Pyongyang on the Potomac

My God, did you see that disgusting display yesterday in the East Room? Newly acquitted, flush with triumph, Donald slouched to the microphone, beaming, then scowling, then hollering, then cracking wise, veering all over the map as he voiced endless complaints against all who’d wronged him, and there were so, so many who’d wronged him. Contrition in the wake of his narrow escape? Fuck that. Nothing to be contrite about, he won, and anyway, his escape wasn’t narrow. He’d romped it home, thanks to all those in attendance. Waving a newspaper headline trumpeting his faux vindication in the Senate as if it was another “Dewey Defeats Truman” moment, instead of a sad, sick inevitability, he carried on for over an hour in one of his worst performances yet, frothing at the assembled mob of duly attentive and openly admiring Republican sycophants and boot-lickers. The Democrats were “vicious”, the charges against him “bullshit”, the whole thing precipitated, of course, by “dirty cops” and “liars” who were off on a “witch hunt”. Nancy Pelosi was of course a “horrible person”, Adam Schiff too, and particular vitriol was reserved for Jim Comey (“that sleaze-bag”) and the FBI generally (“dirty”, “corrupt”, “leakers and liars”), as old grudges commingled with the new. He continued to whine that his call to extort the President of Ukraine was completely above board and proper:

I call it a perfect call, because it was. And they brought me to the final stages of impeachment. But now we have that gorgeous word, I never thought a word would sound so good. It’s called total acquittal. Total acquittal.

“Total acquittal” is two words, dipshit. Never mind, the point is, the call was perfect. Get that? The Senate just said so, so it must be true: perfect. OK? Donald’s certainty on this score tended to undermine the assertions of Maine’s own quavering queen of grave though feckless concern, Senator Susan Collins, who, chickenshit as always, voted to acquit on the basis that surely, having emerged purified from the crucible of impeachment, Donald had learned his lesson and would henceforward be chastened and cautious. Nope! Suck it Susan! As far as Fat Donny’s concerned, he was right all along, and you just proved him right, Madam Senator, you and all the others, and by the way, thanks for the carte blanche because now it’s time for sweet, sweet, revenge.

All the while, as Trump assaulted the integrity of his own law enforcement officers, their boss, Attorney General Bill Barr, sat there with a big smirk plastered across his fat jowly face. He stands ready, now, to persecute the sorry sons of bitches on Trump’s burgeoning enemies list (word is that Lt. Col. Vindman, already sure to be transferred out of National Security, tops the shit list. God help Fiona Hill.). Everybody else was chuckling and tickled pink. Determined to slather it on, Mark Meadows, the Republican House Minority Leader, stood up to bow and scrape before his glowering, puffed-up master, assuring Trump that the assembled pack of GOP hyena “had his back”, as if such needed any further affirmation. So it went.

It was the same sort of stomach-turning display one sees all the time when the likes of Kim Jong Un and Saddam Hussein hold court, and quite like those crass photo-op Cabinet meetings over which the gloating Trump presided during his first year in office. As in all banana republics, the dictator rants – though few have ever been as full of self-pitying grievance as Donald – and his faithful applaud, weep with joy, and pledge their eternal fealty.

God only knows what Trump will do next. The schemes he must already be hatching, Christ, it makes me sick at heart just to think about it, and who’s going to stop him? He’s sure to commit more impeachable offences before the election – does anyone think the Dems would dare impeach him again? Who, then, can beat him in November? Bernie? Mayor Pete? The first is a tired old socialist who took his honeymoon in the Soviet Union, the second an inexperienced little kid who’s gay to boot, so God-fearing Evangelicals in the Trump Brigade take heed. Fat Donny’ll make mincemeat out of either, won’t he? Doesn’t it feel that way? He’ll tout his supposed record, too; he’s sure to come out swinging with his pack of well-tested lies about the strength of the economy, the boost to America’s standing in the world, the vast increases in military might resulting from his trillions in defence spending, his peacemaking in Korea, his defeat of ISIS, and his stalwart protection of health care and coverage for pre-existing conditions – all falsehoods, distortions, and outright whoppers, the last a Big Lie that would have made Goebbels whistle in admiration. Who among the remaining Democratic contenders has the mettle and the moxy to tear this miserable, strutting bastard a new one? “Sleepy Joe”? Maybe Bloomberg will get the nod? It’s enough to make you weep.

There he was, exultant, raging, ranting, incoherent with anger and going off on tangents, his loyal retainers all around him cheering, clapping, and yuk-yukking at his mirthless jokes. I’m so sick of this. I’m so sick of feeling defeated and hopeless, sitting up here, powerless, without even a lousy vote to cast when the time comes, a mere spectator to the events that are going to shape my Canadian future just as surely as America’s. When the United States swirls ’round the bowl and goes down, the suction takes the rest of us down with it. So God damn them all. God damn his lawyers, his loyal servants, his stinking kids, the judges he appoints, the propagandists at Fox who brainwash the masses, and all those toadies and enablers in Congress, and God especially damn the ludicrously dimwitted and ill-motivated caucasian brainstems that repeatedly vote for him and his legislative lackeys.

Heavenly retribution seems all there is left to hope for. Those who’re gleefully destroying the Republic will probably never pay for what they’ve done while they’re still down here on the muddy earth. Not in any way. Their kind almost never does.