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.
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.
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.
I am not suggesting that I have any particular insight into what’s going on right now, but there are so demostrable Trump-Ukraine datapoints that I feel are not being observed.
Trump’s call with the Ukrainian president was about 30 minutes. The rough transcript it maybe 10 or so minutes of that call.
There were definitely a few convient “…” in the document that we have.
The Ukrainians are tearing themselves apart because their government rather abruptly decided to give up the Dombas area that is currently controlled by Russians.
Russian troops around Ukraine have recently been seen sporting the markings of what has previously been used for an invasion force.
Russia without Ukraine — at least in its own mind — is not considered a “great power.” Putin bragged he could take Kiev in two weeks.
Trump is strangely obsessed with proving the origins of the Mueller report were somehow bunk and therefore would be given the political cover to pardon his former campaign manager Paul Manafort. Manafort pretty much showed up on his doorstep at a very convenient time. He worked for free, even though he owned, like, $20 million to Russian thugs. Manafort was connected to Russia through the deposed president of Ukraine…who is considered something of a Moscow toady.
I honestly don’t know what any of these facts mean. But it definitely doesn’t smell right. It definitely gives you a superficial impression that Trump might have a transactional reason for pardoning Manafort that is not neither is in the best interests of the United States, nor lives up to his oath of office.
Add to this that Trump had a two hour chat with Putin alone — and destroyed the notes — and it begins to seem rather surreal. I just think maybe someone, somewhere, needs to start looking into why Trump is so obsessed with debunking the Mueller investigation even though he got a political pardon after the “poor optics” of Mueller’s testimony to Congress.
Now, let me be clear for the record again, I’m in no way suggesting violence. But I am suggesting the opposition to the MAGA peril to our democracy be more passionate, cogent and, dare I say radical on an ideological level.
The reason why I say this is, we were so busy worrying about the MAGA base, we never thought about that Trump’s cult of personality would infect people we believed would be “the adults in the room.” A prime example of this on a practical level is some Very Smart Conservatives are lulzing at Rudy, Barr and Pompeo (and Gorka!) literally racing around the globe openly pressuring foreign powers to give Trump the cover to pardon Manafort (and maybe Flynn).
This is when things get really, really dark. Not only do All The President’s Men not really feel that they’re doing anything wrong, they are prepared to pull “evidence” that Manafort was “framed” out of their butt to change the narrative as we lurch forward with impeachment. What they want is to give the Infowars comment section red meat. Throw in a possible bot attack on the part of the Russians and there’s a decent chance Chris Wallace will declare impeachment “dead” because of the “bad optics” of the attorney general releasing a report that says the entire Mueller investigation was a deep state plot to make the president look bad.
Ugh.
I feel sick to my stomach pacing out this scenario. I feel this way because outlets like The New York Times are so busy paying Maggie Haberman and “The Vogel” to play the Trump Whisperer — not to mention doxing Orange Crush! — that they are completely flat footed on the gravity of this fast-moving crisis. If the entire Executive Branch is not only run like Trump Org (that is a criminal enterprise) AND nobody is acting in good faith because they don’t believe in liberal democracy in the first place, then, well, we’re fuck if we don’t radicalize on a political level.
I used to say when I was running ROKon Magazine in Seoul that “Every problem is just an opportunity in disguise.” Because Trump is demonstrably at risk of losing his mind — as I have written repeatedly — then there’s both peril and opportunity going forward. They’re peril because if we can’t burn House Trump to the ground, then, well, that’s it. The moment Trump escapes conviction in the Senate he calls up Putin or MBS and does it all over again. Putin directly hacks the 2020 election. And if that doesn’t work, Putin or MBS — or Peter Thiel — could simply bribe the Electoral College in masse. Trump pardons Thiel and the quislings of Fox Bullshit Mt. have Bolton riding a Roomba with glee.
The ICE camp infrastructure is weaponized, all those young hack MAGA judges on the Federal bench do what they were appointed to do — destroy liberal democracy — and America is no longer exceptional, no longer a shining city on a hill, we’re American Carnage.
If The Radical Resistance wins, meanwhile, there’s a least a chance for national renewal. To make America great again, to coin a phrase. But it would take a national outrage the likes of which we have never seen in peacetime. So, I’m dubious. In fact, at this point, I fear the entire fate of the nation rests on Trump being a criminally incompetent self-own artist. That’s how Trump is extremely dangerous to the future of the Republican Party.
But it wouldn’t be in the way you think. In Red States, the Republican Party would continue to thrive. In the rest of the country, however, the stench of tyranny would whoft off the rotting husk of the party of Lincoln. And that’s the best case scenario. We have to stick the landing. If it’s a draw, MAGA wins. They have no shame, they crave power for power’s sake and they don’t believe in liberal democracy.
I am beginning to think only the military — and Trump being bonkers — stands in the way of the MAGA cult essentially bringing the United States to its knees. They already have, in a sense, but we still have a small window of opportunity.
But when Barr releases that bullshit report of his, well, either we save ourselves or we don’t.
We have to accept that what’s going on right now is not a scandal. For it be a scandal, the characters involved would have have some sense of shame. They would have to have a soul, some sense of a shared idea of what’s patriotic. This, sadly, is not the case.
The people involved in the current shitshow have come to believe their own press. What’s going on is a uniquely American type of political war because no one has gotten murdered — yet. Though MAGA via Trump’s Twitter feed seems to believe it would be a net-win for them if that did, in fact happen. MAGA leadership is so detached from the norms of democracy or civil society that they are now brazenly running roughshod over the very Constitution they swore to protect.
