(Photo Credit)
There are many questions with regards to the endgame of That Fucking Guy’s Presidency. Will he be convicted? (Yes) Will he be jailed? (Doubtful, except for house arrest, but you never know) Will we ever find out the totality of the crimes he has committed? (Probably not, unless you want to take a very long view of “ever find out”.)
The one that troubles most people is, “Is That Fucking Guy ever going to lose his cult?”
I’m here to reassure you, he will, and when it happens, it will happen so fast it will make your head spin.
Cults that rely on the charisma of the leader, the godhead, fall apart when that godhead becomes mortal. We’ve already seen a chipping away of that cult in the aftermath of January 6. That Fucking Guy promised to lead them on the march to the Capitol and abandoned them. That Fucking Guy promised to stand up for the rioters as they were processed through the justice system, and failed.
Things like this were noticed and that’s why so many of the rioters turned state’s evidence. Not enough, in my view, but That Fucking Guy has this knack of framing what is “all about him” not about him and what’s not about him, all about him. That makes it easy to continue to defend him, when you can blame everyone else.
I’ve given a lot of thought to how the cult falls apart, and a few possible solutions kept cropping up, one of which might be assumed by looking at the photo at the beginning of this piece (I’ll get to that one shortly).
The first and most obvious solution — his arrest, trial, and conviction, along with prison — is the solution least likely to disband the cult, but it will definitely make them a minor blip on the radar of politics going forward.
That Fucking Guy will be banished from posting to any social media and while he’ll still have his staff, they’ll lose patience as soon as the first paychecks bounce as That Fucking Guy forks money over either in civil settlements or in lawyers’ fees.
If he’s not thrown in jail, simply under house arrest, he’ll still be greatly hampered in his ability to communicate with his adoring fans, and forget being able to hold rallies in person, something his ego desperately needs. He’ll eventually go stir crazy as his polling numbers drop sharply and he cant get out there to woo fans.
But could the break happen before any legal proceeding settles out?
Yes, and this is where Lance Armstrong gives us an object lesson.
I was in the Cult of Lance. As a cyclist taking up serious cycling again in my waning work career (48 years old, or so), I rooted for Lance because I wanted to believe that I, too, could be a competitive cyclist. After all, Lance beat an advanced cancer, a nasty one, and came back to “win” (ultimately) seven Tours de France.
As the rumours of doping began to swirl around cycling, Lance proferred a simple, factual — at the time — defense: he had never tested positive for any kind of steroids. Period.
He was, arguably, the single most tested athlete in the history of sport, and passed with flying colors.
When you want to believe, as I did, it never occurs to you to put on your thinking cap. You have an emotional commitment to the man. But even when friends and family would argue the point with me, in my counterarguments were the seeds of doubt: “He’s never tested positive and anyway, who cares if he took them? Everyone else did! He was only trying to be competitive. “
Nevermind that he only competed in the Olympics once after his cancer remission, that the Olympics had a far tougher doping testing regimen but you’d think an athlete at the top of his sport dominating the premier event year after year would make time to race as an Olympian.
Nevermind the possibility that the UCI, the international cycling federation, might help Lance cover up any positive tests (they apparently did) and thus facilitate Lance’s lie because the American cycling market was huge and would be a gold mine to the world tour.
Nevermind that even by open admission back then, Lance ran his cycling squads like a mob boss.
No. He had to be innocent.
And then suddenly, he wasn’t. The Department of Justice began a criminal investigation of both lance and the US Postal Service (the primary sponsor of Lance’s return to the Tour) and in the course of that investigation, subpoenaed two other riders from the USPS team, who both admitted to doping and testified that Lance not only had doped but had encourgaed them to dope and to cover the whole thing up.
That investigation was dropped but almost the next day, the USADA, the antidoping agency of US sports, formally banned Lance from competition based on the testimony of his teammates (and a few others who had long standing complaints about Lance).
There are parallels, then, between That Fucking Guy’s situation and Armstrong’s, not least of which is the cracking of the wall of silence.
But even THAT was not enough to persuade Armstrong’s partisans, myself included, taht we were misled and acting foolishly in believing him.
Then of course, came the Oprah interview and his on-camera admission. Lance found himself in a situation where his best legal strategy was to come clean.
To say I was heartbroken by Lance is putting it mildly. I don’t think I rode my bike again that season out of disillusionment.
THAT cracked our cult. I mean, you still see people occasionally post on some Yahoo news board or YouTube video how “Everyone was doing it and how could they ban Lance?” but there’s no ferocity, no real teeth to the posters anymore.
This will happen with That Fucking Guy, as well. He has to be getting tired of sleepless nights and panicking every time the telephone rings. He finally runs into testimony from sources he can’t minimize — maybe Ivanka — and finally has to fess up.
It’ll be a real “King Lear” moment.
To me, this is the most likely scenario for how this whole mess gets put away. That Fucking Guy finally realizes the jig is up and fesses, leaving tens of million angry, disillusioned fans wallowing in self-pity over the food they could have bought with the donations they made1
There are two other scenarios that need to be mentioned in passing.
First, of course, is the death of That Fucking Guy. Barring a situation where his followers can claim martyrdom — an assassination, for instance, and believe me I would start looking at Vladimir closely if that happens2 — the loss of the figurehead tends to mute the movement greatly, even if there's someone waiting in the wings to pick up the pieces.
He or she is not That Fucking Guy, and that’s all people will care about, for the most part.
The second is a bit more tricky: it would require a very public breakdown on the part of That Fucking Guy, right down to hysterical tears.
Because tough guys don’t cry, at least not in America.
I gave thousands to Livestrong while Lance was “innocent” so I know whereof I speak, but at least that money went to a cause, not a campaign.
Not that I think Vlad wants That Fucking Guy dead because of his secrets he carries but more to stir the pot and cause more trouble in American politics.