Category: Civil War

Posted on

Mueller to Pissmop – Yes, you are fucked

April 19th 2019

Back on May 17, 2017, Confederate Pixie and then-AG Jeff Sessions told Trump that Rod Rosenstein had just appointed Robert Mueller to be a special prosecutor looking into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. Trump slumped, and said, “Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I’m fucked.”

It’s a side of Trump we don’t see very often: the one that is capable of doing an honest and forthright analysis of a situation. Usually all we get from him is demented and hateful gibberish, a trashy and despicable President playing to a trashy and despicable base.

Much has been made of Trump’s reaction. Not in the morally upside down world of the Republicans, where if Obama had said ‘fucked’ they would have impeached him for using cusswords in the White House. However, Republicans normally would think it’s OK for Trump to do so because he’s bravely fighting immoral people who might say “fuck” in the White House. But they’ve been strangely silent for other reasons.

Trump’s reaction is, prima facie, the reaction of a man who knows he is guilty. It’s the kid snapping his hands behind his back as the teacher walks in the room, the husband slapping off the computer screen as the wife walks in, the guy turning his face away as a police cruiser goes by. It’s not an admission of guilt, but it is the reaction of someone who is guilty.

The rest of the report, even Bawdlerized by Barr, makes it amply clear that Trump repeatedly and knowingly obstructed justice. There’s at least a dozen felony actions by Trump detailed in the report.

And yes, Mueller felt the Department of Justice could not indict a sitting president, and that only the House, through the power of impeachment, could do so. He strongly urged the House to do so, since he believes that no man is above the law—or in Trump’s case, in the sewers below the law.

We now know that in an action that is a felony in and of itself, Barr conferred with the Trump administration on what to censor in the report. Barr needs to be indicted and prosecuted for tampering with evidence and obstruction of justice, and die in jail.

But what we’re seeing now is what Trump felt he could get away with the public knowing. He has utter contempt for the resolve of the American people or their ability to stand up to an self-entitled millionaire autocrat. We do not yet know what remains hidden in the report.

Yes, there’s no doubt that some is hidden for legitimate cause; because it may interfere with other ongoing investigations. (Remember how war criminal and traitor Oliver North was able to skate because of Congress’ reckless release of evidence from a grand jury?) And there may be items that could harm national security if made public.

But this is the corrupt, self-centered and morally bankrupt Trump dictating to his loathsome toady of an Attorney-General what should not be allowed into the public eye. There remains stuff the public is entitled to know, and it’s probably the worst stuff of all. Congress must get the full, unredacted report. I’m happy to say the Congressional subpoena has been issued.

While other legal investigations into Trump’s tawdry life continue, the political battle is now joined.

Some Democrats are still saying it’s too early to consider impeachment. One of them is a presidential candidate, Cory Brooker. In a bizarre show of equivocation, he is saying that Congress should not impeach until the evidence is in, apparently unaware that impeachment is the gathering and evaluation of evidence of presidential misconduct.

He eliminated himself from any support from myself with that statement. What is the point in replacing Trump with a man who was unable to stand up against Trump when the time came to do so. What do we gain from replacing Trump with someone who is afraid of Trump?

We’re hearing the usual political arguments against impeachment hearings, of course. “Democrats are cowards and won’t start a fight they can’t win.”

Well, yes, some Democrats are cowards. And some, like Brooker, are just far too fond of political calculation. But if the Democrats aren’t willing to join this battle now that the time has come to begin fighting, then they will not win in 2020, or ever again.

There were politicians in England and France who, even after Hitler’s invasion of Poland, urged against a declaration of war against the dictator because Hitler had a massive military and England and France were too weak to beat him. In fact, that was the case, but the politicians who still urged appeasement are forgotten to history, because because while they were right in terms of the immediate situation, they were so horribly, horribly wrong on the bigger picture.

Dems who argue that impeachment must not happen because Republican will never support it need to realize that we’ve passed the Polish invasion point of the opposition to Trump, and that political headcounting no longer protects.

