Succession and Secession

Trump's disappearance a couple of weeks ago left many Americans contemplating what would happened if he died.  He has since re-emerged and proven that reports about not his death but his mere illness were greatly exaggerated.  But Washington Republicans are fearful that Trump, once considered more vigorous and fit the Biden despite his advanced dementia and his advanced weight, are fearful that his death in office would send the MAGA movement and the GOP into their own death spirals.  Or so it's been said.

"Republicans are scrambling to figure out what to do if he croaks," one Facebook user wrote of Trump.  "If he doesn’t die right in front of us - while racist rambling at a rally - they will try to pretend he is alive until the next election. J.D. Vance has zero following within the Trump cult. The cult will revolt. Project 2025 will go to pot as they need compliance to complete their most diabolical plan."

Yeah, well, I got news for you.  One thing Vance is is smart, not stupid like Trump.  That makes him more dangerous than Trump. A year ago this time, with Kamala Harris as the Democratic presidential nominee, we were trying to keep hope alive.  Now we have to keep Trump alive.  Because if Vance gets in, he will use all of the newly discovered presidential powers the Supreme Court has unearthed (like its latest ruling, that ICE has the right to roam the streets of our cities and apprehend suspect illegal immigrants at will) to make himself so powerful that MAGA will have no choice but to follow him.  To get an idea of how lawless a Vance Presidency would be like, I need only point out that, after the U.S. bombed a fishing boat in the Caribbean Sea off the coast of Venezuela and claimed the boat was piloted by a drug gang headed for the U.S. - ludicrous on its face, as it was heading in the direction of Trinidad - Vance dismissed those (including libertarian senator Rand Paul) who said that that operation was a violation of international law . . . a war crime.  Vance said he didn't give a twit (he actually used a rhyming word for "twit") what it was called.

And the rest of the line of succession isn't any better.  If Trump dies and Vance is, say, lynched by a panicked mob, House Speaker and MAGA toady Mike Johnson becomes President.  After him comes Senate president pro tempore Charles Grassley, who is so old he can call Joe Biden "Sonny."  After that comes the misfits and miscreants of the Trump-Vance Cabinet, starting with the Secretary of State.

Trump's death in office, were it to occur, would be the ideal time for those of us who advocate dissolution of the Union to strike.  Instead of letting the line of succession play out, we should find a way to suspend the government and begin negotiations for a badly needed national divorce.  We would need a plan in advance before Trump were to breathe his last.  But, failing that, Democratic states should immediately begin the process of withdrawing from the Union.  Vance is only Vice President because of his political backer, tech magnate Peter Thiel, whose opposition to democracy and belief in a global system of technology oligarchs running the show makes him the most dangerous German to walk the earth since Adolf Hitler.  For Democratic states to remain in the Union and "resist" MAGA if Vance were to become President isn't my idea of resistance; it's more like suicide.

I still say that Democratic states should secede.  I also say that we shouldn't wait for President Vance.  We should get out now . . . before it's too late.