NHLycan
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New Hampshire
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As we get closer to DJT exiting our Whitehouse, the consensus is circling around three theories. I don't know why it's just three. Maybe it's all we're cognitively comfortable with..
1- Trump is who he's always been. He's a degenerate and something of an overly lucky moron. Chauncey Gardener with Tourette syndrome and a healthy does of white supremacy. He's not disloyal in the classical sense because he's incapable of feeling loyalty. He loves dictatorial monsters because he wants to be one.
2- Trump is beholden to his Russian backers. He's being blackmailed. He was inane enough to not see this coming. They've got him by the short and curlies because he wasn't bright enough to see the trap before stepping on it. Now he's trying to stay one step ahead of the law.
3- He's a willing agent of our enemies.
(If I were a betting man, I'd say some combination of 1 and 2.)
While entertaining to speculate, I suggest this set of options misses the point. It doesn't matter.
To wit: the man cannot continue in his position as he is manifestly unfit.
This causes us to consider which means of removal is superior. And by superior, I suppose I mean the least disruptive. We'd prefer to avoid a second civil war after all, so modeling that out in some detail is a valuable exercise.
Let's assume fortune doesn't favor us and he won't voluntarily remove himself via resignation, lightning won't strike, McDonald's works too slow and he avoids book depositories.
So, we force him to resign or we impeach. Yes, yes, I know. This is dependent upon finding a majority of elected senators and house members who love their country more than their jobs or party. You may say I'm a dreamer but I'm..well, you know the rest.
So, how to manage it.
It's going to be ugly.
One thing we know is that regardless of how it happens, subsequently he'll do everything he can to cause blood in the streets. He is incapable of being gracious or tactful and the lives of his fellow Americans mean nothing to him.
Which means, he's got to go to jail. That's the only reliable way to make his protestations, recriminations and calls to violence fall on mostly deaf ears. Because it's hard to stir up the masses from a cell, "The Letter From Birmingham Jail" not withstanding. No cell phone means no tweets.
Which also means no pardon for him. Thus no deals can be cut for his acquiesence to obsolescence. Can you imagine him getting off scott free and then being the bigger man? Keeping his word? Doing what's right for all of us? Please. The question nearly answers itself.
Posit therefore- He's sitting in jail. Were I inclined to imagine his internal life, I'd have to wonder what effect that might have on him. No longer waited on hand and foot. Maybe he develops as a person. He's already experiencing a stress level beyond his norms. It's likely he's been forced into celibacy. That may help him evolve, yes?
I'm sure some well meaning folks will suggest the pardoning him somehow serves 'the good of the country' and will facilitate a return to 'national unity'. "Imagine the optics", they'll say. "An elderly man with millions of supporters, languishing in prison? Oh the humanity! It smacks of third world dictatorships!"
That is so much hogwash. He's a thief, liar and traitor. This needs to be done so the next self indulgent moron who thinks he can outsmart the Russians, and float somewhere above the law asks for help when he realizes how screwed he is.
We have three groups we need to contend with. (There's that number again..)
The first is his immediate confidants; family, friends, hangers-on, facilitators. Many of these may keep their noses down to try and avoid the same involuntary vacations. We should prosecute the worst of these; your Scott Pruitts for instance. The rest we ignore as long as they stay out of the spotlight.
Some won't. And some subset of those won't be criminals. Those we'll have to live with. The dirty ones need to be tried and jailed. As long as they're tied up in that mess, they'll be mostly too busy to stir up much in the way of trouble.
The second group are his white nationalist base. These guys remind me of the expression, 'No matter what you do, you'll regret it.' The Proud Boys, The Klan, the Oath Keepers, Three Percenters, and the adjoining recalcitrants are going to be a problem. They're going to start killing cops, teachers, democratic politicians, minorities, etc. More so than they do now, I mean. And they're not amenable to job training and rejoining our broader community. Or maybe they are but that's not something we've been good at as a nation. Which is odd, isn't it? People from all over the world assimilate just fine. Why not these folks? Anyway, these folks going to have to be brought to heel. Law enforcement is a big part of that. It'll be ugly but like The Branch Davidians, it's needed. And hopefully with less innocents in the middle.
Then there's that third group; the angry rural and suburban whites. What's to be said? It's not really possible to make them any more angry and nihilistic than they presently are. Grievance is their bread and butter. The pleasure they feel at stymied progress is already maxed out. What are they going to do? Vote for moron? A white nationalist? A cultist? An Alzheimer's patient? A scientific illiterate? A con man? A war criminal? A misogynist? A Russian stooge? Yeah, been there, done that. That's the problem with bottoming out; there's nowhere left to fall. Their electoral choices literally cannot get any worse. At this point, Sheriff Arpaio as AG wouldn't be a surprise.
It's a fair question to ask how many would end up radicalizing as a result, and that's worth some thought. But given the average age and health of his supporters, that's not a long term problem. Diabetes, heart disease, opiates and suicide sadly seem to be doing to them what they've been trying to do to our country.
Some of them we can and should peel away. Deprogram and detox them. Their children, we need to make sure they don't land in the same nihilistic fantsy land as their parents. That's where we need to focus. Save the ones who are savable.
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