Illegitimi Non Condescendum

As much as public education and non-white, non-male, non-Christian, non-heterosexual, or immigrant Americans, so we’re told, Trumpists hate being condescended to. So this column assumes that all such readers have fully familiarized themselves with and assimilated the contents of Jack Smith’s January Six indictment. Because they value enlightenment, they will have read it word for word. Or had it read to them. Or, in their pickups bearing Trump 2024 and F**k Biden flags, listened to the eight-track version narrated by Jason Aldean.

Having done so, they’ll have understood the lies behind Trump’s and his communals’ claims of criminalizing speech and thought. They’ve recognized that, like all of Trump’s and his media mouthpieces’ efforts at gaslighting, it’s the opposite. It begins, in fact, with clear statements that Trump has the right to continue his unbroken streak of lifelong lying, to his amygdala’s content. And they’ll have internalized this tidbit among many in the indictment: “Jan 3. When the Chairman and another advisor recommended that the Defendant take no action because Inauguration Day was only seventeen days away and any course of action could trigger something unhelpful, the Defendant calmly agreed, stating Yeah, you're right, it's too late for us...”

They’ll have understood why the indictment spends the first several of its forty-five pages enumerating the manifold times Trump was told his election lies were lies. And that it sources truth-telling, even from some people within his collection of cacoethic collaborators and many more outside; and the data on the basis of which he was so informed. If he still believed, he’s dangerously deranged and should be barred (!) from future office. If not, he’s a malignant liar who oughtn’t be trusted with a driver’s license, much less nuclear codes.

Nevertheless, the need to prove he believed he won (“all fifty states”) is, like the First Amendment claims, irrelevant; the indictment isn’t about either. It’s about using those lies, or psychoses, as the basis for creating buy-in to conspiracies to defraud the US government and its citizens; plotting to deprive voters of their Constitutional right to have their votes counted. Fraud, of course, is something of which Trump is even more of a practitioner than marital infidelity.

Nor is it protected speech. And, contrary to the declaration from the most recent of his revolving-door lawyers, who admitted attempting to overthrow an election is “a technical violation of the Constitution” but not “a violation of criminal law,” it IS. The consigliere also posited that since the unconstitutional fake elector cabal failed, it was merely “aspirational,” of no legal import. Like a bank robbery thwarted by calling the cops.

Less implicit in the indictment, probably still working its way through neuro-Trumpic pathways to their cerebral cortices, is debunkery of the notion that indicting a former “president” makes America a “banana republic.” Comes Mister Tallyman to tally they banana: Were we such a nation, Trump would have been rounded up long since, imprisoned without trial, left in solitary confinement till the next revolution. Prior to which, he might have been paraded, chained, through the town square, to jeers and taunts by the six-foot, seven-foot, eight-foot bunch.

But this is America. Trump’s crimes have been investigated for months, the vetted evidence therefrom presented to a grand jury of ordinary citizens, who concluded there were grounds for indictment. And he’ll have a trial in which he can defend himself.

If these facts could theoretically be grasped by the undeserving-of-condescension, they’re unlikely to disabuse them of the belief that calling Trump to account for his crimes is senile, sleepy, but somehow evil genius Joe Biden taking down his prevailing political opponent. That there’s no evidence of presidential involvement is no more convincing to the MAGAnlightened than the lack of proof of electoral fraud. Or of President Biden’s over-hyped, under-happened criminality.

Likewise, Trump’s insistence that the indictment’s timing proves deliberate election interference because Special Prosecutor Smith could have presented it sooner, dismisses the many months of delays occasioned by Trump’s claims of executive privilege and ignoring of subpoenas. In fact, he could get past it at least a year before the 2024 election, simply by demanding the speedy trial to which he’s entitled, by law.

His newest media-flooding lawyer also wants a venue change to West Virginia, because it’s “more diverse” (wink, wink) than D.C. The reality? West Virginia: 92% White, 3% Black; DC: 40% White, 45% Black. It seems Trump is deliberately choosing idiot lawyers to strengthen his case for innocence by virtue of following bad legal advice.

If the preceding amounts only to desperation and baseless, losing arguments, there’s a powerful case Trump has yet to make: Given his childish, schoolyard insults hurled hourly on “Truthless Sociopathic,” including whining that Nancy Pelosi was being “mean” when she called him a “scared puppy,” he could legitimately argue it’s a miscarriage of justice to try him as an adult.