“Hope for the future has basically been reduced to the dream of retirement – somehow, somewhere, someday – and the desire to just survive to the end of the week. Three hours, a pint or two, a book to read. A full half hour to cuddle in the morning before having to drag out of bed and go to work. The occasional pleasure of stopping in for a Guinness on the way home, or going out to an actual pub for an evening, or driving over the hill to see the closest of our friends who all moved away. Small things. Simple things. Things that can be replicated when needed, that don’t require elaborate planning and don’t come with the crushing disappointment of cancellation because you don’t know if or when you’ll get another chance.”
-Dec 31, 2019
As we enter “Year Of Hell, Part 2” it’s hard not to look back on this and wince. The bar was so freakin’ low. I conceded the misery of work and the existential terror of this election season and set the sights as low and simple as they could go, and then everything past the front door got taken away. No stopping in for a pint, no going down the pub, no driving over the hill to see friends. No minor league baseball on streaming audio. No cheeky beach visits. No Marvel movie matinees. No long-awaited vacation trips with friends. Even the morning meander around the farmer’s market once a week has turned into a hit and run mission, and a leisurely cold brew at the local coffee spot or a bagel breakfast sandwich and a Coke for lunch or a casual downtown alfresco dinner feels too fraught with peril to actually undertake.
And you see the incompetence and the malfeasance – virtue punished and vice rewarded and the utter shamelessness of stupidity and calumny and you wonder what happens next. A 10% lead in the polls feels as safe right now as walking through Hell in gasoline panties, and if it doesn’t hold up, we basically lose the country. And if it does hold up, there’s an immediate pivot to scorched earth as the GOP once again buries their crime and assumes the world began anew on January 20 as the sole fault of the new President, who is to be resisted at all costs.
You can already see the groundwork. Pardons and commutations. The Supreme Court rules that the President is not above the law and is subject to Congressional subpoena and investigation – and then, as Josh Marshall pointed out, sets the delay fuse on the ruling to go off for the next guy. Congressional Republicans time the aid package to run out just in time for the election, so they can suddenly revert to deficit hawks again out of nowhere. Roger Stone gets the first get out of jail free card of presumably many to come, assuming Agent Orange doesn’t somehow preemptively pardon himself – or try to, anyway, with the kind of jurisprudential understanding you’d expect from a senile bag of guts who does nothing but watch Fox News all day.
They’ll assume that losing power is punishment enough, and then devote themselves to regaining it. They won’t go quietly, they won’t sit it out for a couple of years, they’ll fight tooth and nail to sabotage recovery and blame the failings on the new guy. Just like in 2009. They will assume forgiveness for their sins – and that’s the real problem, isn’t it? You can only ask forgiveness. It is not automatically granted to you. And it shouldn’t be, for this. No forgiveness for anyone who doesn’t beg for it. No forgiveness for anyone who doesn’t repent and remediate. Show that you understand why you were wrong and show how you’re working to make it right, and then we’ll talk.
After November 3, we’ll know exactly how many people should be written out of the American political process for good. The New York Times and its catamite allies made such a show of “listening” to the Tr*mpists…and all they’ve shown is how right we were not to listen to them. Now, and ever again, amen.