I WAS gonna postulate an OT God going all Tenth Plague on EACH AND EVERY person who cast a vote to put the America-hating fuckstick into the White House (not smiting them through their first-born, either; those voters themselves get to wake up dead). But that leaves us with millions of corpses to deal with, so I decided to go with:
Rapture. Have the NT God just snatch them all up, in broad daylight. Using very recognizable demonic entities, so no one gets the idea that these folks are being rewarded.
A president who is a filthy liar and who espouses and tries to implement an extreme agenda has created an extremist reaction. Revolutions happen when an underlying sense of being treated unfairly (mildly put) meshes with events that allow or encourage mass actions. the Revolutionaries are usually a flipflop version of the overthrown, as horrible in their way as their nemesis.
That is why this atrocity in the WH has to be handled strictly by the Constitution. 2018 will be the most important election in my 75 year old memory. Failure to overthrow, constitutionally, the mess we have created will result in a downward spiral for the USA and, eventually, the world.
I would love to see some divine intervention, an event that by the hand of God or Nature that wipes out the whole rotten administration and their rich, conservative and human-hating appointees…but I’ll settle for wiping them out constitutionally.
I was thinking random thoughts on this a few days back whilst doing some repetitive jobs.
If Trump looked at his approval ratings (big if) and actually believed them, then decided he wanted to be popular, really actually popular, then he has this option: say that he wanted to destroy ACA as it doesn’t go far enough- he wants and will implement full single payer healthcare. Then he could say he wanted to pull out of Paris agreement as it wasn’t stringent enough to allow US to show true leadership, and put in place better, stronger regulations and greener plans for others to follow. His infrastructure investments could all be into cutting edge green technology (solar, wind, wave) and mass transport. He could steal the left and feed it to the alt:right, and they would most likely eat it up.
The downside would be, if the successful mix of Dems and alt:right Repubs worked, that his place in history would be positive; could you live with that? Anyhow, nice dream…
Any scenario that depends upon Trump not being Trump (listens to advice, veers to a Leftward course, stops being influenced by evil and small people) is doomed to reality. Sorry.
AHunter3 was pretty spot-on: Continued resistance, continued bumbling and incompetence and shooting himself in the foot, more people becoming energized to run in local and statewide races in opposition to the GOtrumP. Trump will become increasingly marginalized, and as the pain of his incompetence becomes increasingly felt, Congress may begin taking back some of the power they have given the Presidency over the past 70 years.
To be honest, if I had the authority to:
Dump Trump, replace with Pence…
or…
Keep Trump, get rid of Ryan/McConnell
I would choose door #2, 7 days a week and twice on Sunday. Pence+Ryan+McConnell is just too scary to comprehend.
Constitutionally, I don’t know. We have a system of government that penalizes centrality, rewards the rural voter with more power than a voter in a major metro, and gives us results as in 2000 and 2016 - where the winner by popular vote still loses the electoral college.
This is unsustainable, period, and the two times it happened in my lifetime, it has given us bottom-5 Presidents. If it happens again, and with another horrible President (or even Trump in 2020), then I can see a significant percentage (2%? 10%? more?) of the population decide that the Constitution is flawed and needs to be replaced.
There was a movie in the 90s Dave (1993) - IMDb about a look-like being brought in when the real POTUS suffers a heart attack (while with a prostitute). The people behind the curtain think that a guy outclassed and interested in earning money will be easy to steer - just smile for the press, and sign some documents.
But the look-alike gets a conscience and starts enacting good orders.
So if you could manage to locate a look alike with a conscience (maybe some plastic surgery) and e.g. during the rather insecure golf club time in Florida, new Trump would enact better Executive Orders.
The question is, how soon would the Republican Party react to a Trump not following their party line of coddling the rich and hating the poor? (And how quickly would people notice, if he keeps up the stupid rhethoric and twittering as smoke-screen?)
It still wouldn’t solve the underlying problems of populist-followers, broken election-system and spineless Republican party, though, so it’s just a matter of time till one of the other 9 “normal” Republican candidates gets elected.
The best case is that Trump continues to be incompetent and both Trump and the Republicans are unable to advance their agendas until the Democrats win some kind of crucial majority somewhere.
Trump dying or being impeached is arguably worse than the status who because then Pence would be president and the ridiculous right could want its radical agenda without obstacles.
…and he just can’t seem to help himself, with yet another embarrassing tweet this morning. He’s the living personification of the adage (possibly wrongly) attributed to Mark Twain:
It is better to be silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.
She wasn’t a prostitute - she worked in the office (Clinton-inspired, no doubt). She greeted Dave when he came back, saying how worried she was, etc., and we the audience knew who she was, but Dave did not.
They sold it to Dave as a patriotic duty from the start. He was a good guy from the very start (scene at the beginning where he’s trying to get one of his people work - he runs a temp agency - establishes that). I don’t remember if they even paid him at all. I don’t recall the specifics, but I think they told him something bad about the VP (a lie; he was a good guy) to as an excuse why they couldn’t let the VP assume the office. Then they sent the VP out of the country so he wouldn’t notice anything (or for some reason). And there was a conspiracy theorist on tv claiming the president had been replaced by a lookalike.