This is a solely a political war, hopefully for its duration, but so was, in a sense, Reconstruction. Much of the historical legacy of Reconstruction is a gift from the Radical Republicans. The 14th Amendment is the signature of the Radical Republicans left on the Constitution itself. Now that we have a sense of what MAGA’s game plan is, the Resistance has to radicalize like the Republicans of yore. If we don’t MAGA will destroy the country as we know it. We will be nothing more than a Russian-style “managed democracy.”
In practical terms, Radical Resistance in Congress would look like this — gratuitous use of the “inherent contempt” rule. They have left us no choice. Pompeo sticking his dick out at Congress in defiance is MAGA throwing the gauntlet down. If we don’t at last throw that fucker in jail, or fine him $500,000 a day until he shows up, then all is lost. They will see it as a sign of weakness and take charge of the narrative going forward.
One thing any Radical Resistance has to face is MAGA’s media messaging is now that of a feral rat — or maybe an alien xenomorph. They are prepared to burn everything — everything — to the ground to save The Dear Leader. This is their gotterdammerung. They would rather destroy our entire system of government than give an inch.
As such, political radicalization on the part of the to-date milquetoast “Resistance” is the only answer. I don’t want anyone to get hurt. I hate violence and that’s not my character. But MAGA is ampting up the stakes to a dangerous level. Newt did a tweet today that used the word “fake” in it seven times. And I’ve seen similar surreal uses of fascist agitprop elsewhere on Twitter.
One last note — courage involves taking a risk. If it didn’t then everyone would be courageous. We’ve reached the point where silence is consent. I vacillate widely between resignation and wanting to fight politically until the very end.
Things are dark now. But if we’re willing to defend the Constitution the way it has defended us, maybe dawn will break sooner rather than later.
When I was in college, there was an urban legend where people were sitting around drinking and having fun when someone mentioned that they stole someone’s vanity license tag. In Virginia, such tags are no big deal, but in the North, they’re often very expensive. The story goes that the person who learns this is from the North and they grow enraged. That’s what’s going on in America right now — House Trump stole America’s vanity license tag (our liberty) and we’re in shock. House Trump, meanwhile, is lulzing it all off.
What, you stole my license plate?
It’s easy to despair when thinking about impeachment because the stakes are existential. Let’s go through some datapoints to illuminate why this is the case.
Bill Barr has apparently been preparing an “Anti-Mueller Report” designed to debunk the entire thing. That not only would he run around the globe in search of dirt to debunk a report that Trump screams at the top of his lungs exonerated him, but most of the Right’s inteligensia is totally cool with the whole thing is extremely disturbing. This is the setup to Barr very, very soon holding a press conference “proving” that Trump was “set up” by the Deep State.
What’s so troubling about this in the extreme is how brazen Barr and Pompeo have been in all of this. They have broken so many laws in the process trying to debunk the Mueller Report at the behest of the president that the whole thing is surreal and existential. The kicker is, it doesn’t matter what Barr even finds — he’s setting up a battle royale of historic proportions.
The MAGA base will latch on to whatever he found to such an extent that they will completely ignore the biggest political scandal in American history. This will give the messaging cover that Republican lawmakers need going forward with impeachment and Trump is acquitted in the Senate after a super-fast trial of maybe a hour total. Since the Republican Party is a cult that has no shame and only wants power for power’s sake, this is a win for them no matter what. Trump is free go full Putin between now and the Nov. 2020 election and darkness falls. They weaponize the ICE infrastructure and the American spirit is squashed.
And, yet, while all things being equal that seems the most likely outcome, there are some serious, serious problems for House Trump. One is there is serious momentum behind impeachment. Also, every day Republicans have no cogent answer as to why Barr and Pompeo (and Gorka!) (and Rudy!) were racing roughshod around the globe in an effort to pull a conspiracy theory out of their butts is a day the Good Guys grow in power. If they can’t release their bullshit within a matter of days, not weeks, even if they manage to come up with a Grand Unified Theory Of The Deep State Plot Against Trump they will have lost everyone but the 35% MAGA base of the electorate.
Also, House Trump is now so unmoored from any connection to liberal democracy that they are their own worst enemy. They no longer even pretend to care about facts, or law or ethics. They are willing to destroy everything in defense of House Trump. There’s a real chance that even if they manage to convince the MAGA base that the Dear Leader is, in fact, infallible, that the rest of the country will look at them in amazement that they are oblivious to what they’ve done.
Really, I guess what I’m trying to convey is the stakes are so high that if it’s a draw, Trump wins. He is free to do exactly what he’s wanted to do all a long — become America’s Putin. We don’t have free and fair elections, the ICE infrastructure is weaponized and people — like ME! — are simply “disappeared.”
If we can’t not only remove Trump but put him on trial and ultimately send him to prison for the reason of his life, all is lost. He’ll just keep doing what he’s been doing, only for Ivanka and Don Jr. And given that there are half a dozen would-be Trumps in the pipeline who know how to use the path that Trump has paved, things grow even more problematic. I honestly don’t know how this doesn’t end in a dystopia.
I wish I was overreacting, but I’m not. Again, as I have repeatedly stated, the only reason at this point that maybe we might have a possibility of victory is Trump is a galactic-brain self-own artist. And he’s going to crack under the pressure of impeachment, no matter what. That’s it, that’s all I got.
Barr very soon comes out with this long-awaited probe into the Deep State. He presents it to the MAGA base a the Grand Unified Theory of The Deep State. Chris Wallace says it’s “bad optics” for impeachment.
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