Oh Boy. I can’t predict the future, but it would make a lot sense if within the next, say 48 to 72 hours there was a rather dramatic number of elderly celebrities and politicians who were felled by COVID19. May I point you to this chart, AGAIN:
Our future?
I have no idea who would be affected or exactly when. That’s between the fallen and their maker. But it would make a lot of sense given the above chart that whatever is going on out there in America’s population would pop out in a rather dramatic fashion when there was a dramatic uptick in the number of people we would notice: celebrities and politicians.
TMZ will report death after death of well-known celebrities in the 60s. I don’t want to think about the politicians in Washington and elsewhere who may be felled by COVID19 in the coming days. It makes me angry and sad taht maybe that might have been prevented — whoever they may be. We all bleed the same colored blood. We need to think of ourselves as patriots, citizens and human now, not Red or Blue.
I’m not “rooting” for this to happen, as the Doofus Crown Prince Don Jr. might have you believe. I am, however, being honest — the numbers are rather grim for old people. And a lot of elderly people in the 60 – 80 range control both the spotlight and the levers of power in the current world order. If they were wiped out rather abruptly by The Gray Plague, that would cause not only a lot of cause a huge amount of chaos, it would also shove us into a New World Order. Many, many years of institutional memory would vanish.
It would be a tragedy because, in hindisight, we will look back and realize that maybe some of those lives could have been saved if we had, say, had some actual leadership and not a fascist, deranged moron as president. I don’t think simply wanting some fucking accountability makes me either someone rooting for “millions of dead” to stop the “winning” of House Trump nor does mean I suffer from “Trump Derailment Disorder.” If you think the latter, you can, as always, eat shit you fucking fascist.
Anyway. I have no idea what is going to happen. But this going to be a process, not an event. And with testing, we’re looking at the past, not the present or future. So I still think by about March 15, America may be on her knees.
So, if Trump snaps because his absolute need to win smashing against his absolute realization that he’s going to be blamed for a royal clusterfuck of a response to the biggest domestic American crisis since the Civil War, how bad will things get?
Well, first, things may sort themselves out. No one can predict the future. Maybe it really is “just the flu,” or at least the bullshit coming from House Trump will work with the base. It will work with the base and the “German Industrialists” will continue to buy stocks no matter what and Trump will get his Thousand Year Trump. The Fourth Reich will consolidate its power and I endup with a Trump-brand bullet in the back of my head sometime in Trump’s second term at my local ICE camp.
But, for shits and giggles, let’s just play pretend. I know it’s hard to believe, but let’s assume that, work with me here, Trump finally faces some political accountability for being a fucking criminally incompetent traitor racist bigot misogynist who is only powered by greed, hate and a bloodlust for power and not the interests of the Constitution. What happens then?
One of two things: either Trump implodes or he explodes on a mental level.
Implosion If Trump implodes, we just won’t see him that much. He’ll go full Howard Hughes on us. He might be able to summon enough energy to come out and talk about what’s going on, but in general will see Pence a whole lot more. Like, a whole lot more. And, it’s possible that weirdly the government starts to function better as if someone else is running it. There might even be some personal changes that mysteriously happen out of the blue. And Pence isn’t fired for the second term is widely assume he will be. Trump’s second term is just as bad as we all assume it will be, but by about 2022 it definitely will seem as if Trump has effectively given control over to Pence. A huge political fight breaks out between Pence and Doofus Don Jr as Don Jr has a political reason to expose what is really happening — the United States doesn’t have a functioning president.
Explosion This is less likely to happen, but if it did, it would happen because the short term events on the ground had gotten far worse than we expected. Trump will snap in a rather dramatic fashion. He will go transnational in his bonkers state. A lot of things that have been rolling around in his head since he became office will happen. He’ll pardon everyone he wants to pardon — including himself. He’ll whip his cock out and stroke it to completion. He’ll use the Presidential Alert System to shoot out dickpics and tweets all day long. He’ll probably get extremely passive-aggressive on Twitter an talk about how we all hate him and want him to kill himself. (We don’t.) It will get really, really bad.
