by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
Things are dark, guys. And going to get a lot darker.
There’s a lot of talk about how we’re learning more about how exactly Bill Barr saved Trump’s sorry ass when he “mislead” Congress over Trump’s obstruction of justice in regards to the TrumpRussia scandal.
But it’s too late on a political level. Not only do the two sides now have an established orthodoxy about what happened, even if you were able to pin down your typical MAGA person that Trump did, in fact, obstruct justice they would simply wave their hands and say it’s “moot now,” “it’s time to move on” or mumbled something about “orange man bad.”
The crux of the issue is the Mueller Report was the last gasp of the Watergate era narrative of how a major presidential scandal was supposed to play out. It was our one shot to destroy Trump politically and we totally blew it. Trump is now completely above the law on a political basis.
How Trump’s crimes are framed has changed. Now that’s been proven that Trump’s cult of personality is so absolute that he can incite an armed insurrection and STILL not have any accountability, then, well, lulz.
The thing is, we have to stop talking about how the Republican Party is in its “death throws.” The exact opposite is true — it’s growing stronger and more hateful by the moment. The United States is far more unstable than any of us could possibly imagine.
It’s easy to sketch out a scenario — or several — whereby there’s something akin to a civil war in the United States before the end of 2021. And the center of it will be Donald J. Fucking Trump. He’s such a dingdong that he could very well simply, without thinking about it, run around saying he is the “real” president should Cyber Ninjas “prove” that he “won” Arizona.
A number of MAGA dominated states could take him both literally and seriously and call conventions to leave the Union. Then he will squirm and try to — like he always does — to have it both ways. He will on one hand say he doesn’t support such efforts but on the other hand say that obviously they have a right to do such a thing since OBVIOUSLY he won the election.
The end result of this clusterfuck is we have a civil war now, and not in the 2024-2025 timeframe.
