Of green lights and quid pro quos
This feels like the real thing, doesn’t it? I mean, the end of Trump. What with impeachment rolling on full steam as UkraineGate grows more scandalous by the minute—and with Trump’s incredibly horrific blunder concerning abandoning the Kurds—the fool in the White House has sealed his own doom.
Let us hope so, at any rate. Someday, all this may seem to have been inevitable. We all wondered how Trump could get away with so much bullshit, month after month, year after year, and still keep 95% of Republicans, and 38 percent of the country, behind him. The rest of us shook our heads in bewilderment. How could this horror continue? Why didn’t Republicans see?
Now, maybe they have. The Senate in particular seems to have their eyes suddenly opened; I don’t quite understand their love for the Kurds—that story may be explained someday—but I suspect it has to do with evangelicalism. Somehow, saving the Kurds is connected (in evangelical brains) to support for Israel, or perhaps it’s more accurate to say that saving the Kurds is tantamount to defeating Iran, Israel’s arch-enemy. At any rate, the evangelicals need a healthy Israel—at this point—because without Israel, there’s no place for Jesus to return to; and the Rapture, which has become a semi-official plank in the Republican Party platform, cannot happen.
Radical Christians, including Pence and Pompeo, freak out at the notion that the Rapture might not occur on schedule. Their weltanschauung cannot grasp that: they’ll do anything in order to usher in the End Days, it’s so central to their core belief. Never mind that the U.S. Constitution is awkwardly juxtaposed to the Rapture: if the Constitution is inconvenient, then ignore it. Never mind that the President of the United States is a sinner, and a grievous one at that, probably not even a believer, and undoubtedly a criminal: God moves in mysterious ways, and who’s to say that He, in His infinite wisdom, has not selected a bad man to bring about His ends? King David was no angel (to paraphrase Trump’s description of the Kurds), but God used David; in such a manner, God is using Donald J. Trump to bring about the Rapture.
What can you say about this kind of thinking? What can you say about the men who think it? Yes, they’re mentally ill. Yes, they’re delusional. But there they are, this Christian-evangelical bunch of lunatics who currently run our government.
But the funny thing is that Trump may have overplayed his hand when he counted on the evangelicals to support him in everything he did. You can’t really blame him: they stood by him through the Access Hollywood tape, through the Stormy Daniels adultery scandal, through the hush money payoffs, through Trump selling out to Putin on just about everything, through his vulgarity and bullying…through the whole panoply of Trump’s stupidity and evilness. No wonder Trump thought they’d stand by him as he sold the Kurds down the river.
Well, Trump should have studied his Rapture more thoroughly. For it turns out there’s one thing the evangelicals treasure even more than him: Jesus. Trump forced the evangelicals to choose between him and their Lord. Not surprisingly, they chose their Lord.
So the Green Light to Erdowan resulted in Turkey’s invasion of Syria, and the quid pro quo to Zelensky resulted in an impeachment inquiry. Republicans in the Senate might have stonewalled right through impeachment, were it not for the Green Light. But the Green Light made it impossible for them to do so. The House absolutely will vote to bring articles of impeachment against Trump, probably within the next month. McConnell has already said he’ll have to convene a trial. Were the Senate to vote today, there would not be enough Republican support to convict and remove from office. But a month is an awfully long time in politics, and Trump—frustrated, enraged, irrational—is going to do a lot more stupid stuff in the next 30 days; his judgment is fried. One by one, Republican constituents are going to let their Senators know that they’re comfortable with conviction and removal. One by one, Republican Senators will grow spines. These are going to be breathtaking, historic days; and for Democrats, wonderful ones.
Rest in peace, Elijah Cummings.
“At any rate, the evangelicals need a healthy Israel—at this point—because without Israel, there’s no place for Jesus to return to; and the Rapture, which has become a semi-official plank in the Republican Party platform, cannot happen.”
If this was part of a SNL skit, people would say it’s too far-fetched.
You got that right, Bob Rossi!