Trump’s Conviction, Washington, & the Appeal of a High-Throughput Guillotine

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1,190 words

Everybody and his dog is writing about the Trump conviction, so I guess I’ll add my few grains to the sand pile. Otherwise I’d kill something, preferably a New York judge. Or several of them.

On the observable principle that each succeeding President is worse than his predecessor, Biden has, barely, taken the title for godawful worthlessness and foreign-policy bafflement. But the question is not whether Trump has the morals of a politician, or whether he and some porn queen made the beast with two backs. How many readers would have done the same, given a shot at Stormy? The point is that the uniparty, the bicephalous brigandage that is the real government, has turned the entire political apparatus of Washington against Trump, while ignoring the behavior of its own miscreants.

The media make constant reference to the “insurrection” supposedly martialed by Trump against the Capitol. What “insurrection,” for God’s sake?

During the Floyd riots, mobs surrounded the White House and threatened to assault it, resisting police who ordered them to disperse. In Portland they took over land in the city and declared it independent of the government, while attacking police with Molotov cocktails and bricks, both being deadly weapons. In Minneapolis they burned a police station. This was insurrection on a massive scale. Martial law should have been declared, with the announcement, “Looters will be shot.”

Who was prosecuted for insurrection? Why weren’t they? Because Floyd was black. The looters were black. The white rioters were heavily middle class and Democrat. They were against Trump.

Yet, savage sentences have been handed out to the mob of overexcited ding-a-lings and damned fools who invaded the Capitol. Yes, their behavior was illegal, and yes, they deserved punishment — but not the wildly disproportionate time they got. The idea that it was an attempted coup can only be sold to yokels with no faint idea of what a coup is or how coups are done.

All of this is utterly political. Who is prosecuted for what depends on almost anything but law. Trump was tried for a mildly sordid affair with a porn star, but Biden has not been prosecuted for being neck-deep in corruption in Ukraine along with his dirtball son. Curious, isn’t it, that a President known for this corruption frantically sends more and more money to Kiev? What do the Ukrainians know that we don’t? Diddling a porn star is without meaning. Being corruptly involved with the government of a country militarily entangled with America in a shooting war leaves open a real question of who is getting paid for what, and who has what dirt on whom.

There is a saying in sports reporting that you can bullshit the fans, but you can’t bullshit the players. When Violeta and I go to Washington, we stay with journalist friends — and they are friends — on Capitol Hill, across the street from Lincoln Park. One is a high-end executive with a major network. The Hill crawls with media rabble and opinion mechanics. All of these people are wildly partisan against Trump. What they do cannot remotely be called journalism. One has in her kitchen, always on, a television, tuned to MSNBC. I’ll guess that 70% of its non-commercial time consists of raving, raving, raving against Trump. There is no trace of reportorial self-respect, the principle of always seeking the other side, of fact-checking. In newspapering a saying used to be, “If your mother says she loves you, check it out.” Not now. Pure political advocacy.

At higher levels of the media anthill, people are not stupid. Yet, many seem to know little of the world beyond the ring road. Nor do they care. They do not even try to practice real journalism. Another dictum in the reporter’s trade was, “A burro is an ass. A burrow is a hole in the ground. A reporter should know the difference.” They usually don’t, at least as regards the mysterious and inexplicable reaches of Flyover Land.

You can buy Greg Johnson’s The Year America Died here.

For all the brains that many of them deploy, they are not savvy pols. In Trump’s first victory, Washington had no idea why he won, why people voted for him, no idea of the anger in the country and why it was there.

On Capitol Hill, you sit around the kitchen drinking good wine and wondering whether to order out for Thai or maybe from this chic Mongolian kitchen, or perhaps go to this really great Turkish restaurant. Even in the kitchen it can be at least a hundred bucks for two people, delivered by motorcycle, including wine and tip. I’m not sure, because no one bothers to check.

In Middle America, where sometimes the water isn’t fit to drink, the Deplorables think that Saturday night out for the family at KFC is a treat. A meal at an Indian restaurant in classy Washington would be remembered for a lifetime. Vi and I were recently guests in DC at an all-you-can-eat Brazilian joint where doing the squat-and-gobble will set you back at least a cool C-note each. The place was packed. This is Washington. Those people hadn’t been in a KFC since college, if then.

The contempt of Washo-York elites for most of the country is intense, and the hostility is reciprocated. If Trump goes to jail, I will vote for him because of his incarceration, and if he doesn’t, from loathing of Washington. So there.

Probably none of this matters. America is so far gone in chicanery, bribery, price-fixing, and general immorality that repair is not possible. The country may go parboiled in an ego-fueled nuclear explosion. It may die gurgling as it drowns in moral slime. But I will vote for Trump , in jail or not, from sheer loathing of the whole fetid cloacal gush in Washington. He isn’t fit to be head of toilet maintenance in a Ugandan bus station, but neither is Joe, It will be a joy to see the faces on Capitol Hill if Trump pulls it off.

As I write, it is national election day in Mexico, where I live. To vote here, you need your INE — Instituto Nacional Electoral — card, which has your photo, home address, CURP (a sort of social security number), and signature, and serves as a de facto national identification that is necessary for most official applications and often for things like hotel registration. There also three QR codes, which I don’t know what they are, but maybe related to fingerprints, which are taken when getting the card. After voting, you put your thumb on a pad of black ink that is almost impossible to remove in a day, at least not without taking the thumb with it. As a rule to which there are few exceptions, all Mexican citizens can vote in federal elections, no matter where they are or how they got there. If your domicile is in, say, Jalisco, you can also vote for Governor, Mayor, and other venues that apply to you. If you are incapacitated, there are officials who will come to your home to register your vote, which is kept secret.

Seems reasonable, but maybe worth a try, anyway.