Thirty-four charges down, fifty-four still pending. In what world would a man with eighty-eight felony charges, now a convicted felon, be running for president? Not only that, polling still shows him having a chance.

The inaccuracy of polling and tea leaf reading aside, we have a perspective failure in that this situation does not have the entire country and media industry going WTF!

But the perspective of normal humanity has been battered, bruised and misshapen by years of Donald Trump’s grandstanding, “look at me” posing and his unending stream of lies—happily carried by a media industry addicted to eyeballs rather than facts.

It is a fact that things which don’t make sense are uncomfortable to confront and deal with. This is especially true in the case of a serial liar and outright criminal who conned the country into allowing him access to the highest levers of power.

Remember the fact that criminals accuse others of their own crimes? Well, Trump was just convicted of the exact criminal conspiracy he has been accusing everyone else of committing: election fraud and interference.

But criminals do more than just try to shift blame, they also gather other criminals around them so that they don’t feel like the outsiders to society that they truly are. This has also been part of Trump’s shtick. He has completely corrupted the Republican Party into an organization hell-bent on the destruction of the Constitution and our democratic form of government.

Project 2025 is just one aspect of that intent. Project 47 also exists to stack a future Trump administration with people loyal to him rather than the Constitution. Both of these initiatives have major funding behind them. They are presented as legitimate ideas, when in fact they are seditious and treasonous—working to undermine the very structure and law-based functions of our government.

The fact that these organizations exist and are so well funded is, and should continue to be, a major red flag. While they have been repeatedly exposed, no investigations by government entities have been announced. Worse, Members of Congress, in direct violations of their oaths of office, support these efforts and still support Trump.

Within minutes of his conviction, people calling themselves the House GOP were texting out fundraising appeals with phrasing like, “TRUMP CONVICTED IN SHAM TRIAL.” And Members of the House and Senate took to Twitter to shout out how the trial was a travesty and an injustice—all on the same script. Remember, these are all members of the “Law and Order” Republican Party, complaining about the court system they supposedly revere.

But Trump’s distortion of reality is starting to break. The idea that he can seemingly get away with anything has now been shattered by a long-overdue conviction.The fact that he has managed to delay by various means his other three criminal trials now means a hell of a lot less. And he should rightly be even more terrified of these upcoming trials as those cases are described as even more compelling than the one he just lost.

Trump’s conviction was sobering moment and a massive reality check. But even more so is the fact that the Republican candidate for President of the United States must report back to court on July 11th for sentencing. Oddly in this series of firsts, Trump’s promise to campaign from prison would not be a first. That circumstance belongs to Socialist Party candidate Eugene Debs in 1920. Trump’s reaction to the comparison would be amusing.

As the days move past his conviction and the countdown toward his sentencing ticked off on calendars, Republicans are going to have to come to grips with the horse they’ve backed. Four days after he is sentenced, everyone assumes he will be at the Republican National Convention to be officially nominated as their candidate.

There’s going to be a lot of reality checking between now and then—in between the outbursts of threats and anger from his staunch supporters in Congress and in the public. Hard reality is going to continue to intrude on his and his supporters fevered and violent imaginations.

The questions are already appearing in headlines and memes:

• A convicted felon cannot serve in the military, how can one be commander in chief?
• How could he visit foreign countries as President if many do not allow entry by convicted criminals?
• Are we to remain a country under the rule of law, or a dictatorship where the whim of Trump becomes law—the very situation that caused the founding of this nation 248 years ago.

What Trump and his cronies have all failed to learn is that the United States is founded on a structure of agreements. And those points of agreement are stronger than they appear and compose the actual reality of this country.

It is going to take a LOT more than factually incompetent liars like Trump and his followers, backers and his dictator allies to bring it down. Not when there are twelve everyday people serving on a jury examining evidence, coming to a concurrence that crimes were actually committed and must be answered for.