There’s an old half curse/half blessing of unknown origin that goes, “May you live in interesting times.” I was reminded of it the other day while doing some mental wool gathering of my own “times” spanning the second half of the 20th century through nearly a quarter of the 21st. And I was of course thinking, well, they certainly have not been short of interest.
Then I started mentally ticking off some of the notable, dramatic events most readily presenting themselves for consideration. (I should note that this list— stricktly my own, yours might be different—is limited to the crises that most stood out and challenged the very foundation and identity of our nation; many momentous events occurred of a far more positive hue, but that’s another blog post…)
First: the stamping upon the world’s consciousness of the true reach of the atomic age as schoolchildren (I was one of them) dove under desks in regular nuclear bomb drills designed to…do what, exactly? Perhaps save our lives if we were far enough from the blast’s epicenter, only to allow for a more ghastly death from radiation poisoning in subsequent days?
I remember the absurdity of that entire exercise beginning to impress itself upon me even then.
This time the assault came from within, executed by our own people, planned, inspired and led by the sitting president himself in a desperate, relentless, and still remorseless bid to hold onto power.
And then came the race riots of the 1960s and the horror and debacle of the Vietnam War, all of which revealed a nation far more at war with itself than with any foreign power.
The assassinations of JFK, MLK, RFK, all their rhetoric of hope seemingly turned to dust in the brute fact of their murders in a nation that now truly appeared to be coming apart at the seams.
Followed just a few years later by the impeachment and ultimate resignation of a paranoid president brought down by the coverup of a cheap bit of campaign chicanery.
The Iran hostage crisis, the Bush-Gore election stand-off, the horror of 9/11, the 2007 global financial crisis, the hollowing out of the working class.
All of it leading to the rise of Donald Trump, with its destruction of norms in our political and cultural discourse the likes of which we had never seen before.
And then: January 6.
It is a day, to borrow Franklin Roosevelt’s phrase after the attack on Pearl Harbor, “that will live in infamy,” with one dramatic and excruciating difference:
This time the assault came from within, executed by our own people, planned, inspired and led by the sitting president himself in a desperate, relentless, and still remorseless bid to hold onto power in direct violation of our Constitution and our nearly 250-year-history as a beacon of democracy beholden to the rule of law.
By those lights, it is clearly the worst of all the other dramatic, difficult events alluded to above.
And now the president who was incontestably the driving force behind it is in the crosshairs of various investigators who will ultimately be answering the question on the collective lips of a good part of our nation: “Where do we go from here?”
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Many words have and will continue to be spent grappling with that question. And though it is a tortuous one in many respects, in the end, I simply do not see how we can or should avoid the prosecution of Donald Trump if we are to retain our identity as a democratic nation where no one—not even presidents—is above the law.
Yes, there are potentially explosive downsides to taking that course.
Would it more deeply divide an already grievously divided nation? Almost certainly.
Might it cause outbreaks of violence from the same kind of extremists who attacked the Capitol on January 6?
Yes again. We need only look to the continuing activities of armed militias such as the “Oathkeepers,” the “Proud Boys” and others who are now more organized and mainstreamed than ever before and would be ready to take up arms all over again on behalf of their hero, this time with likely more lethal results.
Prosecution might ignite those flames, and conviction burst them into a raging wildfire, particularly if Trump himself were to call for violence.
Three even worse scenarios loom.
One: Trump is charged but acquitted at trial, his heroism in the eyes of supporters at even more stratospheric heights, him newly empowered and out for vengeance against every one of his detractors. That is a real risk of proceeding with prosecution, no doubt.
Two: He is convicted and jailed amidst a campaign in which he is a leading Republican candidate or even the nominee. A martyr-drenched campaign from a prison cell is so cringe-worthy as to defy the imagination in a country as riven as this one is.
Third: He is prosecuted, acquitted, runs and loses the election again. Having paid no cost for his 2020 malfeasance, what chance is there that Trump would accept his defeat and retire quietly to Mar-a-Lago in 2024? I would say close to none, with all the dire implications of subsequent violence referenced above.
