz, nothing matters” conservatives who are too busy raising their children, working hard and paying taxes to care about anything Trump does. They just don’t care. They cared for a few days in late 2016 around the election and they made their decision.

Everyone else, meanwhile, looks around and sees hell. The very things that people like me have been worried about when it comes to Trump have come to pass. We’re careening towards a theocratic, autocratic plutocracy. This has been building for decades and with the advent of Trump has accelerated at light speed. We still have several more years of Trump bad behavior before the “Lulz, nothing matters” conservatives finally begin to care again. In fact, it may be 2020 or 2024 before they stop raising their kids long enough to pause, again, to take an interest in politics.

It is because of the “Lulz, nothing matters” conservatives that Bob Mueller could prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Trump’s 2016 campaign colluded with the Russians and nothing will happen. Add to all of this the very real possibility that Trump will wag the dog by starting a war with the DPRK and the future of the United States is pretty dark for the next few decades.

But should Trump finally, finally do something so heinous, so obscene that the “Lulz, nothing matters” conservatives get woke, there is a very real possibility that at the very moment they agree with me that Trump has, at last, gone too far and has to go, they will do the Pence Pivot. The Pence Pivot, at least in my mind, is when a Trump supporter says, in essence, that it was all worth it because they wanted Mike Pence to be president, anyway.

I am not a violent man, but the first time someone uses that argument on line or in person, I’m going to lose my shit. I am going to scream until I’m mute. That someone would just ignore the damage Trump has done with the wave of a hand and say it doesn’t matter Pence is president now is such an affront to everything I believe in I’m going to flip my lid. I’m going to lose my shit.

But I doubt we’ll ever get to that point. The “Lulz, nothing matters” conservatives are so content with Trump’s insane vision of America that we will never reach the Trump Singularity when the Pence Pivot happens. There’s nothing we can do. Nothing. This is it. The end. The America that I knew growing up is no more and the only reason why I’m not moving back to Seoul is, in real terms, I can’t.