Editor’s Note: Of course I goofed — it wouldn’t be 3WW, it would be 3W. But this is propaganda we’re talking about, so lulz.
by Shelt Garner @sheltgarner
The fundamentals of the economy are fine. But in the immediate near term, we have more pressing, existential metrics to use than the daily close of the Dow Jones. We need to worry about three things: 1) Food 2) Lights 3) Military readiness.
If we can’t keep those three things going, then everything is going to be a disaster. We have to have those three things to do the next thing: make sure we save as many people as possible. If we’re worried about the economy as we rush towards such a unprecedented long term crisis, we’re only going to ensure that a lot of people get sick and or die.
But we focus on those three metrics above going forward, we can save a lot of lives without the distraction of making sure plutocrats are able to make an extra billion here or there. We have to put human life first, no matter what.
Is Trump going to implode or explode?
Of course, that’s not at all what is going to happen. In fact, the first thing we’re going to have to worry about is if Trump implodes or explodes on a mental level. Is he going to turn into a puddle in the Oval Office, or is he going to go transactional with his insanity? He is going to get really passive aggressive on Twitter, saying we hate him, etc, etc. Ugh. He’s a big baby. A deranged, moronic baby. And in the near term, when we should be trying to save as many people as possible, we’re going to have to figure out how to babysit Trump so he doesn’t get us all killed one way or another.
I’m really concerned about one particular group — the elderly. If we don’t get our act together there’s going to be a great culling of elderly people we may look back upon as The Gray Plague. Yes, the Spanish Flu killed a lot of otherwise healthy people, but COVID19 may kill a lot more elderly people simply because our population is significantly larger and they’re a lot more vulnerable on an existential level.
Anyway, we see this as a war with battles that we may win or lose. I think we should call it 3WW — World War WuFlu. It’s catchy and evokes WW3 to give people some sense of how tough a fight this is going to be.
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.
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.
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’ve told the MAGA people I know repeatedly over the last four years that they will dominate American politics for at least the next 20 years. On a macro level, we have about 20 years before the youngest of the Baby Boomers finally shuffle off this mortal coil. So, from a demographic level, we’re probably going to have a succession of Trumps with the occasional Mike Pompeo or Nikki Haley thrown in for good measure. That’s our future. MAGA’s version of warmed-over fascism is our future. It’s 100% or future. The end. Good night and good luck.
But.
The possibility of The Gray Plague is staring us in the face. It’s at least possible that given the systemic corruption of incompetence of the Trump Administration that if, say, that bastion of MAGA codgerland known as The Villages erupted with COVID19 cases and A LOT OF PEOPLE STARTED DYING that maybe Trump might not have the absolute lock on angry white Baby Boomers? I’m not suggesting that MAGA faces an existential threat — yet — but it might get the wind knocked out of it for at least one election cycle. Maybe. Remember, for all the talk about Watergate, Ford only BARELY LOST in 1976. So things would have to grow demonstrably catastrophic in the United States for Trump’s connection to the Baby Boomer volk to in any way degrade.
Put another way, if The Villages imploded, Trump would probably freak out in a rather spectator fashion. His absolute physiological need to win would strike the absolute likelihood that he might, at last, face some potential political consequences with the base. Given that MAGA is a massive cancer on America, for there to be any real chemo used against it, a lot of people would — very tragically — have to die for it to happen. I don’t want that and I’d much rather take my chances with Trump’s Fourth Reich.
The point I’m trying to make is, even if Trump faces a possible existential threat with The Gray Plague, the hate and fear of brown people and “takers” that he represents ain’t going anywhere and we’re all fucked.
While I’m no fucking Oracle, I do believe I’ve gotten within the spectrum of predicting the real-life pandemic scenario that’s now rapidly unfolding around us. I said it would probably be today that the story started, and it is. But we still haven’t gotten to the “inciting incident” when the plot really begins.
It seems to me this scenario’s inciting incident will be one of several things that may happen within hours or days.
50 For 50 Test Results This Weekend Now that we’re actively testing people across the country, what happens when every fucking State has at least one case? If it happens this weekend, then Trump and his toadies are going to look just as bad as W. with his “Mission Accomplished” sign behind his back on the aircraft carrier. And the conditions are there for it happen rather rapidly.
