When Chaos Itself Becomes Victory

Sorry for the radio silence the past few days, folks. I’ve mentioned February is awful. I’ve been too sick to write for a couple of days.

Seems like there’s a lot to talk about, and most of it I don’t want to talk about. I don’t want to talk about the Super Bowl because I don’t like football– but I also don’t like people who think they’re special for not liking football. I just don’t happen to care for it, that’s all. I don’t assign a value to that. I don’t want to talk about the Super Bowl halftime show because I didn’t watch it and don’t want to. I don’t care for pop music. I also don’t care for people who think they’re better than people who do like pop music. It’s just not important to me. I don’t think scantily clad people dancing provocatively in the halftime show are news either– last year some white guy with a lot of tattoos danced with his shirt off. When I was a teenager it was Janet Jackson and the “wardrobe malfunction.” The halftime show has been like that for as long as I remember.

I don’t want to talk about the Iowa Caucus because I have no idea what that’s all about and what’s more I don’t think Iowa does either. I live-snarked the chaos on Twitter when I was too sick and exhausted to write out a whole blog post that night, and that’s all I have to say.

I think that’s everything. Except… oh yes, there was an impeachment trial and acquittal in there somewhere.  It all went down exactly as we thought it would: the GOP senators weren’t interested in the truth, they got it over with quickly, the president acted as if this sham trial was total vindication. Everyone who likes Donald Trump is certain this is a victory and everyone who hates him is fighting mad. There were no surprises whatsoever, save Mitt Romney suddenly growing a spine when it was all too late.

It was all so ploddingly predictable, it hardly even seems worth talking about. The cries of victory from Trump’s fans seem as hollow as the cries of anger from everybody else, because we knew this would happen from the beginning. It’s horrible and nearly traumatic to watch it play out, but we all knew it would be this way.

I have just one question: what happened to all the conservatives who were looking forward to Trump’s impeachment four years ago?

I used to know a lot of those. We’ve somehow drifted out of contact over the past four years. But in 2016, I was told over and over again that impeachment and removal were bound to happen, both to Hillary and to Trump, because they were both so corrupt. The real contest was between the vice presidents. They were the ones who were going to serve. Nobody really liked Donald Trump; they viewed him as a means to get a President Pence. Pence, they said, was a clean-cut Christian man and truly pro-life. Pence was the president they were voting for, when they held their noses and voted for Trump.

I don’t think those pro-lifers read me anymore, but if they were here I would ask them what happened.

This impeachment was your big chance to get Pence.

If what you  told me in 2016 was true, you should have been demanding Trump’s removal louder than anyone. You should have been marching in every protest and jamming your senator’s switchboard.

Do I like Pence? Not in the least. But here is a meticulous man who will not even be in the room with another woman without his wife present. He quotes the Bible incessantly. Pence is not a coastal elite; he’s from good old Indiana where they grow tobacco and soybeans. He has a downright homey manner of speaking, and even calls his wife by that awkward Midwestern colloquialism “Mother.” And I think he’d be a lot harder on abortion laws than Trump. I don’t believe that simply passing laws to restrict abortion will magically make abortion go away– and my rationale behind that line of thinking is how abortion still existed when it was illegal. I think society needs to change in a number of ways if we’re to be truly pro-life from conception until natural death. But still, If all you wanted was a president who signed bills restricting abortion, you could have had a nice squeaky clean one who didn’t mess around.  No bizarre tweets, no porn stars, no cursing at the podium, no rumors about a stimulant habit, no cozy-ing up to the worst dictators.

Instead, you’ve got this twitching, babbling, narcissistic nightmare with three miserable wives and a string of scandals, and you seem to consider holding onto him a victory.

I am forced to believe that this is what you wanted.

Maybe not in the beginning. Perhaps not while you were watching Ted Cruz’s chances go down the toilet four years ago. But somewhere along the line, he became your first choice. Somewhere in the past several years, “I will tolerate any chaos for the sake of a pro-life victory” became “chaos itself is a pro-life victory.” Somehow, “this is the price I’m willing to pay for the pro-life cause” became “this particular set of evils is the pro-life cause.”

And meanwhile, Planned Parenthood reports that their annual number of abortions and rate of government funding have gone up.

I’m beginning to think it was never really about abortion in the first place, but that’s another story.

(image via Pixabay) 

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