Waiting for the end of the world 4, crime in high places

This one is a little longer.

―――――

Then there is the proliferation of indictments against ex-President Trump, and the blossoming of financial scandals around President Biden. These are wearying. What's more, it seems like everyone else in the country is convinced that this batch of stories is absolutely true, while that batch is absolutely false, and it all goes to show that The Other Party are a bunch of criminal lying scoundrels. Me, I have no idea which stories are true. I have no idea who is guilty of what. But I can speak to how the stories sound from the outside.

• The accusations against President Trump are persuasive only to those who already hated him to begin with. This is for several reasons. 
  
  
• They are not self-explanatory. That is, they all require a lot of talking in order to explain them. If somebody doesn't start off hating Trump from the beginning, it's a lot of work to explain what exactly he did wrong. 
  
  
• 
  Trump incited an insurrection on January 6! Well, maybe. He tweeted some stuff critical of the vote-counting process, but he also tweeted that protestors should keep it peaceful. And we have learned that there were federal agents in the crowd acting to incite the kind of activity that later broke out, so it gets foggy when you try to determine how much influence Trump himself had. There have also been video clips released which suggest that the process of entering the Capitol was not as violent as it looked at first. I don't claim that this proves anything. But the whole picture is complicated and messy.
  
  
• 

  Trump stole documents and took them to Mar-a-Lago! Sure, we all saw the photos. But what was in those boxes? Were they nuclear secrets, or were they travel brochures? Also, the charges were brought under the Espionage Act, and there have been prominent voices arguing that the Espionage Act is a dumpster-fire piece of legislation. Others have argued that the Espionage Act has to cede priority to the Presidential Records Act, and maybe what he took might have been permitted under that latter Act. Again, I don't claim that this proves anything. But again, the picture is complicated and messy.
  
  
• They look politically-motivated. The Democratic Party has been throwing one accusation after another against Trump ever since he was inaugurated. Most of them failed to get traction. But each failure made the ones after it look weaker and less plausible. So from the perspective of believability—how the stories sound from the outside—the Democrats have made themselves look like The Boy Who Cried Wolf. At this point, nobody is going to believe any new charges against Trump except the people who are already primed to believe any charges whatsoever.
  
  
• Remember that I have said nothing about whether Trump is innocent or guilty of any of these charges. I wasn't there, I don't understand the relevant laws, and I don't have nearly enough information to judge that! But from the perspective of plausibility and believability, the Democrats have been digging themselves into a hole. 
   

• The accusations against President Biden are, superficially, a lot easier to believe because they are easier to imagine. 
  
  
• 

  I've just said that it is hard to understand what exactly Trump is alleged to have done wrong according to the charges brought against him. That's what I meant when I said that explaining the charge requires a lot of talking. And it doesn't help that the people who believe in Trump's culpability generally believe that he is guilty of everything! So it can be hard to get them to focus long enough to explain.
  
  
• On the other hand, everyone knows what bribery is. Everyone knows that it is wrong. Everyone knows that it is one of only two specific charges (along with treason) overtly listed in the Constitution as grounds for impeachment.
  
  
• Does that mean Biden is guilty of bribery? I have no idea. Again, I wasn't there and I don't have enough information. That's something a court should decide, or else the Senate.  

But whom can I discuss this with? Marie turns almost apoplectic when she simply hears the name "Trump." Debbie is no better. And if I try to say that the Democrats are losing the war for hearts and minds (which is another way of talking about plausibility), I'll be accused of taking sides on the substantive issues of guilt or innocence. The prospect of being so badly misunderstood, and of triggering such hostility from two women I love so well, is exhausting. Not going to go there.

―――――

What does it mean that these indictments and accusations are flying around? Well of course it's always possible that one or another of them might be true, plausibility be damned. And if one of them is true, then yes the system has to work itself out. That's what we are set up to do. But it makes me very sad.

Partly the optics are really terrible. Prosecuting political opponents is supposed to be something that Bad Countries do, not us. The look is so bad that honestly, I should think that a party would do anything else in their power rather than prosecute an opponent, because prosecution (in this context) would make the prosecuting party look so bad! You can talk all you like about the rule of law, and about how nobody is above the law. But you will never persuade anyone who didn't already agree with you from the beginning.

That's why I said, above, that the indictments of Trump look politically-motivated. As for the Biden accusations … well of course I don't know the reality of it. But the allegations state that Hunter Biden's business of selling access to his father went back many years. If there had been corruption at a level that could be proven in court, why wasn't there a prosecution when Biden was in the Senate? Or when he was Vice-President? Or when he was a private citizen, between offices? Why are we only hearing about it now? Could it have anything to do with the fact that he is now President? And if so, then how is this accusation any different from the many accusations that the Democrats threw at Trump over the years? (I'm speaking in particular of the ones that slid off, and am not trying to guess the outcome of the current cases.)

And if we have gotten to the point that we have to co-opt the legal system in order to conduct basic politics, then it looks like we have forgotten how to do politics itself. But at that point what is left of our system? Somehow it feels like Ancient Rome, maybe in the last days of the Republic: in any event, a time when government is done by exception and outside the formal channels, because all the proper channels are blocked. (Quick: what's the modern ratio of laws passed by Congress to Executive Orders issued by the President? What was it 100 years ago?) Maybe it's just that I'm already depressed. But it feels like the end of something.