Edit adding quotes to get Dave to impersonate, just because (I liked the movie; haven’t seen it in years; looked up quotes):
Government guy: Have you ever driven through a red light? You know, on an empty road where you know it’s safe and nobody’s around.
Dave: I’m not sure… I might have.
Government guy: Well, let’s say your mother was in the car and you had to get her to a hospital. You’d do it then for sure wouldn’t you?
Dave: Well… I guess I would… Yeah.
Government guy: Now, let’s say the whole country was in that car. The entire United States of America.
The BEST case scenario is the most unrealistic, that he will be invalidated, discredited and shunned by his supporters. Because unless that happens, we risk garbage candidates like this every election.
Uh, can you elaborate about who specifically you are referring to here? I don’t remember much extremism on the left back in the 70’s, and the main liars/criminals that I know in politics at that time was Nixon.
Trump becoming a liberal is the worst case scenario. Then the Republicans would deny any responsibility for him and blame everything he does on the Democrats. Which, granted, is their current plan.
The best case scenario is Trump is impeached and Pence leads a lame duck administration. The Democrats retake Congress and the White House in 2018 and 2020 and begin working on undoing the mess conservatives have created.
Going off of the best case and anything possible I would have to say that for me the best thing in the world that could happen would be:
The investigation finds no collusion at all by anyone to affect the election
Trump stops being Trump
a. He turns off Twitter
b. He actually starts giving a damn about the country rather than the party/himself/grudges
c. He becomes a great President and leads the country to innovation and prosperity
d. He repairs and improves America’s standing in the world
e. He fires his entire cabinet and staff
f. a lot more shit that I don’t have time to list
So yeah…become someone else and effectively run the country for the good of the entire nation and not just himself
Best case: civil war between progressive America and (to borrow a phrase) the forces of “an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress.”
A lot of blood will be spilt but after a time in the wilderness and a new constitutional convention, a new, stronger more sensible country rises from the ashes.
Worst case: we fall deeper into fascism one step at a time. As the hollow ineffectuality of the Cheeto Benito’s “policies” is unable to be concealed from his followers, new scapegoats must be found. Nuclear missiles rain down on the rest of the world as unfavored groups are rounded up and slaughtered at home.
But as an optimist I expect we will land somewhere in the middle.
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Revisiting and doing a little necromancy. Maybe instead Trump is more overtly reviving the spoils system that was so weakened by Garfield’s assassination.
So far, no improvement in media behavior or hyper partisanship that I’ve noticed.
The best thing is for the economy to go south not like in 2008 but maybe like in 2000 or 1991-2, and to have more GOP scandals exposing them for being the hypocrites they are. Basically just a general souring of the American mood because of the momentary realization that people who hold the Bible and wrap themselves in the flag are a bunch of frauds.
I find the following interesting:
Present probabilities implied by the Predictit market:
[ul][li] 6% – Chance that Trump will be gone by Dec. 31, 2017[/li][li] 23% – Chance that Trump will lose the Presidency during 2018[/li][li] 10% – Chance that Trump will lose the Presidency during 2019[/li][li] 10% – Chance that Trump will be President Jan. 1, 2020 but will not run for re-election (or will run but lose the nomination).[/li][li] 18% – Chance that Trump be the GOP nominee in 2020 but will lose.[/li][li] 33% – Chance that Trump will be re-elected in 2020.[/li][/ul]
It’s about even-money that Trump will be on the ballot Nov. 3, 2020. If he runs, he’ll be favored to win. No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.
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I do not understand the people who think an impeachment followed by a Pence-Ryan Administration would be an improvement. DeVos and Pruitt are exactly who Ryan would pick for his cabinet if he understood, as Trump does, that most Republicans are now so devoid of humane values that they could murder people in broad daylight and still not lose support. (And yes, the appointments of DeVos and Pruitt are the moral equivalents of murder. — they’ll certainly cause more deaths than Stephen Paddock did.)
Yes, there was risk of nuclear war when Bannon-Flynn were in charge, but there seem to be adults guarding the nuclear Button now.
The incompetence of Trump is the best thing about the present Administration. Lose Trump, you lose the only saving grace. I think I’d prefer 8 years of Trump to 8 years of Pence-Ryan.
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Refresh my memory please. Who were the extreme left types of the 1970’s who were identical to Trump’s supporters?
While I can appreciate the potential “cleansing” of another economic disaster, I’m loathe to wish it as too many blameless folk would get hurt. (In fact, most of those who were wealthiest and most instrumental in the 08 debacle, are doing quite well today, thank you.)
But I agree that the best thing would be for Trump to be ridiculed, and hopefully he and his inner circle would be held to task for their profiteering. Not sure what it would take for the American public to acknowledge their complicity in the lie that America has become, but this might be a start.
