Monday, August 28, 2023

Central Park 5? No, Scottsboro Boys!

At first I thought Trump couldn’t get good lawyers because of his reputation. Then I thought he couldn’t get them because he wouldn’t pay. But then he gave Chris Kise (IIRC) a $3 million retainer, and fired him when Kise wouldn’t be as manic and unreasonable as Trump. But still I thought Trump was scraping the bottom of the legal barrel for some combination of these reasons.

Today the scales fell from my eyes and I saw the truth. Trump isn’t getting shitty lawyers because he has to, or due to circumstances or his reputation for stiffing people he hires. It’s because the only lawyers he’ll keep around think like him and will argue in court like him: stupidly and pointlessly and to the damage of the client as much as possible.
“It's absolutely fair," Cordell explained. "Judge Chutkan deliberated, heard everyone on both sides, and set a date that I think is a reasonable date. It may change, but for now, I think it's reasonable. But I’ll tell you Kaitlan, the moment in that hearing that struck me, I only have two words to describe it as ‘stunningly stupid.' And that was when Trump's attorney compared their desire to delay the case to what happened in the case of Powell v Alabama, a 1931 case involving the Scottsboro boys who were convicted of raping two white women and the case went to the U.S. Supreme Court and their convictions were reversed." 
In that case, the boys were forced to go to trial with little preparation. Trump demanded two years. 
“What the Trump team did was say that, ‘well, what happened in that trial is what could happen here in this trial,’ which is absolutely absurd," she continued. "In the Scottsboro case the Scottsboro boys were indicted, and were on trial six days later, not even given the opportunity to choose their attorneys. In this case, there was an indictment, but …the trial date is seven months out. He has experienced lawyers, a whole team of investigators. And it was stunningly stupid because, one, the comparison is ridiculous, but second, if you want to alienate a judge in a case, this was exactly what to do." 
Cordell suggested the comparison risks aggravating Chutkan. 
“A female judge, a Black judge, and to talk about that case and compare it to Trump's case was absurd," closed Cordell. "And Judge Chutkan really took them up on it and said, this case is entirely different. I think she was absolutely offended. It was really a stunningly stupid thing to do.”
Not much worse than this: Go on, try to slip a piece of paper between Trump and Lauro. I don’t think you can do it.

Trump is not hiring these lawyers because he has to. He’s hiring them because he wants to. It’s somewhat akin to this:
It’s the same failure of perception, of failing, as Orwell said, to see what is right in front of your nose. Trump’s posts appear insane because he’s secretly clever! His mis-spellings are not signs of illiteracy or creeping dementia, they are signs of genius as he teaches JD Vance and Josh Hawley how to pretend they couldn’t find an Ivy League school with a map and a guide. Because, ya know, ordinary people can’t spell!

Is that condescending? Well at least it ain’t racist!👍

We can’t admit the truth in front of our eyes: Trump is stupid and ignorant and emotionally stunted and all but incapable of rational thought. He’s not “feral” and cunning and charismatic: he just appeals to people as deplorable as himself. And a lot of people voted for him in 2020 just because he was the incumbent and people don’t like change; not because they were paying attention and approved of the job he’d done for four years. Likely as not, Joe Biden will be re-elected for much the same reason. Why do people re-elect Ted Cruz and Gym Jordan, who do nothing whatsoever except grab microphones? Every six years Cruz sweats bullets that he’s finally going to be found out and he’ll have to get a real job and actually work. Even he can’t believe he gets re-elected for doing absolutely nothing he’s paid to do.

There’s a lot of truth in front of our noses we simply refuse to see. Trump being a completely ignorant clod means our system doesn’t protect us from ourselves. And we can’t be adults and take responsibility for ourselves and our governance, so we expect the system, or the strong man, to do it for us. And even if the “strong man” is an apparent dolt, we have to find some quality in him that explains his prominence and rise to power.

Otherwise we have to admit we’d rather duck responsibility, and the problem is in ourselves for being so easily led about by such a blatant incompetent. Rather than chasing him to the fringes of the body politic where he can do no harm, we treat him seriously because of poll numbers (our modern Oracle of Delphi). Much easier to say there’s just something about him that appeals to other people. It’s not our fault those people like him.

What appeals to them is that he is as deplorable, demented, and unfit as they are. But we can’t admit that, either. Sounds sort of elitist, ya know. And we don’t want to be responsible for that!

Alone, alone, about a dreadful wood 
Of conscious evil runs a lost mankind, 
Dreading to find its Father lest it find 
The Goodness it has dreaded is not good: 
Alone, alone, about our dreadful wood. 

 Where is that Law for which we broke our own, 
Where now that Justice for which Flesh resigned 
Her hereditary right to passion, 
Mind His will to absolute power? 
Gone. Gone. 
Where is that Law for which we broke our own? 

 The Pilgrim Way has led to the Abyss. 
Was it to meet such grinning evidence 
We left our richly odoured ignorance? 
Was the triumphant answer to be this?
 The Pilgrim Way has led to the Abyss. 

 We who must die demand a miracle. 
How could the Eternal do a temporal act, 
The Infinite become a finite fact? 
Nothing can save us that is possible: 
We who must die demand a miracle.

—W.H. Auden 

But if you pay attention, you’ll find I’m both harsher and more pessimistic than Auden is.
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