Hispanic Fanatic

Now that Bob Woodward’s career has come full circle — from uncovering the corruption of a bigoted Republican president (Nixon) to uncovering the incompetence of a bigoted Republican president (Trump) — we can focus on where we go from here.

Yes, it’s long been perfectly obvious to every liberal, most moderates, and many conservatives that Trump is a reckless, addled moron who never should be trusted with a houseplant, much less the nation’s nuclear launch codes.

We have books from disgraced reality television stars, smarmy journalists, and Pulitzer Prize winners that all basically say that the United States of America has elected a blithering idiot and hate-filled lunatic as president.

And it is not the looney left that is screeching that Trump is a danger to America. It is the people who are closest to him — who work with him every day — who are verifying his doddering incapacity, chronic dishonesty, and complete inability to handle the job. It is only his most fervent supporters — people who live in a bubble of paranoia and have no idea how the government or the Constitution work — who still think everything is just fine.

The rest of us are trying to figure out who the mysterious New York Times editorialist is, and why he/she thought this article would make us feel better (it sure the hell doesn’t), and why admitting to pulling a presidential coup de tête makes him/her an “unsung hero.”

By the way, it’s darkly ironic and vaguely hysterical that Trump is correct that a “deep state” is indeed out to thwart his agenda. But it’s not a nest of bureaucrats and sinister liberals. It’s his own people, the ones he appointed. Yes, he created his own deep state and brought it with him to Washington.

And now the calls are coming from inside the house.

In any case, here is what the Times editorialist should be doing, instead of trying to reassure us that “there are adults in the room” (a pathetically low standard when we’re talking about the Oval Office).

He/she should be going on the record, offering proof of his/her most shocking claims, and resigning from this administration, thereby putting the pressure on the rest of Trump’s enablers to follow suit and for Congress to perform its constitutional duty.

Let’s be blunt. If half of the claims in the Times and Woodward’s book are true, the recourses are impeachment or the 25^thAmendment. Removal is the only way out of this mess.

Anything less is a half-ass half-measure that is analogous to letting a crazy man run through your house naked, trashing your possessions, on the condition that he is “contained” to the living room.

As for Trump’s fans, well, they have options as well.

Unless they finally, belatedly withdraw their support, the best that can be said of them is that they are in deep, crippling denial, to the point of delusion.

The other three options are as follows:

They are racists

They are idiots

They are cowards

The latter category is primarily congressional Republicans.

The other two categories speak for themselves.

To be fair, who could have possibly known that a corrupt, venal, ruthless, cutthroat businessman would turn out to be a corrupt, vicious, conniving, disastrous president? I mean, what are the odds?

Certainly we can’t blame the white working class, who are still merrily chanting, “Lock her up” even as their mighty hero faces the most overwhelming legal trouble for a president since Nixon in the throes of Watergate.

And the Republican Party leadership could not possibly have foreseen that a man whose views were antithetical to their supposed values would break laws left and right in an amoral drive for power over principle, leaving them mute and impotent with their moral cowardice on display for all the world to see. Talk about a whoopsie.

Cleary, the question at this point is not, “Are there grounds to impeach Trump?”

The question is, “How do we choose which grounds to list in the articles of impeachment?”

Yes, it is odd that in this cavalcade of corruption, the silver lining for so many conservative media figures is that the word “Russia” has not been mentioned once.

But all this proves is that Trump has pulled so much horrible shit that we don’t even need to get into the Russia mess to verify that the man is a walking, talking personification of crime, unethical behavior, and grotesquery.

And believe me, we still have to get to the Russia mess at some point.

In any case, these are dark days for America’s favorite unindicted co-conspirator. If Democrats take the House in three months — likely but not a slam dunk — we can start betting on whether they will vote to impeach on the first day of the new Congress or sit back and let the orange menace sweat it out for a week or so.

Wow, it’s almost like an episode of some really bad reality television show — almost.

After much deliberation, President Trump has narrowed down his list of white, right-wing judges and came up with Brett Kavanaugh, who is most likely headed for a seat on the Supreme Court.

As we know, Mitch McConnell basically stole one seat on the Supreme Court, and with Kavanaugh’s confirmation, we will be looking at a solid majority of reactionary justices who will rule over the nation for decades to come.

Yes, anywhere from a few weeks to a few years from now, Trump will no longer be president, and his name will be fully ensconced on the short list of presidential abominations like Buchanan, Harding, Nixon, and Bush 2.

However, even then, we will still have to live under the rulings of out-of-touch conservatives and people who long for the 1950s.