The WuFlop Comes To America This is the wildcard. But the moment it recorded happening in the United States — especially somewhere like NYC or LA — then we’re going to the show. The entire nation will freak the fuck out. My fear it will happen at some recorded live event, say, Saturday Night Live. That’s kind of the nightmare scenario. To date, it’s just been CCTV recordings.
Bonus: The Gray Plague There are a lot of old, powerful and well-known people in the world right now. If, say, The Pope dies in the next 24-48 hours, well, that, in itself, would be a news event and lurch us into the a major crisis that would likely take about a year — at least — to sort itself out.
Anyway, I feel as though my work here is done. I’ve proved my point — I’m pretty good at building real-world scenario and I don’t know jack shit about anything. I’ll keep at it for no other reason than that’s my nature. But, lulz, I’m just a crank, right Maggie Haberman?
I can’t predict the future. I don’t have any revealed truth. But it definitely seems as though at some point between now, and, say, Sunday afternoon a massive amount of history may take place.
I say this because all the datapoints point to a few bolts popping off American society as some event happens that will mark the official beginning of the War War WuFlu (3W). My best guess is it will be someone’s notable’s abrupt demise at the hands of COVID19 or maybe a recorded instance of the WuFlop. Either one of those events would be the historical record scratch that would lurch us into a new era.
Or, put another way, this weekend could be the beginning of a period of unprecedented instability in the United States. The Right is already chomping at the bit to kill liberals, it’s not too difficult to assume they would actually do it far sooner than you think.
But the issue is — key a close eye on Iceland. If Iceland buckles over the weekend, then that’s a pretty good indication that the United States will be brought to her knees in about two weeks. This is the point where I say — I’m not an expert. I’m not looking at this from a medical standpoint, I’m looking at it from simply what seems to make sense on the face of it. So, as such, I could be making some pretty big assumptions that are completely inaccurate.
And, yet, here goes — I feel if Iceland implodes, then the worst is coming for the United States. I say that because more Americans visit Iceland in a year than there are natives. So, well, you know. It would mean a lot of Americans are infected but don’t know it and are exposing the unsuspecting population of poor old Iceland along the way. You could also say the same thing about a number of other nations very closely associated economically with the US like Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean. I think Mexico is the most likely to go down next to Iceland.
Meanwhile, America would be rather oblivious because we’re not testing anyone and won’t do so on any mass level until the end of next week. That gives COVID19 a loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong time to bounce around our population of 335 million people. The endgame might be rather nightmarish in the short term when a massive number of Americans are too sick to do anything and if they’re over 65, well, they’re just dead. The Gray Plague will take a massive hit out of the elderly population at some point starting in about two weeks, probably. But it could be as early as THIS weekend when elderly celebrities — and, gulp, elderly powerful people — begin drop dead.
Ironically, I would say in the short term, more people would be saved if someone DID suffer the WuFlop in the States this weekend. At least, then, we would start taking the situation a lot more seriously. The WuFlop is pretty eerie and to see it is to realize this may be a very dark moment in not just American history, but humanity’s history.
We’ll bounce back, of course, but for a few days it would be something of a bumpy ride. It would be extremely dark and scary. I’m thinking if this horrific event happens, it would be at some point in, say the Ides of March timeframe, if not a little sooner. But it would be this weekend, Leap Day Weekend, when our fate would be sealed.
And, as such, that’s why we need to keep a close eye on Iceland’s fate.
I’m going to give you the known conditions of what’s happening as we enter the weekend and YOU can tell ME what YOU think is going to happen. At the end I’ll give you some of what I’ve written about Trump going bonkers and you can use that, too, to decide what would happen if Trump suddenly woke up to the fact that he was absolutely not going to be able to weasel his way out of being blamed for the astonishing spread of COVID19 in the United States. Trump’s NOT a political genius as Maggie Haberman thinks, but only, in fact, a very lucky idiot.
Within about 48 hours of the first case being reported in northern Italy, the country was reporting hundreds of cases of COVID19.
The first instance of “community spread” COVID19 has happened in the United States about 48 hours ago. The United States doesn’t have a comprehensive testing strategy right now. It’s beginning to get better, but everything is being seen through the prism of short term politics. Everyone is trying to score points, not save lives. There are 335 million Americans who move around a lot and are very social.
