The day has arrived

As I write, the House is debating guidelines for impeaching the Very Stable Genius.

Pardon me if I can't give a flying diddly.

Look, among the players, there is none who rise to the level of savory, much less admirable, much less statesmanlike.

Lest's start with the person at the center of the proceedings, one Donald J. Trump. He's 73 years old and has maturity issues most people have resolved by the age of 20. He is petty and vindictive, he demands personal loyalty like some kind of Cosa Nostra don, and he knows no other way of responding to slights than to engage in schoolyard taunting. He has no core set of principles, which has resulted in incoherent economic policy and foreign policy. He's switched parties several times over the course of his life. He is a man of low character. He was cheating on his first wife with the person who became his second wife. He was in the midst of divorcing the second wife in 1998 when he was out on a date at New York's Kit Kat Club with a cosmetics heiress. He saw Melania Knauss and, when his date went to the restroom, approached her and asked for her phone number. Years later, after he'd married Melania, he was at a golf tournament in Lake Tahoe while his wife was home with their newborn son. While there, he embarked on affairs with the pornographic movie actress Stormy Daniels and former Playboy Playmate of the Year Karen McDougal. He doesn't read - not only policy materials, but anything. He can't put together a coherent sentence when he speaks.

To the point at hand, the transcript of the July Zelensky call, as well as what we know about the Giuliani shadow-Ukraine-policy team's activities earlier in the year, make it clear that Trump wanted the new administration in Ukraine to look into the Biden / Burisma situation, as well as the thoroughly bizarre Crowdstrike conspiracy theory, and that he'd hold up aid Ukraine needed to deal with the Russian threat to get them to do it.

Then there's Adam Schiff, who, prior to the Trump era, had actually established himself as a Democrat whose leftism was tempered by an understanding that the US needs a strong military, and by his activism on behalf of press freedom. But from the get-go in 2017 he has been unabashedly determined to get Trump removed from office as soon as possible. His memo in response to the Nunes memo has been thoroughly discredited. The FISA warrant applications were indeed principally based on the Steele dossier, and the FBI acted very squirrelly, to say the least. He'd rather not talk about that now.

Nancy Pelosi didn't want to see this happen for political reasons, but now that her party has gone down this road, she has to toe the line. (It's been an interesting year for San Fran Nan; she's a leftist of the first order, but has come out looking like an adult in the room as the likes of AOC, Tlaib, Pressley and Omar have burst onto the scene.)

Republicans who had, in the past, justifiably earned conservative respect and admiration, such as Louie Gohmert and Jim Jordan, have guzzled the VSG Kool-Aid and become shills for the MAGA brand. They try to keep their public pronouncements on the level of concern for the election process and the Constitution, but you'll never hear a word from them about Trump perhaps having some shortcomings that make it difficult to defend him. (Then there is Matt Gaetz, who has never been anybody's poster boy for depth, decorum or dignity.)

Bottom line: the way this is going to play out is already set in stone. The House will impeach today, the Senate will acquit next month, and the whole thing will be a distant memory by next summer, as the election-year news cycles accelerate, with fresh ugliness at every turn. The post-American people will consider the implications of the collectivist, redistributionist and identity-politics schemes of whoever the Democrats nominate, and reject them in sufficient numbers to give the VSG a second term.

And we'll have four more years of chaos, embarrassment, imperiled national security, and cultural rot.

I have no tribe or brand to champion here. I daily have to live with my fury at how Trump and his cult have deformed the public's understanding of conservatism, and I still understand full well how determined the Left is to dismantle Western civilization.

I harbor no illusions that what is really needed to heal post-America's profound spiritual sickness will be tried any time soon.

So pardon me if I don't either cheer or rage once today's votes are tallied.