Republicans can also count heads, and some of them are cowards. They know, first hand, the political calculus of an impeachment, and how it can blow up in their faces. But they also know that this is a whole lot bigger than the man in the White House lying about getting a blow job. Trump is a felon hundreds of times over, and a serious and immediate threat to the continued existence of the United States. To not act is treason.

Even the redacted Mueller report makes it clear that we are at the point where we must impeach. We’re long past any reasonable excuse to let the Trump regime continue.

Yes, Pissmop: You are fucked.

Posted on

Trumpanazi – American descent into Nazism continues

April 13th 2019

The Premier League of Britain has a problem with some of its fans. Granted, footies have never been a particularly sedate lot, sometimes preferring to discuss the friendly rivalry between clubs with clubs, or chains, or shivs.

There have always been racist and bigoted assholes in their ranks, who delight in throwing bananas at black players, or shouting some of the particularly lurid racial abuse that is the hallmark of British hooligans.

But in recent times, the nature and frequency of these attacks has sharply increased. WestHam United is in the process of banning fans who videoed themselves singing racist ditties about the Jewish players on that night’s match rival, Tottenham. Two days earlier, Chelsea supporters sang anti Moslem chants about a player in Slavia Prague, and attacked one of their own fans who objected to the vile chants. And on the same night, Arsenal fans screamed anti-Islamic abuse at players on the other club, in a match in the Emirates. Those fans were lucky; most Islamic countries have notoriously little patience for slurs against Allah or his followers. Public whipping is the local equivalent of community service.

Of course, it isn’t just soccer. The number of such incidents has been on the rise throughout Europe and in North America. In Québec, a player, Jonathan Diaby, a 24-year-old defenseman for Marquis de Jonquière of the Ligue Nord-Américaine de Hockey, and his family who were watching him play were subjected to such intense racial abuse from the filth in the stands that he was pulled from the game and he and his family escorted from the stadium for their own safety.

And unfortunately, it’s not just sports where this is happening.

Nazism—and let’s stop pretending it’s anything other than Nazism—has been on the rise, and emboldened by political power in many parts of Europe and the United States, Nazis come out from under their rocks in force. This is how they behave when they think they can get away with it.

It’s a phenomenon that puts us all at risk. Yes, even if you are a member of the so-called ‘master race’, male, and Christian. It’s not a political philosophy, not that such are especially coherent or good at attending to the interests of their own followers. It’s a mental illness, and an ethical vacuum using hate as a substitute for faith and strength. It eventually destroys everything in its path.

Hitler famously executed 12 million people, including six million Jews, between 1936 and 1945. No matter what the Nazis say, that happened. And among the six million he killed who were not Jewish, many were white, ‘pureblood’ Germans, who happened to be communist, socialist, atheist, liberal, intellectual, or just not approving of Nazism’s murderous tactics. And of course, the actual fighting killed even more of the very people who supported Hitler, beginning with the Brownshirts. Nazis killed many people, and resulted in many more being dead.

So if you’re sitting there watching Faux News, smug in the certain knowledge that Trump and his ilk will only target groups you hate, read some history. He’ll get you killed, too, one way or another. If you don’t flunk some unseen test for ideological purity, you’ll die in the fighting, or in the starvation after Trump and his kind have destroyed the country and the economy. You are as much at risk as any Hispanic immigrant, or Moslem, or African American. Your death may just be later, rather than sooner.

Hitler was able to con the German people—his followers—into believing he was acting on their behalf. The war nearly destroyed them, but even without the war, he would have gotten around to putting them in work camps and then death camps after he used up all the groups he hated and needed to feed bodies to the endless maw of his nationalistic ego. The millions who died because of him are nothing compared to the hundreds of millions he envisioned killing.

Trump—and there really is little difference between Trump and Hitler at this point—doesn’t even pretend to be addressing the needs of his followers. His “tax reform” was a vicious cheat that targeted the lower middle class, the source of much of his following. He proposes to make massive cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and to dismantle what remains of Obamacare. Probably about three quarters of the people who voted for him will be hurt by those proposals. Many will be killed.

