What If We Impeached Trump And No One Showed Up

So yeah, the impeachment. Not a fan.

I know, I know. It was necessary - in fact it was inevitable, from the first day of Trump's candidacy, since he was ferociously against even bothering to learn what was legal, much less following those laws.

But as long as we have a two-party system where one party is utterly immune to reality, any engagement between the two is either pointless shadow-dancing (today) or all-out take-no-prisoners warfare (the election next year). Anything else simply doesn't fit.

Ironically, it could have easily been different. There was an argument privately mooted by some Republicans earlier that it could be argued that Trump's conduct in l'affaire Zelensky, while morally awful and worthy of condemnation, did not rise to the level of impeachment and removal. And this could - and would - be vehemently argued by partisans on both sides. But it at least acknowledged a shared reality of basic facts.

Unfortunately, we are ruled by a clinically insane person (narcissistic personality disorder, to be precise) who could never allow such a discussion. His conduct was not only legal, it was PERFECT!!! And impeachment was a HISTORIC INJUSTICE, worse than THE SALEM WITCH TRIALS! (I have to note, this is not hyperbole on my part, but actual terms used by the President today.) And the Republican party is complicit in enabling his insanity - whether out of cowardice at a fear of being turfed out of office by Trump-adoring primary voters, or out of a lust for what little power trickles down to them in such a regime, it no longer matters. The price of this enabling, for the Republican party, is a literal denial of reality.

Thus the spectacle today, of Democrats trudging through speech after speech saying that yes, the President did impeachment-worthy things, following Republican after Republican declaiming loudly that (and again, literally none of this is made up) the President's conduct was perfect, the Democrats have wanted to impeach him from the day he took office, none of them could find "the Ukraine" on a map (I wonder if the GOP focus-grouped using the incorrect, Russia-friendly term for the country, it was used so frequently), the process was unfair because Congress isn't allowed to impeach people after they were elected, Pelosi is the real person worthy of impeachment, and Jesus Christ was treated fairer by Pontius Pilate than Trump has been.

The two party system is shattered. Either the Republicans somehow cleanse themselves of the taint attendant to being thralls of the Trump regime, or what few elections remain to us will be not civil discussions of determining the best choice, but a battle of, literally, right versus wrong.

Our democracy is not in danger of dying - it is almost dead. And it will take a great many people acting outside their narrow self interest to counteract that.

So, yeah. Not a fan.