I've been waiting since 2008 for the GOP to implode, so I'm out of predictions, but it feels like we're coming to a head. My hope when Trump was elected was that the GOP would die, then the Democrats would split in two to reform a stable but still adversarial system. I don't love democrats by any stretch, but the incoherence of the GOP continues to exceed any reasonable expectation with every new crisis. Let's see them try to block aid to Israel on the basis that Biden will try to use the aid to turn the Israeli army into trans pedophiles or something. What a world.
You know what show I love that I shouldn't? The Crown. Know why? It's really a lengthy investigation into the collapse of the British Empire as told through powerless bystanders, like Star Wars and the droids, Hidden Fortress and the peasants, or Last King of Scotland and James McEvoy's imaginary doctor. Granted, "Elizabeth Regina" is one of the more powerful of the powerless narrators but aside from Maggie probably-not-actually asking the Queen to dissolve parliament so she could stay in power, it's pretty much about crusty old people sucking while their empire fucking collapses around their ears. I fucking love it. Fifteen years of avid history consumption has left me with a refined and educated taste when it comes to the collapse of the British Empire and while there are plenty of flashpoints to talk about, from my armchair I'm going to call out Amritsar. This is at the absolute tippy-tippy top of "the sun never sets on the" British Empire, when they were the undisputed heavyweight champions of the world, kings of all they surveyed, "My intention was to inflict a lesson that would have an impact throughout all India." It's all downhill from there. Lend/lease begging, having to spy on the Roosevelts, rationing for 15 years, Suez, British Leyland, the Falklands... collapse takes a while. Britain has been a vassal state of the US since losing Iran but they still thought they were a power twelve years after that. Shit, they still thought they were a power after the Nazis fucking leveled London. I think the GOP imploded July 21, 2016. I think that their failure to nominate anyone other than the guy none of them wanted was the Republican Amritsar. It was their foot soldiers doing what they'd been trained to do, been brought up to do, been bred to do, not what they'd been asked to do and now? We wait for the degenerates to fucking die. The fact that Josh Hawley and Tommy Tuberville continue to be Josh Hawley and Tommy Tuberville, despite the substantial detriment suffered by the GOP because of it, tells me that none of this shit is going to be over quickly. There will be a Falkland Islands conflict. There will be some form of Operation Black Buck.