Call me crazy (and you wouldn’t be the first!), but I believe Monday’s solar eclipse was more than just an infrequent cosmic occurrence. Viewed through crystal clear un-shaded lenses, our Republic is in serious trouble and that rare, astronomical phenomenon coincided with what seems to be a critical tipping point.
 

The ejection of Steve Bannon as the president’s chief strategist last Friday may have precipitated a bump in the stock market, but it really doesn’t bode well for Trump’s long-term prospects (Maybe that’s what Wall Street is banking on?). And it just feels like a pivotal moment. Because, more than anyone else, it was the former (and now present!) editor of Breitbart News who fueled the “Trump Train.” Take Bannon and his website out of the equation last year, and Hillary’s back at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. right now.
 
After the administration’s unprecedented staff shuffling in the last six months, Jonah Goldberg thinks Bannon’s dismissal may actually be “The Last Straw,” expressing his sense of unease in a rather colorful manner ~

Normally, when I’m out of town, and I can only follow the news or check in on Twitter intermittently, I feel like the security guard at a sewage-treatment plant doing his morning rounds amidst the vats and pools: Same sh*t, different day.
 
But this week feels different. The fecal content is higher. The curlicues of shimmering methane distorting the air above Washington seem thicker.
 
Taking this metaphor beyond all good sense and taste, when I look at the gauges and dials in the control room, all the needles are in the red, and the sewage-outflow pipes are all pointed at the industrial turbines.

Almost three months ago, David Stockman of the Contra Corner was predicting the imminent collapse of the Trump presidency ~ The Undrainable Swamp: Why The Donald Is Going Down. Answer, in a nutshell: the media opposes him, the D.C. establishment opposes him, and half the time he’s his own worst enemy.

Indeed, the mainstream media is no longer even in the news business; it’s conducting a grand witch hunt and venomous prosecution that will not be sated until the Donald vacates the Oval Office—one way or another, probably via a threatened invocation of the 25th Amendment by the GOP elders on Capitol Hill […]
 

(T)he Donald is exceedingly vulnerable because he is an insurgent outsider who will eventually end up alone in the Swamp in helpless isolation. At length, the hammer of fiscal crisis and a crashing stock market will break the tepid loyalty of the GOP elders as they smell the 2018 elections turning into a replay of the rout of 1974 […]
 
(T)he Donald is so undisciplined, naïve, out-of-touch, thin-skinned, unfocussed and megalomaniacal that he is making it far easier for the Swamp critters than they deserve. To a very considerable extent, in fact, he is filling out his own bill of indictment.

As anyone who was reading my blog last year knows, Donald Trump was pretty much my last choice in a too-wide field of GOP candidates. He was brash, uncouth, arrogant – and I hated how he treated Ted Cruz. Although he manages to downplay his worst tendencies most of the time, Trump is still that guy. As Goldberg opines ~

I have always believed that the Trump presidency would end badly because I believe character is destiny. There is no reasonable or morally sound definition of good character that Donald Trump can meet. That’s why we learned nothing new about Donald Trump this week. He can’t change. Some good, decent, and smart people couldn’t or wouldn’t see this. But every day, more people see this. The straw that breaks the camel’s back is a collective phenomenon, but like all collective phenomena it’s made up of a multitude of individual realizations.

 
Despite my serious reservations, and considering the unsavory alternative, I did vote for him. I sincerely hoped the office itself would have a sobering, maturing effect on the man – and to some extent I suppose it has. But the rotten GOP establishment – who have more in common with their fellow compatriots in the ruling class: the Democrats – want nothing to do with Trump’s agenda. And they never did. They’ve been undermining his presidency since it began.
 
 
Of course the mainstream media simply loathes the man and they’re given up any pretense of objective journalism. In their eyes nothing Trump does will be acceptable. And now they’re throwing kerosene on the country’s smoldering political discord with their non-stop “Trump must be a racist” drumbeat (Odd they somehow never discovered that during “The Apprentice” years isn’t it?).

 
On the other hand, the president’s loyal “Trump Train” will never dessert him. Whenever he feels besieged and needs an infusion of confidence he throws himself another pep rally like the one in Phoenix last night.
 

Last night in Phoenix I read the things from my statements on Charlottesville that the Fake News Media didn't cover fairly. People got it!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 23, 2017

That’s pretty much true, the media refuses to cover anything he says or does objectively. But he can’t hold rallies every night of the week…

 
Unfortunately I think Goldberg and Stockman are on to something. I believe Bannon’s ouster occurring barely 48 hours before the eclipse was sign of a cosmic shift in America’s course. It’s too much of a coincidence to be other than a sign from God. An ominous sign.