Now, what the political consequences of this would be, I don’t know. It could be that we might just summon up the political courage — at last — to have something of a snap impeachment-and-conviction. But events on the ground would have be so existentially bad that the usual Trump enablers would have abandoned him in a big, big way.
It definitely seems as though the Right isn’t prepare to take the possibility of a pandemic seriously. Much like they think global climate change is a “hoax,” so, too, do they think the “coverage” of the COVID19 by the press is a “hoax” as well. Now, of course, Trump’s enablers are twisting themselves in knots, trying to explain to us that the idiot-in-chief meant “weaponize,” when he said “hoax.” Whatever. he’s still too stupid to be president and should be removed from office immediately for that, if nothing else.
But what’s interesting to me is, what has happened for the Right to take this situation seriously? How many people have to die? Probably if it got bad enough they would either simply lie, or deny or hide any information that really hurt Trump or might cause him to, at last have some sort of concrete political accountability. If that was the case, the only real metric that might give them pause for thought would be if, they, themselves got sick to the extent that they couldn’t show up to work.
That’s it — if they, themselves, were near death because of this “hoax,” then maybe they might at last take it seriously. Then the moment they got well, they would turn around and start screaming at people like me for whatever new reason they might pull out of their butt. They would either simply ignore what just happened, or say if only people like me had supported Trump, things wouldn’t have gotten so bad. Even if there was demonstrable evidence that Trump’s corrupt, incompetence administration is bungling the response to this “hoax,” they would still ignore it. Or, put another way MAGA Republicans are a death cult. They would rather the entire world be a nuclear hellscape than admit that maybe the browning of America and increased sexual agency for women isn’t something to be afraid of. Lulz!
It is interesting some of the wilder rhetorical flourishes of the Right. Mike Huckabee’s “Trump could suck out all the Corona Virus in the world and go to the bottom of the ocean and spit it out and be blamed for polluting the ocean,” comes to mind. That sound very bi-partisan to me, how about to you?
Or, put another way, if America does unite because of COVID19, things will have to get far worse than any of us could possibly imagine at this point. And, for the time being, I have no reason to think that will happen. Trump will again escape accountability, Don Jr. becomes the Crown Prince of the Fourth Reich and I die in an ICE camp. Lulz!
Anyway. We’ll see, I guess. The media’s concern over this issue is a hysterical “hoax,” meant to hurt Trump politically. (Ugh.)
Before BuzzFeed calls me a “dangerous charlatan,” or some such, let me state I have no idea what I’m talking about and if you listen to me you have only yourself to blame. I just like to write and I’m interested COVID19. I was trained a journalist and, as such, it’s an opportunity to flex that part of my mind.
There’s a lot to be hopeful about when it comes to COVID19. I know that Don Jr. thinks that I have some twisted bloodlust and want “the death of millions” so his father’s “winning” will stop, but lulz, fuck that guy. All I want is some form of accountability. That’s it. If you have power, I think you should have to account for any screw ups you might do. What’s going on may be the biggest domestic crisis in American history since the Civil War simple, basic accountability is not a radical concept.
Anyway, in the medium-to-long term, there’s a lot of good news. We may have a vaccine far sooner than we might otherwise hope for. It’s possible that as part of the general ebb and flow of the virus it will subside — but not vanish — from the States. If it follows the Spanish flew, there will be seasonal waves. That will not only get Trump plenty of time to consolidate power and blame everything on Democrats (Flughazi!) but should Corona Virus come back in the fall in, say, October, he can suspend the Constitution and stop the 2020 Election. Lulz!
But there is some bad news. We still aren’t testing very many people — and the Trump Administrator has made a point of censoring how many tests are available — and when we do get around to testing a lot of people it’s a snapshot of the past. We’re seeing what happened two weeks ago with the virus, not what may happen in the future. And this doesn’t even being to address the possibility of The Gray Plague or the WuFlop happening in the United States.
The Gray Plague would be a significant culling of the nation’s elderly punctuation. That might have significance political and social significance going forward. The WuFlop, too, might be a rather big deal if it begins to happen in the United States to any degree. The WuFlop is when otherwise healthy people passout and faceplant. Sometimes, they twitch or “flop.” It’s very unnerving and we’re very unprepared for the general public to see it.
