We're screwed. Here's why.

If this were one of the popular blogs, I'd feel obligated to wear a fake smile as I assure liberals that Trump will face impeachment any day now.

(Remember when liberal bloggers assured everyone that Hillary had the election in the bag? Remember when anyone who made the contrary prediction was damned as a Republican infiltrator?)

Any blogger who wants to be loved must join the growing brotherhood (Alle Menschen werden Brüder) of anti-Trumpists who keep telling each other that impeachment is mere days, mere hours, mere minutes away. I wouldn't be surprised to hear dear Louise say that impeachment has already taken place in secret, the Supreme Court having decided to replace Trump and Pence with their Earth 2 counterparts.

One of the virtues of unlovability is that I can play the role I was born to play -- that of the grumpy old pessimist who tells you things you don't want to hear. Some see the glass as half-empty and some see it as half-full; the grumpy old pessimist sees but a few drops of water quivering on the brink of evaporation, the last drops of water on a parched and dying planet, and he tells you that soon, all too soon, we shall all be crawling across the desert floor, croaking in agony at the pitiless heavens as we face the void of infinite despair.

And that's my act. Thanks for coming, ladies and gentlemen. I'll be playing another show at 11:00.

Here's why impeachment is unlikely, even if Trump's popularity sinks below the 30 percent mark (which many pundits now proclaim to be Doom Point, even though Yeltsin bounced back after his approval rating hit 9 percent).

1. Trump will soon install his toady as FBI Chieftain. His pick will, of course, be compromised, even if his background seems superficially appealing. I don't need to know more about Christopher Wray; it is enough to know Trump.

Never forget: Only the FBI has the resources to do actual knocking-on-doors investigation. That's what the I in FBI stands for.

2. The DNI, the Director of the CIA and the head of the CIA are all Trump's puppets. Any prominent enemy of Trump must be whistle-clean, because the boys and girls who work for Mike Rogers have been listening in to every telephone call and computer message. Moreover, the malchiks and devotchkas working for Spetssvyaz, the Russian version of the NSA, have also been listening in to every telephone call and computer message. (Fun fact: We don't know the name of the head of that agency. Here's a picture of their headquarters.)

Never forget: Modern tech makes it possible to create kompromat where none exists. (See previous post.)

3. Tory power has been diminished in the UK, but Cambridge Analytica (staffed largely by Tories) remains in full force. Right now, the manipulators are busily turning Jim Comey into Hillary II. They'll keep throwing shit against the wall until the shit sticks. Comey, Hillary, Podesta and Obama are all more likely to see the inside of a jail cell than is Donald Trump.

Never forget: Hillary was the most popular woman in America before the smear campaign kicked in.

4. Trump can -- and probably will -- replace Robert Mueller.

One of President Donald Trump’s attorneys on Sunday wouldn't rule out the possibility the president would fire the special counsel appointed to look into his campaign’s potential ties to Russia.

Robert Mueller was appointed by the Justice Department last month to investigate Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election. And on Sunday, ABC's George Stephanopoulos asked Trump attorney Jay Sekulow whether the president would pledge not to interfere or order the attorney general to fire Mueller.

“Look, the president of the United States, as we all know, is a unitary executive,” Sekulow said on ABC’s “This Week.” “But the president is going to seek the advice of his counsel and inside the government as well as outside. And I'm not going to speculate on what he will, or will not, do.”

Translation: Trump will fire Mueller. Cambridge Analytica will no doubt initiate its anti-Mueller smear campaign any day now. Perhaps they'll plant kiddie porn on his computer or his Twitter feed. You should also expect the BernieBots to spew Mueller-hate from stage left. (Has the spew started already? I haven't checked out H.A. Goodman's YouTube channel lately.) (Here's an early attempt.)

5. You know that scenario we keep hearing about -- the one in which FBI agents squeeze the underlings to make them rat out Mr. Big? The one in which the good guys take down Trump the same way they take down the Mafia?

That tactic won't work in this case.

Why not? Because Don Corleone doesn't have the power of the pardon and Trump does. Article II, section 2 of the Constitution says that the president "shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment."

