For the Trump gang of wheeler-stealers, contrition is rarer than winning court battles
From vocabulary.com on contrition:
Someone who feels remorse or guilt is contrite . . . [and wants] to atone for having done something wrong. . . . [in] theology being contrite is “being remorseful for past sin and resolved to avoid future sin.”
NY Judge Engoron, who stung the Trump asset base and phony winner image with whopping body-blows, is a better judge than psychologist. And there is nothing made-up about this decades-long conspiracy, as Engoron castigated the Trump criminal frauds as so obvious they “leap off the page,” concluding “their complete lack of contrition and remorse borders on pathological.” “Borders on”? No “borders on” about it, your honor. The ultimate Trumpworld arrogance: zero remorse.
The Drumpf crime family DNA defies “contrition,” let alone apologies or reparations to parties they victimize or bamboozle. Unless Trump faces the death penalty, don’t expect even a wimpy, forced concession. “To err is human” undercuts family values – and “Trump divinity” never forgives slights. So, admitting wrongdoing, on par with Trump humility or class, demands the impossible: accepting that they damaged someone else’s reality. But the Donald’s “reality” is self-fabricated B.S., sputtering, incoherent and contradictory. Or simply deranged, on full display with the endlessly laughable Big Lie. Trumpism outlaws contrition as a mortal sin – for that would concede that others exist, even have rights.
Further, despite the volume of Trump towers that proves business fraud, who but the dim and reckless double down by attacking the judge and the court system? That only maximizes penalties and legendary victimhood folly. Trump’s self-entitled “greatness” is a magical, automatic pardon — and in advance, even when stealing national secrets in plain sight. In short, Trump wouldn’t know contrition if it crushed his hairdo, thus never accepts responsibility for wrongdoing because that’s literally beyond his perverted brain.
Method in the madness
Thus, there is no Trumpworld “system of justice” beyond the family’s private greed. “Evil” is anything that interrupts Trump theft and predation. That not only frames all his phony campaign promises, but exposes the cosmic illegitimacy behind any indictments or proof. And how can there be punishments when crimes are banished in advance? Trump Inc. frauds “shock the conscience,” per Engoron, because Trump lives in his own “fantasy world” answering way back to fraudster father Fred. Trump et al not only “repeatedly falsified business records with the intent to defraud,” but alleged real estate successes are rife with dishonesty, manipulation and contempt for what defines civility, if not civilization. Total, self-interested absorption is the opposite of contrition or conscience.
All these truths, as pundits spout, raise the ultimate question: how can a failed, crooked businessman, so bad he must cheat to avoid more bankruptcies, run the country without running it into the ground? Can any oafish criminal, committing crime after crime with laughable cover-ups, be handed the greatest power over the supposedly greatest nation? Can deviants unable to declare responsibility or make amends be sane enough to be handed a wand for unrestrained outlawry? It’s a devastating shocker to realize how much in plain sight the Trump base dismisses in its messiah.
After all, Trump isn’t just your normal bad boy who scoffs at unspeakable consequences. He’s the poster boy for what happens when too much money, indulgence, and power wholly corrupt a narcissist. We all recall high school disruptors who upset classrooms, thumb their noses at authority and end as repeat offenders. Desperate for attention (or getting kicked out of school), these non-rich Trump-chaos types are rarely socialized; the very worst end up shooting strangers in a fury of brutality. But the richest, most favored schemers batter down rules, assume invulnerability, and one ended up inciting the dumbest insurrectionist treason ever. Of course, lackey Trumpers naturally adopt the no-remorse folly (with comparable blindness towards law enforcement), plus victimhood, pathetically blaming “their commander-in-chief” for ordering the riot. Strange that so many ne’er-do wells without awareness that others exist then blame everyone else upon conviction.
The fate of unsocialized deviants is predictable, forever getting slapped down, at times forced to be military cannon fodder. But Trump the draft dodger is the rarity, the publicity-crazed billionaire with enough leverage, legal funds, charisma and media hype to break rules, delay justice, and evade accountability. Uniquely, he never obscures his character, viciousness, or staying power, thus exposing how impotent is our legal system to reign in our most dangerous criminal. Eight decades of oblivion to limits won’t change, even when electronically detained.
Accomplishes at the Supreme Court
Civilization cannot long endure when remorse or shame, let alone penalties, are banished as social controls. We must institute cultural and legal immunity against control freaks with impenetrable defenses who not only won’t admit error but the possibility of error. Indictments and convictions are thus all calculated plots to abuse the “perfect geniuses” among us, all one of them. Playing the untouchable outlaw fits Trump’s combined personality as permanent bad boy and permanent victim.
Yet, trial after trial, there’s a ticking bomb limit to Trump’s stunning ability to contort rank criminality into cash-cow cheerleading. Forget contrition or redemption. There is no gain for judges or the majority to treat irredeemable miscreants as having a moral compass. The only critical task is to implant a total Stop sign to the crime spree – and the well-heeled evasions. The disgraced Supreme Court is way behind the curve so that may take longer than reason allows.
Every judge who fails to enforce authority and ignore transparent, cynical evasions becomes an enabler of the scofflaw. That elevates campaigns to the paramount position to expose unacceptable, unchangeable wrongdoing. The Big Lie (on top of 30K others) was only the start as Trump actively wars against majority rule, necessary immigration, and the integrity of the courts. In the end, if Trump succeeds in poisoning public opinion about the credibility of federalism, that huge systemic flood drowns us all. What legitimate government survives if both the idea of its worth and its daily operations are constantly besieged by a lowlife with more convictions than he has cash to pay liabilities?
Say what you will about the downsides of crony, corporate capitalism, income inequality and rightwing excesses. But no healthy democracy, however respectful of diversity and inclusivity, can tolerate the horrors of late-stage Trumpism now openly committed to burn down the house of democracy. In a way, that dramatizes the choice. As one post-essay commentator, quoting another writer, reminded us, “It is certainly true that a bourgeois democracy is by far preferable to an open fascist dictatorship, and the struggle for the former over and against the latter is of the utmost importance.” That makes voting this Fall easier than ever. Is it to be workable democracy or unapologetic, evasive, strongman criminality?
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