gracchusdixit

As millions of Americans, not to mention countless others around the world, woke up this morning, the first image they saw on their phones, televisions, or newspapers was the glowering, red-eyed visage of Donald J. Trump, staring menacingly into the camera. It was, of course, the long-awaited and instantly infamous “mug shot” of the one-time President of the United States, taken as he “surrendered” himself at the Fulton County Jail in Georgia, where he has been indicted in a sweeping “RICO” case alleging that he led a criminal conspiracy to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 presidential election.
There is little doubt that this image will define what the world thinks of Donald Trump for ages to come. The only question is how it will be received. To some, Trump’s pugnacious stare will signify the threat he poses to any and all hopes we may have of political decency. To others, it will be proof positive that he is the courageous son-of-a-bitch they imagine him to be, a fierce demigod ready and willing to bring down the liberal “pussies” they simultaneously admire, abominate, and envy.

When this corrupt demigod wormed his way into the White House seven years ago, having lost to Hillary Clinton by three million votes, he did so in no small measure by smearing his opponent with the bogus accusation that she had committed but one of the nearly one hundred crimes he has now been indicted for. The mantra of the hooligans who attended his rallies in those days was the chant, “Lock her up! Lock her up!”

This vicious nonsense was fueled by Trump’s vacuous claim that “thirty thousand emails” containing classified information had been lodged on the private server of Hillary Rodham Clinton and, as a result, a distinguished former Senator, Secretary of State, and First Lady of the United States could not be trusted with the nation’s secrets. No amount of desperate dirt-digging by the sycophants in the Trump administration was ever able to find a shred of evidence to support this slander, and it was ultimately dismissed as a nullity by his own Justice Department. That so many of the slavering nincompoops who hang on the great pumpkin’s every word nonetheless continue to swallow this malarkey beggars belief—or at least it would, if their gullibility weren’t so embarrassingly obvious.

A month ago, the craven idol these credulous fools worship was dragged into a federal courthouse in Miami, charged with crimes far more serious than any he once leveled against poor Hillary Clinton, including the misappropriation and mishandling of the nation’s most sensitive classified information, a conspiracy to cover up those crimes, and the obstruction of a lawful investigation into his unlawful behavior. A few weeks later, the same malevolent buffoon was hauled into court a second time, charged with conspiring to betray the Constitution of the United States by attempting to overturn the results of a lawful election and inciting violence to achieve that end. And just days ago, he was indicted yet again, by a grand jury in Fulton County, Georgia, which charged not only Trump himself but a long list of his enablers with participating in a “criminal enterprise” designed to steal that same election.

Although these indictments stop short of accusing Trump and his minions of “sedition”—a charge that would open a Pandora’s box of legal and political complications—“sedition” is precisely what they are all guilty of. No matter how you look at it, the January 6th assault on the nation’s capital was nothing less than an attempted coup d’état, which Donald Trump and his gang of desperadoes instigated, egged on, and declined to quell, knowing full well that their actions threatened the lives of police officers, members of Congress, and Trump’s own vice president, Mike Pence. In particular, the latest indictment reveals in stark detail that earlier efforts by these gangsters to intimidate and browbeat public officials in Georgia and other swing states were merely a run-up to the feckless coup d’état of January 6th. That the plot failed in the end, does not make it any less seditious.

Our legal system—as we are constantly reminded by the tut-tutting and finger-waving bien pensants of the media—requires that every defendant, no matter how dastardly his or her alleged crimes, must be presumed innocent until proved guilty. That may be the case inside a courtroom, but it does not apply outside a courtroom, and it certainly does not apply to those of us who are neither judges nor jurors but merely citizens.

As citizens, we are entirely free to reach our own conclusions based on the available facts, and in the matter of The United States of America vs. Donald J. Trump, the facts are utterly damning. As citizens, we are also entitled—indeed, I would assert, we are ethically obligated—to conclude that Trump and his co-conspirators must be “presumed guilty beyond a reasonable doubt,” until or unless they are able or willing to provide evidence to the contrary. Failing that, they deserve to be “locked up” for as long as the law allows.

The greatest threat we face, however, does not come from Donald Trump and the gang of low-rent ne’er-do-wells who surround him. It comes from the political movement he embodies and the political party he now controls. That movement and that party—the Republican Party—have become nothing less than a traitorous fifth column in our midst, determined to seek and retain political power, no matter the cost, even if that means eviscerating our constitutional, legal, and political institutions, even if it means destroying democracy itself.

With precious few exceptions, the spineless leaders of the Republican Party have bent the knee to Donald Trump as if he were their anointed king. Having sworn their fealty to a man regardless of the cost to their country, they now swear to back him against any and all challenges, to forget or forgive his innumerable crimes, and, if worse comes to worst, to side with the existential enemies of the United States, as long as those enemies promise to help the leader they revere get reelected. To achieve this end, Republicans across the land are moving to suppress voting rights, rig elections, and disenfranchise or criminalize those who disagree with or might threaten them.

It’s time to shed the illusion that it’s possible to reason with such people in the vain hope of reaching a civilized compromise grounded in mutual respect. There is no compromise to be reached between those who believe in democracy and those who don’t, between those who are prepared to defend it and those who seek to destroy it. No reasonable agreement between two parties is possible, when one of those parties denies reason itself.

Sad to say, this is not the first time we we have faced this situation. One hundred and sixty three years ago, the slave-owning secessionists of the Old South betrayed the country, turned their canons on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, and ignited a civil war, the most savage in our nation’s history—all, in the name of defending their “right” to own, exploit, and torture other human beings.

Now, 163 years later, we face the grim reality that one of our two major political parties is no less seditious than the slave-owners of the Old South, no less intent on achieving its political purposes regardless of the consequences, and no less treasonous.

To stop this treason in its tracks, before it tears the country apart, it will not be enough to “lock up” Donald Trump and his henchmen. Until or unless those who excuse or defend the man and his movement stand up and condemn everything they represent, they will deserve the same fate.

Until that day arrives, I say: Lock them up. Lock them all up.