ORANGE CRUSH – by Jim Kent

The official announcement has been coming for quite a while, but now the secret, such as it was, can be told: The President of the United States is hopelessly in love with Vlad the Shirtless.

Not hard to understand, on some level. President Putin is everything our President is not: healthy, smart, ruthless, and powerful. Our guy—let’s call him President Puta--is old and flabby, increasingly mentally impaired, and a lifelong craven coward. Alas, he is also powerful.

He has no idea how to use this power except for impulsive bullying supported only by bluster, invective, and lies. Everyone who is not blinded by the sun’s glare from The Great Pumpkin’s fake tan sees this. Unfortunately, this category includes the only public officials on earth with the power to rein him in: the Republican jellyfish in the United States Congress. Thus, President Puta has done and will do great damage to the United States and everyone else, with the sole exception of his schoolboy crush, the President of the Russian Federation.

No matter how the coming elections turn out, he will not be deterred by mere laws; he waived serious sanctions on his BFF weeks after they were approved in heartening bipartisan votes by both chambers of the Congress. Even several of the spineless Republicans have wrung their hands over this. It is easy to predict that this will be followed by thunderous nothing.

What is needed, but will not occur, is a veto-proof majority in both chambers. This could occur tomorrow if enough Republicans remember what their oath of office pledged them to, but they won’t--and there are still enough bedazzled voters in the necessary constituencies to protect the sad status quo.

And so Vladimir Putin will continue to be de facto President of the United States. On any issue he cares about, he will get President Puta on the phone to issue his marching orders—well okay, his crawling orders. The most powerful person in the world will kiss Vlad the Shirtless on all four cheeks and do as he’s told. Love is like that.

Assuming the Ds take the House, which looks likely, their leaders have already pledged to waste a great deal of time, attention and money investigating myriad malfeasances, all of which are already universally recognized. They will doubtless pass impeachment resolutions, all of which will be defeated in the Senate so the targets can declare themselves exonerated.

They will also pass bills to undo some of the damage wrought by my pathetic party, but these will die in the Senate on account of the appalling sixty-vote requirement (which is not in the Constitution and could be reduced or eliminated by amending the Senate’s rules). In the unlikely event of passage, these will be vetoed--successfully, since override requires an even heftier and hence unlikelier majority.

So things look bad for the next couple of years. But despair is not a strategy. If even a pale imitation of recovery is possible, it will take decades to get back within shouting distance of where we once were, if indeed we ever can.

There are a couple of steps anyone and everyone can take, but they’re not magic. We’re looking at decades or centuries, so we’d better get started now.

First, keep up the pressure. Everybody is tired and every day’s fresh outrage is just more tiresome. But every day’s fresh outrage needs to be called out--maybe just briefly and maybe not by everyone every day, but don’t let it go entirely without challenge. This is hard and will get harder, so maybe divide it up among your Friends-and-Relations.

And don’t overlook the offenses of your favoured team. Both major parties have shown strong allegiance to corruption and incompetence. Eternal vigilance really is the price of liberty.

Second, build up the bench. My gang have done a good job of filling up the pipeline with state and local candidates, while the Ds have until recently thought only about the Congress and the White House. Recruit and support responsible adults for school boards, city councils, state legislatures, and sewer districts. Stand for office yourself if necessary, but don’t surrender any office by default.

Third, don’t give up on anybody. All but the very most devout MAGAts have been shown to have breaking points, usually around kitchen-table issues and not profound philosophic principles. Ask questions instead of throwing out accusations. Any change that is possible will most likely occur through erosion and not cataclysm. This worked fine for the Grand Canyon.

The world is indeed evolving in ways that many of us aren’t used to and don’t much care for. President Puta is not the cause of this, only an accelerant. We must do what we can, of course—but if we can’t change the world, we can at least try to make sure the world doesn’t change us.