Look at impeachment as chess... not a sumo match!

You - yes you - are foolish to demand that we deal with the oligarch-mafia-confederate treason with spasm trench warfare. Charging ahead with full-frontal assaults.

We need generals in this civil war who can play chess and look many moves ahead, gaming out what the enemy might try to do. You can bet that Romney and Ryan and Republican Party elders — overlapping to an unknown degree with the puppet masters Murdoch, Putin, Mercer & MBS etc. — are mapping out a path that can:

1 - cancel out Trump’s biggest liability from their view — that of narrowing GOP constituencies, driving off all professions and educated people, ethnicities and many formerly republican women, crushing their coalition down to a rabid, confederate  base… **(See late news below)

(Of course, desideratum #1 means somehow eliminating Trump himself, since he will not modify or compromise. See below.)…

2- …while somehow not enraging that base against the GOP establishment for ‘betraying” Trump…

3- …while enraging that base instead against lib’ruls…

4- …while raising up new GOP leaders with credibility…

5- …while protecting establishment oligarchs and the pyramid of blackmailed servants…

6- …while protecting the cheating methods that are their only hook into power.

It’s a difficult path to thread, especially since the Party Elders and the Puppet Masters probably part company over the following:

7- the rise of would-be theocrats (e.g. Pence and dominionists) who would continue the narrowing while possibly setting in motion a deliberate (and literal) end of the world…

8- unleashing disruptive waves of violent McVeighs., tearing America apart.

What I desperately fear is the one path that would touch all of these bases at the same time. That path is *martyrdom.* A martyred Trump is the way to accomplish all of them. 

== Martyrdom Scenarios ==

I have long been on-record pointing this out, horrified that no one else has even mentioned it. But I ask you to put all of this together:

A. God bless the United States Secret Service. I mean that and I wish Donald Trump health. But if they fail and the pupeteers do eliminate their liability, then we all need to react tactically, not emotionally! 

It will be counterproductive if you celebrate, encouraging the meme that “lib’ruls did it to our hero!” 

Vastly better ? Express rage and suspicion toward those who would benefit most  from such a martyrdom— the Ryan-Romney-Putin-and especially Fox interests. Indeed, what could be a better judo move than to express compassionate pity for a Donald who was blatantly mentally ill? (See this elaborated -- with wry humor -- below.)

B. The other kind of martyrdom is more likely, of course — with those judo-master GOP manipulators giggling as they back pedal and let democrats clean up their mess for them. Because that’s what hurried impeachment could be, unless done right… getting rid of their problem for them, while feeding Red America’s paranoias by appearing like a partisan lynch mob. Yes, the impeachment martyrdom would leave a living Trump out there screeching at rallies. So they’ll map it out with special attention to #2 and #3.

C. Most likely of all — a rush to impeachment leads to Moscow Mitch McConnell chortling with glee and getting the GOP Senate to reject the House’s charges, then declare: “All you dems wanted was to get even for the Clinton Impeachment." Allowing that comparison -- a silly ass pursuit of a wayward husband fibbing about some 3rd-base infidelity vs. Trump's weekly felonies and treason -- to stand will give Fox a chance to portray Trump as a martyr, while keeping him and his rally mob party loyal.

Nancy Pelosi is absolutely right (!!) that a race to *rapid* impeachment is stupid. Profoundly stupid! It presents Romney/Ryan + Putin with a rash gift that would feed chess moves #1-8 while failing to deliver any satisfaction. If hurried, it will give them every thing on that list. (And yes, one “chess” gambit they might pull is to let 18 GOP senators who have 4 more years on their terms, swing to conviction and removal, in order to clear decks for Ryan/Romney, counting on time to overcome DT’s fulminating rallies.)

Pelosi is right. Stretch it out! If done right, and timed right, impeachment *can* corner the GOP into a lose-lose. Think! Use “impeachment hearings” to overcome the Roberts Doctrine and regain full subpoena power. Then go after the money-laundering for Russian mobs. Demolish Trump’s reputations as a businessman, as a judge of character, and above all as a “strong man.” (George Lakoff makes clear that his appearance of blustery strength is THE core-psychic root of his redder support.) Chopping away at all of that, across the 2020 campaign, would either lead to an effective impeachment or else corner all Republican senators into an impossible and hopeless position.

