...it is hard to see any way out of this that doesn't involve blood.
You say that like it's a bad thing ;'}
I was having a conversation with a leftie yesterday about the latest sordid chapter of the Trump witch hunt. Not to worry - I had no expectation of anything other than shyt coming out of his noggin (and I wasn't disappointed). My experiment was to see if there was even a glowing ember of humanity left (there wasn't).
The thrust of my assertion was that the investigation (such as it was) is over and now it is time to get (back) to work.
His response confirmed everything I suspected - an abject denial that anything had changed or that the witch hunt was (or should be) concluded. He upped the ante with an absurd tu quoque (you do it too) as a lame pretext at justification.
I replied that in my opinion Øbama was the worst president in our history, that he trampled laws and conventions in ways that are only now coming to light, and that he committed several offenses that were arguably impeachment worthy. But the difference was that I didn't call (or agitate) for his impeachment because I was smart enough to recognize that tactic as a political solution in the guise of a legal solution. Any political solution requires consensus to succeed. Sure, we could have gone forward with an impeachment against Øbama (he rolls his eyes at the thought) but it would have gone nowhere.
(OK, so I've handed him the edge - now let's see if he can be pragmatic and rational)
Nope, he seizes on the
tactical advantage at the expense of the
strategic one. He goes for the shiny object (admission that an Øbama impeachment would fail) as a concession that my statement somehow absolves Øbama of any blame or complicity while leaving the door wide open for persecution of Trump. He does so at the expense of any reasonable attempt at objectivity (not that he would ever notice or care).
Thus ends the rational part of the discussion.
Recognizing that this discussion has zero possibility of success, I fall back to my (now) default position.
"You people (I love using that phrase!) have worked yourself up into an emotional state where you are incapable of seeing reality. You are obsessed with demonizing our president and are willing to do anything - however foolish or dangerous - in pursuit of that false premise. In that sense you are like the dog chasing the car - you have no idea what you would do if you caught it. I'm here to tell you that what lies next will be bloody and painful.
Even if you win you will surely lose."
"Proceed carefully as if your very life depended on it."
Him: "I don't want to talk anymore about this."