But Trump doesn’t care. They served their purpose. They voted for him once. Like Hitler, that one election is all he needs. Once he consolidated power, Hitler’s only use for ‘the common man’ was that of cannon fodder.

Trump is trying to stage a coup against the United States now. He purged the department of Homeland Security last week, leaving the reptilian spawn of Goebbels, Stephen Miller in effective control of an organization capable of jailing millions. The bitch who threw children in cages wasn’t vicious enough for Trump, you see. He is defying Congress on its request for his taxes—a demand Congress unequivocally has a right to issue. He is using his lapdog Barr to try to bury the Mueller report, and its doubtlessly damning contents.

He tried to threaten ‘sanctuary’ cities with sending them what he considers to be animals and subhumans—immigrants. To the credit of the American people, most of those cities said they would welcome Trump’s castoffs. And his goosestepping followers won’t even stop to consider the mad logic behind protecting America from immigrants by sending immigrants to major American cities. Bigotry and hatred don’t run on logic.

He’s attacking a member of Congress for her Islamic faith. He tweeted twice a falsehood that she was dismissive of the attacks on 9/11. Never mind that Trump rejoiced in the attacks, claiming that it left him with the tallest building in New York City. (It’s a truism that when Trump attacks someone, he almost always ends up describing his own behavior). Equating someone with 9/11 for no other reason than that they are Moslem is exactly the same as claiming that Jews like to drink the blood of Christian babies, or that African Americans live only to rape white girls.

They are blood libels, these threats and smears. It’s the sort of thing you expect to hear from Nazi filth.

And it’s what we now hear from the President of the United States.

Posted on

End Game – It’s us or him

December 21st 2018

Even by the vicious, arbitrary, capricious and sometimes insane standards of the Trump administration, the past 48 hours were beyond belief.

First, there was the Michael Flynn sentencing. Judge Emmett Sullivan was expected to give the seditious and disgraced General a slap on the wrist as a result of supposedly very valuable evidence provided to the special council’s office in relation to Trump and Russia. But Flynn, whose common sense is the equal of his sense of loyalty to his country, ran his mouth to the press, whining that the FBI fooled him into thinking it was OK to lie to them because he thought the 11 separate interviews they hauled him in for were just friendly chats. Koffee Klatches. They talked about the latest Vogue magazine, you know. Just more proof the FBI was evil. Sullivan’s patience snapped, and he let Flynn know just how big a pile of human shit he really is, delayed sentencing, and let it be known if he spread any more right wing bullshit, he would be treated as a near-traitor.

That happened just a day after California Congresswoman Jackie Spier penned an op-ed for the San Francisco Chronicle titled, “Did Putin Buy Donald Trump?” She didn’t actually use either the word “traitor” or “kompromat,” but the concepts were definitely intrinsic to her narrative.

So now even the mainstream press is starting to use the word “treason” in relation to Trump. It’s about time.

Trump made Spier’s case for her by suddenly and unilaterally announcing that all troops would be pulled out of Syria, a sudden action that betrayed the Kurds (again) and no doubt delighted Putin. Make no mistake: I’ve argued for pulling troops out of Syria right along, but I don’t for an instant believe that Trump went about it the way he did because he gave a shit about the troops, let alone the Syrians who are dying by the thousands. He did it because Putin wanted him to. And time is running out for him to do stuff like that.

This in turn caused Jim Mattis to quit in disgust. No flowery language about it being an honor and privilege to serve Trump; just a letter that boiled down to, “I can’t help you, get yourself a defense secretary who will do your bidding.” I used to joke about how it came to be that the only adult in the Trump administration, the sane thoughtful one, was known as “Mad Dog” but that Mad Dog might be one of the very few to leave that benighted administration with his reputation as an adult and an American still intact.

It is scary to contemplate Trump’s foreign policy now that his only remaining advisor is John Bolton.

Then Trump blew up the Continuing Resolution. This was a kick-the-can-down-the-road measure to keep the government running while the ludicrous impasse over the Wall continued. Nothing too unusual there: it’s been pretty much what passes for Republican governance since 1993. They love America but hate the United States, and don’t want to pay for anything other than a big military and an economy that consists mostly in the form of raping the workers. So they’ve been running government by extortion, whittling down any stake Americans might have in their own country.

