Unfortunately keeping Donald out of jail or prison until the primary could be a problem. If he loses the GOP nomination it would be nice to have him running around attacking the republicans for "disloyalty" and making his own bull moose run for POTUS to divide the republican vote. If he wins the GOP nomination then he will run from a prison cell, and it will be the big house vs the Whitehouse. Even if he won the election and the feds couldn't hold him, there would be two states lined up with life prison sentences to pick up the ball. I think the republican base is stupid enough to nominate him if he is indicted and even on trial, millions of them will vote for him even if he is convicted and in prison.
We can only take this line of thought so far: considering the split in the GOOP klavern, we can realistically expect that to fall out @ ~30% Trump, ~30% Trump
ism, ~40% No Fucking Way. Even if we assume the base
overall runs ~60% MAGA, the best he can expect is to squeeze by in the primary.
Next factor is the shock of reality: serious jail time, disqualification, his entire rap sheet.
Yes, he runs a delusional horde; much of that is built on his personal mythology. ACTUAL convictions, *actual* jail sentences, actual
imprisonment won’t cost him his *entire* mindshare…but consider the sheer EFFORT to block out everything he’s done, to ignore their own brains in “support” of his hook in their amygdalae: they DON’T *WANT* to believe any of it so they tie themselves to him & to each other more tightly every day - it’s how the link to faith+Jesus is made and reinforced, too…so understand, please, just how DEEPLY the personal need to
not be wrong again is rooted in that ~60% MAGA number.
Not out of any sense of compassion, either.
Think of that core connection as a force multiplier: Trump is Gawd’s gift to them, Gawd’s people - just as the USA is Gawd’s gift to them. Everything about reality erodes that shell of protection they make for themselves. That’s why they constantly imagine that they’re under attack by demons (everything that isn’t protected by their kumbaya shields): it’s because they are so relentlessly boxed into a frame of reference that’s in basic conflict with much of what we’ve learned about the world, ourselves & each other over the last couple thousand years. Because of those fundamental incompatibilities, they end up feeling deprived, attacked, disrespected in almost every contact with reality that can’t be worked into their frame somehow. They act so defensive because they know how much damage they’re taking: they double & triple down because they’re already in too deep to change course - so holding the frame & its community together, by Jesus (whose bus is in the shop) & Donnie (who’s in the weeds) has become THE MOST IMPORTANT THING at hey can do.
EACH conviction of TDFFG & his henchlings for serious crimes against the nation, for deliberate attacks on the constitution, our elections, our state governments for the purpose of shredding the nation, & fundamentally lawless acts - and the years of fallout to follow - will hit ‘conservative America” like a wrecking ball. There isn’t enough kumbaya available to stand up to that, because it’s ONLY strength is in numbers.
The shell will break as a result of the number of individuals already at their limit where adherence to the frame is concerned: some mix of them will have their faith broken by trumps incarceration; I expect Christianity to take a big hit, too - it being the raw electoral mass that GOOP carved into MAGA. I expect the collective effect of closing the cell door to result in widespread disillusionment in their religion as well as their politics, their racist social structures, the policies that the guilty rode to power.
Very few people are 100% *anything* - almost everyone has things we cherished but put away to ‘avoid conflict’, old internal voices we’ve walled off, shoved away, refused to listen to, paths we chose to take & *not* to take in spite of what we really want(ed). People who have held themselves in check (often brutally) their whole lives will take the break as proof that they’ve been wrong about so much - and start to make choices they would
never have made otherwise. The more repressed or suppressed, the more likely they are to bubble into awareness once the frame breaks - and in that period of disorientation, I think we’ll see a wave of people who have completely reversed how they live & express themselves. In other words, EXACTLY what the owner/ruler class has been MOST AFRAID OF.
OTOH, I have no doubt that not everyone will break - and undoubtedly some of them will take stochastic terrorism as their weapon of choice…and some will continue to team up to plant bombs, burn buildings, break into/out of jails, kidnap & kill people until caught or killed in turn. It will take a while to clean that up, but we will.
Anyhow, I’ve drifted again, a bit: main course is, leaving Trump in the wild has outlived its usefulness already (imo), and we shouldn’t neglect the catastrophic damage possibilities of completing the MAGA accountability arc.
“In RICO prosecutions we trust”
