Impeachment
Fantasies Versus Political Reality
In the Oliver Stone movie “Nixon”, Paul Sorvino’s Henry Kissinger laments
on President Richard Nixon’s troubles prior to his resignation from
office. With impeachment threats
becoming more and more real, Kissinger speculated that Nixon was who he was
because he wasn’t loved by the people he needed the most.
“Imagine what he would have been like had anyone ever loved him”, he said.
I keep that particular scene in mind when it comes to separating Nixon
from our current elected leader.
Donald J. Trump, our orange-skinned-wacky-man in the White House, has
been in office not even half-a-year as of this column’s posting date, and
people are not only spinning fantasies of removing him from office, but are
even getting used to saying the words “President Mike Pence” and are trying to
convince themselves that our current Vice President would somehow be better for
the country than ol’ Orange Stain. Hell,
even the Vice-President has
started his own Super PAC to prepare for it!
Every day the media and the Internet bring some new headline, some twist
and turn involving Trump or the people connected to him, and the liberals and
progressives and the rest of the anti-Trump crowd cheer and say “This is it!
This is the final straw that will break the man-child’s back! He’s done!
He’s finished! This will get him
impeached and out of office!”
And people complain that pornography is unrealistic!
I can understand when conservatives and neo-conservatives and the rest of
the red-hat freedom-hating fascists did it with President Obama for eight years;
spinning delusional fantasy after delusional fantasy that they could somehow
undo his election. These are the same
folks that watch professional wrestling and think that it’s real. That explains how Trump can appoint Linda
McMahon of World Wrestling Entertainment as head of the Small Business
Administration and nobody batted an eyelash over it.
But, liberals? Progressives? Free-thinking people? I expected more from you! I mean, you guys are supposed to be the smart
ones in the bunch! You’re supposed to be
the intellectuals! What the hell are you
doing jumping at clickbait headlines and acting like a bunch of red-hats when
it comes to Trump stuff?
Yes, the actual “fake news” people who made their money off the sheer
stupidity and extreme confirmation bias of the Trumpets are back and they’re
finally able to make money off the liberals and progressives now that Trump is in
the White House. They couldn’t before,
when it was believed that Hillary Clinton would win. They tried.
They really tried, but they said that you liberals and progressives just
didn’t take their bait. You were supposedly
“too smart” for them!
But now that our Narcissist-in-Chief is in the Oval Office, the liberals
and progressives are clicking away at their clickbait headlines, eager to get
any kind of reassurance that Trumpaconallus will be impeached and/or indicted
and/or hoisted from his Twitter petard and sent packing to Mar-a-Largo for good.
Why, liberals? Why,
progressives? Why do this? Why indulge yourselves in these poli-porn
fantasies?
Let’s get really, really, brutally honest here...
None of what you have seen or heard so far will get President Donald
Trump impeached anytime soon. At
all. Even with a special
council appointed to investigate Trump’s possible connections to
Russia. Even with now-former FBI
Director James Comey talking
with members of the U.S. Senate and willing to testify in open hearings. And even if former National Security advisor
Michael Flynn sang like Beyoncé over what he knows, it still would not result
in impeachment, never mind indictment, never mind getting any nearer to getting
Trumpaconallus removed from office.
Why? Because politics.
In order for the Congress of the United States to impeach Trump, the
House of Representatives must bring up articles of impeachment, which they must
actually vote on and pass. Then they
have to go to the U.S. Senate for a special trial presided over by the United
States Supreme Court, where the senators have to vote to convict or acquit the
President with a two-thirds majority for conviction. Go ahead and look it up. It’s spelled out in the United States Constitution. We just went through all this twenty years
ago with your buddy, President Bill Clinton.
(And who would have thought that *he* would look
like a saint in comparison?)
I’ll remind you that the House of Representatives is currently under the
iron grip of the GOP and run by “Mister Budget”, Speaker Paul Ryan. They do not want to impeach
Trumpaconallus. At all. Ever.
Period.
I’ll also remind you that the United States Senate is currently under the
iron grip of the GOP and run by the slack-jawed turtle dick, Senate Majority
Leader Mitch “The Bitch” McConnell. They do not want to convict Trumpaconallus of
any articles of impeachment. At
all. Ever. Period.
