by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls
As it stands, Republicans’ arguments against impeachment are essentially, “Lalalalalala I can’t hear you!” Because they can’t get any political gain from it, they see it as by definition illegitimate. That’s why they attack the process, no matter what. Because the facts don’t help them, they want to message the base that the entire thing shouldn’t be happening in the first place.
There’s a serious danger that should Republicans feel they’ve exhausted all political options that they will lulz the entire concept of liberal democracy and go full throated fascist on the nation. One of the central tenants of fascism is violence or the threat of violence to further political goals. So I feel it’s well within the realm of the possible for Republicans — specifically Trump through his Twitter feed — to become transactional. They will embrace the idea of violence so they can turn around and say, “We have to stop the impeachment process, people are starting to get hurt.”
They will, of course, wilfully ignore that they were the ones who incited the violence to begin with. All I can say is we have to take this into consideration going forward. We have to stop trying to deny that impeachment is happening. We have to start accepting that Trump did this to himself — and us — and we have to see the process through. This is a political war and there’s no avoiding the damage to our political system at this point. All impeachment is doing in real terms is accelerating some trends have been happening for some time.
Really, the issue now is, will Republicans stage a putsch of some sort if they get desperate enough. Will they collectively — at least in the House — decide they would rather martyr themselves in a last-gasp effort to save the political future of The Dear Leader than risk him being convicted. I draw no joy from this prospect. But given how hysterical Republicans are growing, it definitely seems there’s a greater-than-zero chance this might actually happen.
Or, put another way, we have to accept that on a strictly political level Trump is likely to be acquitted no matter what he is proven to have done. In real terms, it would be a non-political event that may bring House Trump down in the end. He goes bonkers. Or there’s some sort of impeachment-related violence the causes a brief–but powerful– radicalization of otherwise moderate independants.
I honestly have no idea what is going to happen. I just know no matter what the endgame, we’re going to be in a new political era.
