Donald Trump in two years……

 

Trump: “Well, boys, it sure is great making America great here in this fine minimum-security prison. The orange jump-suit matches my complexion. Happy to be sharing a cell with you great Americans.”

 

Proud Boy: “Yes, sir, Mr. President. You will always be our president and making America great again.  It’s an honor to share a cell with you, too.”

 

Trump: “If you had been more careful, we could have been in the White House now, instead of the Big House. I told you to march peacefully.  When I said fight like hell and stay strong, I did not want you to really hang Mike Pence.  That was not good optics. After all he was loyal all the way, except when I told him to overturn the election.  I told you to stand back and stay strong.  That did not mean break down the doors and kill policemen.

 

Proud Boy: “Yes, Mr. President, maybe we should not have stormed the Capitol. And that hangman’s noose and gallows was not a good idea either.   And we never got a hold of Nancy Pelosi.  We would have surely hanged her. But I did get to put my feet up on her desk and take a video, so the deep state FBI could ID me.”

 

Trump:  I forgive you even though this is all your fault.   But that’s ok boys, we will get there in the next election.  I am making arrangements to have the Constitution amended allow past presidents to pardon themselves. And Justice Alito even said he can interpret the law to allow me to pardon myself without an amendment. This trip to prison was all rigged.  The jury was rigged, the Biden Justice department was rigged, just as this last attempt to get the GOP nomination was rigged against me.  And I thought I would get away with it all until Garland finally appointed that mad dog Jack Smith, a war crimes prosecutor, a real inspector Jovert, to get me.  I thought Garland was such a wimp he would wait until after the election to appoint Smith. Biden must have put a boot up his ass.  Those RINOs in the party gave the nomination to Asa Hutchinson, that Casper Milquetoast.  How is he going to make America great?  He even told people that I was unfit to be president.  What kind of Republican is that?  The least thing they could have done would have been to give the nomination to Ron DeSantis.  At least he was mean enough and cruel enough to send those migrants to Martha’s Vineyard.  He even used taxpayer dollars to do it!   He is trying to be just like me, but he’s just a poor imitation, like Hunt’s Ketchup instead of Heinz.  And by the way, that’s what they are giving us here at the mess hall.  They don’t even have a MacDonald’s here.”

 

 

Proud Boy: “Yes sir, Mr. President.  You know as leader of the Proud Boys, I had your image tattooed on my back, just like Roger Stone had a tattoo of Nixon on his back.  And I got the orange color just right.  They had to use red number 4 to correct the skin tone.  I sure am proud sharing a cell nearby you.   I am really grateful that you pulled some strings to keep me out of that supermax prison, even though I clubbed some of those capitol police storm troopers.”

 

Trump: “Well anyway, I succeeded in getting Liz Cheney out of congress.   Who needs goody two shoes there to inspire the people?  It’s bad for business.  Never mind though, I have an enemies list even longer than Nixon.  And I have studied Putin’s methods of dealing with political opponents.  I mean I would not order any poisonings or arrange for anyone to fall out of a window, but there are other things I can do like blackmail.  I watched how Frank Underwood did it.  Very inspiring, I’ll tell you.  Believe me.”

 

Proud boy: “Mr. President, can I play golf at one of your courses after I get out of this hole?”

 

Trump: “Sure, I will give you the felon’s rate.  But be careful going to the bathroom, I still have some classified documents semi-hidden there.  I would not want Lavrov to see them.  I only share them with club members and good-looking women, since Melania does not even come to visit.

 

A Court of Division and a Look through the Glass, Darkly.

 

The Supreme Court of United States favors the perpetuation of minoritarian rule and law, unrelated to the evolution of the American polity.  This court has directly or indirectly advanced the notion that a multi-cultural democracy is not on their agenda.  That notion hides behind a veil of corruption and hubris.  The dignity of the highest court in the land is ghosting us.

 

Behind the façade of granite columns and the “Equal Justice under Law,” is a divide between the essentially gerrymandered court, appointed by a president elected by a minority of the popular vote and confirmed by a Senate that does not equally represent Americans. 

 

This Supreme Court’s current agenda is insidiously hacking away at 70 years of racial progress.  An agenda that gutted the civil rights act, and an agenda that tosses affirmative action in a ditch.  An agenda that cruelly disenfranchises minority voters behind a cloak of intellectually dishonest hypocrisy.

 

Since Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 dismissed racial segregation in the south, a litany of cases has followed its courageous lead. “Impeach Chief Justice Warren” signs abounded on every highway in the south.  I saw them.  Whites were busy reinforcing their tribal “superiority.”  Tribes may have been good when we were fighting wooly mammoths, but are they still?  New manifestations of old tribes have been egged on by Fox News, decrying every night about fear of immigrants, fear of others, all in the name of corporate profit biting away at the heels of our democracy.   The first amendment gone wild.  Where have you gone Walter Cronkite?  

 

And yes, the north was racist also, effectuating segregation geographically.  That, too was a remnant of disastrous reconstruction, presided over by Andrew Johnson who ascended to the presidency when Lincoln died.   Johnson, a virulent racist, did all he could to return black America to the same position it was antebellum.  Draft riots in New York City consisted of white mobs who did not want to fight to free “n*****s.” Segregated neighborhoods still exist.

 

The court imposing a time limit on the attempt to achieve racial justice while it is still a work in progress is heartbreaking because it assaults and batters the aspiration of a new generation of the American underclass, struggling to rise up.  It struggles to grasp a part of the American dream, now fading further into the horizon, like someone crawling through the arid sand toward an illusory, shimmering oasis.  But the court says the strugglers are now equal.  Are they?  Do they still have further to go?   Justice Alito, his cruelty and bitterness unmasked, thinks so.  Alito, after all, relies on 16^th century opinions that use witchcraft as a rationale.  Discrimination is dead, says he and Chief Justice Roberts.  It’s discriminatory to favor an African American.  Asians might suffer.  Tuba players, athletes and legacies, too.  

 

Equally divisive is the Alito authored Dobbs decision, creating a maze of State laws, especially for women with limited resources, trying to travel to states that provide health care involving reproductive choice. Abortion is never an easy choice; those who make it are often in dire need of help, psychological, emotional and medical, Justice Alito’s callous ideology aside.

 

Even sadder, is the reality that the court truly represents a significant number of Americans, fearing the reality of a majority-minority nation, threatening their supremacy, their tribe.  

 

A house divided against itself cannot stand, said Lincoln.

 

Are we to suffer the same fate as many other nations that could not reconcile their tribal differences, unable conquer their fear of others and the need for obedience to norms and to fellowship, of, if not loving, at least respecting countrymen of different creeds, opinion, and race?  

 

Doctor King thought the arc of history bends toward justice.  Would he feel the same way today? What would Abraham Lincoln say?  Lincoln understood moral ambiguity.  After all, before the war started, he said if he could save the Union half slave and half free, he would do so.  But the war changed him, and although he was always morally opposed to slavery, at one time he considered a plan to send blacks back to Africa.  He knew the first obligation of a politician is to get elected. The great emancipator understood moral ambiguity in himself and in his countrymen.  He also said that without public sentiment there is nothing.

 

Looking at a hate and grievance monger like Ron DeSantis in the most charitable light, one might say he is just trying to get elected.   But at what cost?  Do we see in Trump and DeSantis the dark reflection of ourselves?