Let's say (hypothetically) that Roger Stone has been caught doing something illegal. (Of course, he never would do anything illegal. Perish forbid! We are simply pursuing a hypothetical scenario.) Let us further say (hypothetically) that the feds tell Stone: "We'll reduce the charges if you testify against Trump."

Why on earth would Stone take that deal? He knows that Trump can hand out pardons the way you hand out candy on Halloween. As Trump cements his position as America's Czar, he will be in a position to promise his loyalists substantial cash rewards. The money will go directly into foreign bank accounts, free of taxation. That's how Putin does it.

But but but (I hear you saying) the Constitution says "except in cases of impeachment." Nobody is going to impeach Roger Stone or Paul Manafort or Michael Flynn. And without squealing underlings, nobody is going to impeach Donald Trump.

The problem is in our Constitution, a document written in the days before organized crime. The Founders simply did not anticipate a Trumpian level of corruption and shamelessness.

When that key fact finally sinks in, when the sheer hopelessness of our situation becomes apparent to all, left-wing dunderheads of the BernieBot ilk will no doubt offer the same remedy that they've been offering since 1980 and perhaps earlier: "We need a new Constitutional convention!"

Oh, right.

C'mon, think about it: Just who do you think will go marching into that convention hall to rewrite all this country's most basic rules? Do you think it'll be Bernie Sanders leading an army of college-aged hipsters and vegetarians and Rastafarians and wiccan feminists and Groovy Flower People? Seriously, is that how you think it's gonna go down?

Ain't gonna happen, silly-billies. The people marching into that secret chamber will be Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell and Steve Bannon and various Cato-ites bought and paid-for by Robert Mercer, Sheldon Adelson and the Kochs. (And Alex Jones and H.A. Goodman will stand outside the hall and say "It is Good.") These are the people who will rewrite the Constitution for the sole purpose of bringing it in line with the Gospel According to Ayn Rand.

Is that what you want, my progressive-purist friends? Because that is what will happen if we have a new Constitutional convention. Guaranteed.

At this point, a BernieBot is likely to retort: "Okay, then. Time for...revolution!"

My friend: If that's the way you think, allow me to offer a gentle invitation to go fuck yourself with a cactus dildo drenched in Dave's Insanity Sauce. The only people in this country likely to stage an armed revolt are the same people who voted for Trump because Hillary is a witch who eats children in the basement below Comet Pizza.

The people who think that way possess guns. They like guns. They really, really want to fire those guns. With every cell in their bodies, they long for the Day of the Gun. And as they spray machine-gun fire all across the American landscape, they'll be singing a country tune with these lyrics:

Jesus wants you to kill!
Kill the lib-er-ill!
He's not like you or I
And that's why he's gotta die
Kill kill kill kill KILL!

Ever see the last shot of Cabaret? (I caught it on teevee about an hour ago.) That shot perfectly illustrates the only "revolution" likely to take place in America the Beautiful.

Stop kidding yourselves. We're screwed.

Added note: Louise. After writing the above, I decided to check out what Louise Mensch has been saying lately. (For the past week or so, I've been trying to ignore her. It's, like, so over.) Although her undeniable propensity to spew bullshit has caused my crush to fade, her most recent tweet is not without points of interest:

Oh fuck
oh fuck
this is like the end of the Sixth Sense

Oh my God I get it

You may be surprised to learn how rarely I complain when an attractive blonde with a British accent says "Oh fuck oh fuck Oh my God." If I were writing dialogue for Billie Piper, that's pretty much how the whole script would go.

Mensch was reacting to the work of one Dark Wisdom, a twitter-based researcher and musician previously unknown to me. He has been doing some excellent work looking into some of the more shadowy activities of Sberbank.

If you're interested, go here and keep clicking the links. One focus of DW's research is a Russian initiative called the Active Citizen Project, which is allegedly designed to allow the average Russian citizen to think that he is having a more direct voice in the day-to-day decisions of government. It's a way of making the people think they are living in a true, Athens-style democracy, even though the online voting systems are completely in Putin's control. The implication seems to be that something similar may be in store for the US. Not democracy, but an incredible simulation!

The Chairman of the Board of Sperbank is Herman Gref, whose ties with Trump are undeniable. Google "Herman Gref Trump." In particular, see here and here.