There is no doubt about it.
I wanted President Trump to be impeached. And, yeah, I'm one of those who've felt he's been committing impeachable offenses since Day One. Not everyone felt that way, particularly Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and a good chunk of the Democratic House. But the evidence of Ukranian extortion was so blatant, even Pelosi could not shunt it aside.
So, yes, I wanted our narcissistic, racist President to be impeached.
I also want him convicted and removed. Furthermore, I want to see him perp-walked and imprisoned for his many crimes.
These parts of this are not likely to happen.
Or are they?
The big news last week is that John Bolton is now willing to testify in the Senate trial.
Granted, McConnell is reluctant to allow any such thing, but if four Republican Senators say they would like witnesses, particularly Bolton, he might not be able to stop it. It takes a simple majority of 51 to set up/revise trial rules.
So, whether he gets to or not, Bolton wants to sing.
Why now?
Why?
John Bolton, former National Security Advisor (and other related roles in his career as the nation's leading war hawk), cheered the Trump decision to take out a prominent General of another sovereign state, one who is perceived to be the number two person in his country, just behind the Ayatollah.
Should not this make Bolton happy and supportive of Trump?
Well, the fuse is lit now. He knows, better than the rest of us, that no matter how skittish Trump is for future actions, that the chain of events flowing from this is unstoppable. We will spiral to a war with Iran, and for someone like Bolton, the sooner, the better.
I despise Trump, with every fiber of my being. But the truth is, he is not in the same war hawk league as some of the people that have been around him. Trump's foreign policy is chaos personified, but he is instinctively an isolationist, and a big 'greed is good' guy. He looks at the quivering in the stock and oil markets and thinks, hey - maybe this destabilizes the economy and puts my re-election at risk.
Don't get me wrong. Trump is a dangerous child who has no idea what kind of harm his destructive actions can lead to. The shooting down of a Ukranian airliner is an indirect result of the instability he caused. And that will hardly be the end of it.
Now that the fuse is lit, it makes it more critical than ever that, in Bolton's view, we are guided through the fire properly. He has seen up close, and personal how erratic and ignorant Trump is.
Who are the major figures behind the desire for a war with Iran? Outside of Bolton, they include Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Vice President Mike Pence (two Mikes! It's a shame that Bolton's first name isn't also Mike - that would make it a triumvirate of Mikes! The name Micheal Bolton isn't taken, is it?). Bolton has geopolitical neocon philosophy reasons for wanting it. Pompeo and Pence? It also has something to do with Christian Reich theology that, I am sorry, completely escapes me - I'll have to do more research. Something to do with fulfilling biblical prophecy?
The bottom line is, it may be in the best interests of these three to replace the erratic Trump with the simple-minded but laser-focused Pence.
We may be witnessing a coup, a manipulation that will lead us further into war and the nightmare world of Christian dominionists and neocon war hawks.
I've understood for a long time that Pence is no prize. But I thought he would at least be more restrained than Trump and would have trouble mounting an effective campaign to win outright in 2020.
But I may be wrong. Pence may be more dangerous than Trump. He would continue all of Trump's policies and lead us more surely into war.
This is a nightmare.
There is no good way out of it.
We may have to pray that the election results in November end and repudiate this insanity.
We have to win in November. It won't be easy, but we have to.
Everything is at stake.
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