Gaslighting God

Hidden within Saturday’s largely hollow political victory was the beginning of the end.

SHAWN THEW/EPA/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES

by Rich Herschlag

Congratulations, Donald Trump, on a job done. Avoiding conviction in the Senate while losing by a righteous 57-43 is a fitting end to four-plus years of lying, cheating, threatening, intimidating, sabotaging, evading, avoiding, extorting, and ultimately murdering and committing insurrection in the full light of day.

We gathered all the GOP wimps together for old times’ sake and gave you the sendoff you so deserved—a low D graded on a curve. They carried your sorry political corpse over the goal line in a stretcher during a timeout and called it a touchdown. Your handpicked crack defense team made the cut by virtue of having not been well known enough to be disbarred and then managed to almost lose a case in which the jury was already in the bag. Note to self: When on trial for assault, assemble a highlight reel of everyone on the planet at one time or another using the word “fight.”

You proved your point, which is that there are many men and women like you—weak, angry, bitter, frightened, desperate and more than willing to put a steel boot on the neck of anyone in their way as long as someone else will be there to take the rap for it. More than simply prove this point, you did your very best, day in and day out, to drag down a large confused mass of individuals somewhere in the middle who had perhaps half a chance morally until you arrived on the scene. You leave in your wake a nation at each other's throats, with body bags needlessly piled to the roof and beyond and other nations once in awe asking themselves seriously, What was I thinking?

Have a nice afternoon on the back nine, and do not for a single moment lose focus on the lone notion that can still save you from yourself and what you have wrought—that there is no justice and no God.

Yet these entities always make themselves known in any number of subtle ways until one day when it’s not so subtle. The problem seems to be how slowly they rear their head. Very slowly indeed. It is during this interminable transition—between crime and justice, between amorality and spirituality—that fools and tyrants like you live their entire lives. It is a wide berth the heavens give the truly evil. More than enough time to play out one’s misbegotten childish grievances, construct a microcosm where savagery and avarice are rewarded, and in your case foist that paradigm on an entire subclass of individuals far too muddled in their thinking to comprehend how they ever walked into the trap or contemplate how they will ever get out.

But allow me to offer this one unsettling thought. Those grinding wheels have now begun to turn. Hidden within Saturday’s largely hollow political victory was the beginning of the end. The very impeachment you called a witch hunt effectively extended the charade of your presidency another three or four weeks. Your cringey apparition haunted the halls of a Senate chamber cowering in fear of Oath Keeper assassins commissioned by you, and for a few bonus days y’all managed to hold back the floodgates of comeuppance. But now it’s over.

In its place as you will soon discover is a different paradigm. Who fears Stalin today? Who hides from Saddam Hussein? Who trembles before Al Capone? There is a line connecting where you are right now and where you will be at some point. No one including you knows the exact slope or curvature of that line, but we all know it is all downhill.

Surely, no matter how much thou doth protest, you can feel the shift already. Yes, you still lay claim to a base of the basest nature, but we have a bigger and better one and top notch professionals on our side. We’re already chipping away. A hundred million vaccines here, a million manufacturing jobs there, a couple million affordable health plans here and you will sense the air going out of the balloon. The travesty you have perpetrated is high maintenance. You are exhausting and with no other purpose than to become still more exhausting. People have lives to live. Even your hardcore base is not entirely immune to the allure of a better life. You will eventually be left with a rotisserie league of wild-eyed, unkempt neo-Nazis as is fitting for a man of your stature.

This was your last hurrah if you want to call it that. Watching Mitch McConnell urge conviction after failing to convict must have given you the sensation below the belt Melania hasn’t given since 2006. The Turtle was all "I wish to acquit Charles Manson for the violent murder of a bunch of people, but I would also like to add that Charles Manson has been a very bad boy and his mommy should probably spank him." That was rich. You’ll be TiVoing that speech till the day they drag you pajama-clad and babbling incoherently to criminal court in Georgia.

By the time you exit this earth you will be largely forgotten, especially by the likes of folks like me who are embarrassed to have had to invest quality time fighting the good fight against hacks like you. But there is one thing I want to hang around to see, somehow, no matter how high priced or out of reach the ticket. At the instant of your ultimate physical demise you will be confronted with the most complete highlight reel ever—the one of your entire life culled and edited by archangels. No doubt you will be motormouthing about how the racist housing discrimination, wage theft, rapes, and incitements to violence are all merely otherworldly deepfakes. You will not be out of your mortal shell a millisecond before you begin gaslighting God. Unfortunately for you, She doesn’t have to put up with that shit.

Listen to our podcast impeachment special for free!: Emergency Impeachment Podcast: Republicans Choose Cowardice Again

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