David Cameron is Paul Ryan's Ghost of Christmas Future

The lesson many pundits are taking from Britain's vote to leave the European Union is that the appeal to bigotry, hatred, and fear can lead people to vote against their best interests and royally fuck themselves up out of pure spite. If that can happen there, they say, then a Trump presidency can happen here.

That may be true, and we should certainly all be scared. But Brexit should also scare one particular American, Paul Ryan, who just had a chance to see what happens when politicians make a short-term political calculus that destroys their career.

Brexit happened because Prime Minister David Cameron wanted to get reelected. A chunk of anti-immigration conservatives wanted Britain out of the European Union and to keep the Conservative Party together and win an election, Cameron agreed to a referendum on leaving the EU.

Cameron didn't want Britain to leave the EU, he just wanted to pacify those on the right and counter the popularity of the anti-immigration U.K. Nationalist Party. He figured he could easily persuade voters to vote REMAIN.

He couldn't, and having created a disastrous situation with disastrous results, he had no choice but to resign.

Now, Cameron will go down in history as the guy who screwed Britain and the EU. That is his legacy. Nothing he has ever done in his life will matter; he's the Brexit guy.

Like Cameron, Paul Ryan decided to do something dangerous to the country for political expediency: support Donald Trump as the Republican presidential candidate. Trump, a racist, xenophobic no-nothing conman (or, as the Scottish would say, a weaselheaded, Cheeto-faced, jizztrumpet/fucknugget/shitgibbon) who spews hatred against minorities like a shit-throwing sprinkler system, gained the nomination through big lies and absurd promises. It's clear to everyone with half a brain, including Ryan, that he is a toxic bomb set to blow up this country.

But Ryan also believes, probably correctly, that Trump is somewhat more likely to support his help-the-rich, screw-the-poor agenda than Hillary Clinton, and for that reason, he has chosen to endorse the monster.

Ryan's endorsement looks worse and worse every time Trump claims his right to be judged only by those with European ancestry or congratulates himself when horrible tragedies befall the country, but while Ryan will mildly criticize Trump's remarks, he is still determined to make him president.  Ultimately, whether he succeeds or not, he is probably destroying his career.

In November, one of two things will happen. Either Trump, in spite of a phenomenally incompetent campaign, will win, or Clinton will. If it's Trump, well then, an authoritarian lunatic will helm this country, most likely sending the world into economic collapse, and Ryan will intimately tied to that disaster (and probably won't even get much from his shopping list out of the short-fingered megalomaniac). If it's Clinton, then Ryan sold his soul and got nothing for it except a GOP in flames.

The U.S. does not have Britain's parliamentarian system, so Ryan won't have to resign anything. He'll still be a congressman. He might even get reelected; in this country an incumbent can get reelected even if he's in prison for fraud. But his career as the golden boy of the GOP will be over. Like Cameron, he will forever after be known for one thing; tying himself to a bucket of shit, throwing the bucket down a well, and trying not to fall in after it.

Watch out Ryan; it's a very heavy bucket.