Sunday, January 14, 2024

Fearing The Future Past

So, let’s see… Trump no longer has the power, nor even the trappings (other than Secret Service protection), of the presidency. What will his “ardent supporters” do? Come out in a blizzard and catch their death so they can caucus for him? They won’t be around then in November, does he get that?

His “less cryptic” calls for violence will mean, what? More bomb threats he can deny knowledge of?
Deny in the worst way possible.

His ardent followers are all reprehensible cowards making anonymous death threats against public officials. It is disgusting that he is inspiring this, but it’s hardly a clear and present danger to the Republic. Even the people who regularly proclaim “Enough is enough!” and demand his arrest in high dudgeon are just parroting his cries of “Lock ‘em up!” Which you’ll note Trump doesn’t say as often now. There is an argument (as even the appellate courts have recognized) that Trump is entitled to a certain leeway for “political speech,” even as he is at liberty on several bonds. Yes, it is a lacunae of our law, but that’s the interplay that occurs between the 1st amendment, and the 5th and 14th (due process), and the fact that for the first time in history we have a Presidential candidate indicted on 91 felony counts in four cases under 3 sovereigns. It’s not like the main problem here is the Constitution.

The main problem is the candidate is dangerously idiotic. Not the flex he thinks it is.
No, I don’t have any idea what that means, either. He won’t get better, which means in the general his MAGA voters won’t save his ass. He’s a very stable genius. There really should be a waiting period. Not to buy a gun, but to vote. Long enough to be sure you’re a citizen, especially if you have a “foreign” name. Or just brown skin. We don’t want to be “woke,” do we? And we can’t trust same day registration; although we should trust one day voting. Right? Fewer people vote that way, which is good for Republicans. Not for the Republic, but, you know: gotta break a few eggs to make an omelette. Right?

The point is, Trump’s “attacks” are either word salads or empty threats. I’ve been yelled at in open court by judges and told to my face I wasn’t fit to be a pastor. And here I am. Trump is neither as competent as those judges, nor as forthright as my worst church critics. Granted, I’ve never been threatened with violence, but that’s not how Trump rolls, and his last effort at large scale violence ended with 900 people facing charges. That tends to take the wind out of the sails.

Texas still remembers February, 2021, when most of the state lost power for a week. No power meant no water, either. Even those of us with gas water heaters had no joy. The coldest weather since then is coming this week, so stores started running out of bottled water and paper towels(?) and…frozen food? Yeah, I don’t know. I guess they planned to leave them outside when the cold shut the power plants down again. There was also a run on portable electric heaters. So they’d have heat when…the power went off?

Yeah…

The point of the anecdote is: we’re always fighting the last war. Everyone in my neighborhood is preparing for February 2021. Which isn’t coming this week, despite the predictions of low temperatures. Disaster two years ago is not disaster tomorrow night; even now the predicted lows are predicted warmer.

And the odds that Trump will repeat January 6th of that same year? Just as great as our chances of suffering another unprecedented winter storm this week. What is the national equivalent of too many flats of bottled water and too many rolls of toilet paper?

Nothing we can’t deal with, at any rate.
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