Many Republicans held their noses and voted for Trump because they wanted the GOP to load up the Supreme Court with its kind of judges. They got their wish, of course, so maybe they will finally be happy and stop feeling so persecuted and perpetually furious (note: not very likely).

Of course, those Republicans who know Trump is a disaster will say that his judicial choices justify their backing. To be fair, it is quite a bargain. The GOP gets its agenda advanced, and all it costs America is the loss of our values and our standing in the world. Oh, and every ethnic minority, gay person, and immigrant now feels the icy grip of fear constantly, and there will most likely be some kind of economic disaster soon. But hey, it all evens out — right?

However, if the establishment GOP is happy, what about those fabled working-class conservatives who propelled Trump to victory?

After all, we heard stories of “economically anxious” farmers and unemployed factory workers who wanted to shake up the system, and while they were at it, maybe get their small town’s opioid crisis under control.

It’s hard to believe that these hardscrabble folk feel vindicated because, for example, the Supreme Court has “sided against workers’ rights in an important arbitration case.” Is that really what they wanted?

Along those lines, keep in mind that only 29% of Americans want to see Roe v. Wade overturned. Yet 46% of voters picked Trump.

That’s at least a 17-point gap in reality.

Of course, we should know by now that many people didn’t vote for Trump because of an allegiance to GOP goals. They voted for him because he shared their hostility toward foreigners and swarthy people. Maybe they were unemployed coal miners, or maybe they were rich Manhattan lawyers. The only thing they had in common was that they never — and I mean, never — wanted to hear Spanish.

And today, a lot of those heartland conservatives see their precious leader screwing them over because of some insane drive to start a trade war. Or their tiny town is exactly as messed up as it was two years ago, with no signs of help from the Trump Administration.

And yet they continue to pledge their eternal loyalty to him. And they will continue to support an agenda that is focused on making rich people richer. And their pain will never end. But of course, they will blame the liberals for that, and the cycle will continue.

By the way, assuming that Kavanaughis confirmed, four of the last six Supreme Court justices will have been appointed by Republican presidents who lost the popular vote.

That, apparently, is democracy.

Is there anything more gauche than quoting yourself? Well, maybe starting an article with a rhetorical question is worse, but…

In any case, here is an excerpt from something I wrote last summer: “If there is one thing that the candidacy of Donald Trump has taught us, it is to never count him — or his followers — out.”

I was writing about the latest polls at that time, which showed that Donald Trump had as much chance of winning the election as Noam Chomsky did of landing a triple salchow to clinch the gold.

I mean, it was absurd to think Trump might capture the Electoral College — just ludicrous. Ha ha ha ha.

Ha ha.

Ha…

Yes, we’re all still laughing five months into this monstrosity of a presidency. Our laughter is not joyous, of course, nor is it resigned or world-weary. It’s more like the collective lunatic howling of the damned, which I guess still counts as laughter nonetheless.

Regardless, my point in that article was to be skeptical of all the experts who assured us that Trump would flame out in spectacular fashion and that America would never hand over the car keys to a man who isn’t even qualified to be the assistant undersecretary in the Federal Bureau of Weights and Measures, much less the fucking chief executive of the nation.

No, we were all a little too relaxed about the possibility of a Trump presidency. And I’ve written before about the liberal tendency to insist that this time — really, really, really this time — it’s all over for Trump.

As you recall, he wasn’t going to win the nomination, he wasn’t going to win the election, rogue electors were going to deny him the presidency, he would get impeached on his first day, he would resign in disgust immediately, and so on and so on. He would this, that, and the other thing.

All of this would prevent us from living in a world where the president of the United States repeatedly insults an ally just hours after that ally has suffered a terrorist attack, or makes America the undisputed bad guy in the history of climate change, or just in general resembles an evil, sputtering old man planning to slip razor blades into apples next Halloween.

And just today, we have confirmation of what we all knew, which is that this president is even more corrupt than Nixon and thinks “obstruction of justice” is some kind of fancy French dessert.

Well, here’s the truth: None of this really matters, because Trump’s base doesn’t care about any of this.

Hell, white supremacists and conspiracy nuts and right-wing hatemongers are all for the man, more than ever. And until just about everyone else in America says, “Enough of this shit,” his supporters are numerous enough to keep Trump’s wobbly, haphazard administration upright. The alt-right and the bigoted will not be dissuaded. They are a multitude of furious fire ants keeping the anthill from toppling over, even after repeated sprayings from the flummoxed homeowner.

And so, none of these scandals are nearly enough to end our nightmare.

Of course, the impeachment-o-meter is hovering around 40%, so what do I know?