Indictment watch, Day 2: Once more, for the back of the room...
...real life justice is NOT like fucking Law & Order, for fuck's sake!
I know it's hard to accept in our instant gratification developed world, where we have the breadth of recorded music available on devices we carry in our pockets. But on a TV episode where someone commits a crime and is sent to the hoosegow at the end of forty-two minutes, that's fiction. And the time required to get from arrest to conviction is elided in the episode for the sake of drama. It's like how M*A*S*H took place during the Korean War, but lasted, oh, nine years longer than the actual war. Time in a drama is fungible. And yet too many of us have gotten it in our heads that Donald Trump should be in prison right now based on the things they watch on television or see in the movies. It just isn't like that.
Our system of justice favors the accused. It was designed that way on purpose. The Framers had finished fighting a war of independence against a country which had a star chamber, where justice was swift and unaccountable. Yes, I want to see Trump suffer the ignominy of being the first American president to be convicted of multiple crimes. But precisely because this is so unprecedented, I want everything to be above-board and irreproachable. I want every appeal he makes to be denied. I want him to spend the rest of his miserable, misbegotten life ruing the day he descended that escalator because he hated a Black man so much, a man who was far above him in every measure.
And make no mistake: He will appeal. Even if New York Attorney General Tish James destroys his company, he will have deep-pocketed sycophants who will flood him with money for his appeals. Don't think indictments and convictions will be the end of it. I just want you to prepare for that.
"But we saw him do it in real-time!" OK. Fine. Is that how you build a case? Is that how you get a conviction? Is that how you win on appeal? Is that what the Constitution says? No? Then maybe shut up and let those who know what they're doing complete their work, in the proper manner, with all avenues of escape shut off to Trump and his fetid family. Yes, we want vengeance. But more than that, we should want justice. The two are not the same. Vengeance is from our lizard brain. Justice is from law and procedure.
We should, in fact, be grateful that Merrick Garland's Department of Justice is working as it should be working, with neither fear nor favor. And that fear and favor apply to those on our side who want to see Trump hauled before a kangaroo court and summarily executed.
Yes, I agree: It's ridiculous that Trump has resources and avenues which a poor Black man doesn't. But that's an argument for judicial and legal reform, not for treating Trump like some hump locked up for carrying a nickel bag. Our justice system, in its theoretical form, is something of which we should all be proud. That the law isn't applied equally to all calls for ending those inequities, not for visiting those inequities on everyone.
There are outrage farmers across the political spectrum whose bread and butter depends on you being angry all the time. Their sustenance is predicated on keeping you as irate and frustrated as possible. When you see one of them, ask yourself: Who does this benefit? And nine times out of ten, the answer will be: It certainly doesn't benefit me. Don't be a chump. Don't be a mark. Be the rational human being gifted with intelligence and perspicacity you know yourself to be. Don't go down the rabbit hole of blind rage. That just leads you to a hole in the ground.
So, pop some popcorn, drink a libation, and relax. "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice." These are the words of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. And some would mock this as "liberal, Whig" history. Well, sign me up. Because the alternatives are nihilism and despair.
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