Trump’s Onrushing Medical Catastrophe
Nope, not talking about his GOP health care debacle, but rather his own personal physical / mental collapse.
I’ve used the term “medical catastrophe” before re Trump, but I want to explain what I mean carefully so there are no misunderstandings re my point or intent.
By “medical catastrophe” I mean a change in his physical and / or mental health that will preclude him from being able to fulfill the duties of his office.
It could be the Alzheimer’s symptoms he’s long been demonstrating finally erupt into an unmistakable full blown case, it could be he slips and falls in the White House bathroom, it could be he has a stroke golfing at Mar-a-lago or is struck by lightning while playing a round (hey, it happens more often than you think).
He is an elderly, out-of-shape guy who eats crappy food, possesses no self-discipline, keeps irregular sleeping schedules, is faced late in life with an enormous new load of stress in excess to anything he’s experienced before, and is easily driven to fits of rage up to and including screaming in frustration at people when things don’t go his way.
Any physician would say he’s a prime candidate for some sort of serious medical problem.
But I bring this up not to focus on his condition, but rather the condition of the country, in particular our two major parties.
Something is going to come out of the Trump / Putin / Russian interference investigation: There are too many people telling then changing contradictory stories, with too many examples of clear cut violations of US law for somebody not to take the fall for something.
At the worst end of the spectrum, the GOP finds itself handcuffed to an infantile con artist deeply in debt to Russia and willing to conspire with them in order to win the election and bolster Russia’s standing in the world at the cost of US influence and prestige.
We normally call such behavior treason.
At the best end of the spectrum, the GOP finds itself handcuffed to an infantile con artist who disrupts normal governance in this country by inflaming a small but volatile base; the price for GOP dominance today is a loss of the growing national majority that wants some common sense stability reinstated.
On the one hand, the Democrats would love to find a battery of smoking gatling guns with GOP fingerprints all over them; on the other, the discovery of same would not win over any of the GOP base (much less the Trump base) nor would it make compromise and governance easier in the future.
We know, for instance, that both Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan while candidates did their best to sabotage seated presidents’ negotiations with foreign powers to peacefully resolve international conflicts, in Nixon’s case extending the Vietnam War by several years at the cost of around 18,000 needless US deaths (and lord knows how many Vietnamese).
We know both Nixon and Reagan, while president, willfully violated federal laws.
We know Lyndon Johnson conjured up a phony justification for escalating the Vietnam War, just as George H. Bush conjured up a phony justification for the first Iraq war, and as his son George W. conjured up an equally phony justification for the second then topped his father’s perfidy by ordering war crimes committed against POWs and civilians.
War crimes we eagerly hung Nazis and Imperial Japanese officers for in WWII.
All of these crimes were overlooked, because facing facts and harsh reality is something America does not want to do.
We do not hold leaders and parties accountable, because to do so would strike at the heart of a huge hunk of the American populace, no matter which side of the divide the blame falls.
With too much of our personal identities invested in one political POV or another, we are loath to actually admit culpability, much less guilt.
We see admitting wrong as being weak, and if our national history teaches us anything, it’s that the weak get shit all over by the strong.
Don’t deny that.
But with Trump, there’s a great chance to scapegoat an outsider and his outliers, a wonderful opportunity to demonize some genuine trolls and shift all the blame to them.
Or in particular: Him.
When Trump’s health finally brings him down (and I would not be surprised if his medical catastrophe occurs before the 2018 elections), all the guilt and blame to be found in the current investigations will be shifted to him.
He will, of course, be immune to prosecution: His health, having failed him, makes it impossible to question him, much less try him, much less convict and hold him accountable.
Every dingleberry in his administration will gleefully rat out their boss the moment he can’t access his Twitter account any longer. He will be the single culprit responsible for all the crimes and suspected crimes and treasons and suspected treasons that are uncovered.
Both parties will benefit from this.
The GOP gets to flush their big orange disruptor once and for all, credibly saying “Well, he never truly represented us as a party” and repudiating his worst excesses.
They lose his base, of course, but they would lose that base anyway: The moment Trump’s medical catastrophe removes him from the White House, his base will become obsessed with conspiracy theory after conspiracy theory as to how the GOP leadership secretly sabotaged their great orange hope.
The Democrats get the satisfaction of a “We-told-you-so”, of course, but also the permanent marginalization of the alt-right white nationalist base that the GOP have been using up to this point to block progressive programs.
That’s short term good news, long term mixed news because it means a now unencumbered GOP gets to recruit among large minority communities previously in the Democratic Party camp.
The Democrats won’t automatically lose those voters, but they’ll have to work for ‘em.
Trump’s cronies will eagerly support this because (a) it keeps them out of jail, (b) it keeps them out of jail, and most importantly (c) it keeps them out of jail.
And interestingly enough, Trump himself would benefit from this (presuming his medical catastrophe leaves him able to do so).
He will, for the rest of his days, be able to claim that he woulda-shoulda-coulda achieved all sorts of greatness had he only been able to finish the job yet secretly revel in the relief of knowing he is no longer responsible.
The apologists in his base will eagerly glom onto that.
By the time he finally shuffles off this mortal coil, he’ll be presumed guilty of all the ills laid at his feet, while at the same time being able to claim a fig leaf of plausible deniability due to the actual investigations stalling out due to his inaccessibility.
A win-win-win situation for all involved.
