A Fever Dream

In the courtroom of honor the judge pounded his gavel,

To show that all's equal and the courts are on the level,

That the strings in the books aren't pulled and persuaded,

And that even the nobles get properly handled,

Once that the cops have chased after and caught 'em.

Spoke through his cloak, most deep and distinguished,

And handed out strongly for penalty and repentance,

To William Zanzinger, a six month sentence...

But you who philosophize disgrace,

And criticize all fear,

Bury the rag deep in your face, 

Now is the time for your tears.

-Bob Dylan, The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carrol

William Zanzinger's tobbacco farm of 600 acres, which Bob Dylan mentioned in his song is right down the road from my kid's middle school.  Dylan's song is a folk rendering of a true story about Zanzinger, an old money Marylander, who killed a maid named Hattie Carrol and who was convicted of such, but only given a six month sentence.  Zanzinger was white and rich and Hattie was black and poor, and our justice system, even now, is far from equal, and back in that era it was a total sham.

I'm looking at the headlines today, about Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen, who have respectively been convicted and plead guilty to crimes of a a decidedly white collar sort, but serious crimes nonetheless, but I'm getting the feeling that we're just in the "speaking through the cloak" phase of this thing.

Our world doesn't ever seem to do justice to the likes of them.  A nineteen year old black kid from Detroit might spend most of his adult life in prison for selling a few grams of cocaine, but I suspect that these powerful men, who should be old enough to know better, will probably not see much in the way of hard time.  I'm thinking about how money can buy you out of all sorts of trouble, and combined with a high profile and access to power you can be practically impervious to legal ramifications.

Donald Trump joked during the campaign that he could shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue and people would still stand by him. Honestly, as much as I detest the man, I did think it was a joke.  But as Morrissey once said, "That joke isn't funny anymore, it's too close to home and it's too near the bone."  How many of Trump's cronies have to be convicted?  Richard Nixon resigned before it got to this level.  You could argue that he's just the hub of a wheel, and that he didn't really know all of this stuff was going on around him, but being the unwitting Don (pun intended) of a kakistocracy is every bit as problematic as being intentional about it like Trump's buddy Vlad.

I'm not even sure I want impeachment to happen, I really just want America to come to her senses and start voting for people who have some measure of integrity.  That is the glimmer of hope that I see in this current vortex of sewage, people like Beto O'Rourke running in Texas against Ted Cruz and Andrew Janz who is pulling even with Devin Nunes are starting to show up politically. Sure deep blue districts are going to produce some left wing nut jobs to counter the right wing nut jobs that have been spewing out of the Tea Party Hellmouth since Obama's first term, but the hope of this country is that Democrats can recover their identity as the party of the working people instead of being the NY/LA lapdogs, and that the Republicans can remember what the hell a conservative is actually supposed to act like, and they can get together and tell the oligarchs and the con men like Trump and his cronies to stick their fake populism where the sun don't shine.

Sorry, that was an angry run-on sentence, but I'm not going to fix it.  Right now, it is the time for our tears and maybe some songs of lament about how far we have fallen from our own values.  That is not "Trump derangement syndrome," it is the necessary first step in healing.  Like the twelve step programs will tell you, the first step is admitting you have a problem.  We have a problem with being too ignorant, blind and apathetic.  And I'm talking Democrats and Republicans, both. An intellectually agile and engaged citizenry would never have come to the point where the choice was between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, it really was a choice between two people who could not rise above who they were, the choice became: corrupted politician or even more corrupted salesman and We the People, chose the latter more out of jaded pique than out of common sense.

What is happening now in the courts seems to me like an immune response to a disease, and I hope that once we sweat out the rest of this fever dream we will come to our senses.