Republicans fear a purge come January which sounds bad but what other choice is there?

 

I find this to be a strange article, given I suspect its one of the last few I do that are worth anything. Never really started out with this thought but like millions of other people each day I read the f--- out of the news.

And now I am reading something I can't get my head around. For the past three and a half years I along with everybody else in this country have watched Trump stick his "people" in all levels of government, even when they had no actual position there. Loyalists I think they were called at the time; this started like the day of the inauguration and has continued to this day.

Trump has staffed this government with people so hilariously under- or mis-qualified it beggers belief:

* Betsy DeVos, to run the education department because she hates the school system

* Ryan Zinke to be Secretary of the Interior who immediately set about selling the whole damned thing, laws be damned.

* Steve Fucking Bannon, the man who hates America, democracy and anyone not his color.

* Larry Kudlow as a financial expert. A talking fucking head, making decisions for millions of Americans.

* William Barr as the Attourney General, the perfect Yes man for the Crazy Leader with Dumb (tm) Ideas.

The list goes on and on, its late, I have brain damage and will not go through them all, I don't have the energy. Thats the kind of funny short-cut these polarizing times have had: 

A. The divide between Them and Us (for all values of "Them" and "Us") has been establishcd and by now calcified. Pollsters are no longer surprised that the needle just doesn't move. 

B. The ones who might believe your statement will believe it w/o reams of proof; for the ones that do require the reams of evidence, they will never be convinced anyways.

So based on A and B, I am saving myself some work and just stating: if you don't believe me, reread the news and you will get it. 

The Republicans know they are sticking woefully unqualified people like judges in place to keep their point of view even when that "judge" has never even ruled a case and has been labelled unqualified by the ABA, the only authority on this most people know...and we trust the ABA way more than you.

So when Biden and gang come rolling into Dodge on the 23rd of January, there is going to be a purge; the Republicans already fear it: again, read the news and you will find two flavors of stories from the conservatives:

1. There will be an evil purge if Trump loses, every person not deemed loyal will get the can.

2.  Those evil Democrats will wipe out everything we know and love.

While at first those seemed comedic, after a few more of the same articles going by they started to piss me off, in the same way intentionally stupid people have pissed me off my whole life. I have to problem with lack of education (barely got out of HS myself) but someone unwilling to learn and better themselves at all, that person disgusts me. The opportunities to learn and the opportunities to do are two of the things I like best about being an American citizen at this time in history.

What made me angry? For the past four years I have had to put up with Trump doing the whole projection thing where he blames his foibles on his enemies. Did he cheat in the election? No but he bets you did. Did he try to bribe a Ukranian official to do his dirty work for him? Of course not but given him and Rudy time, they will find some way to pin it on you. 

His playbook hasn't changed a lick in four years which makes this easy to spot. One key superpower needed to make this work is that of being disingenuous. Anyone can do that but it takes one from Krypton like Trump to be able spend the last four years paranoid as hell, going thru hiring and firing over and and over so much nobody isn an actual permanent employee anymore. Trump says he loves his "Actings" since it lets him rotate a parade of clowns that could never pass muster in confirmation hearings through highly sensitive and important decision-making positions. Loyal only to him.

So, yeah, if American votes in November and puts someone with radically different ideas in office, it is within their power of the position and apparently deviousness to purge and stock the entire US government any way they see fit or unfit and the Republicans won't have a fucking thing to say about it since they did it themselves just four years prior.

Which leads to the second shared-fear: wiping out all they know and love. Well first, what they know and love is all the chaos and mayhem, racism, intolerance, bigotry, self-dealing and more....they love Americans distrusting the government, Trump and his goons spend every day on TV disparaging this major governmental department or that one. They thrive on hurting people....the right people that is.

When asked what they admired about Trump early-on many of his supporters replied, not that he had great policies or he would lead us well or anything like that, it was more primal: he is hurting the right people, which in this case were the homeless, immigrants and anybody not swearing fealty to Donald Trump. 

The best we could hope for is a reset to pre-2017 mayhem, when the most you hear from politicians is every four years. When everyone isn't at everyone elses throat, police harming innocent civilians with tacit approval of the President, and for that matter, who *doesn't* miss a government of checks and balances where in the case of a hair-brained President or Senate the whole country doesn't get flushed down the crapper in the first instance of an actual emergency....like it is now.

Could this actually be like pre-2017? Of course not; however I posit that with different, frankly more normal leadership by someone who actually gets the job:

* Sane COVID-19 responses and actions would have been taken, lessening the impact of the corona virus by at least half or better, which would then put us in that fun group that...

* Is safely re-opening the country, people out and socializing. The "embers" Trump refers to don't happen here because of his leadership but overseas and other places Trump wants you to mistrust and hate, they dealt with things quick and are now, even with *some* resurgence, waaaaay better than we will be for some time to come, if ever.

* Their economies are righting. Not any pie-in-the-sky V, but the slow gradual recovery of reality. We would be there too, if only....

The key to making all of this work, the key to saving everything? Simple (although getting harder with each passing day): Trump and the rest need to care about the people they are charged with governing enough to bring the whole country together, fight the virus as a single entity, not as thousands of individual skirmishes as Trump has so far. Just bring us together, quite dividing us. Ever hear of a Phyrric victory? 

Hmmm. I almost suggested Trump might come to personal terms with the history behind the term Phyrric Victory...then I caught myself because that would assume he wins in November and I have it on good authority that America has had enough of his bullshit.

Trump loyalists in place are dedicated fans of this approach, this Us vs Them crap, the "for us to win all else must lose" mindset of a 12-year-old. These need to be flushed from the system and we will not heal until they are. Things don't need to be like this, things can start to change in 2021.

I just want some normalcy to return to my reality for the time I have left, not have every day consumed with the latest stupid/immoral/unethical/illegal/just plain being a dick thing the President has done.

Just don't be surprised when we need to clean house to make it happen.