Everyone’s waiting breathlessly for the indictment and arrest of Donald Trump. It’s a fantastically bad idea: if it happens, it will die in the court system; the rickety legal theory behind the indictment is one that the DOJ has already rejected, and even if a tendentious jury convicts him in New York City, the thing will surely be reversed on appeal. Moreover, the whole operation is such a transparent weaponization of the legal system against a political target, such an in-your-face abandonment of even the pretense of impartial rule of law, that all it will do is to make a martyr of the man in the eyes of scores of millions of Americans who are already mad as hell. (It isn’t as if people haven’t noticed the glaring lack of Biden-family indictments, or who gets raided by SWAT teams at 6 a.m. and who doesn’t, or the fact that not a single person on the Epstein client list has ever been arrested, etc. – and arresting Trump will only fan the already-crackling fire.)
So: what’s the deal? Why would these people, at least some of whom must be of at least average intelligence, make a crazy move like this? I can think of a few possibilities.
a) Overweening confidence
b) Rational judgment wholly overwhelmed by hatred
c) Panicky desperation
d) Galactic-level stupidity
e) All of the above
Help me out here. What’s the correct answer?
9 Comments
The royalty can do whatever it wants and dispatching enemies in a public and humiliating way is good for their hold on power.
I’ll go with (e) Malcolm. Government bureaucrats and their media cheerleaders in large cities are buried deep in narrative loops.
Embrace the healing power of ‘and’, Malcolm.
e) and
f) Manhattan DA, grand jury, ham sandwich
Anyway LOL. Some talented novelist out there will now have the golden opportunity to write a sequel to Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities: “The Greatest White Defendant.”
OK, that’s one for a), three for e) – and an f) that I should, perhaps, have included.
LP might say that what he described isn’t properly subsumed under a), and perhaps that would be a fair point: “overweening confidence” might be too broad a category. I’ll say it plausibly belongs under a) because to do something this audacious does require a supreme confidence that you won’t find yourself dangling from a lamp-post as a result of your audacity. (Sadly, that confidence may be justified.)
But LP’s comment does bring out an important point that might be lost under the broad heading of a): namely, that it is exactly the rubbing of the faces of the conquered in the invincible power of their rulers that most effectively breaks the spirit. It is what O’Brien did to Winston Smith:
Theodore Dalrymple has described this with harrowing clarity:
Our Bioleninist ruling clique knows well how this public humiliation plays with its base: demonstrating that the folks on top actually have the power to do this preposterous thing, and get away with it, will reassure the bottom half of their dumbbell-shaped coalition that they have backed the right horse.
Where the “overweening confidence” comes in is their belief that it won’t blow up in their damned faces.
Jason’s f) faces the same peril. For DA Bragg actually to go through with it, I think, really is due to a combination of the other choices: he must be confident that it won’t help Trump more than it hurts him; he must really, really hate the Orange Man; he must be a little desperate in order to try something this risky for his own career, built on such a shaky legal foundation; and he must be stupid. So perhaps f) folds into e).
If this judicial persecution happened in some societies, said society might just enter a state of all out open civil war. We don’t do that hence no meaningful consequences.
The Manhattan DA’s world consists entirely of people who think as he does. Half of the country does not exist, except as inferior non-player characters.
In his world, he’s striking a courageous blow against the Evil Orange Man. Even a failed attempt to indict will grant him positive status. We should not think of him as stupid, but as alien.
Moreover, even a failed attempt is a punishment to Trump and a warning to others.
Criticas,
I’ll file that one under some combination of a) and b).
a) Bragg is surely confident that his making such an unprofessional legal argument, one that surely will not result in a conviction, will not cost him his job, or his reputation amongst the people to whom he is signaling.
b) I have no doubt that a person such as Bragg loathes Donald Trump, as well as everything (and everyone) Trump fights for.
I think it’s safe to say that most of what Alvin Bragg does (and this principle applies to pretty much everyone), is motivated by what seems advantageous for his personal status. In his local environment, his status surely rises with this comical prosecution, even if the result at wider scale is negative.
And yes: not necessarily stupid (though I wouldn’t rule that out), but living inside a very, very different world-model. “Alien” doesn’t seem far off the mark.
Wow. Your comments and those of others have really illuminated the motives of the wielder of this otherwise inexplicable thrust of the legal javelin. To gain credibility amongst those to whom he would apply for approval, he would apply this unfair and stressful legalism to a former president. So appalling; you show how transparent this show-trial is.