Don't Sleep On Justice
Giving Trump the punishment he deserves, and not a lick more
Editor’s Note: Have a question about how to snuff an unwanted dog while making it look like an accident? Don’t ask Kristi “Gravel Pit” Noem. That performative psychopath killed her dog in cold blood, thinking it something to brag about in her ghostwriter’s book. Then, the South Dakota governor/veep hopeful repeatedly defended her dog murder on Twitter and TV, complaining of fake news, even if she was the newscaster. Don’t ask Matt, either. Matt is a dog partisan, period. He was bitten in the face by his sister’s foster rescue, a gargantuan mastiff named Tank, just three weeks ago. (A minor brush. No stitches required.) And he’d be incensed if anyone tried to put that dog down. He’d rather take unwanted dog owners to the gravel pit. Neglected dogs, like neglected people, need love and care to get back to good health. Here’s that in action. But for all other non-homicidal/animal-cruelty-themed questions, do ask Matt at askmattlabash@gmail.com.
Dear Matt,
I dislike Donald Trump. That is a mild statement, I abhor most everything about him. Yet I feel that I am rational enough and fair enough to find him innocent of a charged crime if he actually is innocent by all evidence and arguments to the contrary. The fact that I voted for Obama and Hillary and Biden should not be automatically disqualifying in my view. What say you in this wildly divided, ultra-partisan cesspool we are drawing jurors from in America?
Ron R.
That’s an interesting way of framing matters, but even if I’m no Democratic partisan, I can relate. As regular readers here know, I’m not a Trumpster. Another way of saying that — subtlety aside — is I loathe Trump with my whole heart. Though it’s nothing personal, if Trump is reading this. (Fat chance, for a guy who likely doesn’t read anything longer than Newsmax chyrons or KFC Grubhub menus.) Mind you, I don’t have any preternatural prejudice against artificially-colored con men who want to date their daughter and who cheat on their wives and their country while seeking to enrich themselves by bilking paranoid seniors out of their retirement savings with cynical legal-defense fundraising emails and/or by selling them Lee Greenwood Bibles.
I just generally tend to abhor serially dishonest seditionists who try to divide America against itself while attempting to overturn our entire system of government to service his own narcissism disorder. But I’m old-fashioned that way. Maybe I’m an out-of-step prude.
And could perhaps be considered doubly so if you’re not, like me, one of the anachronistic squares who consider paying hush money to the porn star you diddled, shortly after your wife gave birth to your son, to be disqualifying behavior, electorally-speaking (legal technicalities aside). If your wife and children can’t trust you, maybe we can’t either? But who am I to say, if even my old comrades on the Christian right, who used to at least go through the motions of pretending to have morals, can’t bring themselves to say it? (Two-thirds of them still choose to see Trump favorably. Jesus famously forgave a thief hanging on the cross next to him, and my fellow Christers still seem to be in the thief-forgiving business, as well. Even if they sometimes seem to mistake the thief for Christ himself.)
On the other hand, as I watch his current trial coverage, I keep waiting for a truly felonious crime to present itself, besides minor bookkeeping, creative-writing fictions. Of which any corporate tax accountant worth his salt is probably also guilty. Yes, I know that Trump’s former lawyer/current bête noire, Michael Cohen, has already done time for the crime. It is, indeed, a crime that Alvin Bragg is attempting to put Trump away for. But it all still feels semi-Mickey Mouse to me, especially when contrasted with the truly felonious behavior that it seems he should do serious time for in his other three pending trials – for deliberately stealing state secrets, and even more so, for attempting to steal an election that he lost, while intimidating people to go along with his attempted heist. Actions carried out in plain sight.
I guess what I’m saying is, just as I’d rather have seen Al Capone — who Trump has compared himself to — go away for all the murders he ordered, rather than for tax evasion (which is what ultimately did him in), I’d rather see Trump go away for his attempted murder of democracy, rather than for fudging his expenses/campaign finance reports. The latter of which is a widespread and yawn-inducing “crime,” likely to hang at least one juror in his defense, which is all he needs. And a hung jury in a first trial likely deadens the impact of the subsequent trials. (Assuming the Supreme Court doesn’t do some of those in by giving Trump immunity before they even get going.)
If you’re pissed off that I’m pre-acquitting Trump, save your fire. I’m not. All the evidence hasn’t been heard, and maybe it gets worse. And contrary to wanting to see him skate, I’m actually quite eager to see Trump meet justice for the first time in his slippery, consequence-free life. Which he’s not going to like, if that ever happens.
But just because he’s willing to suspend all standards, doesn’t mean we should, ours. In fact, we should be even truer to our standards, if for no other reason, than to re-assert that standards matter for their own sake. And that we should be forever faithful to them, wherever the evidence leads. Even if they cut against our desired outcomes.
As I was discussing with a friend the other day, after we’d both read a piece about a talented writer who’d seemingly decided to go all-in for Trump just to spite the elites he loathed, that is precisely my main brief against Trumpism. It gives anti-elitism a bad name. Since the alternative, as embodied by him, looks even less desirable on most days. Choosing worse than what we've already had, just to spite what we've already had, is not an answer. It just becomes another problem that needs solving. Much as Trump, the purported swamp-drainer, needed his own swamp drained. (No fewer than 11 of his associates/staffers were charged with crimes during his presidential hitch.)
Which is why even someone as habitually and blatantly guilty of crimes against propriety and good taste, not to mention the law, should be punished proportionally, and not even a tad bit more. And which itself is not said in order to preserve the integrity of Trump — he doesn’t have any. But to preserve the integrity of the standards that he fails to live up to. And which is why any fair juror, once all the evidence is presented, should be just as willing to hang his or her jury, as they are to hang Trump. (I mean “hang their jury” in the figurative hung-jury sense, not in the literal “Hang Mike Pence” sense.)
Even a scoundrel should skate if the state’s burden is not met. Without justice being blind, we won’t see anything clearly at all.
Bonus Tracks: Yes, I know. I hate our present condition, too. Why are we are here again? Oh yeah, because enough of us chose this mess. Sometimes, I feel like someone might have snuck in Paul Westerberg’s “Let the Bad Times Roll” as our new national anthem while I wasn’t looking:
Though I’d rather light a candle than curse the darkness. So here’s the Replacements’ lead singer doing one of his grossly underrated and more upbeat solo shots (or at least upbeat for Westerberg), off the Singles soundtrack. God bless your grungy GenX heart if you remember “Waiting for Somebody.” And if it’s new to you, I envy you hearing it for the first time, as it has some killer Westerbergian riffs: