I awakened from a fitful sleep this morning with a frightening thought. What if Trump wanted this “shutdown” as the precursor/prime cause of a total takeover? What if he really did “win” that showdown with the Democratic Bobbsey twins?
Then I put it out of my mind.
Until I read this headline.
From…of all places…The NY Times.(https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/12/us/politics/trump-shutdown.html)
Playing by His Own Rules, Trump Flips the Shutdown Script
My heart skipped a few beats. I had swallowed the evening Deep State media line that Trump made the usual fool of himself while Pelosi and Schumer craftily played him. I had seen the mockery of the stolid Pence, just sitting there looking…”Pencive,” to coin a term. Damned near immobile, in point of fact.
But then there was this headline. I thought maybe it was just bad writing on the part of some Times editor, so I read on.
You should too.
The trick in Washington has always been to make sure a government shutdown is pinned on the other guy. President Trump is the first to ever pin one on himself.
In a new twist on the old game of shutdown politics dating to the 1990s, Mr. Trump was essentially goaded on Tuesday by Representative Nancy Pelosi of California and Senator Chuck Schumer of New York into embracing ownership of a shutdown yet to come if Democrats do not accede to his request for $5 billion to build a wall on the southern border with Mexico.
“I will take the mantle,” Mr. Trump told the two Democratic leaders in the Oval Office, saying he would proudly close parts of the executive branch if he did not get his way.
–snip–
Mr. Trump has consistently played by his own rules in Washington, and perhaps this is just one more example of how he can upend the conventions of the capital and win a shutdown showdown on his own terms. Many of his most enthusiastic supporters are both anti-Washington and pro-border wall, so his decision to potentially close down a section of the federal government to secure funding for the wall could play well with them. It could also generate some welcome backing from his base at a time when he seems under siege on the legal end and is struggling to staff his administration as the two-year mark nears. In addition, the 2020 campaign is already on the president’s mind, and his efforts to limit immigration have worked for him in the past.
With Democrats about to take over the House, the president’s opportunities to win the wall money — a central facet of his 2016 campaign and one he has so far been thwarted on — are diminishing. As that window is closing, shutting down the government is starting to sound like a victory, at least in the president’s mind.
–snip–
But if no accommodation can be reached, parts of the government might be closing for the holidays. Democrats believe it was Mr. Trump, with his fervent shutdown embrace, who presented them a gift.
I repeat:
“Democrats believe it was Mr. Trump, with his fervent shutdown embrace, who presented them a gift.”
Hmmmmm…!!!
I needn’t go much further. We will need to wait to see how this all plays out before declaring victory.
The Bobbsey Twins may have just been Tar-Babied.
We shall see.
Won’t we.
Individual-1 is under pressure from all sides, right? Accusations of prosecutable criminal actions are being bandied about, and not just by federal prosecutors.
What better way to stave off whatever is in store for him than by taking the government down? After all, that objective was the plainly stated prime mover in the whole Steve Bannon plan from the get-go.
Take it down and rebuild it in another form.
A more…authoritarian…form.
Watch.
AG
P.S. While I’m at it…that Pence posture during the meeting? The Deep State Media Complex laughed at it, and rumors of Pence’s displacement in 2020 by Nikki Haley started to fly. (<https://www.salon.com/2018/12/12/whats-behind-mike-pences-stony-visage-trump-may-plan-to-dump-him-for-nikki-haley>)
Could be…but it also could be that Pence knows something terrible is about to happen and is having a fundamentalist Christian shit-fit about it.
Did y’all notice the media coverage of the Bush I funeral’s ceremonial reading of the Apostles Creed? Trump and his “official” whore were roundly criticized for refusing to take part in that reading with the Clintons, the Bush IIs, The Obamas and the Carters.
Recent headline from The Washingtoon Post
All the presidents at the Bush funeral service together recited this core prayer. Except one.
Hmmmm…
I have no doubt that Pence might be thinking about how a Satanist would ncessarily refuse to do that.
No doubt at all.
Hell…I considered it, and I am about as far from the current popular definition of a “fundamentalist Christian” as it is possible to be.
P.P.S. W. B. Yeats:
Poem?
Prophecy?
Or both.
The Second Coming
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?William Butler Yeats, 1919
You be the judge.