I cannot comprehend why some dem leader hasn’t taken the pity tactic, which would infuriate Trump vastly more than the chest-to-chest sumo shoving and shouting we currently see. Any liberal leader who started publicly pitying Two Scoops, speaking v-e-r-y slowly toward this addled dimwit, would win instant cred and become the central focus of Trumpian tweet hate. 

It would chop hard against his blustering "strong man" image.

Moreover, the pity-meme could help us plenty, if the GOP masters go for either kind of martyrdom! “You threw that poor imbecile into a complex world for which he was ill-equipped, just because he’s good at riling up rallies of other imbeciles. And when it all finally overwhelmed him, turning him into a drooling-jibbering liability, YOU threw him under the bus. You monsters, we’re on to what you did to us, and to that pitiable moron!”

== Stop insisting on full-speed-ahead. Instead... maneuver! ==

Again and again, I repeat: Trump is infuriating, but his White House leaks! He is cauterized! The civil servants and defense pros are alerted! Things… could… be… much… worse!  

A Pence White House will be staffed with tightly disciplined dominionists and utterly leakproof. He would smoothly call for comity and calm and negotiation — an utter lie that we have fallen for many times. He will soothe back into line hundreds of thousands of civil servants and officers who’ll sigh with premature relief that the Trump Nightmare is over...

... when in fact the new president will be a much-worse maniac! One who prays daily for an end to all freedom, ambition, curiosity and children and an end to the world and an absolute destruction of the United States of America. And I mean that literally is what he prays for, daily.

No, no, I am not in a rush to remove the cauterized and 80% neutralized Donald Two Scoops, before the timing is right. And it is only right if it helps crush the GOP in the 2020 election! If nothing else, have impeachment on the docket when the NEW Senate takes over, some weeks before the 2021 inauguration. That new Senate -- ordering Trump dragged out of the White House in shame and banned from the Capitol steps -- is a fantasy we might, if we work hard, manage to see.

 == Addendum ==

FINAL scenario.  As one of you pointed out, the gopper secret masters might jettison both Trump and Pence, allowing Pelosi(!) to become president, as a tactical move saddling her with (1) Trump’s martyrdom, (2) presumption that was her ambition all along, and (3) blame for the sudden recession and (4) incumbency during a rejection-election. 

Problems with this scenario. Pelosi would unlock every filing cabinet and every Putin scheme gets uncovered and the election cheating gets harder.  Ryan might go for it. Not Murdoch or Putin.


** Late New Saturday: Former House Speaker Paul Ryan reportedly wants to use his position on Fox's board to 'do something' about Trump

The alternative to Trump is scarier! The "Cyrus Effect." And what you can do.

Obsessed with the midterms? Planning to help register folks and then join a Get Out The Vote effort, on election day? Maybe volunteer for a local candidate? Good for you. Then you aren’t an all-talk-no-action lazy bones. What Tom Paine called a “summer soldier.” 

Only dig it, Congress is not the most important show. Your excuse: “how will anything I do matter?” might apply at that level. But the real action is in statehouses, where corrupt GOP secretaries of state deliver the goods with cheat after cheat, while Republican-controlled legislatures gerrymander and close DMV offices, so women and young people can’t get ID.

Look at this map. In green and blue states, the future of America will be decided. Volunteers who help flip a state assembly seat will meet and work closely with the candidate! She’ll know your name. You’ll feel your efforts affecting the balance, day by day. 

A $50 contribution at that level can make a real difference. And you’d learn a lot. Maybe get a friend in high places. Especially Minnesota, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania… but yes, also Texas, Colorado, Florida. 

If you’re not living near any of the colored states on this map, do you know someone who does? If you do live in those states, how far from a swing assembly district where you could make a difference?