So, in the long term, we’re fine. It’s the short term — say the next 24 to 72 hours — we have to worry about. But it’s possible Trump will AGAIN weasel his way out of any accountability, even if it means a lot of necessary deaths. All that matters is power, greed and being cruel for cruel’s sake.
I had an illuminating little encounter today. I saw two Virginia State Troopers at a fast food place and I decided to talk to them about what I felt was the coming COVID19 crisis. I was a bit taken aback not only by how fucking arrogant and dismissive they were, but how the one who spoke to me pretty much towed House Trump’s official imperial line about what’s going on: “a media hoax.”
So two men who are likely to be at the forefront of what could be the biggest domestic crisis in our nation’s history since the Civil War were lulzing it because The Dear Leader is a comically deranged mixture of Chauncey Gardner and Zoolander. While, yes, Trump may have meant the media was “weaponizing” their coverage of COVID19 because they wanted to hurt his fee-fees, a lot of his followers HEARD WHAT HE SAID: nothing to worry about, it’s a hoax.
Anyway, I’m starting to think House Trump is going to get away with doing to COVID19 what they did with The Mueller Report — lie and hide the truth until politically they escape any consequence again. It’s the idea that House Trump might face some political consequence for their criminal incompetence, more than any blood lust about hoping to see “millions die”that people like me want when it comes to COVID19. And, I think, on an gut level, even the Doofus Crown Prince Don Jr. knows that and hence he lashes out — he knows that if that actually happened, the whole thing could come tumbling down. At least in the short term. That prospect frightens him so much — and he’s a complete moron — that he lashes out and says demostrably hateful, stupid things in an effort to whip the base up into a frenzy so they’ll vote for him in 2024 should God Emperor Trump I decide to step down rather than rule as Emperor For Eternity.
So, there’s a good chance that rather than face any accountability, the criminally incompetence House Trump will mindfuck America like we’re China or something. They won’t tell us how many tests are available. If the have the power to hide any information that will hurt them politically, they will, damn the consequences or additional loss of life. As long as the stockmarket is stable and Trump wins re-election, everything is a lulz. The base will remain willfully ignorant of how many of their loved ones could have been saved and if there’s any scandal, it won’t be until the general 2021 – 2023 time frame before it happens. House Trump installs its OWN Deep State and Vice President Don Jr. becomes president should Emperor Trump 1 of Trumplandia dain to step down for any reason whatsoever.
I honestly don’t see how both the worst case scenario happens AND us being just as fucked as we would have been had none of this have happened won’t happen. Many more people than need be will get sick and maybe die AND House Trump will establish the Thousand Year Trump. They’re just too craven, too willing to do anything to win for that not to happen.
Of note — Trump has said at least once that COVID19 is going to “miraculous” vanish in April. This is what’s going on: an expert told him it’s likely COVID19, like the flu, will retreat in the spring, just like the normal flu. It isn’t really going anywhere — just like the Spanish Flu, it will be back in the fall. But Trump will crow that he was right. In fact, he will make it the centerpiece of his re-election campaign. The fact that COVID19 would then be ravaging the Southern Hemisphere won’t matter to him. In fact, he will probably know that and when it comes back just int time for an “October Surprise” he will use it blame Democrats and / or suspend the election and never fucking leave office.
Again, if you think all of this is me having “Trump Derangement Disorder,” I want YOU, PERSONALLY, to eat shit. It’s the least I can say since it’s demonstrable that House Trump is criminally incompetence and a lot of people — many of them elderly MAGA people — will die unnecessarily because Trump doesn’t want to face any real political accountability. House Trump is already censoring the number of tests given and they could go so far as to make the results classified at some point in the near future.
As we entered February, House Trump was riding high. The impeachment “hoax” was defeated and Emperor Trump I was well on his way to consolidating his power over fading Republic. The Fourth Reich was now in its crib after a turbulent birth.
Flash forward to March and the Fourth Reich’s future appears a little less assured. We now find ourselves waiting for the first round of tests for the Corona Virus from across the country. In previous situations, House Trump has always, always, ALWAYS won. They did whatever mindfucking necessary to win. Have Rudy confess to it on TV. Anything. Anything to win. And it has worked.
