It Was Always Going to Be This Way.

It was always going to be this way. As much as Trumpism could be described as

a revolution, a grotesque one at that, as is always the case, this particular

revolution has ended up eating its own children.

Trump and his populist congressional followers and tiresome base are now

shaping up against a sizeable part of the GOP who have all of a sudden

rediscovered their fiscal conservatism when it comes to the COVID relief

package. There is a ghoulish satisfaction in watching the two sides now

squabbling for the soul of the GOP going forward. Trump eggs it all on with his

usual incendiary words and tactics, while Mitch McConnell tries to re-assert

himself over his now deeply fractured party. Shakespeare himself couldn’t have

penned a better tragedy.

That said, the real tragedy here is not McConnell breaking sweat over a Trump-

inspired situation that he should intervened about months ago. No. It’s the

millions of regular Americans and small businesses that have been suffering for

months in a pandemic-ridden U.S. In the face of record numbers of

unemployment, evictions and bankruptcies, the best that the GOP controlled

Senate can come up with is $600.00 per adult by way of COVID relief. Do they

think real life runs on fresh air?

This of course leaves us in the highly unusual situation of sharing a take with

something that is Trumpian – that the COVID relief checks should be

$2,000.00 apiece and not a measly $600.00. Keep in mind though that a broken

clock is also right twice in a day. And if you think Trump is promoting

$2,000.00 a person from the goodness of his dark, charred heart, and not for

political machination, slash, burn and to hit out at McConnell for having the

temerity to recognize Biden’s victory, well you’ve not been keeping up.

As the GOP and Trump carry on getting themselves in a terrible tangle in the

dying days of the worst Presidency ever, spare a thought, kind of, for Georgia’s

Republican sitting Senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue as they face off

against Democrat challengers Rev. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff,

respectively. Both of those races will determine if the GOP holds on to its

majority in the Senate. And surprise-surprise, despite Mitch McConnell adding

yet more worry lines to his face about the COVID relief payments debacle, both

Loeffler and Perdue have bucked his line and expressed public support for

$2,000.00 payments per person. It’s almost as if they are facing critical

elections in a weeks’ time. But then, hang on, oh…

Trump has always been a slash and burn President, as well as being the worst

executive office holder since King George the Third. Trump’s only ingredients in

that orange hot-dog skin like surface that holds him together – himself,

naturally, malice and chaos.

That is all. Now that McConnell and his Congressional allies are trying to rein that in,

it somehow, bizarrely, adds that element of mirth, somehow, to the biggest threat to t

he United States since World War Two, the pandemic. That we have to try and

laugh in these dark days perfectly sums up the pain we are all in.

Trump and a good amount of the GOP never took the Coronavirus pandemic

remotely seriously. Even as the body bags piled up and the businesses boarded

up. Hence, we have this tragic stand-off between the populist, Trumpian

segment of the GOP and the fiscally conservative McConnell-esque tribe. For

once, the Democrats have gotten the upper-hand over the Republican party on

this issue – for all the right reasons.

Again, the American people deserve way better than this carnival of misery and

dismay. This has been a monumental failure of government at the most

harrowing of times. The equivalent of a 9 / 11 a day of deaths is occurring

courtesy of COVID and with no end in sight. This required leadership, focus

and resolve. What did we get? A GOP slavishly addicted to Trump’s Twitter

whims and a citrus-hued leader who cared more about his image in the mirror

and the news-cycles than he did about the growing number of daily COVID

fatalities that were being brought forth in his daily briefings that he rarely

cared to read in any event.

One can only imagine that in centuries to come, there will be a huge shortage of

paper and space on the internet. That’s because the history books that are

waiting to be written about this sorry saga in American history, will surely be

huge enough to make Shakespeare hang his head in shame - with a smile on his

face as the GOP implodes.