== Don't trade acne for cancer ==

I've repeatedly asserted there are far worse things than Donald Trump. For one thing, almost every member of the “deep state” — or faithful/intelligent civil servants, FBI, Intelligence agencies and military officers — see plainly how dangerous an infantile narcissist controlled by foreign despots can be. They have cauterized around this fellow pretty carefully and Two Scoops currently has less practically-executable power (except the damned judicial appointments) than any president in modern history. But all of that might go away, in the outpouring of national relief, if our current, foul-mouthed schoolyard bully gets replaced by the smoother, more soothing-voiced Mike Pence. Smooth, but in fact vastly more dangerous.

Here’s an op-ed from The New York Times - Mike Pence, Holy Terror -  that lays this down in some terrifying detail. Frank Bruni points out that Pence "adds two ingredients that Trump doesn't genuinely possess: the conviction that he's on a mission from God and a determination to mold the entire nation in the shape of his own faith, a regressive, repressive version of Christianity. Trade Trump for Pence and you go from kleptocracy to theocracy." (Not scared by that? Read Robert Heinlein's prophetic novel Revolt in 2100.)

Mr. Bruni raises the possibility “that Pence could end up in the White House sooner than you think. In addition to the prospect of Trump’s impeachment, there’s the chance that Trump just decides that he has had enough.”

Consider how amplified Trump will be, in such a political martyrdom.  How freed and empowered. The only thing worse could be a Donald Trump who was actually, physically martyred. If that happened - and thousands of fools celebrated in the streets — then we would pass into a time of searing flames.  I pray for his health. Yes - and for several more reasons - I sincerely do.

(Mind you there are lesser versions of the same trap. Say, if Trump gets his “Big Parade,” and a few hundred lefty imbeciles gather along the route to spit on soldiers and vets, the resulting, edited images could drive millions of crewcut fact-people back into a mad GOP they’ve recently been fleeing, in droves.)

But the core element in this article… and in my own missives for a year… has been Mike Pence. He would transform today’s scatterbrained, demoralized, raving-leaky White House into one that is utterly disciplined, close-lipped, and stuffed with Dominionist fanatics eager to use the nuclear button to bring an apocalypse they already pray-for, daily. And I do not exaggerate, even slightly. They do. Pray for an end to human civilization. An end to democracy. An end to all human curiosity, striving, excellence, improvement or ambition. Damnation for 99% of their neighbors. An end to all further generations of children! And an end to the United States of America. Explicitly. They pray for exactly that.  And Mike Pence will be their Nehemiah Scudder, their deliverer on some or all of those promises.

== A Closer Look at Pence ==

A more detailed look at Pence can be found in the soon-to-be-released biography: The Shadow President: The Truth About Mike Pence, by investigative journalists Michael D'Antonio and Peter Eisner, who warn that Pence has become "perhaps the most powerful Christian supremacist America has ever seen."

Even the person I call the “worst American,” for having helped to forge today’s cynical confederate cabal, the conservative columnist George Will, has said that Pence had dethroned Trump as “America’s most repulsive public figure.”

So for all of you on the Union side in this phase of the civil war, I have one piece of advice — patience.  Bide your time. I mean, how long can the oligarchs maintain a universal and open war against every single fact-using profession? How long before some democratic politician stumbles into the polemical power of invoking the Greatest Generation and Franklin Roosevelt? 

(Fun fact.  Around 60% of military chaplains are Baptists. Oh, they are in it for the win, long term.)

Stephen Colbert (bless him) and Rebecca Solnit (deep respects) are absolutely wrong about one thing.  Donald Trump is not the disease. He is a symptom. The disease is a cynical oligarchy waging open war upon the American/Western Experiment.  The disease is every single advertiser on Fox. The disease is you, if you buy anything from any advertiser on Fox! And the disease is Kremlin-promoted division in the Union’s great big, wide blue tent.

There are times when you need to buck up and stop whining about symptoms and unite over the long haul to cure the disease.

