Justice, Bloodlust and the Need to Reassert Decency
Reflecting on the latest arraignment of the criminally charged Donald Trump
Once again yesterday, there was no mugshot, no handcuffs, no incarceration, no confiscation of passport. Once again, Donald J. Trump remains free to mouth off, attacking Special Counsel Jack Smith and the prosecutors who’ve performed their duty to support the rule of law and serve justice.
Despite the promise that no one is above the law and there’s one system of justice, Trump is treated differently. No matter, it seems, that the felony charges—unprecedented for anyone who’s ever held the nation’s highest office—represent a grave assault on our democratic system, or that his hostile behavior continues to put so many public servants in danger of violence.
I get it. He’s surrounded by Secret Service agents. Judges and law enforcement are legitimately concerned about inflaming an already triggered population of cult followers. It’s clear the priority of prosecutors is focused on accelerating toward a speedy trial.
Soon we may see these choices tested in Atlanta, Georgia, where Fulton County Sheriff Patrick Labat is saying that, if Trump is indicted there for his involvement in election fraud, they will be taking a mugshot of him. “Unless someone tells me differently,” Labat said on Tuesday, the sheriff’s office would follow “normal practices, and so it doesn’t matter your status. We’ll have mugshots ready for you.”
Personally, I’d be happy and relieved to see this dangerous man—who has betrayed our country, desecrated the democratic responsibility to support the will of voters, trashed the sacred tradition of a peaceful transfer of power, conspired in a months-long campaign to convince the public that he won an election that he actually lost—in handcuffs, behind bars, clad in an orange jumpsuit. This would be a sign that he, who has caused so much harm, was finally on his way to being held accountable. I won’t understate how much I, like so many others over these years of blatant criminality, have yearned for it.
But here’s the thing: Let’s cast our minds back to the 2016 election and all the times when Trump and demagogic acolytes like his former national security advisor Mike Flynn exploited angry crowds by urging the “Lock Her Up” chant against Hillary Clinton. This wasn’t reasonable political expression, but bloodlust—the fueling of a hateful mob hungry for a lynching.
It was true then that something dangerous was happening, that Trump and his sycophants were abusing their platforms to unleash and empower a climate of violence and hate. By 2020, Trump was still fueling the mob: “I agree with you 100 percent,” he told “lock her up” chanters just a month before the 2020 election. And we continue to witness the consequences of this poisonous attack on responsible citizenry—a broken reality in which facts and law don’t matter and decency is buried under a blizzard of cruelty and a hunger for carnage.
I admit that this display of bloodlust always alarms and disturbs me because of what it may portend. The history of violence in America, and particularly the practice of lynching when white vigilantes decided to take the law into their own hands, offers concrete reason to worry where this can lead. We have suffered seven years of Trump attacks on vulnerable populations and our system of justice.
Now my linking this dark strain to how Trump should be treated may seem like an overreach. But the key now and in the future—if the goal is to stem the cancer still spreading in the body politic—is to calm the violence wherever it may reside across the political spectrum. That doesn’t mean not fighting fire with fire or allowing the MAGA cultists and their irresponsible leaders to continue running roughshod.
In the end, it may be in our best interest to skip the mugshots and the cuffs and acknowledge it as an act of decency (even if it’s undeserved). This may remind the small percentage of Republicans who can still be reasoned with that our shared purpose is to serve justice and not pursue retribution.
Ultimately, the road to democratic repair will require demonstrating that crime doesn’t pay and the guilty will be held to account. Following a jury’s verdict, that could mean locking him up sooner rather than later.
One last note: After the arraignment on four felony counts and Trump answering the judge with “Not guilty,” he called this “a sad day for America.” I would argue that this was a hopeful day and the reasons for sadness began when this conman descended his golden elevator and offered his bleak, hateful vision—and tens of millions of Americans found it appealing.
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We must persist in our prosecution of these crimes - all of them - and those who support(ed) them. We cannot yield to the unending dissembling of this cult/faction.
“Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.” - Frederick Douglass
And somehow, we need to return to an acceptance of facts (not alternative facts) as foundational and let all the lying and alternate realities die from starvation. Otherwise, we remain vulnerable to the next narcissistic conman spewing a persuasive anti-democratic message.