Trump, apparently upset that such intellectual luminaries as Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh no longer loved him, changed his mind after most of Congress had left for their indeterminable vacations, so the government will have a partial shutdown at least until January 10th. It will cost billions, and Trump should reflect on the fact that the Secret Service agents following him won’t be getting paychecks for Christmas.

Even the most stupid mob boss knows you gotta pay your muscle. But then, Trump is extraordinarily stupid.

The stock market is showing signs of a possible crash, having lost 4,000 points this past month. Investors are no longer confident we will survive Trump. That’s not a very comfortable thought.

Then there is the Whitaker thing. The swindler-turned-top-cop had a Department of Justice board of unknown parties say he was not required to recuse himself in the Mueller investigation, then they put out another statement an hour later saying he was supposed to recuse himself, and then an hour after that Whitaker said he was going to disregard the advice to recuse himself.

Kremlin watchers thought as of yesterday that Rosenstein was still overseeing the investigation, since Whitaker didn’t want to go to jail for obstruction, but was acting on the QT since if he did recuse himself, he would get the Jeff Sessions treatment. Now nobody knows that the hell is going on. In some ways, that’s the most terrifying development of all, since it smells like Trump is preparing to purge Mueller’s ass.

Finally, there was the Trump Foundation. A judge shut it down, effectively labeling it a criminal enterprise. I had to shake my head at the wonder of it all. Remember all those Republicans who prattled on endlessly about the Clinton Foundation because it took money (legally) from foreign concerns. For all the huffing, they couldn’t find any quid pro quo, unless you count the ridiculous conspiracy theory about the Canadian government selling uranium to Russia. (Would Trump hesitate to give Russia uranium if Putin asked him for it?). Are they apoplectic in rage over the open criminality of the Trump Foundation?

Hmm. Apparently not. Like cheating on wives or banging porn stars or blowing up the deficit or bombing kids in other countries, or screwing kids domestically, it’s only bad if Democrats are accused of it.

The people who worked directly for Trump aren’t the only ones who trashed their reputations; any Republican who whined endlessly about the Clinton/Obama “scandals” and is silent now can expect decades to pass before anyone wants to hear their thoughts on much of anything again.

Meanwhile, the country is now in deep crisis, and when Congress returns, it may have to put aside the budget and the wall and all that, and drive Trump from office.

It’s him or us.

Posted on

Our Rakish President – Trump uses his to start forest fires

November 21st 2018

“Obama judges have a much different point of view than the people who are charged with the safety of our country.”

Those were the words uttered by the five-and-dime Mussolini in the Oval Office today, and it may be the scariest thing he’s uttered to date. By implication, Trump judges are good for the safety of the country, whereas non-Trump judges are…well, traitors, apparently. It isn’t enough that the judge he originally picked a fight with yesterday, US district judge Jon Tigar in San Francisco has nearly a decade on the bench (He issued a temporary restraining order against Trump’s proclamation that he could incarcerate asylum-seekers). Roberts himself was nominated by George W. Bush in 2005 and while I think he’s far too chummy with business interests, I don’t consider him a threat to the safety of the country.

A relatively straightforward lower court decision, observing the country’s mandate by treaty on how to treat asylum-seekers, seems to have triggered the biggest confrontation between the Court and an Administration since FDR’s famous effort to pack the court in 1936.

The constitutionality of “the court pack” never was resolved. The court began issuing rulings favorable to FDRs New Deal programs even before FDR’s too-smart-by-half idea, and interest in the court pack waned among Congressional Democrats. One judge had a change of heart regarding New Deal Acts that began before the court pack idea was brought up, a fellow named Roberts. Owen Roberts. He had been a swing vote between the four conservatives on the court and the four liberals, the New Deal’s version of Anthony Kennedy.

Our Roberts isn’t that Roberts, and Trump pretty clearly is no FDR. I don’t think we’ll see anything resembling a rapprochement there.

