Rot

Donald John Trump was impeached yesterday. Finally.

He got off with a mere two counts, but that is enough to tag him forever as a derelict thug.

More importantly, perhaps, the impeachment process made glaringly obvious the thorough decrepitude of the Republican party. It is rotten to the core.

In June of 2017 your basement dweller (BD) posted an assessment of Trump’s first four months in office. In it he posited that while Trump is obviously a problem, he is not the only problem, or even the main one. The real problem is that he is supported by a vast crew of enablers, although BD had previously allowed for the possibility that the Republican party would restrain Trump’s more egregious behavior to some extent.

Alas, it was not to be. The party of Trump capped off their attempts to derail the impeachment investigation with a concerted display of sophomoric rants in the House chamber. Each Republican speaker seemed intent on outdoing the previous in mangling facts, twisting logic, abusing history, and torturing the English language.*

The soulless suit that runs the Senate has signaled he has no intention of running a proper trial there.** The chief justice of the Supreme Court, who will ostensibly preside over the trial, cannot reasonably be counted on to enforce any modicum of constitutional rigor.

In sum, the Democrats did their duty, at whatever cost. The Republicans continue to shamelessly beshit themselves in lockstep on behalf of Dear Leader. The republic accustoms itself to debasement.

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*They take their cues from Dear Leader. At Salon several health care professionals examined the six-page rant Trump sent Nancy Pelosi on the eve of impeachment.
**As Pelosi said today, “I don’t think anybody expected that we would have a rogue president and a rogue leader in the Senate at the same time.”