No, this latest White House flap over the response to the death of Sgt. La David Johnson in Niger is not going to bring down the regime. At this point, I don't know what will -- short of the armed seizure of the White House, Bedminster, and Mar A Lago. Even that might not do it.
It's clear enough that certain powerful interests are deeply invested in the Trump Crash and Burn presidency, and their faction within the government is strong enough (though maybe not large enough) to control events, at least for the short term.
It's been suggested that the only thing that faction really wants is that gargantuan tax cut for the rich, and once they get that they'll cut the Orange Menace loose, regardless of the consequences. If Pence is "worse," so what? What he would do, post Trump, would only effect the Rabble, no? So why should the Important People care about that?
They don't and they won't. Period.
So long as the current White House chaos is kept in bounds -- by a force field? -- what happens and doesn't happen there is more for entertainment and distraction purposes than for any program or policy, most of which seem to be made in the shadows and implemented more or less on the sly, all of which benefit the Most Important and Highest of the Mighty. In many cases, they're nothing but pure expressions of power. "I can do this and get away with it and there is nothing on God's Green Earth you can do about it. Suck. Ers!"
As the wheels of the regime come off and skidmarks run everywhere, it's mostly, still, for show.
The spectacle keeps us transfixed.
A while back, I mentioned that it looked to me like Trump's powers and authorities as president had been severely curtailed, essentially he'd been neutered as "God-Emperor," by the end of February, or at the latest the end of March. (Accounts vary about when in actuality the tie-down took place.)
When he put The Generals in charge of running things, it seemed obvious to me that we were now ruled by a junta, and if Trump was anything in that context, he was a buffoonish, boorish, racist, bullying figurehead.
The whole Sgt. Johnson Thing said to me they're full-on into gaslighting now. The revelation that Gen. Kelly straight out lied about Frederica Wilson's speech at the FBI building dedication, and that the White House was going to stick with the lies no matter the facts is I think a step beyond where they've been in the past. This is madness, but with deliberate intent.
By producing and presenting lies and fabrications regardless of the demonstrable facts of the matter, they achieve a remarkable advantage over their targets -- the media first of all, the rest of us in the end. This was the tactic used by the Bush 2 regime in the run-up to the Iraq War. It did not matter at all what the facts were, what the truth was. They were fabricating their own false reality against which there was ultimately no defense. One could object and point out the truth all one wanted, but it had no discernible effect on events.
By the time the bombs started falling and the invasion began, most Americans were convinced of the false reality fabricated by the gaslighters -- as quite a few still are.
It seems to me the gaslighters now are trying to re-create that triumph. They've been feeling their way along, in some respects following the lead of Trump's gaslight tweets. Even though he's constantly hammered for his falsehoods, he gets away with it because it is... entertaining, and a money-maker for the media (among others.). His falsehoods are something like earworms. It's hard to shake them, especially when the media repeats them over and over and over again.
It can be countered, but I don't think it can be done nicely or politely.
And if the goal is, as I suspect, those ginormous tax cuts for the rich, regardless of anything else, then it doesn't much matter what has to be done to get there.
This too shall pass, but things will never be the same again...
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