This morning, having surveyed the devastated landscape of Tuesday night's election return, the president*'s eldest son, Sluggo, decided to tweet out what he believes in the name of the whistleblower whose complaint got the current impeachment festivities rolling. Sluggo is the second or third Internet ghoul to do this. (One of them even tweeted out what he said was the whistleblower's house. Jesus, these really are the fcking mole people.) Meanwhile, in the purportedly adult precincts of the U.S. Senate, Rand Paul has come right up to the edge of identifying the whistleblower and now says he'll probably do it sometime in the near future. And, in the House, where the wild things play, there's talk about subpoenaing the person whom the Republicans believe the whistleblower to be. This is stupid and reckless, and we are not going to play that here in this shebeen.

Sluggo also just happens to have a new book out. ANGELA WEISS Getty Images

This, coupled with the story over the weekend of the Republican intention possibly to move Jim Jordan and some of the House Judiciary hooligans onto the Intelligence Committee, demonstrates what the Republican strategy will be when the open hearings begin in a couple of weeks. It is going to be to wreck the process with as much clowning as heaven—or Adam Schiff—will allow. There's even a report that Republicans might attempt to subpoena Joe and Hunter Biden in order to explore the debunked conspiracy theory that got the White House in all this trouble in the first place. If you can't control the process, wreck the process—on television, if possible.

It will go far beyond mere political opposition. It will be outright nihilistic vandalism perpetrated in defense of a presidency* that doesn't even deserve that much. The wreckage will be vast and encompassing, the collateral damage immeasurable. And, at the end of it all, the president* will still be guilty as hell. The trick will be finding a way for that not to matter.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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