Karl Rove says the Clinton impeachment was dignified.  I doubt that any impeachment anywhere was ever dignified.  They all sink to the lowest possible level of mudslinging.  All are screeched, lied about, exaggerated upon, pulled this way and jerked that, stretched far beyond anything so dignified as dignified.

Impeachment is the failure of politics.  It's politics at its worst, undeclared secret war breaking into the open.  Traditions go by the boards; old understandings rend and fracture; people once friendly turn uncivil, then nasty, then vicious.  Old scores fan new flames.  Old wounds rip open and take on hot, vengeful new life.  Ultimately, all trust dissipates in an environment of ultra-suspicion and doubt, making it ever harder to push ahead with the people's business.  The longer it drags out, the deeper the damage, the more unforgotten the double-crosses and unforgiven the back stabbings.  Bitterness clogs every throat.

Serious stuff.  Friendships of long standing wither and die over impeachments.

All this is why impeachment was intended only as a last resort.  It was never supposed to be about policy, or personality, or class warfare, or personal distaste.  Yet that's what this one is about.  Democrats don't like Donald Trump, so they're sabotaging the Constitution with an impeachment IED.

Many of us suspect that America is fast approaching her end one way or another.  Where the rubber meets the road, that will simply mean that all pretense of justice and rule of law go away, and all the behind-the-scenes shenanigans we've always suspected will become pretty much wide open and accepted.

There will be exceptions here and there depending on local personalities, but the productive, cheerful America many of us think we remember will gradually devolve into the Chicago Way of Barack Obama.  Machine politics will rule from coast to coast.  You can argue it's been that way for decades; it has, but it's gotten infinitely worse.

As the pinnacle of politics in America becomes vulnerable to impeachment for any petty thing, as today's Democrats seem to want, life generally will become more precarious and iffy, more random, with more tragedy and disaster and less predictability.  In effect, we will return to Depression-era days.  Machine politics will revert to machine gun politics.

Some seem to want this to happen.  To them, America is so irredeemably ugly that she deserves to fall flat on her face, people hungry and crowds rioting for food.  Since the last Depression, we've mostly lost the ability to feed ourselves at home, but to make up for it, we've learned to riot for whatever we think we need.

That, it seems to me, is where we're headed.  Roving mobs breaking into homes and businesses for food, for drink, for sleep, to get clean and to stay warm.  A Middle Ages, Game of Thrones existence, a dystopian world vaguely reminiscent of The Hunger Games.  Families hunkering together for defense of hearth and home.

But no cops on the streets.  No law and order except what we impose within our own walls.

This vision may seem quaint, even vaguely romantic.  It won't be.  We'll come to live with death in our daily lives, as did our medieval forebears.  People in the inner city may say, "So what's new?"  What's new is, it will be the new normal everywhere.  No way out, no escape, no hope of improving your lot.

Nasty, brutish, and short.

Forget hospitals.  Medical care will consist of first aid using dwindling supplies of Band-Aids, outdated aspirin, and old home remedies.  You get the picture.  Maybe a car here and there, always on the lookout for gasoline.  Roads and streets in total disrepair.  When the sun goes down, it's like North Korea everywhere.  Dark.  And most of what you eat will be canned goods left over from the golden era.

The Golden Era — you know, back before nonsensical impeachments tore the country apart.

Image: Donkey Hotey via Flickr.