== The Cyrus Effect redux ==

Polls show that most Republicans are fully aware that their nominee and president is a deeply immoral person. So how do they rationalize continuing to avidly support him? Of course to the oligarchy "It's taxes and sweetheart contracts, stupid." To GOP pols "It's the courts, stupid," hoping to stymie any future reform of election laws or getting money out of politics. Okay, I can understand those evil, but rational motives.

But the rank and file are problematic. "For decades, Republicans, and especially conservative Republicans, insisted that character counted in public life," says Peter Wehner, who served in three previous Republican administrations. "They were particularly vocal about this during the Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky scandal, arguing against “compartmentalization” — by which they meant overlooking moral turpitude in the Oval Office because you agree with the president’s policy agenda or because the economy is strong. Senator Lindsey Graham, then in the House, went so far as to argue that “impeachment is not about punishment. Impeachment is about cleansing the office. Impeachment is about restoring honor and integrity to the office.”

But all that - like suspicion toward Kremlin despots - lies in the past. "A party that once spoke with urgency and apparent conviction about the importance of ethical leadership — fidelity, honesty, honor, decency, good manners, setting a good example — has hitched its wagon to the most thoroughly and comprehensively corrupt individual who has ever been elected president."

One rationalization offered among evangelical Christians is the "Cyrus Effect." The King of Persia who freed the Jews from Babylonian captivity was clearly a pagan, yet also "the instrument of God."  Likewise, the spectacularly un-Christian and dissolute-immoral Donald Trump delights heaven and believers every time he galls all the people they hate, especially city or university or fact-profession elites.

Of course there's a theological answer in the form of a question: "Is Cyrus in heaven?" If he is, for being a sacred instrument, then it means that you can get there without performing the rituals and incantations that fundies claim to be the only route to salvation. If not, then Two Scoops ain't going, either.

==The perfect hypocrisy storm ==

Those claiming that the president's acknowledged immaturity, narcissism and moral turpitude are "irrelevant" should read these op-eds by Mike Pence, back during the MonicaGate Scandal (so charmingly limited in scope.) Pence wrote:

"If you and I fall into bad moral habits, we can harm our families, our employers and our friends. The President of the United States can incinerate the planet. Seriously, the very idea that we ought to have at or less than the same moral demands placed on the Chief Executive that we place on our next door neighbor is ludicrous and dangerous. Throughout our history, we have seen the presidency as the repository of all of our highest hopes and ideals and values. To demand less is to do an injustice to the blood that bought our freedoms."

You can bet that when ... not if... Pence replaces his boss, he will claim there's no hypocrisy! That he had been merely biding his time. And sing hosannas that a decent man is in office! And fools will rush to proclaim relief, unaware that our danger will then multiply a thousand fold.  (See where I urge you all - don't be in such a rush to impeach!)

From The Atlantic: "In 2011 and again just ahead of the 2016 election, PRRI asked Americans whether a political leader who committed an immoral act in his or her private life could nonetheless behave ethically and fulfill their duties in their public life. In 2011, consistent with the “values voter” brand and the traditional evangelical emphasis on the importance of personal character, only 30 percent of white evangelical Protestants agreed with this statement. But with Trump at the top of the Republican ticket in 2016, 72 percent of white evangelicals said they believed a candidate could build a kind of moral dike between his private and public life." 

In a head-spinning reversal, white evangelicals went from being the least likely to the most likely group to agree that a candidate’s personal immorality has no bearing on his performance in public office.

"Fears about the present and a desire for a lost past, bound together with partisan attachments, ultimately overwhelmed values voters’ convictions. Rather than standing on principle and letting the chips fall where they may, white evangelicals fully embraced a consequentialist ethics that works backward from predetermined political ends, bending or even discarding core principles as needed to achieve a predetermined outcome," writes Robert P. Jones in The Atlantic.

What this cogent article never says is that the predetermined outcome openly and eagerly desired by a large minority of these folks is the fulfillment of prophecy in the gore-drenched Book of Revelation, including death and torture for 99% of their neighbors, an end to all human curiosity or achievement or democracy, no further children born into the world, and an end to the United States of America. 

Truly, you never parsed it that way before? Is there any other way to parse it?