Normally I don’t bring politics into my blog. I prefer to keep divisive things like that out of this space because that’s not what this blog is for.

This blog is for getting what is inside me out, not for putting new things in.

But it just occurred to me that one of the major aims of this blog is to aid in my psychological recovery by giving me a safe space where I can express the emotions that I find so very hard to express in real life.

That includes my fears, anxieties, worries, and sadnesses, and right now most of those things have to do with the situation down south. .

I am terrified by the idea that I might have to watch America die. And not just because Canada is the USA’s conjoined twin.

Things look bad. Not as bad as my more high strung and demonstrative American friends think it is, but brother, it ain’t good.

People are worried about Donald Trump picking Justice Kennedy’s replacement. I am not. That’s not as dire a situation as it seems.

Why? Because the Senate is almost evenly divided. 49 Democrat, 51 Republican. The fact that John Mccain ain’t dead yet makes it practically a tie.  That means that it would take only one defector to force a tie and two to reject a candidate outright. And I don’t think it will be that hard to get a few to switch, depending.

Depending, that is, on who Trump chooses. From the liberal POV, the absolute best choice is someone completely inappropriate.

Preferably someone who is not even a lawyer.

Why? Because that would make it ludicrously easy for Senators to defect. If Trump picked someone like Ted Nugent or Bill O’Reilly, the cacophanous mockery alone would make Senators afraid to vote yes.

And ideally. the process would stretch out for as long a time as possible in order to maximize the odds that one of the super old CONSERVATIVE justices dies and then they have to replace THEM.

Also, I think people have a narrowly false idea of exactly what a Supreme Court justice will and will not do. It is true that, as the final arbiters of the Constitution, they can more or less change all the fundamentals of what it means to be American.

On paper. But the reality is not quite that simple.

For one thing, the Justices worry about their legacy. They do not want their name on decisions that blatantly violate the Constitution. or otherwise will go down in history next to a thick black mark.

There’s also the fact that the Justices have to face other lawyers during their entire time on the Court. When a Supreme Court Justice goes to the club to relax after a hard day’s work, they aren’t hanging out with politicians.

They are hanging out with other lawyers, and if they blatantly violate the letter and spirit of the Constitution, especially if it violates the actual body of the document, pre-Amendment, then they will be bitterly unwelcomed by many they consider friends.

There’s also the fact that, historically, the Supreme Court has been very, very, very reluctant to go against its own precedent. Sadly, that protects Citizens United, but it also protects the rulings on gay marriage and of course, Roe V. Wade.

There is also the fact that Justices are not particularly loyal to they who appoint them. Their obedience tends to last as long as it takes for them to realize that there is nothing the President who appointed them can do to them once they have the job and then the other factors become a lot more important to them.

But the real thing that restrains modern fascism is that they can only get away with making changes that do not have an effect on the lives of everyday people.

So you can fuck with foreigners in the name of immigration and national security all you want. It has no impact on the average person’s day to day life. And you can even get away with picking on a minority that the public either dislikes or simply isn’t conscious of yet, at least for a while.

But the fascist nightmare stuff like government checkpoints all over the place, the ending of due process, or mass arrests at peaceful protests, and ESPECIALLY the brutal treatment of law-abiding citizens – will trigger a backlash of such ferocity that it could end in revolution if the people are not appeased.

So there is a limit to what they can get away with in the long run.

Also remember that the Trump administration is not popular, even among Republicans. Dumb Donnie’s approval rating is down to 28 percent, and like I always say, approval rating is a very conservative metric.

People basically intepret the question as “Would you kick the bum out of office THIS SECOND?”. And that colors the reponse.

So that lonely 28 percent of people who approve of Trump are not all people who actually like him or think he is doing a good job as President.

They are just people who have not completely rejected him yet.

So the tide has already turned against him and what remains of his support is very weak. It could crumble any day now.

Heck, even the creeps on Fox News sound like their heart isn’t in it any more. Excusing the inexcusable 24/7 is clearly taking its toll on them and I can almost hear their nerves being stretched beyond the breaking point.

What I worry about most for America is civil war. If the Trump team makes peaceful revolution impossible, they will make violent revolution inevitable.

Luckily, I don’t think it would be a prolonged conflict. Dumb Donnie might thing he commands the most powerful armed forces in the world, but he does not. They don’t like him at all and are actually empowered to refuse un-Constitutional orders.

Law enforcement doesn’t like him either. So they won’t be his secret police any time soon. And he’s pissed off the intelligence community.

So any conflict, should it come to that, would be swift and decisive.

To sum up,  the whole thing has been weighing on me a lot lately.

I am gklad I got some of it off my chest.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

I’mma lie down now.

I don’t feel so good.