Well, I was hoping the Supreme Court would finally decide this week that Donald Trump could be tried for attempting to overthrow the government of the United States. But it didn’t. And I would say that the arrogance of the delay—the political odor of it—is unprecedented, but it isn’t: the memory of the Supremes voting, along party lines, to give George W. Bush the presidency in 2000 festers. The court has actually diminished since then. One of the Justices, Clarence Thomas, seems for sale. Another, Samuel Alito, clearly has anger issues that propel his right-wing (not conservative) sensibility. Three others were appointed by Donald Trump. We’ll see how they roll. But the slow-walk of this crucial case is suspicious: The American people have a right to know if their former President was a traitor—and to have it adjudicated before the election. Their dilatory loftiness is a veiled attack on democracy. And yes, on the rule of law.
Meanwhile, Trump and his cult curdle apace. They are getting weirder. The incestuous craziness is ratcheting up. Pete Wehner describes it this way:
Motivated ignorance refers to willfully blinding oneself to facts. It’s choosing not to know. In many cases, for many people, knowing the truth is simply too costly, too psychologically painful, too threatening to their core identity. Nescience is therefore incentivized; people actively decide to remain in a state of ignorance. If they are presented with strong arguments against a position they hold, or compelling evidence that disproves the narrative they embrace, they will reject them. Doing so fends off the psychological distress of the realization that they’ve been lying to themselves and to others.
Motivated ignorance rules Trumpadelphia. The intensity of the lunacy is coiling tighter, ready to spring violently—to lash out—when triggered. The ogre raised $141 million in May, mostly from small donors, after a jury of American citizens found him guilty of trying to influence the 2016 election by paying Stormy Daniels to hush up. Trump is now openly bribing big business, especially the fossil fuel fossils: he says straight out that he will give them tax and regulatory breaks if they kick in to his campaign. His lackeys in the Congress have announced they will join his retribution crusade because they believe that the New York trial was fixed. It wasn’t. It may have been a questionable case that will be overturned on appeal. But to lay waste to the rule of law because this convicted grifter and rapist was found guilty of “a misdemeanor dressed up in a tuxedo as a felony,” as Trey Gowdy put it, is officially-sanctioned anarchy. The fact is, every last Republican with an IQ north of Marjorie Taylor Greene’s knows that Trump is skating on fraudulent claims. Their perfidy will be remembered by history. Their names and reputations are forever ruined…and that most definitely include those who have remained silent.
I could go on about how ridiculous and disgusting the Republican Party has become; but that would be shooting a dead elephant. Nor will I rehearse the increasing evidence that Trump is losing it mentally. We’ll get to see his scattered derangement in real time during his debate with Biden next week. Perhaps the President is on to something with his new campaign theme: Trump is worse than before. He was always prohibitively dreadful but “something snapped” after the Mean Tangerine lost the election in 2020. Every moment that Trumps talks about (a) his sanctity or (b) 2020 or (c) the judge and jury in New York or (d) Jack Smith or (e) sharks is a moment that Biden wins next Thursday. (One hopes Joe will remember when and how to enter and exit the stage.)
I’ve tried not to indulge the melodrama attached to this election—the unlikely idea that Trump would be disciplined enough to be a successful dictator, even if he has crazy extremists like Russ Vought advising him; I expect intermittent, flatulent attempts at authoritarianism if he wins. I expect he will be thwarted by a mob of Washington politicians who want to preserve their own chance to be President in 2028. But I am beginning to wonder how we put the pieces of this country, and our damaged institutions, back together if Biden wins.
A good part of the problem is the lazy pessimism we’ve chosen for ourselves. The widespread abandonment of American exceptionalism, which I define as the historic pursuit of a common ideal by people of heterogenous roots. It’s nice to see Admiral William McRaven saying things like this in The Washington Post:
Growing up in the segregated South, my mother was not naive about our nation’s faults, but she always believed in our better angels. She believed that America was exceptional because there was goodness in our hearts, goodness that transcended our hatreds, goodness that brought us together in the worst of times, goodness that showed the world that despite our internal strife and political divisions we could rise above it all and be the best version of ourselves. This was what made America exceptional.
Now, a former president has been convicted by a jury in New York, and we have a choice to make. We can show the world that we are still exceptional and continue to lead the international community with integrity and pride, or we can prolong the onslaught of crassness, vulgarity, pettiness and righteous indignation and descend into national mediocrity, where there is nothing of value worth emulating.
I have been a vocal critic of the former president, but I took no joy in seeing him found guilty. He was the president of the United States. My president. Whether I liked him or not, he had been elected by the people, the American people — your neighbors, your colleagues, your friends and your family. If we are going to continue to be viewed as exceptional, then it is time for both sides to lay down their rhetorical arms and find a way to rise above.
McRaven is a great American, a patriot. I once spent an afternoon with him, talking about democracy. He was horrified by the noisy brutality that had overtaken public life. This was after he gave the famous commencement speech at the University of Texas in which he advised young people to make their beds:
If you make your bed every morning you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride, and it will encourage you to do another task and another and another.
I’ve been rooting for him to run for office ever since. I don’t care which party. I don’t much care about his positions on the issues; we may disagree on this or that. But I suspect that he will come to his beliefs after careful thought—and the exercise of moral character, and a bedrock faith in democracy. You ask me what I’d like to see in a President? I’d like to see that.
