In the end, all the shocking Cassidy Hutchinson testimony will be dismissed by most conservatives because there is some debate about the sexxiest element of what she said: that Trump attacked his Secret Service detail.
That’s it. What could have been a John Dean moment will be brushed aside and dismissed by the Right because of that one thing. As such, no consensus will develop about what to do with Trump, we won’t develop the political will to finally hold him accountable and we lurch ever closer to autocracy or civil war.
It’s all very disappointing.
And, what’s worse, even if we did magically gather the political will to do something about Trump, there are half a dozen younger would-be autocrats — Ron DeSantis chief among them — who would finish the job that Trump started.
We’re beyond the event horizon of autocracy or civil war. As I’ve written before, it’s like we’ve given up as a nation. The Right absolutely believes they’re being oppressed by the woke cancel culture mob that is turning everyone gay that they use their Hard power to punish anyone they find…annoying. American politics has collapsed.
Most of the Right wants autocracy through white Christian minority rule and as such the dispute over the Trump-attacked-a-Secret Service-Guy is all they need to dismiss everything else she said that isn’t in dispute or in any way contested. They have their hook, their talking point and now the two sides go back to their silos, their echo chambers.
And when inevitably my Traditionalist relatives demand I talk about politics with them, they will wallow in that dispute and say everything she was “bogus” and a lie. And we lurch closer and closer to autocracy or civil war.
But, really, it was inevitable that this would happen. And that’s why we’re totally fucked. The rot within our political system is so extreme now that the momentum for us to either become an autocracy or have a civil war is so powerful that there is no turning back.
I suppose if there was some sort of very clear cut tragedy — one that was absolutely impossible for the Right to spin — that we might, might punt this crisis down the road one more political cycle. But it would have be a 911 sized tragedy that was extremely clear-cut. Something impossible to muddle, that forced the more extreme elements of the MAGA New Right to cool it for a little while.
One last thing — the Right is very agitated and they’re ascendant. If anything happens where they actually lose that momentum, watch out. They’re going to burn the country to the ground. All the psycho “Night of Rage” bullshit that they were so sure the Left was going to do, THEY will DEFINTELY do.
Things are dark and getting darker. There’s no going back. Something’s gotta give. Pray.
