No, I am not talking about the party-loyal double-blinkered gang on which the Donald and Messrs O’Connell and Ryan rely for their rock-solid voting block. I have given up on them. They have apparently made their decision to go down with the ship — trumpets playing, flags flying, partisanship-above-all reputations secure for the historians. I am talking about the young idealistic ambitious up-and-comers who know that the days of this triumvirate — no matter how entrenched —are inevitably numbered. Their individual dates with Father Time will not be denied by ever-so-much gerrymandering and diddling with ballot boxes and hard-to-get voter IDs. The purchasing power of the Boss Tweeds and the Koch Brothers and their ilk has always historically been eventually nullified by some reform movement or other — whether led by a resurgent good-government opposition or a new megalomaniac crusader with a different agenda.

The power acquired by long-serving congressional leaders through seniority (regardless of brains or ability) grows steadily throughout their tenures and then one fine morning, poof! The flag-draped coffin lies in the Capitol rotunda, the well-worn encomiums are cranked out one more time, the music stops, and the mad scramble for the vacated chair begins. It is in that mad scramble that political career opportunity lies. The future is as unlikely to be just a continuation of the past as tomorrow’s weather is likely to be a repetition of today’s. There will be new alliances, new dependencies, new obligations, and new chairmanships and therein is the allure of a political career. Look at Ronald Reagan or Jimmy Carter. Talk about left field.

You never know. Never underestimate the impact of a seemingly trivial slip-up that may suddenly open the door. Gary Hart, John Edwards. Even the giants, like Al Gore or Bill Clinton, stand always at the edge of the cliff.

So where are all the astute young men and women from the Republican ranks who can smell the blood in the water — the smart, overachieving, helicoptered children who paid attention when the civics teacher was talking, studied their Constitutional history, went to the right schools (Yale above all, or, lacking the silver spoon, The City College of New York, or Howard University in approximately that order of current admissions desirability) and who are shooting for a life of eminence, influence, and DC perks as their careers? Surely their familiarity with the odds and their competitors should have enabled them to gauge their chances with a fair degree of accuracy, and surely, if that is so, by now their insights as to their own opportunities, although they may vary, must be aware that a large-scale page-turning is in the offing.

By now, considering the totally beyond-the-pale state of our normal political standards, there should be pockets of sharp, capable people with their eyes on the prizes, jockeying for position, readying themselves for inclusion on the next roster of DC VIPs. If they are there, why don’t I see them?

Why does no daring young Republican leader seem to want to take a chance and be the first rat down the rope? So far the absconders seem to consist exclusively of the crooks, grifters, grafters and criminals who feel the Hot Breath of Mueller; not claimants to a fresh set of voter offerings or different ways of looking at the same old rich/poor, urban/rural, educated/blue-collar, unbounded greed/social conscience, save-the-planet/screw-the-grandchildren divisions.

Jeff Flake and Jon McCain do not constitute much of a horde, and McCain is already dead. Where are these aspiring and clever future aspirants to leadership with the courage to test their classroom lessons instead of listening only to the old mantras of

• “Get the Black Bastard out”,

• “Kill FDR’s social revolution”,

• “Kill everything Obama ever touched”,

• “Check with the NRA and Koch and your campaign bank account before you speak”

that have got them into this pickle. (For there seems to be no question that between the Witch Hunt and the suddenly re-awakened Responsible Press, there seems to be the slimmest of chances that the electorate will repeat its mistake in 2020.)

Does this invisibility mean that there are no sharp minds among young Republicans, capable of figuring this out for themselves and starting to rumble about new directions? Does it mean that they and McConnell and Ryan and the Donald are content to see their country go down the drain just for the satisfaction of “winning”? I have no problem imagining such an ending for Trump, whose huge ego could very well only achieve full satisfaction in a Götterdämmerung ending, with trumpets blaring and artificial smoke curling above the stage as he waves his tin sword and curses at his “unfair” fate, but both McConnell and Ryan are experienced politicians, to whom the possibility of electoral catastrophe is part of the thrill of simultaneously serving and screwing the people. And surely today’s crop of ambitious millennials is better educated and more realistic than either they or the Donald?

Or is it me? (I?) Am I so dense that I can’t fathom that Trump has already so fundamentally changed the rules of our government (backed by his hand-picked Supreme Court appointees) to some new form that I am unable to recognize, that things will never be the same again, and that it is my myopia, and not the misjudgment of the new class of Republicans, that is being revealed?

If I am failing to recognize that the new wave (not Blue or Red, nor capable nor incompetent) is somehow here below my radar, then comfort me with the news before Father Time catches up with me too. It will make my journey easier. If I am just being obstinate and curmudgeonly and the New Age is already here and Mitch and Paul and Donald and David Duke are the real shape of the future, draw some sort of curtain over the scene so I don’t have to watch. I can perhaps make do with what time I have left in learning to crochet or stick pretty glass shards on misshapen pottery articles and stop reading agitprop articles in the radical magazines like The New York Review or the New Yorker, or yellow-sheet rags like the New York Times. This hanging on the edge of the ledge by my fingernails every morning as the news comes in is wearing me out. I need a rest before I go.