But now we have a situation that is difficult to use the Stormy Daniels Playbook on. Not even Roy Cohen would be able to tell the wind to stop blowing or the sea to not rise. And, as such, it’s possible that within a few hours, the first Emperor of Trumplandia may soon be seen for who he is: just a hack reality TV star Right-wing Twitter troll who was incredibly lucky because of systemic problems in the American political system.
And, yet, in a way, for the moment Trump is both the God Emperor of Trumplandia and merely a very stupid — if lucky — mortal. What happens in the next, say, 48 hours, will decide his fate. Trump has been screaming at people like me about how much he hates me for about four years now. And, now, he and the doofus Crown Prince believe the press coverage of an impending pandemic in the United States is a “hoax.” What’s more the Crown Prince, seeing his own prospects as God Emperor Trump II possibly beginning to fade, is lashing out, saying “Democrats want millions to die.”
In the past, House Trump has always escaped at this point in the crisis. Always. They have ALWAYS WON. As Putin is known to say, “All that matters is you’re still in power when the sun sets.” So, for House Trump, it’s always been about power for power’s sake, greed for greed’s sake and cruelty for cruelty’s sake. It’s very possible that House Trump will live to fight again.
And yet.
Given what we know to have happened in a series of other nations starting with China, there’s a decent chance this might not be the case. Or, if it is, they’re going to have to start cracking some heads to stay in power. I don’t want anyone to die or get hurt and I’m not really all that thrilled at the prospect of the country I love, the United States of America, going into the biggest domestic crisis since the Civil War effectively without a president. I want America to win 3WW and, by extension, Trump. And, yet, there’s a problem — Trump, is, himself, a national security problem.
The god emperor had no clothes, if you will. So on one hand, I am rooting for Trump to at least not go completely fucking insane so he doesn’t nuke the entire world to hell, but on the other hand, it would definitely be beneficial if somehow we, as a nation, summoned the political will to either do a snap impeach-and-convict or invoked the 25th Amendment against Trump’s will.
For the moment, we have the political will to do neither. And if things get so bad as to actually give us the will to do either of those things, you know pretty much the End Times have come to the United States. I don’t want that. If Trump escapes AGAIN and the Fourth Reich is able to grow to adult hood and throw me in a Trump Re-Education ICE Camp, then, well, so be it. I’d rather go alone against ICE than the entire nation be brought to its knees because of COVID19. So, in that sense, I’m definitely NOT “rooting” for “millions to die.” (Fuck Don Jr, by the way.)
As an aside, much of the bitching and moaning coming from House Trump is due in large part to them knowing what THEY would do if it was a Democratic president who was facing this situation. As shown from the Ebola Crisis during the Obama Administration, House Trump really would root for millions of people to die if it meant they could take and keep power easier. This is demonstrably true, so if you think I have “Trump Deranged Disorder” please eat shit, you fucking fascist asshole. Yeah, *YOU*, PERSONALLY.
Anyway.
One thing to keep an eye on if you want to get a sense of the prospects of House Trump is what its enablers say over the next few days. If the usual MAGA apologists oddly begin to sound a bit more human, as if their immortal soul might have return to their bodies, then, well, that’s a real danger sign. Things would have to get Biblical for, say, Hugh Hewitt to say, yes, maybe House Trump is NOT the only thing standing between America and the chaos of scary brown people and women with sexual agency.
All we can do now is wait. Wait for not only the test results but what the reaction to them may be on the public. If they’re not so bad, that’s great. Trump can crow about how it really was a “liberal hoax,” and I can go back to developing my novel. If they’re as bad as I suspect, well, buckle up. Things may get rather bumpy for not only House Trump, but everyone else in the United States.
Shelt Garner may be reached at migukin (at) gmail (dot) com.
In the context of how it was said, I think what Trump trying to convey to the base was that just as TrumpRussia and impeachment were, in his eyes “a hoax,” so, too, was Coronavirus. The *coverage* was “just another attempt” to “bring him down” because the liberal media doesn’t like his policies.
