Evidentialism isn’t much on karma, but it fully embraces the concerto of circumstance. And today’s  was a doozy.

On the same day at the witness-less impeachment of Donald Trump whimpered to its inevitable euthanasia, the Iowa Caucuses kicked off a year of primaries, presidential puffery and, eventually, an actual vote to do something Nov. 3. Oh, and Rush Limbaugh has lung cancer (apparently that 30 years of hot air Rush spewed was carcinogenic).

Now that’s a confluence of events: One party will acquit its leader while another will appoint a new prosecutor. All while the war’s most inaccurate reporter rots from the inside. Say this for the upcoming presidential election: It will be the most honest in modern political history.

Doubt it? Love him or loathe him, does anyone truly feel like they don’t know who Donald Trump is? Are his supporters hard to distinguish? Are there really any on-the-fencers left in America? If so, what the fuck have you been doing for four years? Read something.

The Left, meanwhile, is harder to read; is Bernie a socialist? Will Warren really stick it to the .01%? Could the billionaire sniping between Michael Bloomberg and Trump get any better? (Trump accused Bloomberg of demanding boxes for debates. “The president is lying,” Bloomberg responded in a release. “He is a pathological liar who lies about everything: his fake hair, his obesity, and his spray-on tan.”)

Despite the differences on the Left, they do all share a through-line: All promise to have the spine to bitch-slap Trump. Democratic voters also have a singular though-line: Someone who will bitch-slap Trump.

Which is why Democrats should actually celebrate the vote the Senate took last week to bar any witnesses in the impeachment trial.

Consider, for a moment, the firmament the GOP would have claimed if it had allowed witnesses. Senators could have argued (however speciously) that the trial was a fair proceeding, complete with evidence and witnesses. Neither, however, amounted to enough to warrant removing the president, they would argue. Soak it in enough politispeak, and it may even sound legitimate.

Now, however, Republican Senators have to sell America on the impartiality of a witness-less trial. A much harder stretch, even when playing to dimwits. Like the jurors in the O.J. verdict and the lawmakers who voted to invade Iraq, there are names listed specifically behind these actions. We can decide if there will be a day of reckoning.

A day after the Senate vote to ban witnesses, a wily hacker, presumably Democrat, massaged the Wikipedia entry on The United States Senate to read this:

The United States Senate was formerly the upper chamber of the United States Congress, which, along with the United States House of Representatives ― the lower chamber ― comprised the legislature of the United States. It died on January 31, 2020, when senators from the Republican Party refused to stand up to a corrupt autocrat calling himself the president of the United States, refusing to hear testimony that said individual blackmailed Ukraine in order to cheat in the 2020 presidential election.

After the hack, Wikipedia quickly took down the entry and restored the original, perhaps one of the first times Wiki has publicly made an entry inaccurate.

But the point was made. For three years, we have lied to ourselves about what would move the political needle: The Muller report? Nope. Ukraine? Next. Political assassinations? You’ll have to do better than that. The only thing that’s going to remove Trump is an overwhelming electoral loss. And even that may be disputed (the guys contested an election he won, for god’s sake).

The results in Iowa will do more than pick a first-round winner. When it and 49 others states have run their preliminary 5ks, they will give us a clearer picture of who we are as Americans. Are half of us flat-Earthers? Anti-vaxers? Half of us believe you’re in a cult. The other half think you’re too hard on the Kool-Aid. We’ll see in less than a year.

If we choose it, impeachment starts now. But make no mistake: We will sleep in beds we made.