Endgame

Looking forward to the thought experiment the Republicans must elucidate.

They must explain the endgame of Jan 6.

So let’s begin. It’s Jan 6.

Assume the Vice President is now dead. And the Speaker of the House is kidnapped or held hostage. Or tortured and murdered.

Imagine Senator Hawley has prevailed. The certification of electoral votes is halted. There are dead Americans everywhere in the Capitol.

The electoral votes are seized. Congress disbanded.

The president declared martial law, as was discussed with his top advisors.

The election is declared “on hold”.

Election equipment is seized in every state and data is sealed.

The 45th President is still in power.

Then what?

Incapacitated and incapable of governing in the midst of four existential crises, then what, Republicans?

Explain, Sen Josh Hawley. Explain the plan. Because you’re an integral part of it. You played a key role.

So the Capitol is seized. Congress disbanded.

And Trump is still president. He’s still golfing and ranting and the pandemic is roaring and unrest spreads like wildfire across the country.

Then what, Senator Graham?

Senators: Did you read about the Russian Revolution? That’s what Steve Bannon advocated, hoped would occur: the destruction of the “administrative state.”

And everything that had occurred was inevitable.

There is no scenario that doesn’t include storming the Capitol. It’s a historical inevitability, an absolute, a Reality.

It would have to result in a military dictatorship- this too would be an inevitable chapter, by default. Power vacuum.

So, Senator Hawley, you’d have to be jailed or somehow disappeared. Your ambitions are too…inconvenient for the long term. You are a hack, a beginner. The oligarchs will eat you for lunch and spit you out.

And the powers of Trump? They evaporate- his power was never legitimate. It was granted by an electorate that no longer exists after a violent insurgency breaks up the government. He’s a coward, and those with brute force and true malevolence would take his place.

Maybe that most malevolent one, seizing power would be Senator Graham. For a minute. He’d be Commissioner Graham over the temporary military district.

Or perhaps merely de-legitimizing the US government was the plan. And somehow Senator Hawley, the genius from Missouri, was right and President Lincoln was wrong.

And Mike Pence in this likely scenario would be dead. So no, it’s not a peaceful transition to a second term. That’s over.

It’s bullets -not ballots- that will prevail.

No, Republicans can’t just “take over” on behalf of the oligarchs. The military wing support a coup. Not this one.

So Senator Hawley, you’re telling us to go ahead, fire on Fort Sumter, that Lincoln’s murder was no big deal. That JFK was in the way, so a crossfire was a good idea. That the Cold War was stupid. Let things take care of themselves. Business as usual.

That’s the genius of Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley.

But they wouldn’t survive their own Insurrection. There is no place for them in the new authoritarian state. They’re incompetent, so they would be sidelined or imprisoned- if they were lucky.

Because without a system of balanced powers and good faith agreements we have violence. And we do have that, even before the Insurrection, in proportion to the injustice in the land.

There is no happy ending here for the Republicans.

Useful terms of address for the “president”*

1. occupant*
2. footnote*
3. asterisk*
4. mini-Mussolini*
5. mighty mouth*
6. herr helmet*
   5.mr melania*
7. the tic tac troll*
8. mr melania, sir* (correction}