Would America forego the countless, unifying, ultimate thrillers – and courtroom theatrics – by electing Trump?
Let’s face it: America, despite its individualistic defiance of invasive rules, loves to see the law in action—trial movies and TV courtroom melodramas, even stage plays—whether realistic or fanciful. Think of the dozens of TV trial broadcasts (from Perry Mason through Law and Order, etc.), Ditto, the unending flood of movies about lawyers, juries and trials (from Twelve Angry Men to Inherit the Wind and My Cousin Vinny). And celebrity trials, filling up weeks, are the most entertaining of all, surpassing one-time sports extravaganzas.
I suspect the hard line between blue and red state residents disappears on celebrity trial decisions, except of course multiple convictions that tar and feather the magical messiah from Queens. Isn’t there more routine, substantive support for what attentive juries and meticulous judges conclude (whatever the decision) than for any nomination for president? Trials literally rule—to the degree that notions of civilization rule.
Convictions, or acquittals, deliver understandable, tried and true judgments, fueling our onward, collective morality show. Who says relativism reigns? We’re talking how a wobbly, primitive culture divides good from evil, the despicable from the not guilty, the true “enemies of the people” from heroic martyrs tortured by unjust inquisitions. As religion dies on the vine, what more than convictions separate uncivil from civil disobedience to statutes and laws, a mirror to majority values when initially written. And affiliated trials—like impeachment or Congressional inquiries, certainly “Special Counsels”—fit this Yankee obsession. Jail time (and fat fines) distinguish verified sinners from ordinary hustlers, creeps and knaves.
On that basis alone, I project a Harris victory because a Trump win wipes out juicy, onerous, “weaponized,” federal indictments—for no magnetized MAGA DOJ would ever send its boss to jail. And for what, demand Trumpers—merely inciting a once-ever, violent election coup attempt, concocting phony elector schemes, or stealing truckloads of top secrets—priceless in the end to enemy foreign governments? After all, our leaders know what our spies report, but to a Putin or a Putin-fanboy, the potential financial and political profits are staggering, let alone the private, country-club gloating after getting away with such a daring theft.
Epic villains fit epic drama and judgments
What more than public trials dramatize headline accusations, high drama, nuanced technicalities – then deliver the denouement of firm (if appealable) decisions? Behold the perfect narrative, with beginning (a crime or arrest), middle (testimony, challenges, revelations) and end (a certified, official judgment, finished with penalties and whining declarations by innocent lambs). How satisfying, in a messy world choked with fuzzy edges and maddening complexities, to see a story-line terminate with unambiguous, black and white judgments, all the more exhilarating when seriously bad guys get deserved comeuppance? Wary DAs are hardly in the brash, let’s-take-a-chance business. Plea bargains take care of most incontestable cases.
At times a few law-breakers (called mavericks by their cheering fans) may either hang a jury or be found innocent. “Innocence” is in fact quite different from being judged Not Guilty. As a famous detective/lawyer I knew well once quipped, “I am not in the business of proving innocence, whatever that is. My goal is for my clients to gain that coveted trophy of Not Guilty.”
Close behind America’s manic obsession with sports, celebrities, and junk food is the endless fascination with malefactors and misfits—and thus with show trials. Think of the emotional draw in unpacking who does what, how and why, then what does a nominally advanced state do about it. And the most democratic part of all is that, like politics or sports, everyone has his/her own weird opinion. Did the rich and famous O.J. Simpson truly become homicidal and bludgeon his ex-wife and boyfriend? Was the perfectionist Martha Stewart so slapdash she committed a stock crime? Was Trump so nervy, even stupid to commit half the crimes of which he’s accused? Really, to collude with others on the crime of buying off an adult film star, then break the law by deducting the payoff as a “necessary” business expense? Anyone that greedy or ham-fisted a tax cheat deserves 34 felony convictions.
Trials—catharsis and truth together
In any case, remember the cathartic outcomes from Bill Clinton’s legal circus, telling us more than we wanted to know about presidential miscues, if not GOP vengeance? Slick Willy didn’t pay a commensurate political price but recall the months of lurid, Peeping Tom energy. I just don’t think multitudes deem the huge scope of the horrific Trump Trauma Tales complete without the legal and emotional release from trials on Jan 6 outrages, fake elector schemes, the GA blackmail/vote fraud (still could happen even if Trump wins) or the outlandish theft of top-secrets purloined from the White House.
The world demands to know just how pernicious is the relentless Trump immorality and—even more so, what will a once self-respecting republic do about direct blows to its highest sovereignty: fair elections. Think of the exiled theatrics, if not lost TV revenue, were the Escape Artist-in-chief to get away with serious, even mammoth crimes. Sure, he already has to pay hundreds of millions for stomping on other people’s lives, maybe notch a prison sentence.
But if a violent coup against our Holy of Holies is never aired out in public—and adjudicated by a jury of peers (more or less as few are criminals), what happens to our core American confidence in right and wrong? The masses, desperate for distraction from pet cannibalism or climate change or painful drug prices, will feel cheated. And all America has to do is NOT elect the least qualified, least upbeat candidate in our history. Is that too much to ask?
When doing the crime escapes doing the time
Electing Trump would be a double (or triple) whammy against the hard work of repairing all the broken systems wrought by Trumpism. That’s aside from an overwhelming need to purge all our anxious bad vibes so many harbor everyday towards every breaking headline (what now, what new low?). Trials are necessary to complete the terrible Trump Trip. I just hope he’s still cognitively sentient enough, when and if trials happen, so he will understand what OTHERS think he did—and why his “perfect” career free of wrongdoing is mysteriously riveted by so many prosecutions.
After all, Trump declares himself, without much proof, among the most honest truth-tellers around (per a recent interview). Even when convicted of multiple crimes, caught dead to rights, there is never remorse nor apology, indeed only a blizzard of whining belligerence blaming anyone in sight. Otherwise, he’d have to admit wrongdoing and lose all face. That’s why Trump Trials must happen, aside from all the entertaining shenanigans along the way. Otherwise we are stuck with more cliff-hangers than any mortal can endure. Finally, when serial lawbreakers do the crimes, but not the time, civilization quakes in its boots – assuming they haven’t been stolen and repacked as golden MAGA sneakers.
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