If Trump wasn’t criminally stupid, what he MIGHT have said was an actual event was being “weaponized” by his political opponents. I THINK that’s what he was trying to say. He was TRYING to message the base that the bent of the coverage was more critical than it might otherwise be.
But he’s sooooooooo fucking stupid, not the political genius that access-journalist Maggie Haberman keeps telling me he is, he made a bad situation worse by conflating things to such an extent that instead of preparing for a pandemic, we’re all talking about that fucking dumb comment.
In a way, I think what MAGA is most concerned about is now they’ve been on top for some time and the idea that just as they’s finally beaten the opposition and are on the cusp of their final consolidation of power, THIS happens. So, they’re feeling a little nervous that, well, that Fourth Reich they were so looking forward to isn’t QUITE the sure thing they thought just a few days ago.
An alarming thing I’ve seen on Twitter very recently is some scientific evidence that COVID19 has been in Washington state, at least, for about six weeks. If it’s been in Washington for six weeks, it’s been bouncing around the United States for six weeks.
So, I would suggest, when the first wave of test results across the country begin to be reported, we may have, on a psychological level, something of a Pearl Harbor moment. But it won’t be the beginning of WW3, it’ll be the beginning of 3WW — the World War WuFlu.
Now, if that is, in fact, the case, the entire dynamic of American politics will change rather rapidly. Americans in ital reaction would be to “rally round the flag.” But, of course, Trump on an existential level is a divider, not a uniter and, as such, his usual demagogic bullshit won’t work. You can’t gaslight a pandemic. I guess you can try, but it’s difficult. The usual Stormy Daniels’ Playbook of having Rudy come out to admit everything to “normalize” criminal behavior just won’t cut it.
So what would all of this mean on a practical level? Well, if Trump’s worst nightmare happened — the stock market cratered and he was blamed for it, then either he implodes or explodes. Either he crumples rather dramatically and we’re effectively leaderless during the greatest domestic crisis since the Civil War, or he goes complete nuts and does — or tries to do — some rather insane things.
Trump implodes I could see the administration have something of a spasm of panic where by the usual corruption and incompetence is replaced with a sudden need to use things that Trump hates: science, facts and unconditional bi-partisanship. As such, MAGA apologists like Rick Santorm and Hugh Hewitt might rather abruptly change their tune out of desperation. Like, for the duration of the crisis while it’s an absolute political necessity, they might not try to score short term pontifical points or defend the indefensibly — they may start to act like normal human beings. They might, for once, unequivocally state what is demonstrably, factually true: the emperor has no clothes. They will, at last, pull their head out of Trump’s ass and weirdly want to do whatever it necessary to save as many lives as possible. If it happens as abruptly as I suspect, we all may look at CNN or MSNBC and drop our coffee cup in shock.
But for that to happen, things would have to get rather Biblical in their nature. Like The End Times Are Here Bad. Suddenly Trump and his toadies will be honest for once. They will beg for the very people they have scream at for four years — qualified women and minorities, scientists, you name it — to help them save the country, and, by extension, themselves. The moment they feel safe, these MAGA shitheads will turn around and go back to screaming at these people for being scary.
There is the other option: Trump, on a mental level, explodes. He goes complete nuts. He orders anyone who will listen to do what are obviously illegal things. He suspends the Constitution. He shuts down the Internet. He locks down the border. He orders the Air Force to shoot down passenger planes. You name it. This would pose something of a problem for our political system, especially if he starts to order the MAGA base to kill people he doesn’t like or if he goes so nuts that he begins to use the “Presidential Alert System” to send us all his tweets and cockpics.
This raises the question — what, exactly, COULD we do about it? Both impeachment and the 25 Amendment are now effectively non-existent as options. For either one of these options to become viable, things would have to grow so existential that there would suddenly be the overwhelming political will to do them. Since impeachment is a political act, you could go the 1868 route and simply impeach Trump for, being, well, Trump and rush it over to the Senate. We might even get witnesses for once.
