Don’t think of this as a real piece. It won’t even count against you if you’re on the pay-by-the-piece subscription plan. Though seeing as how that plan doesn’t actually exist, if you’re on it, you’ve probably been scammed, and might ought to take that up with our friends at Substack support.
Because to me, this isn’t a real piece. I was doing legwork on one of those – something non-political that I actually cared about writing. (On the death of the great Robbie Robertson, architect of The Band, as a matter of fact.) When who could’ve predicted - besides all of us - that the latest and most sweeping indictment against Donald Trump would drop last night. Or rather, it inflicted itself upon us, as I’ve come to think of all of the whirlwinds that our ex-president keeps reaping. So consider what follows as more of a spur-of-the-moment lamentation. Or possibly, a cry for help.
It’s Trump’s fourth indictment since April, if you’re keeping score at home. And as has happened so many times before, I had to put aside what I want to actually be working on, to work out my anger issues over yet another unwanted intrusion on our time. This is not the anger commonly derided as “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” Which I have counter-defined in the past as: state an obvious truth about Trump, and when you do, his supporters become deranged. Rather, it’s anger that results from one man’s fragile, frenzied ego continuing to hold our nation hostage, as it has since 2015.
This latest marks four more indictments than any of our ex-presidents have known. They usually elect to keep lower profiles, burning brush and painting dog portraits (Bush), or building houses/teaching Sunday School (Carter), or reading over old correspondence in which they fantasized about having sex with men (Obama). But whatever their poison, to their collective credit, they generally engage in more anodyne activities than running afoul of RICO statutes. As a justice-lover, I’ve been waiting for this indictment since January 6, 2021, since I always believed the Georgia case was the most slam-dunk of all the cases. And yet, I’m tired. And take no joy in it. I’m so weary, that even my usually-overactive schadenfreude gland seems to be on the blink. Since when you forever live in the swirl of scandal, it’s hard to stay scandalized.