Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

And so Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff take the Republic into a dangerous defile on a dark day as they engineer a House resolution with rules for a medieval-style inquiry on the existence of phantoms. The phantom du jour, of course, is the fabled “whistleblower,” a CIA ectoplasm identified by everybody and his uncle in Swampland as one Eric Ciarmarella, 33, a former Joe Biden staffer, Obama White House low-level NSC holdover, and John Brennan “asset” deeply involved in Ukrainian pranks during the 2016 election and subsequent disinformation leakage to the media since the early days of the Trump administration.

The “whistleblower’s” trail winds through every shadowy turn of RussiaGate to the current phantasmagoria of UkraineGate, and connects the principal misdeeds carried out along the way including Hillary Clinton’s devious operations with Fusion GPS, the Comey-led FBI’s illegal entanglement with CIA spying on US citizens (including occupants of the White House), and lately the mendacious maneuvers of House Intel Committee chair Mr. Schiff.

The notion that Mr. Ciamarella’s identity will remain officially hidden much longer is a joke, since his “complaint” lies at the center of the impeachment process underway, and sooner or later he will be compelled to make public testimony — unless Ms.Pelosi’s House majority votes to rename the USA the Haunted Forest of North America. And when this unmasked phantom finally faces legitimate cross examination his mischief will be plain for all to see. Do you also suppose that Mr. Ciamarella’s revealed adventures in perfidy have not been noticed by the attorney general, Mr. Barr, and his deputy John Durham?

It seems obvious that the Democrats mad rush to this wholly irregular impeachment happened in direct, proportional response to the encroaching danger to them posed by the DOJ inspector general’s imminent report and the news a week ago that the AG upgraded his “review” of all things RussiaGate to a criminal inquiry, with grand juries assembled to process indictments. In the meantime, Rep. Schiff’s secret proceedings in the House basement seem to have produced little besides evidence that contradicts the premises of his wicked enterprise. One by one, his witnesses have been busted — Mr. Taylor, Col. Vindman, Mr. Morrison, and all the rest — in Mr. Schiff’s quixotic effort to demonstrate that the transcript of Mr. Trump’s phone call to Mr. Zelensky says something other than what can be read plainly in its pages.

It’s hard to feature how the House might convey their garbage barge of obvious falsehoods to the Senate — the risks are so perilous — but if they dare to, I hope it leads to an actual trial, where due process of law will obtain and, for the first time, a long list of malicious actors in this epic of treachery will actually have to answer for their treasonous activities. Much of what has been documented the past two years about the coup to oust Mr. Trump never made it to the pages of The New York Times, WashPo, and the cable news networks, and may come as a shock to people who read and watch nothing else. For instance, the reportage of Paul Sperry about Mr. Ciamarella at Real Clear Politics this past week, which ripped the mask off this fake pimpernel, has been utterly ignored by those news outlets.

You could read the desperate anxiety on Speaker Pelosi’s fright-mask face in her various fleeting public statements since August. She might suspect that this long-running enterprise of sedition leads to a political shipwreck more violent than anything seen in the USA since the Civil War. Or just perhaps she is foolishly oblivious, misinformed, and badly advised. If we are fortunate, the damage to come can be confined to the death of the Democratic Party. It’s hard to imagine how they will survive the emergence of the truth about exactly what has gone on at their bidding since the primary elections of 2016.

The House of Representatives goes on hiatus now for about ten days. There’s a pretty good chance the DOJ IG Horowitz’s report will drop before they return. There’s also more than a fair chance that it will contain a load of damning information about matters connected one way or another to the impeachment inquiry. I doubt the mainstream media will be able to evade reporting on it. There are also indications that the long ordeal of General Michael Flynn’s prosecution is about to end in a debacle for Mr. Mueller‘ gang of attorneys, who have been concealing their turpitudes from Judge Emmet Sullivan’s court since last December. When that case blows up, the reverberations will thunder through every cranny of Washington DC and everything on the battlefield will look different to the people of this land.