FDR and his allies were slier in their attack on the courts. FDR was the concern troll, fretting that the nine old men, many in their 70s, might find the burden of the many cases before the Court to be an undue burden, and should welcome the help of four or five young, strapping judges who can lift the Constitution over their heads and give it a good stout flapping. His allies are busy, including publishing a book, “Nine Old Men” that inferred that the court might have some problems with senility creeping in.

Trump, of course, is a bit more direct, simply saying that justices not appointed by him presented a threat to the safety of the county. He probably can’t display the same wit and brilliance with the name “Roberts” that he did with “Adam Schitt”. Our President, the third-grader.

Trump has authorized US troops guarding the border against migrant caravans to use deadly force if necessary. Citing “credible evidence and intelligence” (in other words, Trump pulled it out of his ass) Trump believes that thousands of approaching Central American migrants “may prompt incidents of violence and disorder” that could threaten border patrol agents and other government personnel. His order expands the authority of US troops to include “a show or use of force (including lethal force, where necessary), crowd control, temporary detention and cursory search” to protect the border agents.

Those poor border agents. How will the poor dears deal with a group of unarmed men, women, old folks and children who are still some 800 miles away and won’t even show up until at least March? Or longer, given their travel plans.

You see, those troops that Trump has boldly sent to protect the poor, quivering, border agents from possible contact with aliens? They went to Laredo, Texas. The caravan is going to San Diego, some 1,500 miles to the left of Laredo.

Oh, well, the troops can cover themselves in glory potshotting Mexican kids who look like they might be thinking of tossing a rock at the heavily-armed troops. After all, it worked for Netanyahu. A true hero in Trump’s eyes.

Posse Comitatus? Oh, you’re thinking of the OLD United States, and not the new and improved Trump version.

It’s raining in Northern California right now, and with a sigh of relief, Smokey the Bear can lay down his rake. While this storm won’t bring much to Southern California, the long-range (November 27-December 6th) looks pretty promising. Everybody is ready for a respite in the fires, and I just hope the Camp Fire area doesn’t get too much rain. Montecito is still fresh in our memories (and still at risk, nearly a year later). Likewise the millions of other acres burned in this ongoing nightmare. One clown on Facebook castigated ignorant liberals who probably didn’t know where Paradise was for doubting the acumen of Glorious Leader, showing a picture of a piling cat, saying that this was the ‘rake’ Trump was talking about. A piling cat is about 10-15 feet wide, with 6 or 8 big tines, and resembles the big tilling machines tractors tow around fields. Nobody calls it a ‘rake.’

I see Ivanka was busted for using an unsecured email server for government business. How about it, Pissmop? Gonna chant “Lock her up”? Oh, give it a go! We watched your grotesque turkey pardon thing yesterday: this is your chance to surprise us all with a flash of self-deprecating wit and humor. Or even, “I pardon peas, carrots, Ivanka and myself”.

Of course, if you ever venture out where you can hear crowds, you hear “Lock HIM up” a lot from now on. Unless you feel, as you do with American troops, that if you go out where they can see you, someone might shoot you.

Gosh, that would be a real shame. Stay hidden and stay safe. Keep your rake handy against all the forest fires you’re starting politically.

PS: If Trump is impeached, guess who oversees his Senate trial?

Posted on

Election 2018 – And its possible aftermath

November 5th, 2018

It has been brought to my attention that there is some sort of election thingie tomorrow. An unkempt person, disheveled with wild, wide eyes and arms failing in futile violence, screamed at me that the entire future of humanity rested on this election, and that I must implore everyone to vote right away!

I really have to get rid of that mirror. Nobody likes bad-news mirrors, and you don’t even have to be an evil narcissist to have one seriously fuck you up.

There will be no vote imploring from me. If you haven’t decided if you are going to vote or not, you probably aren’t reading this, and are too dumb and apathetic to be reading much of anything more involved than the directions on how to make a grilled cheese sandwich.

For the rest of you, yes, quite a bit rests on this election. However, the rest of the world, should America fall, will simply close ranks and go around the former world leader. Yes, America is mighty militarily, but it still needs to engage and trade with the rest of the world in order to survive.

