This is How a Party Devolves

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

tip o' the tinfoil hat to Constant Reader, CC)

It's ironic, if not outright impossible to believe, that Donald Trump's life could be characterized as calm. Trump's been called a lot of things in his life but calmness has never been associated with it. Yet, that's precisely what we're seeing despite the political and legal headwinds at this final phase of his life. It's the calm before the storm.

     The reason I say this is because right now Trump is enjoying nearly universal support from ultra right wing Republicans. More and more of them are even saying the quiet part out loud and calling for a repeal to the 22nd amendment that limits presidents to two terms.

     Republicans are perfectly OK with moving the goal posts when it suits them. When they have the majority in the Senate, they have no problem whatsoever in nuking the filibuster and denying the minority party a voice. When there's a Democratic governor in power, Republicans will move to strip that governor of his or her powers, such as what we've seen recently in Kentucky (Funny how Kentucky always seems to be at the epicenter of this right wing white-boarding). Then, when political conditions favor them again, they then move the goalposts forward.

     But with this emerging movement to get Trump a third term when he hasn't even come close to winning in '24, we're seeing the right wing's loathing for democracy and sheer ignorance of basic facts. First of all, you cannot get rid of a Constitutional amendment the minute it momentarily becomes inconvenient to your agenda. That would be problematic at best even in the wake of, God help us, a Constitutional Convention.

     Trying to get Trump a third term blithely ignores the fact that, statistically-speaking, he's already well past the end of his life span, which, as of last year, fell to 73 years. Considering his unhealthy lifestyle, it's a medical miracle Trump's still standing, albeit with a bizarre fronto-temporal forward tilt. It's impossible to see how anyone representing the apex of human evolution see many more years of life for this bloated fascist who gorges himself on hamburgers, fries and Diet Cokes. Plus, even if Trump lives into his 80s, only a blithering idiot would think his cognitive decline will arrest itself or get better. It's just a matter of time before Trump will make a public appearance sans pants.

     So, what will transpire when the inevitable happens and Trump is turned into a 300 pound pile of compost occupying the back nine of Mar a Lago?

     Well, one doesn't need to be a political scientist to know what will happen. But before I go into it, let me tell you about a video I once saw on the internet a long time ago.

     It was a dead water buffalo lying in a shallow river. The animal's body was unnaturally moving because its carcass was being hollowed out by scores of piranha furiously feeding on its innards.

    This is precisely what MAGA has long since done to the Republican Party. We've gotten so accustomed to the idea of Neo Nazis and white nationalists completely subsuming a major political party that it's hardly shocking anymore. It's now a party that, through a bizarre alchemy, turned Liz Cheney into a voice of reason within the conservative movement. And Liz Cheney was no centrist like, say, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. This is a woman who'd voted with Trump 93% of the time... until January 6th.

 

"But wait! There's more crazy!"

But Cheney's apostasy, which was completely based on the January 6, 2021 insurrection, cost her her political career. She was thrown out of the Republican conference chair then was humiliated in 2022 by losing her Republican primary to a wild-eyed lunatic named Harriet Hageman, who is what the local church lady would look like after an unsuccessful regimen of Haldol suppositories.

    Almost all of the 10 House Republicans (including Cheney) who'd voted to impeach Trump the second time are now out of Congress. Some got hounded out, others lost primaries or elections. Since then, we've seen the retirements of dozens of Republicans, most notably Ken Buck of CO-4 and Mike Gallagher of WI-8. When Gallagher leaves, that'll shrink the Republican majority to one. It's like an Agatha Christie novel only with AR15 lapel pins.

     So, I think it's safe to say the GOP is the hollowed-out water buffalo stuffed with piranhas.

     Don't believe me? Ask Marjorie Taylor-Greene how things are going in the Freedom Caucus.

    But Marjorie Taylor-Greene was no victim. This is the latter-day Republican Party we're talking about. There are no victims, except in a mutually inclusive sort of way that depends on a torturous redefinition of the word. Time and again, we see and hear stories of disparate factions of the far right movement tearing each other to pieces when they realize there are differences in ideology.

     To revisit the movement to overturn the 22nd Amendment and keep Trump power for life, MAGA betrays its short-sightedness in hitching their wagon to an incipiently demented con man and grifter statistically past the end of his life span. But what happens when Trump finally shuffles off this mortal coil?

     What will result will be the largest and most vicious Nazi power struggle this planet has ever seen.

     We never saw it at the end of WWII because the end came so swiftly. Seeing the end was near, Nazi leaders like Himmler and Goering approached the Allied powers with peace deals that prompted Hitler to issue arrest warrants for them just before he ate a bullet and a cyanide capsule. Himmler mysteriously died in British custody and Goering committed suicide literally hours before his execution after the Nuremberg trials.

     They did turn on each other, sure, but because the Allied powers moved so swiftly and because the major figures died so quickly, we never saw what would have been a long, protracted power struggle after Hitler's suicide. And when you practically predicate an ideology on hatred and intolerance, it's inevitable that when the Dear Leader dies, there will be a power vacuum then a power struggle. And when Trump is finally gone from the picture, psychopaths-in-waiting will seek to inherit or steal that mantle outright.

     It will be, well, a fascist bloodbath the likes of which the world has never seen and it will, ironically, be staged in the nation that did more to end fascism in Europe than any other. And considering how thoroughly MAGA has occupied the GOP, it only stands to reason that, when MAGA falls, the GOP will fall with it. To hope for another outcome would be like trying to separate the Titanic from the 1500+ souls that went down with it.