As such, our only metric for the time being people getting sick. There’s a good chance we have a “shadow pandemic” taking place in the United States caused by a lack of testing. As such, COVID19 may pop out of the population like a kraken in rather abrupt fashion.
COVID19 is spreading and Trump doesn’t care.
Or, put another way, if you don’t have any metric for who has it because you’re not testing, and you’re not doing anything to stop the spread, then, well, lulz? You’re fucked. You could have a HUGE pandemic bouncing around the nation’s 335 million people at an alarming rate. Every day we don’t do some of the crazy things that places like China, South Korea and Japan have done to stop the spread, COVID19 uses to grow exponentially. More people spread it around their community. More people get sick. More people begin to die. But it’s likely they would be treated as if they just had the flu.
At some point, however, things would get so bad — like they have in Iran — that it would hard to ignore what was going on. Probably what would happen would be a LOT of elderly people would begin to die. They, too, would probably at first thought to have died from “the flu.” And we wouldn’t know any better until A LOT of elderly CELEBRITIES and POWERFUL PEOPLE began to die in quick succession to such an extent that the general population noticed it because each one of those events was news item.
Also at risk — if China is any indication — are nurses, doctors and other members of the health care system. Nurses as young as 29 have died there from COVID19. So, it is reasonable to assume that something similar would begin to happen in the United States. But because COVID19 was bouncing around unchecked, more and more such individuals would begin to die.
Now, if you take all those conditions and mull them for a bit, it definitely seems as though everyday something doesn’t happen to wake Trump up that maybe he needs to be a leader, the worst the situation is going to grow when something happens that finally does. In other words, as long as Trump tells MAGA this is all a Deep State conspiracy to bring him down, more and more lives are being put at risk.
I suspect the WuFlop — where people faceplant and begin to writhe on the ground like they’re possessed might give even MAGA people pause for thought. The conditions are there for this weekend to be rather dark on more than one level. And Trump’s willfully oblivious to what’s going on, focusing more on the stockmarket than the lives of the 335 million people he swore to protect.
Do The WuFlop.
The Gray Plague, too, might rattle the cage of a few of Trump’s supporters. Maybe. Either that, or we have some significant political violence in the United States. Places like Virginia I could see exploding into violence pretty easily if the vast majority of the United States was sick. Gun nuts, in particular, are itching to overthrow the Virginia state government because, lulz, they hate liberal democracy and want to fuck their guns.
Of course, this IS Trump we’re talking about, so once he realizes the magnitude of his fuck up, he’s probably going to snap. He’s going to panic in a rather frightening manner. He might shut the country down in various ways. He might order all planes out of the sky — including shooting them down. He might order the Internet shut down. He might start a war to distract people. Or, worst of all, he might just snap. The issue, of course, is there’s no political will to do anything about Trump until well after he inevitably wins re-election through any means necessary. The 25 Amendment is a dead letter, too. So, I honestly don’t know what would happen if he snapped in the middle of the biggest domestic crisis since the Civil War.
I’ve written at great length about what Trump losing his mind might look like. Here’s an example.
For about four years now, I have been telling anyone who will listen that I think Donald Trump is an existential threat to the Republic. The last few days have pretty much proven my case. It’s rare that I look out in the blue winter sky and wonder if I’m going to see a DPRK ICBM in the sky, heading to nearby-ish DC.
I have even begun to pace out how I would know it had happened. The EMP burst would zap all electronics in the general area of the nuclear blast and so, well, nothing would work. I have thought about how many sites the DPRK would target and the likelihood they would actually be able to blow them up. I love Koreans, but they have no “medium” switch on a cultural level. So if president crazypants managed to get them to the point where they wanted to take us down with them, then, then they would probably shoot as many as five ICBMs towards us. They have a pretty nice H-bomb arsenal at this point and the means to deliver them across the entire United States.
But they haven’t really had a chance to test the whole system, so there’s a good chance what would really happen is we would all collectively shit our pants at how fucking close we came to 10+ million dead (at least) in the United States alone. We aren’t really prepared on a psychological or emotional level to deal with THAT many dead in the context of civilization continue to exist. But that would be a real possibility — as long as the Chinese and Russians sat on their hands, any nuclear war between the DPRK and US would be on the low end of a “limited exchange.” Given how fucking bonkers Trump is, of course, he would probably nuke the North Koreans out of existence using not just tactical nukes but h-bombs. You could probably turn most of North Korea into an unlivable radioactive hellscape with as few as 5 h-bombs. Think about that. That’s pretty deep.
