One of the popular online parlor games of late has been wondering whether Donald Trump will give up power if he loses.

You know how it works: Someone says he’ll just squat in the White House. Then Defenders of the System rush in to say that can’t possibly happen, the Secret Service will escort him from the grounds, and besides, his term ends January 20 one way or another, and if there’s any question about succession, Nancy Pelosi steps in.

Fear not! It’s in the rules!

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World War II — the American part of it — lasted less than four years.

It must have seemed like forever.

Time does that. We can measure time — by day, by year, by atomic second — but the experience of time is not the duration of time. If we’re having a good time, time flies, we don’t know where the time went. If we’re miserable, well…

It’s been a long time since November 2016. Less than four years.

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So, what’s the point?

We know how the Senate trial’s gonna end — we’ve always known how it would end — and while there may be a few twists along the way, the conclusion is not in doubt.

So why bother? What’s the point?

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Impeachment was always going to go down in flames. We knew that going in. It would pass the House, die in the Senate. Some argued that the certain futility made the exercise pointless, perhaps even prone to backfire.

Our attitude has been: Go down fighting.

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We’re arguing again.

We’re arguing about what to do. We’re arguing about how to do it. If we don’t do it this way, or that, we’re doing it wrong. We’re fucked. If we don’t do it this way (or that), it’s just gonna happen again. Like it always does.

We’re arguing again. We’re arguing with ourselves.

America is arguing.

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It began in 1972, near as we can tell. You could say that it really began in 1968, or 1964, or 1954, or even 1865 — nothing happens in isolation — but if we’re gonna get at what it is, we’re gonna pin it on 1972.

1972 is the year Democrats lost their nerve. 1972 is the year George McGovern lost to Richard Nixon. Big time. Like, 49-state big time. Jokes about the Socialist Republic of Massachusetts were popular during our teen years.

Democrats never recovered from that one. It’s perverted everything they stand for. Still does.

Democrats are afraid of losing.

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“Sure, understanding today’s complex world of the future is a little like having bees live in your head,” says the Honorable Chester Cadaver. “But, there they are.”

Oh dear, now look what you’ve made us do, we’re opening with Firesign Theatre.

And yet that’s been our state of mind the past three weeks, the three weeks of the shutdown. We’ve been waiting to get our bearings, see where this is going, see what difference it makes when one wing of the Capitol isn’t run by traitors.

We still don’t have a fix. It’s all bees.

Which, truth be told, is an improvement over the past couple years.

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