Saturday, December 8, 2018

Tired... So Very Tired...


Fatigue is setting in. No, not on the part of Donald Trump, who continues to display the kind of manic energy that was classically displayed by terminal tuberculosis patients in 19th Century opera... and certainly not on the part of the Mueller team, who are determined to see this thing through to the bitter end. (I understand they take energy drinks intravenously.) And not by the opposition, or Resistance, either, who continually tap into new energy reserves (not to mention funding from various anonymous donors with globalist tendencies) in order to fuel their crusade against Trump. And not on the part of Trump's hard-core supporters, who continue to wait in long lines and show up at rallies, knowing – on some level – that he is their last, best hope to be heard amidst the din of liberalism and globalism. (Trump could, if he were a student of history, expropriate Louis XV's line, “Apres moi, le deluge”, and he would be accurately describing the reaction of his supporters to his – at this point inevitable – impeachment.)

No, the fatigue is clearly showing in the faces, body language, and actions (or the lack thereof) of the mainstream Republicans – not just the “never Trumpers” but pretty much all of them. They never accepted this quaint notion that an elected president automatically becomes the head of whichever party nominated him; the Republicans are perfectly satisfied being, and remaining, headless. (And lacking certain other body parts has never bothered them either.) And so many of them campaigned against him when he was running – being quite explicit about their preference for Hillary over Trump – that we can't expect them to have changed their minds in the meantime. In fact, they are the prime candidates for the great desertion that will accompany the impeachment, and which – if it turns sufficient members of the Senate – could actually make it a success.

There are other aspects to this. To the extent that Trump is winning anything – succeeding in implementing even the slightest tidbit of the platform on which he ran – they are shying away from jumping on the bandwagon and sharing any credit. The image they want to project is that Trump's very few achievements were accomplished in spite of, and not because of, them – and that they would have been perfectly happy with a third Obama term. In other words, he is the lone gun who rode into town in the best Clint Eastwood tradition, challenged the corrupt and overweight sheriff, and started cleaning out the bad guys, while the polite citizens retreated into their homes and pulled down the shades. The problem is that Washington, D.C. is a big town, and the bad guys, AKA the Deep State, are everywhere. A single gunfight at the O.K. Corral might be on people's minds as the ideal, but it's not going to happen. I imagine that the last time a Deep State of any sort was thoroughly liquidated was when the Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia – but do we really want that? (Some might – but they can dream on.)

Then there's the fact that the Republicans are much more comfortable being in the minority, as they are about to be in the House of Representatives, where they can sit in leather chairs and collect their pay but not be held responsible for anything that happens. It's been said about the recently-deceased George H. W. Bush that he was “a good loser” – referring to the election of 1992 and his gracious and gentlemanly response to having lost (which could be a lesson for certain characters in Florida and Georgia). And it's true – Republicans in general are good losers because they tend to adhere to traditional notions of manliness and gentility, and they have a sense of proportion, whereas Democrats are lousy losers because they are revolutionaries, for whom there is no place in their theory for losing. For a Republican, losing an election is a humbling experience, but no more; the Republic will survive, and the people have spoken. Whereas for a Democrat, losing an election means that some crime has been committed, and an immediate investigation is in order, along with any number of lawsuits and court orders, and an unlimited number of recounts (during which additional ballots will turn up in the darndest places, and turn out to be – amazing! – overwhelmingly Democratic votes). Their metaphysics will simply not allow the possibility that they could legitimately lose – as witness Hillary's reaction to losing in 2016, and the reaction of many lesser lights to losing in 2018. After all, aren't they the voice of “the people” (the real people, that is, as opposed to the “deplorables” who are nothing more than haters and therefore don't count)? Don't they care? Haven't they shown their compassion in the way they govern cities like Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit, Philadelphia, St. Louis, etc.? (Paradoxically, these are the people who constantly cry “Count every vote!” and yet they are the first to fly into courtrooms when the count doesn't go their way. Democracy is only a good idea when you win, apparently.)

But if the Republicans are good at losing, and are more comfortable being in a perpetual minority, then they are acutely troubled by winning, and – as has been shown by Congress over the last two years – constitutionally incapable of taking advantage of it. I have often marveled, in the case of either house of Congress, that when the Democrats are in the majority they act like it, and run roughshod over the Republicans, whereas when the Republicans are in the majority the Democrats are still in charge, and still run roughshod over the Republicans. Sometimes gentlemanliness can be carried too far. Not only do the Republicans get cold feet and go belly-up, they start apologizing for being so reactionary, stuffy, and mean-spirited. It's actually a miracle they ever get elected to anything any more.

So... now that the 2018 election is in the history books, more or less, we see that, far from fretting over their loss of the House, the Republicans actually seem relieved. Finally they can relax a bit, and they won't have to pretend to support Donald Trump's agenda because it won't make any difference. Of course, they still have the Senate, but that's not going to mean much when the Democrats unsheathe their long knives in the House next month. We are in for a marathon of investigations, hearings, indictments, and prosecutions that will make the Mueller bunch look like the J. V. team. (The good news if you're a libertarian is that this will bring all other Congressional activities to a screeching halt – great if you subscribe to the idea that pretty much any governmental activity or program means a further loss of citizens' freedom.)

So what we are seeing, and will see, is some relief of the fatigue factor when it comes to the Republicans, and they can settle back into their usual leisurely life style. After all, politics should not be a job, or a career – what sort of parasitic thinking is that? It should be a gentlemanly affair, take it or leave it, etc. – and leave the bomb-throwing to the radicals within the Democratic Party (of whom there is a new bumper crop as the result of the recent election, Alexandria O-C only being the most high-profile example). Of course, a party that so readily gives up power and is so addicted to the good life is unlikely to do well in future elections; expect the Senate to flip in 2020, for example. (And if Trump is still in office at that point he would be very well advised to cut his losses and go back home. Plus, c'mon dude, if half the American public thinks you're a reincarnation of Adolf Hitler, that's gotta be a tough row to hoe.)

And besides, what will the Republicans have to offer in 2020? A recycle/retread of the same sorry no-faces that Trump managed to squash in 2016? Good luck with that. The Democrats, on the other hand, have a veritable army of young radicals and unapologetic socialists, who will be marching behind one of two banners, either that of the Queen of the Night (AKA Hillary) or that of Lenin's brother by another mother (AKA Bernie). Collectivism/totalitarianism only seems to be an idea whose time has come and gone; it keeps coming back to life like Frankenstein's monster, to mesmerize a new generation of believers. If prostitution is the world's oldest profession, then socialism is the world's oldest political delusion; it is at once the very embodiment of concupiscence and the antithesis to Natural Law.

But in the meantime, Trump will continue to cause some fatigue and distress among Republicans as long as he remains in office (because, after all, it's their party and he was never invited), and will continue to energize the opposition to a level of hysteria and paranoia formerly confined to mental institutions (before the blessings of Thorazine and Prozac). And as such he will be doing us all a favor in that he will be preventing the opposition from pursuing more “constructive” endeavors. But they never tire, and neither does he, apparently. So starting in January we're going to be treated to the spectacle of one man against what will appear to be the world, with the Republicans snoozing on the sidelines. And of course the world will win, sooner or later, and the Republicans will be back to the sort of lifestyle they know best – permanent minority status and permanent powerlessness. It is only their delusional system that protects them from humiliation and shame.

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