Tag Archives: justice

Trump, by design, is above the law

Every now and then a person of privilege, who has done something seriously wrong, gets popped and spends some time in prison. They pay fines all the time, and spend piles of money on lawyers, so “justice” is served against those offenders, but that justice is milquetoast at best. For the most part, the privileged are above the law. Worst case scenario: drug and rape numerous women over several years, and spend three years in prison for it (Bill Cosby).

You know this is true, and you know why it is true. It is true because the system was designed by the privileged to put the privileged above the law. Duh. Of course.

I say this to help you become a happier person. Trump will never see the inside of a prison cell, or if so, such a stint will be a short one. He can’t be imprisoned because he will avoid, delay, and appeal, until each of his legal problems goes away, or he dies, whichever comes first. It will be a combination of both, almost certainly. During this period, the “Justice” Department, and various state Attorneys General, will chug along making sure the rest of us see justice, while a much smaller number of individuals, Trump included, stay free, live free, and die free, no matter what offense they do.

There are exceptions. Sometimes a person of privilege fucks up some other people of privilege, and those offenders can go to jail forever. Bernie Madoff went to prison forever, for taking 36 billion dollars from a wide range of people. I assume some of his victims were individuals of power. Plus, he failed to pay billions in taxes. That is a world apart from anything Trump ever did, as far as messing up the privileged goes. Minnesota’s Denny Hecker went to prison forever, well, for 10 years, for defrauding a third of the suburban middle class of Minnesota. So of course he’s brought to justice. But he is one of dozens (hundreds?) of similarly crooked people selling and trading and conniving who are all free, and who will will remain free. By and large, a working class stiff, especially if a person of color, can get months or years in prison for voting in the wrong place, putting their kid in the wrong school, jay-walking across the street, or sneezing too loud, and that is a good day for such an individual, because at least they were not blasted to kingdom come by the cops. A thousand people will be shot or maimed by cops, a million bilked by scammers, and tens of millions ripped off by landlords, for every privileged person who truly gets justice. Trump will never get justice.

So how does this make you a happier person? Because I’m giving you permission to stop worrying about Trump. Worry about other things. Worry about clean elections, clean cars, clean energy, clean water, and clean air, and forget about our filthy, stinking “system of justice.” Respect each other, respect our collective activism, respect our occasional successes, and and feel good about all that. Accept the fact that Trump will die an old man with no friends at his golf course in Florida, and don’t worry about what he gets or does not get in the way of justice. He is above the law, more than any individual has been, but not that much more, and he is not alone. Just learn to stop worrying, and love the injustice, as it were. You and I have better things to do.

I do grow weary when justice commenters, many of whom I adore and am addicted to listening to, come back to that old line: “No one is above the law.” Sorry, Arlene, Rachel, Chuck, Jill, Heather, Kimberly, Barb, Joanne, Neal. Just stop saying “Nobody is above the law” when talking about Trump. It makes me sad when you say that. He is above the law. You need to reconcile that and learn to live with it.

Or, maybe somebody prove me wrong.

Deplorable Holdout: How to get out of jury duty

As I noted here, we can expect to see very few convictions in the Trump-Russian scandal.

In the recent Paul Manafort trial, we now know that 11 out of 12 jurors saw the evidence to convict Manafort as overwhelming. They wanted to convict him on 18 counts. One single jury, this one, the one I warned you about, the deplorable Trump Is My Savior juror, held out on each one. Much of the time spent deliberating was spent with the 11 sane jurors trying to convince this one deplorable juror to do the right thing.

We are lucky there were any convictions at all in this trial. And, now that everyone knows that this strategy works so well (getting off on 10 felonies that you definitely committed) you can be sure that any Deplorable in the future who would otherwise try to get off jury duty in the Southern District of New York or Washington or nearby districts will not do so, just in case they get to be the wrench in the works of democracy.

Read the details of an interview with a juror, here. The interviewed juror is herself a Trump supporter, and didn’t want, she claims, Manafort to be guilty. But the evidence on all counts was overwhelming. So that’s good news, in that she did the right thing, or tried to. But if you listen to her comments carefully, you can see her treading fairly near a line that, once crossed, does not convict the guilty as long as they are Republicans, or supported by Trump.

This was not a trial about Trump, or the campaign, or the Russians. The interviewed jury actually referred to the consideration of a Trump-Russian scandal as “shenanigans,” suggesting that if she was on THAT jury she would enter the courtroom with a strong bias to acquit. As I say here, and as this particular interview confirms.

Some will suggest that no, this is not a problem of Deplorables being everywhere, but rather, one single juror perhaps being paid off by Manafort. I wouldn’t say that is impossible, and it may well be true. But when you hear hoof beats, your first guess should be horses, not zebras. One in three Americans, based on polling data, have attitudes that predict that on a jury testing the evidence in a case against Trump, his family, or anyone in his white house, will acquit. Perhaps the only way to see justice in this situation is to try to convict every single one of them on financial (or other) crimes unrelated to the Russian-Trump conspiracy. That wouldn’t really be justice, but it would be better than this country rubber stamping a Trump style presidency by doing nearly nothing to stop it officially.

There are two people who should be ashamed of themselves (other than the members of the Trump-Putin gang).

1) The juror in question here; and

2) You, if you are one of the vast majority of Americans who see getting out of jury duty as your sacred duty. It isn’t. Getting ON jury duty is what you should be doing if you have any love for civilization.

I’m done with quietly watching people in on-line communities proudly exchanging stories and information about getting out of jury duty. Don’t do that in front of me.