None of them will ever want to do anything to remove Trump from office
because he represents all of those red-hat-wearing cult-like supporters that
they and their friends in talk radio and Fox News and Breitbart and the rest of
the conservative groups have been cultivating over the decades. They created the crowds that voted for Trump
and also keep themselves in power. Those
red-hat masses are the bumper crop of the seeds of discord that they sewed a
long time ago. To remove Trump is to go
against those masses, and you do not go against the cult that keeps you in
office.
I mean, you liberals should know all about that. Why the hell do you think Nancy Pelosi is
still around and still serving as
the bane of your faction’s collective political existence?
On top of that, the United States Supreme Court is being dominated by
conservative-leaning justices. They do
not want to do anything to challenge the status quo or upset the government. At all.
Period. The days of actual freedom-loving
justices like William O. Douglas are long since gone.
Remember when Trump made the campaign claim that he
could shoot someone in the middle of 5th Avenue and not lose a
single voter? For once, he was not
exaggerating about that! That actually
is a valid claim to make given what we know about his red-hat supporters!
But the scary part is that the same holds true to those in Washington now
that he is the government. At this
point, Donald Trump could hypothetically have a dead hooker in the Lincoln
Bedroom and hypothetically be found with blood on his clothes and be hypothetically
holding the bloody knife in his hand and those in Washington will do everything
in their power to excuse, justify, and validate it. And it wouldn’t be because they like him or
because they think he’s some kind of political savior. They
would do it because that is the nature of politics.
The impeachment poli-porn fantasies all rely on the members of the GOP
suddenly “coming to their senses” and deciding that enough is enough. It presumes that “Mister Budget” and “Mitch
The Bitch” would actually “keep Trump in check” like they promised in 2016 when
they first pledged to support him as their party’s nominee. I would have a far better chance of spending
the night with my favorite muse than to see the GOP leaders suddenly hold themselves
true to their word.
Yes, Nixon resigned rather than be impeached, but that was because Nixon
was a political creature and the people in charge of Congress were
Democrats. In other words,
politics. Plus Nixon was legitimately
concerned about the nation and how it would handle such a divisive subject. That’s actually a rare trait that we don’t
see in today’s politicians Bill Clinton
was actually impeached because the GOP was in charge of the Congress so they just
needed an excuse. Again, politics.
Donald Trump, on the other hand, lives in his own narcissistic world of
alternative facts, surrounded by myrmidons and soothsayers, with a political party
that enables him and a dedicated group of red-hat-wearing cult members that
live in that same alternative reality. Again,
politics. And there is nothing at all to
suggest that the GOP is willing to go against him, no matter what he does short
of trying launch an all-out nuclear war.
Because, you know, it’s hard to govern a nation when it has become a
nuclear wasteland.
That brings us to that “other option” as provided in section
four of the 25th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. It’s a little confusing, but basically it
gives a way out for Pence and the rest of the Trump lackeys to nudge Trump out
of the way without an all-out coup d’état or having to go through the enablers
in the GOP-controlled Congress. It also
presumes that Trump would have to be so deranged that nobody has any confidence
in him anymore. I’m not saying that it is
not a possibility, but I will say that Trump will have to do something so
extreme that his acolytes would have no choice but to invoke that option in
order to save the world, and so far they’ve been keeping him from going that
far. I mean we’re talking
“finger-on-the-button-screw-it-I’m-nuking-the-whole-world” extreme.
So my message to the impotent Dems and the liberals and progressives and
free-thinkers and other anti-Trump people is this: Stay frosty. Stay on point. Don’t indulge in the poli-porn
fantasies. Certainly don’t fall into the
clickbait traps. Don’t presume that
every twist and turn in our ongoing real-world soap opera “As The Trump Tweets”
will lead to your much-desired reward.
Soap operas instinctively detest happy endings, especially when it comes
to the real-world variety.
Donald Trump is not Richard Nixon.
He isn’t even Bill Clinton. He is
surrounded by enablers, not opponents, and they will not help you in the least. And as long as you engage in those poli-porn
fantasies of impeachment being “right around the corner”, then Trump will be
staying right where he is at least until 2021, if not 2025. That’s a really long time to live in
delusion.
The movie version of Kissinger wondered what Nixon would have been like
if was loved. Well, now we sort of know
the answer to that. He’d probably be like
Donald J. Trump.
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