Let’s dispense with the obvious stuff right here: Mango Unchained tried to commit election fraud at the highest possible level. Considering what he was hoping to accomplish, I think it’s fair to say he’s riiiiight on the line of committing treason. He certainly violated his oath of office and the Constitution, and his actions show a clear disregard for the atrocities his supporters were happy to commit in his name. 

Any reasonable judge and jury would need but minutes of deliberation on any of those things. He publicly said he did it! Even before the Jan. 6 commission got cracking, we knew about plenty of broad strokes of illegality: pressuring state officials, false electors, meetings to come up with a legal strategy to violate the Constitution (and for once to violate something that the Constitution is actually pretty fucking clear on.) Indeed, he still can’t shut up about any of it — he’s the prosecution’s star witness!  

As the J6 hearings roll forward, there’s been some calls for actual legal remedies to be applied to Trump for [waves vaguely at the dozens of laws he’s violated in the past 6 years]. SplinterRIP posted some quotes from the NYT story about it in the DOT but I wanted to highlight one in particular:

If Mr. Garland concludes that Mr. Trump has committed convictable crimes, he would face the third and hardest decision: whether the national interest would be served by prosecuting Mr. Trump. This is not a question that lawyerly analysis alone can resolve. It is a judgment call about the nature, and fate, of our democracy.

Watching Trump get perp-walked — preferably with him trying not to topple over while slowly navigating a ramp — would be a video I would watch several thousand times and would make me feel indescribable joy. Outrageous joy. If I were watching the video alone in my bed, possibly without clothes on … maybe orgasmic joy. 

Ahem.

There are a few problems with my fantasy here, and a big, obvious one is: There’s never been a trial like this and it’s unlikely — and probably a lot closer to “downright fucking impossible”— to have anything approaching a fair or impartial hearing over his crimes. It would be incumbent not to turn it into a Stalin-era show trial and, at the same time, every last decision would be appealed to the Supreme Court in real time, a court packed with people whose legacies would be just as much in the firing line if Papaya Pol Pot went down. He might well get off. And of course, as soon as we had one trial of this nature, we’d have dozens run by the GOP for stuff like “Biden fell off his bike” and “AOC said a mean thing about guns” and “Did you know that Congresswoman is a Muslim?!?!” 

But what is not a question, and it’s frankly breathtaking that the NYT would even suggest it is, is whether or not “the national interest would be served by prosecuting Mr. Trump.” What on Earth is more in the national interest than holding people accountable for their actions when they are in elected office? How far have we strayed that the very idea of responsibility is just seen as too difficult so … oh well? “The bad thing happened but we need to move on” is the language of the abuser. And trying to placate an abuser does little other than potentially delay more abuse. 

That the GOP talks like this is axiomatic; they’re so over democracy that they don’t even want to pretend. Why the New York Times would even entertain it is a more interesting question of whether they’re so badly abused they can’t even recognize the problem — or if they’re just another abuser.

Because the thing is that Trump’s an ugly problem, but people in power deciding not to play by the rules set for you and I is a much broader issue and, frankly, a much bigger concern. You don’t have to look real deeply to see that our officials never face consequences for their actions or decisions. Nixon got a pardon “for the good of the nation.” Reagan got a pass. Kids and teachers can get vaporized by AR-15s all the live long day, but protest a rage-fueled alcoholic over a judicial decision that’ll also kill people and the Senate will come sprinting back to Washington to protect him. Martha Stewart can go to jail for stock fraud, but Congressional insider trading is endlessly fair game. W and Cheney ginned up a war. Henry Kissinger’s lies killed thousands. And yes, even Obama and his drone strikes. 

All of those people violated the law just as brazenly as Mango Unchained and none of them have ever had to worry about facing any sort of punishment. And the question is, then and now: Why not? Why do we just accept a system where those people never get called to account — and how can we be surprised that the system fails precisely because those people have zero fear of consequence for their actions?

So yeah, please put Trump on trial. But if we want to have a country with even the barest hint of democracy, we can’t just call it a day after that. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of other people who should face wrath for their actions, too — and while it’s mostly Republicans, it is by no means only them. But until we ensure the people who are supposedly there to create and uphold our laws abide by them, we’ll always be one vote away from having it all come apart.