“I think our country sinks beneath the yoke;
It weeps, it bleeds, and each new day a gash
is added to her wounds.”—Macbeth
“Sleep no more—MacTrump has murdered sleep.”—Ada Zee
Okay folks, here’s yet another warning shot off the bow from someone who’s seen the nightmare unfold before. Now that the Supreme Court has been packed, what’s next? The descent to the bottom will be marked by headlines like roadsigns on mountainous roads—for “dangerous curve ahead” or “slippery when wet” read “The dems have allowed Trump to pack the courts with fifteen of his picks so they can go home and campaign,” or “Trump is planning another visit with Putin.”
For those who still dream of a last minute democracy save, it’s time to wake up. Or never mind, Children, just go back to your troubled dreams, it really is too late to save it. Losing the decisive Supreme Court seat, a battle that, like the 2016 election, was for the Dems to lose, was the last hurrah. Let me tell you how it unfolds from here on in.
Operation Takeover: phase one.
Install puppet in rigged election. Take over the three branches of government, administrative, congressional and judicial, with compromised cronies. In the recent Supreme Court nomination battle we saw how Kompromat* directed the actions of key players who decided to throw in their lot with seriously compromised Trump. Phase One, complete.
*Kompromat (compromising material) is so pervasive in Russia we think of ourselves as belonging to a blackmail state. The Supreme Court coup revealed just how deeply blackmail as a style of governance has spread its tentacles into US politics.
Operation Takeover: Phase two
Timeline
November-December
November surprise. The failure of the Dems to win back either the House or the Senate will come as a surprise to no one except the perpetually deluded leftists still mired in dreams of justice, karma and due process. The clueless losers will point out all the ways the free and fair election process failed; voter suppression, disappeared votes, voter machine hacking, miscounts from key districts etc. Greg Palast will report it all, again. Meanwhile the photos of people keeping democracy alive by standing in long lines in the cold and rain in under-served districts will elicit the usual bleats of woe: “I don’t see how it happened!” “The polls all told us a different story!”
Throughout November there will be demands for recounts, investigations into computer hacking, analysis of how gerrymandering destroys representative government, bafflement over lack of unity among women—and on and on, ad nauseam. In the midst of it all Putin’s favourite goon, his long shot who has paid off beyond the oligarchy’s wildest dreams, will again visit his master, this time to get his marching orders.
December. The courts uphold gerrymandering because the Supremes have already voted away review by precedent. In districts where races are contested, the courts, packed by Trump court appointees, will render their verdicts.
In response to increasing chaos martial law may well have to be declared, at least while the courts sort it out. The Supreme Court may weigh in. One casualty of the ushering in of the dictatorship may well be Putin’s here-to-fore most useful idiot. He may grow so unpopular as people realize what they’ve lost that you’d no more name your kid Donald than you’d name him Adolph. With hardly a blip on the social media radar he’ll be replaced by that demon-in-waiting who speaks for the religious right. Almost immediately we will start to miss the old dictator, who was always good for a laugh and at least wasn’t a hypocrite.
What will happen to him? Terms to be discussed at their new meeting, but I expect them to include: 1) installation of the first-ever Presidential Golf Course, probably in Arizona. It will be massive. It will bring jobs. Maintenance of the monstrosity will suck out the last of the water from the Rio Grande and usher in the Sixth Great Extinction. 2) A set of solid gold “magic” golf clubs. When he uses these clubs he always wins, it will be amazing. 3) A private physician to administer the longevity injections that will keep him going into the next two or three decades and even beyond. (The Russians are far ahead of the rest of the world in the life extension department, and also good at keeping it top secret.) Is our Dictator really eating MacDonalds and KFC and swigging down Diet Coke or is that all theatre, just like the rest of his revolting nonsense?
2019 and beyond
The velvet glove has come off the iron fist. Though life in the new theocracy will lack the scandals and endless tweets that characterized the Royalist Days, as they will come to be called, the dull, brutish, bleak and dreary sameness of life under the dictatorship will still have its moments. The citizenry will feel a sense of solidarity as they pull to together to rescue victims of ever more frequent and worsening climate catastrophes. They may enjoy rounding up dissidents or joining in the public re-education of atheists. For rehabilitated intellectuals there will be book burnings to attend, and the hanging in effigy of directors like Michael Moore (who will long since have taken himself off to Canada). Weekly mandatory visits to church will provide comfort, and silence any complaints about how we are deprived of any art, books, theatre or music not authorized by the State.
Beyond the death of democracy and the dissolution of empire, which has happened countless times before, I see something even sadder. Something that occurs over eons rather than centuries of time, as species go extinct and are replaced by competing species. There was a time when Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon lived as neighbours, even interbred. Over time Cro-Magnon took over, replacing Neanderthal. The prevailing narrative is that Cro-Magnon, the first “modern man” was smarter than Neanderthal, and we liked the idea that our ancestors were an example of survival of the fittest. My suspicion is that they weren’t smarter, simply crueler, capable of wiping out neighbouring tribes without turning a hair.
Where are we now? I believe we are looking at the gradual wiping out of Homo sapiens. We are being replaced by a sub-species, Homo sapiens sociopathensis. This new species has every chance of prevailing because they are not, unlike Homo sapiens, burdened with a conscience. Sure, Homo sapiens can win in a fair fight, but they can’t grasp that sociopathensis will always rig the fight to win. Home sapiens lack the requisite cruelty, the consciencelessness, the capacity to think evil, say evil and do evil at every turn that will be required of players in the new world order.
As we bid farewell to the country as we knew it, and a species that has given us much to admire, we can, I suppose, take some comfort in the works of Homo sapiens at its pinnacle of greatness. For example, the sublime Edward DeVere (aka Wm. Shakespeare) created in Macbeth a hero for the 21st century, our first (failed) sociopathensis. Turns out Macbeth didn’t have the stomach for pure evil. It is possible to read in this play both the tragedy of a man and the tragedy of mankind.
Using the words of a Homo sapiens stunningly far ahead of his time, it is fitting that Macbeth says good by for all of us.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing.
.