Let’s talk about the photograph taken today, President Donald J. Trump, sitting slack-jawed at a table, eyes half-closed, posture melting into his chair like a wax figure left too close to a Florida window. This isn’t a retired celebrity sighting. This is the current President of the United States, looking for all the world like a man who has forgotten not just where he is, but who he is, and why the room around him keeps stubbornly refusing to turn into a golf cart.
This is the man with the nuclear codes.
This is the man making life-or-death decisions about wars, alliances, famine, immigration, climate, surveillance, and democracy itself...
And based on today’s photo, he may not be entirely aware of the table in front of him.
Someone should sound the alarm.
Because Donald Trump appears far too gone, physically, cognitively, morally, to be president of anything more complex than a church potluck seating chart.
His ankles rankle. His gait stumbles. His breath wheezes. His flesh cycles through colors like a mood ring worn by a hormonal teenager. Despite what his hand-picked physicians swear under penalty of social exile, Trump is in appalling health. A lifetime of rage, denial, diet soda, sedatives, stimulants, and late-night junk food has consequences that no amount of bravado can bury.
He is deteriorating in plain sight.
This man might not survive his own presidency.
So what happens next?
What happens when the current President of the United States does the country, and the global community, an involuntary favor and dies in office?
There would be celebrations that would make the end of World War II look like a quiet Tuesday. Fireworks. Church bells. Street dancing. A collective, planet-wide exhale that would shift air pressure systems.
But celebrations don’t solve constitutional crises.
Because the moment Trump’s pulse flatlines, America wakes up to President J.D. Vance.
Scenario One: President J.D. Vance, the tech bro homunculus with a Senate lapel pin.
Vance would be sworn in before Trump’s body cooled. He’d recite the oath with the same earnest look he gives Peter Thiel’s reflection. Then, after the mandatory period of “We grieve our dear leader” pageantry, he’d begin consolidating power.
But here’s the catch:
Vance can mimic Trump’s cruelty, but he can’t channel the base’s bitterness.
He doesn’t have the reptilian intuition.
He doesn’t have the cult telepathy.
He doesn’t have the unfiltered id that Trump weaponizes so effortlessly.
And so the internal feeding frenzy begins.
We’ve already heard the rumors that Vance told Don Jr. he’d consider him for VP in a Vance administration. True? Maybe. Smart? Absolutely not. It would appease the base temporarily but ignite a dynastic firestorm that ends with Junior trying to reclaim the throne by 2028, choking on the myth of his own inheritance.
Meanwhile, Erika Kirk has been floating through the Trump ecosystem with increasing visibility, the kind that looks suspiciously like positioning. Don’t dismiss it. In a Vance administration, she could become the new “fresh-faced, camera-ready unity figure.”
Vice President Erika Kirk is not implausible.
Which should terrify anyone with an internet connection.
Scenario Two: President Vance, but the real president is Peter Thiel.
Thiel didn’t invest millions in Vance because he enjoys memoirs about hillbillies. He invested because Vance is programmable. Because Vance is loyal. Because Vance is easy to steer.
Born in Germany, raised partly in South Africa and Namibia, Thiel shares more than a few of Elon Musk’s favorite “genetic theory” fascinations. With a net worth high enough to buy a small country, or at least privatize one, Thiel’s vision for America is openly authoritarian, techno-feudal, and deeply anti-democratic.
A Vance presidency is, in reality, a Thiel regency.
Scenario Three: Full-scale Republican Civil War.
Remove Trump’s physical presence, remove his tantrums, his threats, his gravitational pull, and the GOP fractures instantly. It’s held together right now with spite, fear, and the duct tape of shared delusions.
Without him, we get:
The Idiot Caucus: MTG, Boebert, Mace, Ogles, Luna, and whoever’s animating Matt Gaetz this week.
The Slightly Sane But Pretending To Be Stupid Caucus: Thune, Cassidy, Lankford, Mitt Romney’s ghost of conscience, and maybe Rand Paul when he’s feeling libertarian.
They will shred each other.
And America will get nothing done until 2028.
Honestly? That might be an improvement.
And the Democrats?
They will almost certainly fumble the moment.
They will trip over their own shoelaces.
They will split into the Purity Left and the Panic Center.
They will shout at one another about messaging while the country burns.
But make no mistake: even that circus is VASTLY preferable to the ongoing descent into authoritarian rule under a current president who now appears to be held together primarily by rage and whatever pharmaceutical cocktail his handlers can slip past his gag reflex.
And yes, perhaps it’s unfair to speculate about Trump’s health simply because he disappears from public view, can no longer speak coherently, eats like a six-year-old with a platinum AmEx, and whose skin tone is changing shades like a time-lapse of autumn.
Perhaps it’s unfair.
But the stakes demand truth.
Clots and Prayers.
-Michael Jochum, Not Just a Drummer: Reflections on Art, Politics, Dogs, and the Human Condition
No comments:
Post a Comment
All comments are moderated before being approved. Trolls and spammers are not welcome and will not be approved. STRAIGHT to the trash with you! Anonymous comments are okay, unless troll shit. Trolls, go to hell.