Those are almost the worst possible things that could happen to our country—with one exception.
And that is to avoid prosecuting the case simply because we are afraid of the backlash that might ensue.
Given the enormous weight of evidence we were able to observe first-hand and then hear elaborated in wrenching detail by the January 6 congressional committee, not to pursue charges commensurate with Trump’s direct plotting, planning and incitement of that day’s violence would leave us with an irretrievably broken democracy.
It would effectively signal the end of the rule of law, almost guaranteeing that some future president—maybe him in 2024!—will also use the power of his or her office to malign effect, because the legal constraints our Constitution imposes will have been proven unequal to the challenge Trump successfully executed against it.
And: It will declare open season for lawless, norm-free politicians of Trump’s ilk and even worse, who are emboldened to pursue similar or even darker agendas, our democracy as we know it effectively neutered, “free” in name only.
The stakes are that enormous, and no blithe dismissals of them as “Trump derangement syndrome” can minimize or rationalize them. We are clearly at the most dangerous point in this nation’s history since the Civil War. It is essential to bear that in mind in the weeks and months ahead as this momentous decision looms for Attorney General Merrick Garland and his Department of Justice.
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Interesting times indeed. To me it comes down whether or not there’s a reasonable chance that Trump can be convicted. I’m not sure there is. As you point out, if he’s charged and acquitted, we’ve given oxygen to his campaign. Let’s see what legal experts and Merrick Garland decide. If there’s a decent chance for a conviction, he should be charged and I can live with the outcome.
Right, Al—I think in the end, Garland has to make a determination based on whether the case against Trump passes the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard that will guide a jury. My biggest fear is that while such a case might be made strongly, say, against a governor engaged in the same shenanigans as Trump, Garland may decide that prosecuting a president is of a different, more troublesome order, and he will thus decide against proceeding, even though he determined the case against him is a strong one. If that occurs, we will have learned that presidents really are above the law—and future nefarious presidential contenders (including Trump) will have learned it, too. In that direction lies darkness, I fear.
Merrick Garland must go forward with a charge. It’s that simple. Will a significant number of Americans call it a DOJ witch hunt? No doubt they will. Will some react violently? It wouldn’t surprise me. Will the Supreme Court intervene with some sort of decision involving executive privilege? The Court might rule that the 1974 United States v. Nixon case, which stated that privilege is not absolute, does not apply to Trump because he’s not a sitting president. Almost every nightmarish scenario I can dream up is a possibility. However, the worst possible one would be for Garland to do nothing.
Yes, it is a fraught situation, to be sure, Robert—no easy-peasy slipping out from the knots Trump put the entire country in with his election denialism. Seems to me either way Garland goes, there will be hell to pay, so then he may as well do the right thing, yes? As you say: “It’s that simple.”
Well put Andrew, there is no doubt that Trump deserves to do time in a striped jumpsuit but it sure seems like a distant hope that MG will prosecute unless some kind of “john dean” bomb shell explodes nearby. The evidence in Georgia with his own clear voice begging for a few thousand more votes may be the best legal bet, but of course nothing is guaranteed. Trump, like various Mafia dons before him, has spent a lifetime fighting off lawsuits, buying influence and otherwise circumventing the law – it would be oh so sweet to see this narcissistic gollum go down but it may have to be done at the polls.
Well now, things sure got shaken up a tad yesterday, didn’t they? Kind of breathtaking, really, and such a very interesting move by the FBI. And of course, the right wing media MAGAverse and its political class went berserk, as was predictable. They were always going to follow Trump to the gates of hell whether the DOJ pursued charges or not. And within their entire mountain of vitriol and vows of vengeance, you will find not one teensy mention of the events that brought it on: an attempted election nullification and coup by the sitting president on the democracy they are pledged to uphold.
If we do nothing out of fear, we will bring upon ourselves what we fear.
Exactly, Jay. It’s amazing how often we are not up to this elemental bit of wisdom; we seem to have to keep facing and relearning it at every critical point in history—whether our own personal history or any given nation’s.