But, remember, this is not something to hope for. Our political is so taunt, so dysfunctional, that for it to work again would mean A LOT OF PEOPLE WERE SICK AND DYING. And, if you throw The Gray Plague into the mix and the idea that a lot of the leaders who would help get rid of Trump would be, themselves incapacitated by WuFlu, well, I think you understand how bad things would be while we figured out how, exactly, to get rid of Trump. Throw in a limited nuclear exchange between the United States and the DPRK and things would get even more fucked up.
I don’t want this to happen. Yes, Trump has screamed at me and people like me for about four years. And, yes, he sees any willingness to compromise or work together as weakness to be exploited to the fullest for short term political gain. But I am an American, and if it seemed as though America, Columbia, was on her knees because of 3WW, then, I think everyone should just cool it and help the Trump Administration get us out of the situation as soon as possible.
Of course Trump would use any vacancies in the government caused by 3WW to consolidate power after it was over and he would also turn around and put everyone he didn’t like in an ICE camp, like he would do anyway in his second term, but lulz. YOLO.
I’m not an expert. But I can read. And here’s what I know to be true:
South Korea, Italy and Iran all saw exponential growth in cases of COVID19 after their first cases were registered. They knew this because they had socialize medicine and could test people pretty fast. When they did, they had a metric to use — the number of people they knew were infected.
Let’s turn to the United States.
We have four recorded cases in the last 24 hours and nothing, in real terms, is changing. And we have only a limited ability to test people. In fact, even though the testing front is getting much better, it’s still going to take some time to test people and get the result back. And, in real terms, we’re not changing our behavior on the ground. So, it seems possible that when we do finally get around to testing that we may be in for something of a Pearl Harbor moment when we realize it’s too late — we have cases in all 50 states.
That, in turn, would likely lead to a massive panic. And, soon enough, it’s possible we may reach our Jan. 1942 moment — the whole country buckles and it looks as though the Apocalypse has, at last, arrived. Then leaders will pop here and there on the State and local level and things will begin to get better pretty quick. People will still get sick and a lot more people than need be will die, but, in the end, we’ll manage to get through it all.
But, of course, there’s no assurance the “good guys” will win. There could be massive political violence, revolution, counter-revolution and civil war. What came up from the ashes of that situation would be anyone’s guess. And that doesn’t even factor in the possibility of a limited nuclear exchange between the United States and the DPRK along the way.
And, yet, let’s try to think of where the serious, major outbreaks might happen in the United States in the coming days. Here are my guesses and the reason.
Nevada (Lunar New Year, Caucuses) NYC (Midtown tourists) Florida (Superbowl) LA (Lots of awards) Iowa (Caucuses) South Carolina (Primary) Washington, DC (Impeachment trial, lots of foreign visitors)
There are probably others, but once we have our Pearl Harbor moment, the above are the places we might see massive numbers of people get sick and, sadly, die. I don’t want this. I would much rather suffer through Trump’s Fourth Reich than have something that horrific happen.
And, maybe, I’m wrong. Maybe jumping to conclusions. I do that a lot. Hopefully, I’m wrong and I can, at last, go back to developing my novel.
Oh boy. Trying to untie the logic behind Trump’s comment at his recent South Carolina Nuremberg rally is going to take some time. So, according to Trump at the news conference today, what he meant was the concern that the press was showing was the hoax, not the virus itself.
Ok.
So, in essence, he’s using the Zoolander argument MAGA is so fond of — he’s too bad a speaker, and too stupid, for anyone to accuse him of being a poorly informed racist misogynist hypocrite. But, really, it also admits that Trump wants it both ways.
He wants to scream at the top of his lungs to the base that the evil liberals are out to get him then within hours turn around and “respectfully” as the press not to hurt him by explaining how bad things are. It’s the same-old same-old scream at you to win power, then once power is attained scream at you for having Trump Derangement Disorder if you have the gall to scream back.
The reason why this usual bullshit begins to fall apart with COVID19 is, well, people’s lives are at stake. So the dynamic is significantly different. Or, to put a more fine point on it, old white people‘s lives are at stake. So, for once, MAGA may find themselves having to take Trump’s lies and bullshit both seriously and literally.
That’s a rather existential threat for Trump whose political power comes from lying and dog whistles. If he has to act like a traditional politician — and is judged by those metrics, his political goose is cooked.
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