by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
A number of things brought down the Soviet Union. The Pope. Ronald Reagan’s massive military build up in the early 80s.
And Chernobyl.
Now, let me frame the following by saying living through history sucks. It’s only given a narrative after the fact. So Trump could very well simply use the coming chaos associated with a massive pandemic in the United States as just another excuse to consolidate power, weaponize the ICE Camps where I will quickly find myself dead. That’s a very real possibility.
Or, put another way, with great risk comes great opportunity — for both the good guys and the bad guys. So, there are any number of pretty dark scenarios that might happen in the next year or so. But let’s, for once, be hopeful and think about a situation where House Trump, at last, meets its political Waterloo.
The key issue is how bad things get on the ground. If what I fear will happen, happens and essentially nearly 100% of the American population is in some way exposed to COVID19 over the next, say, 28 days, then, well, The Thousand Year Trump may….have a problem? Trump on a basic level is very stupid and very lucky. He’s an idiot. He’s nothing more than a Right Wing celebrity Twitter troll who won the historical jackpot. If Trump had decided to play president in one of the Sharknato sequels, we probably would be talking about how James Woods was going to defeat President Hillary Clinton in the fall. Or something like that. It was inevitable — because of the absolute singularity of racism that is the Republican Party — that SOMEONE like Trump was going to become president. So, Maggie Haberman, you sold your soul for access to a very lucky doofus.
Anyway, for COVID19 to be House Trump’s downfall, things would have to grow so demonstrably bad that the base would begin to waver in ways we’ve never, to date, seen. If The Gray Plague culled about a million elderly people over the course of a few months then, well, I’d like to think someone, somewhere might notice and decide not to vote for Trump in 2020. While that might make Twitter Liberals have a spontaneous organism, there’s also a chance that, well, Trump will finally go completely fucking insane. He may snap at the prospect of “losing face” if you will. He’s already barely holding on as it is.
I’ve repeatedly said over the last few years that Trump, because he represents the fears of white people about long-term “browning of America”that essentially he’s a king, a tyrant and absolute dictator and the only thing that would bring him down would be something “extra-political.” So he was never going to be convicted by the Senate for anything he did that could, in any way, be construed as either a policy difference or the idea that the a lot of people didn’t like him. Whatever will bring Trump down will be something so jaw dropping, so debase, so completely surreal that is goes past the bounds of politics into something darker and far more scary.
So, I would propose that should Trump feel that because of something out of his control, like, say, a massive pandemic that brings the nation to its knees over the next two weeks, he may snap. And because he’s already successfully beat impeachment AND the 25th Amendment is a fucking dead letter — I have no idea what the end game might be. Probably would happen is Trump would bring us to the brink of the end of history by blowing us all up. If he didn’t manage to pull that off, then, and only then, might either the 25 Amendment be invoked, or Nancy Pelosi strike again with another article of impeachment or three.
Or, put another way, there’s a chance that when Trump does finally lose to history, it will be of benefit to none of us.
