Index

Finally

A short postmortem of a fake presidency

Now that Tweety Amin has left Washington, we can all breathe a sigh of relief and begin to assess how best to repair his damage. In the mean time, here are some points to ponder.

Drowning Rats and Sinking Ships: While Moscow Mitch has jumped ship, I will talk more about that later. The rats I am talking about here are the orange Mussolini’s coalition of freaks: the Proud Boys, the QAnon loonies, and others of that crowd - the ones that did the legwork and will suffer the consequences for following his orders to invade the Capitol. I appropriated a version of one of their flags that flew at the Capitol insurrection for the image above.

First, the headline from Insider.com: “Proud Boys are ditching Trump hours after he left the White House for good, calling him a ‘shill’ and ‘extraordinarily weak.’” (full text on Yahoo) Ok, the accusations are not news - those of us with brains knew that stuff from the start - but the fact that one of the fake ex-president’s most militant allies has gotten wise to him is most definitely news. The first reason it is news-worthy is the discovery that the right-wing has anyone smart enough to see trump for what he is, and the second is that trump dropped the ball so badly that they couldn’t avoid seeing it.

The QAnon crowd has the same problem, of course. After only a couple of weeks after the Twitter mainline feed from their idol stopped, things like “Thanks Trump! You sold out our country!” are showing up.

Since even the dumbest of the cults are getting wise to the orange con man, perhaps there are better places to be than Mar-a-Lago right now.

The Power of Technology: Since the fake president’s reign effectively ended on January 6th with his ban from Twitter, his allies have been screaming about the technology companies’ de-facto power to act as censors. The orange one had used many tweets to attack that ability, at least as it applied to him and his allies. He also wasted many tweets trying to bully the technology companies into censoring his opponents (or anyone else daring to tell the truth.)

This conversation will continue, but without the hysterical orange toddler crying “me, me, me, me, me” over every little insult to his highness. While the concentration of power is wrong and needs addressing, it requires a fair-handed and intelligent approach, something that has returned to the Whitehouse with President Biden.

Now for the good news: The orange incompetent has stuck a stake in the heart of Reagan’s “Unholy Alliance.” As I mentioned up top, Moscow Mitch has suddenly dumped the orange one to the mercy of his fellow senators, leaving open the possibility McConnell might even vote to convict him at the coming impeachment trial. While this sounds like just another drowning rat swimming away faster than most, the former Senate majority leader has an especially good reason to be heading the other direction: the corporate donations that are his real power base dried up immediately after the Capitol attack.

While McConnell is an expert practitioner of the art of the political backstab - just ask Obama - his real power comes from the fact that he is the republicans’ loan shark. Everyone owes Mitch, and he knows when and how to call in his debts. This allowed him to maintain discipline in the face of the orange idiot’s first impeachment trial, even though the more honest, more intelligent, and longer-serving among the senate republicans would have had to consider punishing trump for his crimes.

Standing back for a second, we should look at this Unholy Alliance thing. Since the term hasn’t been used much lately, I feel a need to explain it. Back in the 1970’s, the republicans were still hurting from the severe black eye that Nixon earned them, both in popularity and in donations. With the Democrats taking the high road in the south and becoming the party of civil rights, they left the republicans with the white supremacists and the losers still fighting the civil war. Some bright (white) boy came up with the “Southern Strategy” of the republicans appealing to the “morals” and “civil rights” - the racism and white supremacy - of the impoverished, under-educated southern whites.

This dovetailed well with their ideological allies in the big business community, which didn’t care one whit about “morals” as long as they got access to the levers of power. The mass of easily manipulated hate-fed white voters gave them the power without the slightest comprehension of what they were giving up, so the business community was happy with the deal - as long as businesses were the ones with the power. This combination of malleable voters and large campaign donations from the corporations became the “Unholy Alliance,” a mash-up of two fundamentally incompatible groups that gave the republicans the presidency several times, and continuing control of a lot of statehouses. The alliance also pushed the republicans further and faster down the road to full-on pro-business fascism following the Mussolini model, a push that came to fruition with the fake president.

Along comes the orange one, an opportunist and low-grade street con man with morals matching those of the business community, and it was love at first lie. He promised everybody everything, and even though there was zero possibility of him ever keeping those promises, the voters and the business community both bought in.

He used the targeted messaging that social media gave him to promise the religious far-right access to political power, and they ate it up while the promise flew under most people’s (and the business community’s) radar. The religious right had been trying since Ronnie Raygun to grab some measure of political power, and were repeatedly rebuffed. They had used decades of “moral” - racist and misogynist - appeals to keep their base in line, but even the most ignorant will get restive when they see no gain, so the fake moral stances of the orange con man were coded music to their ears. They dropped their morals like they never heard of the word and dove after the promised power. The orange one now had his cult of personality.

The business community didn’t have any levers to pull with this cult, but the orange one kept them gaslighted while he built his appeal up. Since the original deal that built the right-wing alliance was that the business community stayed in control, the cult had them nervous long before the election, and they were ready to bolt when Biden won. Losing the senate meant that the money flow was gone, and the Capitol invasion gave them cover to do what they were going to do anyway.

While McConnell may be able to make peace and restart some of the money flowing, the fact that the democrats have taken control of two of the three branches of government means that McConnell’s real power base has evaporated. The vampire that is the “Unholy Alliance” now has a stake in its heart thanks to the fake president breaking one too many rules, and the fascists’ senate knee breaker suddenly has reason to return to being a Republican.