The point is, however, that we’re definitely lurching towards what I’ve suggested all along — things are going to get so extreme and so surreal pretty soon that we’re going to learn a lot not just ourselves as a people but something pretty basic about our nation as a whole. If there’s nothing Trump can do that will lesson his support for any reason, what happens if he get’s so bad on a mental level that we all start to think maybe we’re entering The Dead Zone. Maybe the reason there’s no intelligent life in the universe is inevitably an ET Donald Trump pops up and blows the planet to bits? Is it possible that Trump’s not just an existential threat to the Republic, he’s an existential threat to the species?
I suspect that we’re just fucked. MAGA just needs Trump cognizant enough to make it into his second term. That’s it. By that point his new Veep — The Kooch, Kris Kobach, Tom Cotton, Tucker Carlson or Don Jr? — will be in place to pick up the slack. So I fully expect one of the scenarios we face is Trump uses any war in the Middle East to win re-election and the he promptly turns into a psychological puddle and we get the American Hitler we’ve all been expecting in Trump.
I just can’t see ANYTHING that will force Trump out of office for any reason other than a peaceful death sometime in the next 10 years. He’s just one tweet away from demanding a Constitutional Convention to “pass a balanced budget amendment.” He will get it, they will go rouge and pass Enabling Acts on a Constitutional level and I die in an ICE camp sometime in the next two to three years. Lulz!
Another, far darker scenario is Trump doesn’t make that far. He manages to crater on a psychological level not when MAGA needs him to (any point after Jan 20, 2021) but, say, sometime in the January-October time frame. If things get as mindblowingly surreal as fear, Republicans will have three lines of defense, 1) Let the people decide 2) If only we back off and give him some space, he’ll make America Great Again 3) The Pence Pivot.
The last one is one of the more clever moves they might use. If things get so absolutely extreme that the Republican Lizard People finally face the unthinkable of having to admit that, well, maybe Trump really WAS a worse choice than Hillary Clinton, they will simply say that Trump needs his rest and Pence is making sure Trump’s vision of America (ugh) becomes a reality. We’re safe because of Pence, in other words.
But let’s say that doesn’t work. Then what. What if what I’ve mulled before happens. I mean, what if Trump really finally flips his lid — and in the middle of a major regional war in the Middle East, no less! Then what. Poor old Hugh Hewitt’s brain may break. If you’re such a cockholster for The Dear Leader and finally reality comes crashing into the situation in a way that even you can’t spin or deny, then, well, things are going to get fucking lit. A lot of smart, educated grown-ass men have debased themselves absolutely for the sake of Trump and every day Trump gets worse and more dangerous for not just America but the FUCKING WORLD.
The single most surreal event of my life will be if Dennis Prager+Hugh Hewitt+Matt Schlapp get on TV and have a complete, total mental and emotional breakdown when, like The Simpsons’ Comic Book Guy, they realize they hitched their “lives and scared honors” to the wrong guy. This is unlikely to happen, but thinking about it happening is kind of chilling. That level of bonkers behavior on the part of a “public intellectual” would be rather disturbing.
Only if, say, a few million people died and everyone blamed Trump for it could I see that happening. In real terms, those guys have gotten what they wanted from Trump — a tax cut and young, hack MAGA judges. They have no shame and our media ecosystem is so broken that the moment Trump is no longer politically viable, they’ll change their tune in mid-conversation and act as if nothing happened. Fuck those liars.
Anyway, I generally don’t think any that extreme is going to happen. Far more likely is Trump will always be just on the cusp of losing his mind and yet never quite get so bad that Nancy Pelosi strikes by sending the Articles of Impeachment to the Senate so they can be used essentially as the 25th Amendment. He will drift into his second term and The Kooch (or whomever) will be the person who puts me in a camp and is indirectly responsible for my death in American Killing Fields. (In upstate New York maybe?)
Here’s a little fragment I wrote about how difficult it would be to get Trump physically out of the White House if, for some reason, we did manage to decide to get rid of him against his will.
9/10th a story fragment of a possible near future by Shelton Bumgarner
April, 2019
The eyes of the world were on the White House.
