Trumplandia is a Rabid Cerberus

(By American Zen's Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari)

Think of Trumplandia as a rabid Cerberus. Except, as opposed to the famed mythological three-headed dog, this one has many, many heads. Some wear red hats, others don't. But it doesn't matter whether or not they sport over-priced headgear- What matters is what's between their ears.

     Now, by that I mean there's actually something to parse there. Right wing journalist Charlie Sykes wrote yesterday on Bulwark about "the Trumpian smear reflex" that seems to take over what passes for the frontal lobe of True Believer Republicans (Let's just call them "Ever Trumpers"). These are the kind of people who would defend this so-called "president" even if he raped then strangled a Mexican kid on the Resolute Desk on live TV then called their deported parents to tell them what he'd just done in as graphic a detail as his announcement of the death of al-Baghdadi.

     "Well, personally, I wouldn't have done that," Sean Hannity would say on Fox, "but the president is always exuberant in his love for children. And while liberal naysayers would disagree, the parents had the right to know of the loving in their final moments the president had shown to their daughter." Sean Duffy would opine on CNN that "the president's fornication technique was all-American and that he'd made the child's final moments almost painless and quick."

     Come on, you know they would.

     The Republican Party and, up to a point, the Democrats until last month, have given this budding tyrant one pass after another, giving him a sense of his own impunity. I think we in the reality-based community can all agree that Donald Trump never once for a nanosecond ever considered himself a public servant answerable to Congress, the Constitution or the will of the people. He is an autocrat of the lowest, crudest order so it would follow that his most rabid fan base would fervently respond to such crudities that spew like a toxic fire hose from his Twitter account seven days a week.
     But the more intellectual of the right wing in both the media and the political arena, the George Wills, the Jennifer Rubins, the Justin Amashes, et al, have of late been reaching their fill. The first major test of their loyalties came when Trump abruptly announced he was pulling out of northeast Syria (without once notifying his commanders on the ground or even the Pentagon) and abandoning our Kurdish allies to the not so tender mercies of the Turks and their allied forces.
     That was the political Third Rail we knew Trump would piss on that would eventually make the GOP break ranks with him. The GOP had invested way too much political capital (capital they absolutely should have invested along with the Democrats) inveighing in the strongest terms against ISIS and al-Baghdadi's caliphate. They'd invested so much, in fact, it was long past being politically feasible to stand by Trump in the hour of his greatest and most infamous treachery that will surely go down in US history as the biggest foreign policy blunder since Bush invaded Afghanistan and Iraq.
     But then on Twitter Trump went after Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a bona fide war hero and patriot and, for the second time within a month, Republicans, who'd invested as much if not more political capital into their seeming reverence for the military, were forced to draw another line in the sand. He called Vindman a "Never Trumper" and insisted he couldn't have sat in on his "perfect phone call" with Zelensky that he'd nonetheless took the pains to hide in a N.I.C.E. server. He tried to drag Lt. Col. Vindman down to his level by claiming his motivations for testifying before Congress under subpoena were politically motivated. Which is almost ironic since his political motivations for making that infamous July 25th phone call is what got him in this impeachment mess in the first place.

The Tongues of Dull, Fat Cerberus

Of course, it wasn't just Cadet Bone Spurs who went after a guy who actually earned his Purple Heart instead of having one handed to him by a doddering veteran who didn't know any better. Laura Ingraham last Monday night accused Lt. Col. Vindman of being more loyal to his birthland of Ukraine than the United States. Completely lost on the alt-right's de facto sex symbol was the irony of doing this in defense of a guy born in Jamaica, Queens who has from Day One, in insulting his own generals, intelligence and diplomatic corps and members of Congress, shown more loyalty and patriotic allegiance to Russia than that selfsame United States.
     Ingraham's fast, loose and completely baseless allegations were essentially brought out because. as Ingraham actually admitted, Vindman chose to defend the nation's interests over that of Trump's. In fact, this is literally what Ingraham said on her show the night before Vindman's testimony (emphasis mine):    

Here we have a U.S. national security official who is advising Ukraine while working inside the White House apparently against the president’s interests and usually they spoke in English. Isn’t that kind of an interesting angle on this story?

     Crushed child testicles enthusiast John Yoo openly floated the idea that Vindman was committing "espionage." Also lost on Ingraham was the irony that Trump's "interests" were, as usual, purely partisan and selfishly motivated- Strong-arming Zelensky into carrying out an investigation into the Bidens, having Zelensky announcing it on CNN and essentially using the Ukrainian president as a terrorist hostage reading off a cue card before a video camera. Then and only then, it was understood both in Kiev and Foggy Bottom, would he get his military aid.
     

 

      Then yesterday, it was the right wing's answer to Howdy Doody, CNN's new Special Needs Affirmative Action hire Sean Duffy, to open his maw. Duffy said,

“It seems very clear that [Vindman] is incredibly concerned about Ukrainian defense. I don’t know about his concern [for] American policy, but his main mission was to make sure the Ukraine got those weapons. I understand it: We all have an affinity to our homeland where we came from.”

       Well, all except Donald Trump, obviously, a man who is so bought and sold by the Russians he might as well have a permanent front window display in Russia's GUM department stores.
       With the betrayal of the Kurds and Trump essentially committing libel against a decorated war hero, the Republican Party has finally rediscovered its gag reflex, the tip of the cock against the tonsils, the part where the body politic finally expels that foreign, toxic organism called Donald Trump. So far, we've gotten just a couple of dry heaves. But often, those dry heaves presage a far more cathartic purge.
         Keep in mind- Lindsey Graham's anti-impeachment bill was shot out of the water by nine Republican senators. One doesn't have to be a tea leaf reader to see in that a serious erosion in the firewall that will literally prove to be the only thing keeping Trump from being expelled from office.