Mike Pence Cannot Block the Certification of Joe Biden's Victory When the Senate Formally Counts

[kurtcagle]

8. Gaming Rules Lawyer

OVer the years, I've run a number of role-playing game sessions, from D&D to GURPS to Call of Cthulu. Every so often, we'd get someone in our group - usually male, teenaged or early twenties, and white - who would try to rule lawyer their way out of every negative action, throwing up every excuse they could find in the rules (which as GM, I generally treated more as guidelines anyway) for why their character's stupid action didn't get them fireballed, petrified, or losing their +5 Holy Sword of Greatness. Typically, once they saw how the landscape lay, they bailed to find some other group to try to take advantage of.

Trump reminds me a lot of these guys. He put the absolute minimal amount of work into any decision or initiative (which usually ended up being a boondoggle), and when he inevitably faced a day of reckoning and lost, he'd throw up every obstacle in the book, while simultaneously shouting abuse at the people who held him to task. What's worse, as each loophole he tried to exploit became more and more silly, even his allies would abandon him because he got in the way of actually playing the game.

Had Trump put some effort into stopping Covid-19, he would have had a second term. Had he bowed out gracefully when it became evident that Biden had beaten him, he might have been able to play a position as Kingmaker in the GOP moving forward, possibly even running for re-election in 2024. Now, I think even his closest associates have to recognize that Trump deserved to lose, which means that this will likely be the first, last, and only elected office that he will ever have. Good riddance to him.