Just moments before, President Donald J. Trump, 45th president of the United States, had been convicted by 67 members of the Senate for a whole list of high crimes and misdemeanors. Trump had for weeks now been ranting on Gab about his case in the Senate, bouncing back and forth between threats to start a war with Iran or the DPRK and not-so-subtle hints that he might take his own life should he be convicted by the Senate.
And, now, at last, the moment of truth had arrived.
Trump legally, at least, was no longer president, but he had been oddly silent since the verdict had been announced with great fanfare from the well of the Senate. Trump’s conviction had come after months of investigations on the part of the now Democratic Congress. The length and breath of Trump’s malfeasance discovered by these hearings had rocked the nation to its very core. On more than one occasion, MAGA talking heads on cable news had been interrupted by astonishing breaking news that left them, for once, unable or unwilling to defend the president.
The hearings had ground on for months to such an extent that Trump’s approval had slowly drifted to the 20s and stayed there consistently. Trump’s support was now made up of the very rich and the very poor. Oddly, despite Trump’s near constant demands on Twitter for violence on the part of his supporters, little, if any was reported. Trump had grown so frustrated that he had all but abandoned Twitter at one point for the more receptive Gab social media platform. Though on more than one occasion Rudy Giuliani had made it very clear it was within the rights of the president to declare martial law if he deemed it in the best interests of the nation. More than one delegation of Senate Republicans had gone to the White House to explain to Trump that he was going to be convicted, no avail. Trump made it clear to them, in not so many words that his simply living in the White House made him president, a sentiment best expressed by the legal saw that, “Possession is 9/10ths of the law.”
Finally, a post to Gab came out: “My so-called ‘conviction’ is the work of the Deep State and as such illegitimate. I remain president.”
This set off a chain of events, the likes of which Americans had never seen. Suddenly, everyone on Twitter became a Constitutional scholar as everyone studied the exact wording of the Constitution as to what happens if the president is removed from office by the Senate. The wording is quite clear: he or she is no longer president and that’s it.
Nowhere in the Constitution did it explain what to do if the president simply decided to ignore the Senate. What’s more, nowhere in the Constitution did it state what to do with the nuclear launch codes should a president be removed from office and he refuse to accept the decision of the Senate.
The next few hours were chilling as they were surreal for millions of people not just in the United States but around the globe. The issue of Trump’s physical access to America’s nuclear launch codes was suddenly at the forefront of everyone’s mind. Though it was finally announced that while the nuclear football remained in Trump’s possession, Sec. of Defense Mattis had ordered the American armed forces to stand down for the duration of the crisis.
Trump, on Twitter, was as defiant and unhinged as usual.He threatened to kill himself. He threatened to start a nuclear war. He vowed to declare martial law.
The usual suspects on cable news did their best to spin all of this for Trump. As an anxious nation waited for the now former president to leave the White House, a cavalcade of former Republican Senators and Trump White House staffers attempted to make the former president’s case. Their final argument was that for the good of the country, Trump should be allowed to remain president, despite his lawful conviction by the Senate.
Things began to move rapidly at this point.
Vice President Pence was sworn in but Chief Justice Roberts in a dark, somber event in the Old Executive Building. Meanwhile, it was learned Trump had quietly replaced his Secret Service detail with a private security force that made it clear it was prepared to defend Trump until the bloody end.
At this point, two things happened. A final bipartisan delegation of Congressional leaders came to the White House grounds under the flag of truce. During the course of an hour-long meeting, Trump screamed at them that they had never supported him and the world would be better off if it just ended instead of allowed the forces of the Deep State to ruin America. He made it absolutely clear that he would never leave the Oval Office willingly.
With that, they left.
Next, a surreal, bizarre event, the FBI slowly began to surround the White House. There was much debate online and on TV about how long the nation should wait for Trump to leave the White House. CNN went so far as to do a deep dive into the exact amount of food the White House grounds might have available at any one moment.
Finally, shots rang out from the White House as the battle was joined. It took several hours but in the end, the FBI was finally able to secure the facility. Nearly a dozen personnel on both sides died during the course of the Battle of The White House.
In what would become ionic footage, Trump was quietly escorted from the White House grounds. He spent the remainder of his days ranting on Twitter and Gab that he was the rightful president.
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.
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