Trump is not a negotiator. For starters, he announces up front that he plans to screw the people he’s negotiating with, which deincentivizes those people from negotiations. Would you buy a car from a guy who tells you he has the best profit margins from car sales in the state? If you would, call me: have I got a sweet deal for you! Well, a sweet deal for one of us, anyway. You like sweet deals, right?

Trump boasts himself into corners. Take NAFTA. After announcing he was going to shaft Canada, he was dismayed when Canadians turned down his polite offer to be shafted. Having boasted he could swing a great deal by pressuring Canada, he threatened the Canadian auto industry, which consists of such Canadian enterprises as Ford and GM. Turned out he lost the support of the very people he was trying to protect from those evil Canucks, Ford and GM. Cornered by his own bombast, he finally signed a deal with Canada in which America actually made more concession, because Trump desperately needed an agreement he could lie about and proclaim to be a great victory for Trump America. In poker terms, Canada had a pair, and Trump had a busted flush, and Canada walked away with the pot, leaving Trump to scream that his hand was a lot closer to a real flush than a lousy pair!

Most of the world looks at Trump with a mixture of sadness and apprehension. He’s a pathetic clown, but he is a very troublesome pathetic clown, and what’s more, he is greatly strengthening the hands of other players in the game who are not clowns: China and Russia.

So as Americans vote, American prestige and influence, already plummeting, might go past the point of no return. If it does, that means a lot of problems for a lot of people, but in the end the world will carry on, they way it did following the fall of every other mighty empire.

In a best case scenario, the Democrats take the House, and Trump is in prison by 2020. That won’t solve the problem of Republicans in general, a party gone mad, but it will pin their ears back some. Worst case scenario, Republicans keep the House and Senate, and only the most naive or the most cynical Republican supporters believe America will have anything in common with the America of 25 years ago. Oh, America will still have an election in 2020, but it will be about as relevant as the elections they used to have in the Soviet Union.

The elections won’t save America, and could seal America’s fate. It’s not a great choice, but it’s probably the last best chance most people will get to have a choice.

Just remember that when you wake up on Wednesday, Trump will still be in the Oval Office. Republicans will still control congress, and will have two months to try and entrench as much of their toxic fascist agenda as possible. The Supreme Court will still consist of four liberals, four fascists, and a GOP ratfucker. November 7th will not be rainbows and butterflies, and the real fighting may just be starting.

The other day I wrote about an article by Stephen Marche on a respected blog in Canada speculating on what Canada should do in the event of an American civil war. It was a jarring thing to see.

CBC radio, the heart of journalist decorum and restraint, had a lead story referencing Marche under the headline, “What should Canada do if there’s a civil war in the U.S.?” This is the CBC, which probably started its September 1st 1939 broadcast with something like, “There appears to have been a spot of bother in Poland today as Chancellor Hitler continues to behave in an impolite manner.” They aren’t given to frantic arm waving, or, being non-profit, overly obsessed with ratings and clicks. Such a headline would be unthinkable unless they seriously believed that a civil war or other forms of violent chaos was truly in the offing for the United States.

Despite Trump, Canada remains the closest thing to a friend the United States has. If a friend tells you you look very ill and ought to see a doctor, you should at least consider the advice.

I’m not sure such a calamity can be sidestepped. But all sane Americans need to be aware of the danger, and think hard on how it might be averted. Despite what the history books say, nobody ever wins those types of battles.

Posted on

Civil War II: The election of 1860, reducere

Civil War II

The election of 1860, reducere

October 28th 2018

There is an article by Stephen Marche in the current Walrus that, while addressed to Canadians, is of major importance elsewhere: “America’s Next Civil War.” https://thewalrus.ca/americas-next-civil-war/

The article delineates a process by which in the fairly immediate future, America may descend into civil war, or perhaps widespread chaos.

