I have been paddling around in politics for all of my adult life, and I love it. It’s a bare knuckle sport, and for somebody like me, it’s like hockey without the skates. And the best skater on the ice isn’t always immune to a knee in the nuts from an opponent who lacks a certain delicacy.
But whether it’s hockey or politics, there should be rules. One of those rules is that an injured player should be off limits. If an opponent is trying to limp off of the ice to the bench, you shouldn’t be able to come along and cross check him in the back of the head. The more I watch, and the more I think about it, I’m starting to think that’s exactly what’s going on in the Republican party right now.
Let’s be honest. Donald Trump is a sick old man. He’s been sick for a very long time. His own niece, who has spent more time with than any doctor he’s ever known, and who also just happens to be a board certified clinical psychologist, says that he is an extreme narcissist with sociopathic tendencies. And it’s not just her, more than 30 psychologists and psychiatrists making patient absent diagnoses from Trump’s voluminous public record have reached the same conclusion. Donald Trump lives in a delusional world in which he can accept responsibility for nothing other than success. If he can’t have it, he’ll just make it up.
Ever since Trump lost the election, I have found myself paying more attention. Plus, I have spent more time rereading Mary Trump’s book to confirm what I thought I already knew. Since Trump lost the election, officially, and went off on his foul mood temper tantrum, and with the GOP’s fawning subservience to his wishes, the media has fixated on Trump’s hold over the GOP. But the more I watch, and the more I look, I am seeing exactly the opposite situation.
When Trump lost the election, and especially as the process played out, and multiple recounts confirmed the final results, a magnitude 8 earthquake went through the GOP. The GOP had already sold its soul to the Trump devil, purely because of the intensity of his hold over his base, and his loss threatened the loss of that base once Trump actually left office. But Trump being Trump, totally delusional, he refused to concede and promised to fight on.
And this was a lifeline for the GOP. They desperately needed to keep Trump’s rabid base engaged and involved, and Trump’s delusions were the way to do that! Trump is a political imbecile. Both McConnell and McCarthy are career politicians, with all of the savvy that comes with it. And presented with this opportunity, they made a conscious decision to play on Trump’s mental illness.
Remember this. Within 48 hours of the Capitol insurrection, both McCarthy and McConnell took to the floors of their respective chambers to condemn Trump for direct responsibility for the attack. Within days, McCarthy made the pilgrimage to Mar-A-Lago to kiss the ring, and McConnell was obstructing the second impeachment trial, and whipping votes against it. They knew a miscalculation when they saw one.
Because the local yokels were willing to pick up the slack. The Arizona Senate passed a bill that allowed a totally bogus fraudit of the Maricopa County vote, and Trump latched onto it like a drowning man grasping a straw. Even without social media he started preaching the eventual return of the Cheeto Messiah, which the base picked up on. And that was the lifeline McConnell and McCarthy had been waiting for.
Other states started promising to pick up the mantle, and Trump’s mental illness was in full bloom. He has been reported as telling associated that he fully expects to return to the White House in August. Let’s be clear. The election is over. The results were certified by the states, and the congress certified the electoral college results. Trump is not getting back into the White House before January 20, 2025.
But that’s fine with the GOP, because Trump is what Putin would call a useful idiot, and the GOP needs him to keep his base motivated at least through 2022, and preferably into 2024, regardless of whether he runs again or not. As a result? The entire GOP caucus is going balls to the wall to fuel Trump’s delusions, simply to keep him motivating his base to donate and show up.
I’m sorry, but that’s just wrong. You don’t take advantage of the mentally disabled that way. The GOP caucus is strutting around, like the bullies at the bus stop that make fun of the kid with the hockey helmet on. Fuck the whole goddamned bunch of them. They’ll have to make their peace with Saint Peter.
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Doubt st Peter will take a meeting after they pass the entrance that says: abandon hope all ye who enter here. Hard to find them in eternal darkness.
So disappointing, after they all thought they had purchased their spot in heaven. I do so hope some of them get buried normal like. People everywhere are going to need a place to piss after the Republican infrastructure collapses.
They haven’t any concerns about having to justify themselves to St. Peter. Despite all their Republicany “Christian” blather they don’t believe in St. Peter, God or Heaven any more than I do and I’ve been agnostic for decades. Power and Money are their religion. Trump, McConnell, McCarthy and so many others make me wish I DID actually believe in Heaven and Hell. Because if I did I could derive real, tangible enjoyment of the thought of them making it all the way to those “Pearly Gates” witness St. Peter telling them to hold up a minute because God himself was coming to see them – and then God appearing and crotch punting their asses straight down to HELL!
I can buy the GQP using T as a useful idiot, but sadly, T believes his own delusional mythology (although someone noted that T doesn’t believe anything in the usual sense, he just uses what seems to work). That said, I know Repubs who are leaving the party or voting D for preserving democracy. Granted, they are not GQP “leaders.”
There are a lot of sick old men who call themselves Republican, a sub species of human beings characterized by lying, cheating, stealing and fucking the daughters of their friends. Even the young ones have learned their elders ways. Prison is their rightful place.
I can’t imagine that the big-money donors to the GOP would support another presidential run by Trump, who is likely to be indicted soon. Only a smarter, savvier fascist like Josh Hawley or Tom Cotton has any chance of winning in 2024. The GOP is downplaying the Jan. 6 attempted coup, because so many potential candidates were involved in its planning.