So here’s what you can expect to happen next, reading between the lines and skipping the drama, rage, and hyperbole.

Next week, the House of Representatives will vote to impeach President Trump. Then, nothing will happen for months.

The impeachment process can’t go to the Senate until the House sends it a formal and written impeachment notice.

Nancy Pelosi and her senior staff plan to wait at least 100 days before sending an impeachment notice to the Senate.

This is to allow President-elect Biden to deal with the coronavirus, cabinet appointments, and his administration’s beginning. That brings us to Spring when Donald Trump might be a distant memory if our new President does his job.

Do we really want to remember him for that long?

That delay seems a wise political move to me, although perhaps not wiser than just letting him go. In a sense, that is what they will be doing. It’s hard to imagine the Senate retaining an appetite for impeachment months from now.

The Democrats are pushing impeachment, apart from the obvious. If Trump is impeached, he will lose travel and security and stipend and pension benefits and will not be permitted to run for office again.

If he is not convicted by the Senate, he will retain all of those benefits.

A strong majority of Democratic representatives feel strongly that Trump should be held accountable for supporting the capitol’s attack, whether he is found guilty or not.

Others want to move on, and let the new administration take over in peace.

Many are just sincerely outraged by what happened last Wednesday and what could happen. I’m sure for some; it’s, just good politics.

The Republicans in Congress are mostly silent about what Trump did or didn’t do on Black Wednesday. Many are said to be upset, but not so upset they will say so yet, if at all.

Republicans seem to have found a new villain to attack – the tech companies that shut Trump and other far-right platforms down after Wednesday.

They are saying this is worse censorship than exists in China.

Trumpism is a grievance movement, as is the modern Republican party. There must always be new grievances to fuel the outrage and sense of victimization that characterizes the President and many of his followers.

Does anyone even know what their policies are?

The right-wing media and most Republicans didn’t waste too much time condemning the assault on the capitol; they seem to be returning to form, hunting new enemies to warn us about.

Socialism got a week off.

It is important to remember that Trumpism is not monolithic; it is composed of several different elements. Republican observers believe Trump to have lost a good chunk of followers by his behavior last week but by no means all of them.

No one really knows how many people have turned away from him.

The first polling and focus sessions (most private) have found the Trump movement is split into thirds.

One third strongly objects to what Trump did, accepts the legitimacy of the election, and wants to move on; one third disapproves of Trump’s behavior but opposes removal or impeachment.

The final third supports him passionately and believes that the election was stolen.  They want to fight on. But his supporters are more split than ever.

It’s disheartening that so many people support this behavior; it is encouraging that so many people don’t. In politics and democracies, you rarely get it all.

The loss of Twitter and Facebook as a direct pipeline to his followers was a blow to Trump and the way he operates.

President Trump is certain to find another platform online, but it will not be as large or all-encompassing as the 80 million-plus followers he had on Twitter.

Trump and his political brand are clearly badly “damaged,” but part of his genius lies in how he moves through crises and mishaps that would have sunk any other politician in minutes.

He embraces them, waves them like flags, amplifies them.

Still, it seems to me Trump has overnight become a toxic figure for ambitious politicians or those with greater ambitions.

The lesson of Trump is that there are just not enough white nationalists and wannabe racist Christians to win the presidency.

Remember that he couldn’t win re-election before this nightmare; why would he win after it?

This setback for Trump feels deeper and more damaging to me than his many other defeats and bungles.

Trump is due to leave the White House in less than two weeks.  Just bow your head and say “thank you” twice.

He is closely watched and monitored,  and it seems clear the alarm would be sounded quickly if he did anything rash or dangerous.

He faces impeachment and several state and legal civic and criminal actions. Even Rudy Guiliani, his sole remaining legal adviser, would probably advise him to be quiet and leave.

This is somebody who really doesn’t need more trouble.

Trump might even face federal investigations and charges relating to the capitol attacks if further evidence emerges about his crude efforts to overturn the election and incite the rioting.

But Trump is predictably unpredictable.

He never admits wrongdoing, and any challenge or criticism enrages him and inspires him to be even more offensive and what he would call “bold.”

He seems to think this makes him look tough, but the emerging truth is that it just makes him look crazy, at least to most Americans.

This is consistent with sociopathic behavior. Trump, clearly, is mentally ill.

This week, he is getting clobbered from left and right and defended, but little attention has been paid to the psychiatric meltdown he is suffering. To me, that is perhaps the biggest story of them all.

Yes, he is dangerous, but he is also extremely ill. People in that state of mind do not fare well, certainly not for long. And they are not capable of carrying out complex tasks.

He will not be permitted to launch a nuclear strike by himself, which is quite apparent. He can make a lot of trouble, of course.

Trump will obviously continue to have millions of supporters, wherever he goes and wherever he does.

But his disintegration in the last two months – the consequences of being defeated for perhaps the first time in his life – suggests that he is weakening, his judgment getting worse, and his defeats more intense and predictable.

Nothing he does now works.

It is simply difficult for me to imagine Trump surviving in this state of mind for too long. At this rate, he will either break down completely or get sick and weaken.

The movement he created will go on, but it’s hard to see a successor as charismatic and entertaining – and powerful -as he has been in the eyes of his supporters.

Personally, I would think the wisest and most humane – for the people – the course is to leave him alone and let him go. The more he is provoked, the more dangerous he is. He has no interest in being President, only in looking like a president.

Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley have all the charisma of dead fish.

Trump’s communications skills are as savvy and effective as any politician alive. He will not be easy to replace.