For Example…
I’d also like to see a candidate for President who tells people things they don’t want to hear. Bobby Kennedy—the father not the demented son—was one of those. My former colleague Evan Thomas wrote a wonderful book about Bobby and, this week, this piece for John Ellis’ Political News Items. I’ve written about RFK in the past. I devoted the first chapter of my book Politics Lost to Kennedy’s amazing speech in Indianapolis when Martin Luther King died. But Evan reminds us of a speech Bobby gave a few weeks later:
On April 26, 1968, Robert F. Kennedy stood before an audience of doctors and medical students at the University of Indiana. He gripped the podium to steady his shaking hands. The students, who were mostly white and middle class, asked him where he was going to get the money to pay for medical programs for the poor.
“From you,” Kennedy answered.
There were boos and hisses, but he kept on. “You sit here as white medical students while Black people carry the burden of fighting in Vietnam.” Silence from the crowd. Kennedy kept banging on with uncomfortable truths, and a strange thing started to happen. The audience began to applaud. Kennedy won the Indiana primary.
Neither of the two bravos running for President can be expected to do anything like that this year. One is too selfish and the other too scared. But here’s an experiment: Check your local races. Search for a candidate willing to say something meaningful, but unpopular—something you disagree with, but respect—and then vote for them. In 2028, that should be the threshold test for any serious candidate….And only YOU can hold them to it.
Willie and Freedom
I saw him play. I was lucky enough to be a kid in New York in the 1950s. I saw him play in the Polo Grounds and Ebbits Field, magic places. I was a Giants fan because my dad and grandfather had been Giants fans—the Giants were the Tammany team and we were a Tammany family, though that’s another story. But I became a true baseball fan because of Willie. The way he played helped make me the person, the writer, I became. That is not an exaggeration. There was a wild joy to it, a creativity. He changed the shape of a baseball diamond. His hat would fly off when he chased a ball or a base; he wore his cap small on purpose. Everything he did was either classic—his batting stance—or distinctive. His signature basket catch was an act of casual disdain, followed by a studiously laconic, near-underhand toss back to the infield if the bases were empty.
I saw him make THE catch on television; 1954 was my first season of serious fandom. Sitting in left center field at Ebbets Field on my 10th birthday, I saw Willie crash into the wall just below me and make a fabulous catch. And then, in 1963, freezing in the upper deck in San Francisco, I saw him throw out a runner at the plate during a game that went 16 innings, both Warren Spahn and Juan Marichal throwing shutouts all the way…until Willie won it with a home run. And when he came home to the Mets, well past his prime, my brother and I were there and yelled ourselves hoarse to welcome him back. When Willie’s death was announced last week, my brother messaged me from Thailand—he and my son (in New York) and I were watching the Mets broadcast. We saw Keith Hernandez choke up at the news.
Willie was youth—not just mine, but the idea of youth itself. And he was more, for me: he predicted the civil rights movement. It was obvious, given his natural superiority in every way over his lumbering white opponents, that blacks were not inferior. And better still, they were cool. In that way, he also predicted the 1960s for me: the idea that things could be done differently, with anarchic energy, with flair, with a sense of why-not, let’s give it a try. He is gone now and so is my youth and so, too, is that great American sense of exuberant possibility. We are dragged down by cynicism and pessimism and predictable cardboard entertainment. Where do we find the joys of yesteryear?
Fair Warning
Lots will be happening in the coming week. Maybe even a significant court decision. I’m going to try an experiment: writing every day. Let’s see how good my alleged sanity works in real time. If you like what’s going on in this Tammany precinct, you might consider subscribing—for free or, better still, paid:
I could call this column A Tale of Two Writers. One cites thoughtful remarks by a distinguished retired officer, recalls memorable speeches by a fallen political martyr, and remembers with appropriate affection a great athletic hero of yesteryear. The other trivializes his otherwise-merited opposition to a presidential candidate by referring to him as an ogre, a grifter, prohibitively dreadful, and a Mean Tangerine. Joe, calm down and do a little more self-censoring.
As for the Supreme Court, I call your attention to a recent study reported in Politico --of all places--which noted that today's court rules unanimously nearly half the time, and when it splits often does so in ways not predicted by the pundit class. That study concluded that the court is better characterized as 3-3-3 than 6-3. The court, whose predecessor found broad presidential immunity from civil suit, has the ultimate responsibility to determine what, if any, presidential actions are also immune from criminal prosecution. That is a sobering responsibility and should be determined on an adequate record from the courts below. It isn't the court's fault that Merrick Garland took forever to bestir himself. Again Joe, start thinking like Learned Hand, not Mme. Defarge or Inspector Javert.
Lest you and my fellow readers misunderstand where I am coming from, let me close this critique by assuring that I am no more likely than you to cast a vote for Donald Trump come November.
Joe is getting it. We have to get,it into our heads that the Supreme Court’s is corrupt. We can’t do anything about it right now, but we have tô understand it. This court is deliberately delaying the immunity issue so there can’t be a trial. It is important that we really realize this - this is not remotely normal. One of the major institutions of’America is actively working with the forces trying to destroy American democracy. I’ve come,to understand that over the last few months, what I do not understand is the behavior of the so called liberal minority. (Liberal in the old fashioned sense of defending democracy) Thre of them have been cowards. When will they recognize that they do not belong to some august body trying to do good for the America people. They are part of an a bad, ill conceived institution that has done far more harm,to America than good is now poised to destroy the country. I sure hope they stop going out for tea with Jistice Barrett.