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.

Pinochet In Portland

Maybe it was a dream. When Barack Obama was president, and now it sure seems like a dream (intelligence, integrity, competence, humor, nice family, no indictments), weren’t a bunch of self-described “patriots” hoarding guns and ammo like toilet paper in a pandemic? Predicting government troops would be rounding up civilians and hauling them away? Building bunkers, promising to defend our “freedoms” with their lives?

Funny thing: what they predicted with the certainty of Covid-hoaxers and climate-change deniers has come to pass, just down I-5. Anonymous, heavily-armed federal agents, uninvited, snatching citizens off the streets, hauling them away in unmarked vans. Citizens who, for the most part, had been protesting non-violently. No identification on those armed government kidnappers, no warrants. Swinging truncheons, gassing, shooting rubber bullets. Maybe I shouldn’t have said “funny.”

Unlike those fevered “patriots,” people having more than two Betz cells to rub together knew this would never happen under President Obama. Same with those imaginary “antifa” demonstrations, to which the tumescent, mega-armed, MAGA-hatted have been showing up, ready to lay down their lives for Old Glory, Confederate flags, and the occasional swastika. That those events were obvious troll-jobs didn’t occur to them, even after the third or fourth time.

Maybe those heroic one-minute men knew President Obama was never going to lead UN tanks and ISIS soldiers up their driveways; knew they’d not need to make good on their rodomontade. But where are they now, as Portland is Pinocheted? Citizens are being disappeared, though less permanently, as if America were 1970s Chile. As if our “president” were the third-world strongman to which he aspires, against which those faux militias promised defiance. Having claimed resistance as its primary purpose, the NRA is missing, too. Moms are there, though, arm in arm, braving the gas. Who are the real patriots?

Our heavily-armed, Obama-hating heroes weren’t really concerned, then, about out-of-control government coming for people exercising their rights. Turns out it’s fine when a tyrannical leader kidnaps and batters citizens, as long as they’re libtard commies. Some might call that short-sighted collaboration.

A brave guy is Donald “Found-a-dementia-test-difficult” Trump. Afraid to serve in Vietnam, as this columnist did, he’s courageously ordering troops into Democrat-run cities, unleashing beatings, gassing people who seek only fairness, to galvanize his base. Anxious to have them forget his disastrous pandemic response and the Russian bounty disgrace, this he’ll do. And, more blind than those he gassed, Trumpists are delighted. Beating up liberals absolves 140,000 American deaths, Constitution be damned.

Because of the “Patriot Act,” some say Trump has authority to send troops to protect federal property. Okay, fine. Deploy them to steps of federal buildings and pedestals of statues, to hold off the chalk, donuts, and spray cans. But assailing peaceful crowds; breaking bones of a Navy veteran whose offense was challenging them to uphold their oath; beating on-scene medics; firing tear gas at resolute, non-aggressive moms? That’s what history’s Pinochets do. And when enough citizens excuse it, because it’s not them, that’s how they consolidate power.

America was built on protest. Dumping tea into Boston Harbor; women marching, year after year, for suffrage, assaulted, jailed; MLK, Jr, John Lewis, and other brave souls, risking lives for equal rights, paying with life and blood; Stonewall. Absent the right to assemble to petition for redress of grievances, who would we be, and who will we become? First among the ten, that right is inseparable from America’s greatness. Or was, before Trump began striking at the heart of it.

Though he and his “news” liars pretend otherwise, Portland wasn’t being overrun, nor were people hiding in their homes, local police overwhelmed as terrorists roamed a city in flames. Like Seattle, it’s a couple blocks of inconvenience, as city life otherwise goes on as usual. If there are situations that might justify Federales overtaking local law enforcement, this isn’t. And what has Trump’s banana-republic despotism accomplished? More resistance. Which he’ll turn into context-free doomsday ads.

If Trumpist-Republicans are unconcerned when their “president,” sinking in the polls, turns federal troops upon pro-equality demonstrations; if they ignore the ominous implications because it’s a “liberal” city and the demonstrators aren’t red-hatted, they’re deaf to America’s death-rattle.

Every American, including Trumpists, should be horrified by what’s happening. Those who aren’t, because it’s only “lefties” being brutalized, are anything but patriots. They’d have ratted on the Boston tea-dumpers, thrown rocks at suffragettes, and taunted innocent Black children as they bravely integrated schools.

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