The existential threat this provides to Canadians is clear. Much of Canada’s identity and economy result from the twitches and grunts from the slumbering elephant next door, and indeed, Canada’s very existence stems from northern ambition and desire to expand in the wake of their victory in the first civil war. It’s no coincidence that the movement to unify the British colonies into a “not-United States” materialized in 1864, when it was clear the North was going to win. (Some BNA colonists, while absolutely hating slavery, hoped for a prolonged standoff between the Confederacy and the Union, which would nullify American expansionism.)

Of course, the threat is even greater to Americans, who in the event of a civil war can reasonably expect to die by the tens of millions. The first civil war was extraordinarily bloody and vicious; there’s no reason to suppose that a repeat, involving a far larger population that heavily is armed in and of themselves with weapons of mass destruction.

People like to pretend that conditions in the US were more polarized and antagonistic in 1860. They weren’t, at least not outside the more radical enclaves in the deep South. Republicans, sensing the danger the nation faced, backed down and nominated a moderate, who could live with the existing institution of slavery but opposed allowing it to spread westward (reflecting existing law). That moderate, Abraham Lincoln, subsequently became President.

But the southern leadership had adopted an intractable position, and the war happened anyway.

It’s important to remember that most Americans in 1861 believed the war would be brief, relatively bloodless, and would end as soon as the politicians realized it was bad for business. You often hear similar sentiments on the eve of any major war; in living memory, Americans remember how it would take weeks to subdue Iraq and the war would pay for itself. Or so they were told.

Nobody is going to mistake Trump and the Republicans for moderates, and unlike the era of the civil war, the institutions of voting, the judiciary, and congress itself weren’t delegitimize they way they are now. Voters expected their votes to be allowed, and counted. Judges were supposed to be impartial, at least most of the time. Congress was hagridden by moneyed interests, but at least those interests were human residents who had a stake in the country, rather than a multinational bottom line.

I suspect that next week’s election might be the irrevocable last step, the way the presidential election of 1860 was.

The really scary thing is that it may not matter who gets declared the victor in the 2018 elections; the validity will be in grave doubt. If Republicans don’t get their way, they will spin endless conspiracy theories about George Soros, globalists, the ‘deep state’, immigrants and Hillary. If Republicans hold the house, the massive irregularities already evident in George, Kansas and other states will cause many to doubt the validity of the vote count. Nobody will trust state investigators working for states that created the sense of illegitimacy in the first place, And the Trump administration has done an excellent job of carrying out the Republican policy of subverting the courts, making them apparatus of the Party, so there will be widespread mistrust there, as well. And of course neither side will believe press reports, valid or otherwise, seen as coming from “the other side.”

I don’t expect instant disintegration following the election. If the Democrats prevail, there will be lots of outrage on the right, and probably a sharp uptick in terrorist attacks like the ones we’ve seen this week, lots of pearl-clutching on Faux and the right wing media, and outrage as the Trump administration continues to collapse, with the attendant threats of a Reichstag fire or major war as unifying distractions.

The response will be at least temporarily subdued as the same fascists who have been promoting the Republican agenda stop to consider their bottom lines (despite the popular saying, war is actually very bad for business) and strong doubt about what the stance of the American military might be (The officer corps are strongly Republican, but reportedly deeply antipathetic to Trump).

If the Republicans prevail, the chaos may come more quickly. Trump and his handlers will rush to consolidate what they will doubtlessly see as the successful conclusion of a coup against the United States, and a largely disbelieving populace is likely to take to the streets.

Some police organizations are deeply infiltrated by extreme righties and evenneo-Nazis, and they won’t hesitate to use extreme and bloody methods of suppression against what they will call “communist agitators.”

At which point the fuse will be well and truly lit, the ensuing explosion inevitable.

Can this be avoided? I’m not sure. I honestly don’t think so. When America’s closest friend and ally, Canada, begins openly preparing for chaos and bloodshed south of the border and pondering what to do with the inevitable flood of refugees, it means prospects are grim.

Pay attention to this election like your life depends on it. It probably does.

And if you hear public officials opining that the spreading unrest is just temporary and should be over in a few weeks, a month tops, then run for shelter!

error

Enjoy Zepps Commentaries? Please spread the word :)