by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls
Right now, all down to a matter of specifics when it comes to MAGA fuckers breaking the law and outing the Trump Whistleblower. Sen. Rand Paul apparently thinks there’s no law preventing him from simply blurting the name out whenever the mood strikes him, so lulz.
Meanwhile, Sean Hannity is a very wealthy man. There’s simply no downside to him blurting the name out on his show tonight — or anytime this week. So he gets sued. He hires the best lawyers in the nation and gets whine about about being a martyr for the cause in the face of the Deep State. Trump will owe him a solid. And, really, what better way to kick of Hannity’s political career than to do something so absolutely stupid in the name of Der Further. Trump can pardon him, if need be.
Once the Whistleblower is outed in a major, public way, then the two sides go back to their corners to plot their next move. Republicans will scream at the top of their lungs that the impeachment process has to end immediately because Whistleblower had a work relationship with Joe Biden and Susan Rice. They will do everything in their power to “kavanaugh” him in the eyes of the public. The will wallow in whatever political dirty tricks they have to get the base to dismiss Trump’s growing number of proven Big Boy Crimes against the Constitution.
Logically, all this would happen….NOW. Why it hasn’t happened yet is something of a mystery to me.
Two other things continue to linger in my mind. One is Trump’s mind exploding, not imploding in a really massive, public manner. Really, that particular fear is a long-term one. It could happen anytime between now and whenever Trump gets Peter Thiel to bribe just enough Electors to get him into his second term. At that point Trump will be a puddle and Trump’s second term Veep, Evil JFK Kris Kobach, can take over and establish The Thousand Year Trump.
The other thing I have a lot of unease about is extra-political moves on the part of MAGA fuckheads who are inspired by Trump unceasingly overheated and overwrought rhetoric on Twitter. Republicans will defend it, of course, and will even spin it as a reason why impeachment has to end. “People are getting hurt!”
But I believe Americans will collectively call bullshit on this foolishness and the political ground under Trump’s feet would begin to buckle in a pretty significant manner. Political violence is so alien to Americans that should there be any anti-impeachment violence, Trump’s fire break of general apathy on the part of the non-Twitter using public would go poof.
We also need to accept that good faith debate is now a dead letter in America. Republicans are old school fascists at this point. They have macro trends in their favor, but they’re so craven — and their leader so stupid — that they’re careening towards such a massive clusterfuck that their inevitable consolidation of power may at least be momentarily delayed. Even that is simply a “maybe.” But I do think if we are honest with ourselves and realize the Republican Party is a fascist, criminal enterprise now the sooner we will be more serious about impeachment stakes.
Republicans only care about laws and democracy if it helps them again power or money or both. No one is going to save us. There is no “Resistance,” we have to save ourselves. If we were a functioning democracy, we’d have massive rolling protests across the entire country until Republicans took notice. But that’s just not going to happen.
Things are going to get very, very dark. I would say the next 20 years will see America as nothing more than a Russian-style “managed democracy” until the youngest of the Baby Boomers begin to drop dead and the Browning of America kicks in. Even then, there’s a good chance it could be decades after that point before we stop being a mixture of modern day Venezuela and Apartheid South Africa. The political pendulum has broken for the next few decades.
The worst case scenario of the American Republic is here.
