On Saturday September 18 a few hundred deluded individuals showed up in Washington DC to demand justice for the criminals jailed for the January 6 insurrection.
Where were the hundreds of thousands of Americans who should be demanding justice for themselves? For four long years we the people were lied to, swindled, disrespected, disregarded, and flimflammed by a pretender to the presidency, a parasite on the body politic, who cares for nothing and no one outside his own skin, and who came frighteningly close to dismantling our democracy for no better reason than because he could.
And yet Donald Trump remains free to work his mischief and manage his cult.
We all know that Trump is a criminal. We all have a pretty good idea of the crimes he has committed. We all want to know why he isn't locked up.
I expect a number of us have a fantasy in which DJTrump is snatched, hooded, thrown into the back of a windowless van, delivered to a secret penal facility, and habeas corpus be damned.
My personal fantasy is based on a short story from 1955 by Steve Allen, called "The Public Hating." Simply put, a traitor is strapped to a chair in the center of an arena, and the huge audience he betrayed focus their loathing at him, literally hating him to death.¹
I think that would be wonderfully poetic.
Only there's that pesky idea called presumption of innocence. It's not spelled out in the Constitution, probably because it has been a cornerstone of civilized legal systems for so long the Framers took it for granted.
It is one reason why the legal process is slow. It is slow because it has to be done right. If there is the faintest flicker of reasonable doubt in the prosecutor's case the accused could well go free. But while the process plods on, we feel the need for speed because the 2022 elections are coming at us, and we want to know something that will assure us of Trump's criminality.
Just Security, a litigation tracking site,² lists a total of 16 federal and state major criminal and civil cases pending against Trump in DC, Georgia, Michigan, New York, and Scotland.
Complaints include conspiracy to disrupt congressional proceedings, defamation, election tampering, fraud, incitement to violence, money laundering, personal injury, tax and insurance fraud, and violation of civil rights.
Yet the most crucial and necessary charges that should be brought to bear on him, those that would prohibit his ever again seeking public office, are absent. He could be found guilty and imprisoned on any of the charges listed above and still run for any office, including president.
To the best of my knowledge there are only two potentially applicable crimes that, if he were found guilty, could prohibit Trump ever from holding office again: Treason (18 USC 2381) and Rebellion or insurrection (18 USC 2383). Prosecutors at every level seem to be dancing around the more serious charges.
In 2020, 81,284,666 Americans voted against Donald Trump. Could not even one thousandth of one percent of them--813 people--organize to petition the government for redress of their grievances? As citizens of the nation that was victimized by its alleged former leader we surely have grounds and standing.
If 813 people gathered each week, or each day, in different parts of the country and the gatherings were covered by media, might that not call some attention to the importance of prosecuting the man who has done so much damage to our nation and society? And still does, through his minions?
Justice for the people!
--- Diogenes, 9/23/2021
¹ Allen, Steve. The Public Hating: A Collection of Short Stories. Dembner Books, 1990.