His successor, if there is one, has not yet emerged.

We tend to react in politics to the reality we seek, not the one around the corner.

Joe Biden seems to be planning a strong and dramatic assault on the coronavirus – diverting funds to fund it, releasing up to 100 million vaccines in the first 100 days of his office.

It’s about time.

His mere presence in the office should be a relief to many. And a distraction. He is, in so many ways, the anti-Trump.

He will be scrutinized and attacked, but his persona is one of calm and reason and compromise. He’s too old to be ambitious, and he won’t join the craziness of Trump World.

He doesn’t cut it as a socialist or an election bandit, more like Pa Kettle.

The national temperature should go down, by dint of that if nothing else.

This is expected to boost the economy as well as the nation’s health. If those two things happen, it’s a new ball game for  Biden, Trump, and the country, and the country’s smoldering politics.

My personal philosophy about Trump remains unchanged:

I find him consequential and important, but I choose not to get on the Trump Crazy Train, which is part of his psyche and both political parties that create a  constant tornado of chaos and fear and confusion.

I’m not a pollster or a pundit, but everybody I know is ready to move forward and get on with life.

I want to follow the Crazy Trump Train and write about it when I can be useful, but I see no reason to get on the train, now or ever.

Trump is a dangerous and destructive man, but he is not as dangerous as people fear, and not in the ways they fear. The worst damage has been done.

The attack on the capitol fits his long string of stunningly foolish and incompetent missteps.

I am not one of those who agrees that he personally plotted the attack; he’s not that organized.

The assault on the capitol seems far beyond the man who gave us Tulsa, blew the handling of the coronavirus, bungled an election he could easily have won, was rejected by 90 different federal judges,  called upstate election officials and threatened them on tape, helped ensure Democratic control the Senate, one of the most significant political events of the year, and has alienated almost every major political ally and supporter,  incited rioting at the capitol, and then grievously mishandled his response to it.

Why I wonder, are so many people afraid of this man when he can’t seem to even get the color of that next on his head right two days in a row?

Trump also managed to refocus America on its long and agonizing struggle with race. Black people watched the capitol attacks on TV and could hardly believe how gingerly these rioters were treated, how far they were allowed to go, how freely they came and go.

There were no troops in riot gear, no pepper spray, clubbing, shieds rubber bullets, 14-foot fences, and Humvees with water canons. Nobody opened doors for them or gave them high-fives, or posed for selfies.

Law enforcement’s response could hardly have been more different – or obviously different –  than the ugly and violent confrontations all summer with Black Lives Matter protesters, none of whom attempted to invade a statehouse, pour feces on the walls, and terrify legislators.

Race is back on the agenda, another parting gift of President Trump.

Speaking for myself, I can’t quite bring myself to fear this man and his closest and most trusted adviser Rudy Guiliani. It’s a circus, not a revolution.

God created Guiliani to make sure Saturday Night Live will prosper. You could not make him up.

This is the man with the dripping hair dye, who grabbed his genitals in front of a fake reporter, admitted to lying about the Ukraine, who confused a landscape center for a five-star hotel and held a press conference there, and who has lost every single legal battle he has engaged in over the past two months.

This is where it is now, for President Trump – no Mitch McConnell, no Mike Pence, no Hope Hicks, no Christ Christie, no real lawyers, just a handful of White House staffers, not even Ted Cruz, who bailed out of Trump Worship this week, and Melania, who can hardly wait to get to Mar-a-Largo and redo the decorations her husband hates.

I worry about his son. Imagine growing up in the middle of this?

We move now from drama to tragedy.

At Mar-a-LargoTrump will re-enact the sad fate of the also mighty William  Randolph Hearst, who spent 28 years building the castle San Simeon, the inspiration for the movie Citizen Kane, the story of his life.

At the height of his power, Hearst became notorious for misuse of power and vengeance. He almost single-handedly started the Spanish-American war.

Any time anyone challenged him, he would use his newspapers as weapons against his enemies, assaulting them with insults, lies, bitter and rambling editorials. He could not bear to be challenged, considering all disagreements as acts of unforgivable disloyalty.

Millions of people believed every false thing he said.

This is what I believe history tells us in store for President Trump:

“At the peak of his fortune, in 1935, he owned 28 major newspapers and 18 magazines, along with several radio stations, movie companies, and news services. But his vast personal extravagances and the Great Depression of the 1930s soon seriously weakened his financial position, and he had to sell faltering newspapers or consolidate them with stronger units. In 1937 he was forced to begin selling off some of his art collection, and by 1940 he had lost personal control of the vast communications empire he had built.  Paranoid and bitter, he lived the last years of his life in virtual seclusion. — Encyclopedia Brittanica.

An old friend of Heart’s wrote in the New York Herald Tribune  after he died that Hearst “never recovered from failing.”

The movie is widely believed to be the best film of all time, but he was completely forgotten and ignored in the years before he died.

It’s not up to me, blessedly, but if it were, I would say send our modern-day Hearst off to his castle and let him take his chances with the world.

If you love politics, you already know it is the most fickle and cruel of worlds.

The people love to love, and they love to hate, and no one – absolutely no one – stays loved for too long when they drift away from power, as Hearst learned at the end of his life.

Let the Gods take care of Donald Trump. We can’t control or manage everything on the earth. We all have work to do. Sometimes, you have to let go, something every politician learns.

Like it or not, Trump is one of our most consequential presidents, and as such, he is destined to be judged by higher powers than those we humans possess.

Let him meet his destiny.