Unto The Breech

I can't help myself. I'm getting excited. It is a daily struggle to keep myself from getting hopeful. I've felt this way before, shortly before having the proverbial rug yanked out from under me. To say I am cautious at this point would be like saying Groucho Marx was mildly entertaining.

It seems, and I underscore/bold/italic the word "seems", that Donald Trump might actually be the genuine article. To rehearse my past comments during the 2014-2016 election, I am NOT a wild-eyed Trump supporter. I don't trust the Republican party as far as I can toss a 1-ton block of concrete. I think the US government is corrupt from the ground up and has been since at least the Franklin Roosevelt days, and probably since Abraham Lincoln. I think the only viable fix for that country is to literally tear down Washington DC and start over in Omaha, Nebraska. So when I say I am getting hopeful, this is a big deal.

With those caveats in mind, I state that I can almost make out a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. I am, however, standing very close to the tunnel's entrance should that light turn out to be a thundering locomotive bearing down on me at break-neck speed.

I am not on the Trump bandwagon. I don't follow groups. I have seen groups turn authoritarian many times in my life, and I have paid some terrible prices for going head-to-head with authoritarians. My first big stand against group-think was in grad school, and I have never stopped the fight. Whenever someone tells me how to act or what to believe, I bristle even when I agree with what they are saying.

I don't think Trump is willing to pay the price for his rhetoric. They bastards he is up against will not just give up and go peacefully to the noose. Perhaps I underestimate him, but I get the impression that he is not used to getting hit in a real fight.

Despite all the Zacks and Qs and bubbly optimism from the Jerome Corseys, I still think Trump will run yelping when he sees what price he must pay to fight authoritarians. The true evil he is ostensibly fighting will not stop at his family and fortune, they will slice him to bits and dance on the bloody remains, but only after they have collapsed his world.

What I see now in the US is eerily similar to the early Kennedy days. A new wave of optimism was sweeping the country. I charismatic and intelligent (yes, Trump is very intelligent) president was making great strides in cleaning up the graft and corruption in Washington, along with his bookend brother in the DOJ. At the moment of peak exuberance, they shot him in a most public and horrific way, and have successfully swept it under the rug for 50 years. Not one single person who committed that crime has ever paid a price. You don't fight that kind of evil with a few memos and some captured texts.

The evil will cut off a few unnecessary bits, like a lizard dropping its tail, in order to save the vast infrastructure they have built up over the past century. Throw 'em a Comey or a McCabe or a Rosenstein and the whole thing will blow over and it's back to business on Monday morning. If it goes as high as Hillary Clinton, you are getting awful close to the real power and things will get real nasty in return.

After a year of watching, I still believe Trump is naive. Sure, he's been through some tough Board Room scraps in his time, but those are gentlemen slaps compared to the fight he's picking right now. Notice none of his top people are standing next to him. They are ALL keeping an overly respectful distance to stay out of the line of fire. They know he's smoking next to the gas pump and they want a good seat for the fireworks, but well away from the burn zone.

Needless to say, I maintain a position of hope that at the 11th hour, America has produced a real champion that somehow lives a charmed life and who can take on a Den of Depravity so profound that most of us would wretch our guts out if we knew just a tiny fraction of what's hidden there. But I honestly think that the vast majority of Americans can't handle the truth and will turn - not against the perpetrator but against the person who made them look at the car wreck carnage.

I'll be the first one cheering any heads that roll among the authoritarian mob running that country, but I know that the coming fight is far worse than anyone can imagine. Think of what "doctors" do to cancer patients - taking them to death's door in the hopes the cancer will die first - and then inflate that metaphor hundreds of times over.

I'm all for folks getting excited and ready to fight, but DO NOT underestimate the evil we are up against. The fight WILL hurt and it will hurt bad. We will all pay a terrible price, no matter who wins. It's better to march into the fray knowing this, than to sail in on fairy dust and gossamer pillows.

The ugly is just beginning. Let's hope Trump is the man the world needed to pull back from the brink. More importantly, we need to remember that we don't need leaders to fight; they only serve the purpose of firing up the troops.

Off in the distance, methinks I hear the sound of plowshares being beaten into swords. The question is which side is doing it?