The Witness Chronicles September 13, 2023
Trump’s comic book mug shot, empty impeachment threats, and 24 of your peers is not a conspiracy
Well, another week, another dollar. At least that’s what it feels like sometimes. You all got my heartfelt pitch yesterday for upgrading to paid so I won’t hit you again.
Yuk, yuk.
This week I mused about how Trump’s attempt to look badass in the police mug shot just reminded me of old school Marvel comics villains, all shanty-eyed and trying to look scary. I laugh now when I see it.
I laugh more when the right rattles the toy swords of impeachment.
And I discuss a reality the right does not want you to hear: that it isn’t liberal witchhunters or zealous prosecutors going after Trump, it is ordinary citizen juries looking at facts and making tough decisions. Your neighbors, in other words.
My mother, now 92, used to say, the world is going to hell in a handbasket, when things were not going her way. I have no idea what that means but somehow it applies these days.
Still smiling though.
Did you write today?
Martin
I’m Starting to Love the Trump Mug Shot
Evil Villain 101. Now he has successfully turned himself into a comic book character
I was a Marvel comics kid during their golden age in the sixties and early seventies. My brother and I had a collection that would make any comic fan drool, seriously. The first eleven issues of Spider-Man. 65 out of the first 70 Thors. Silver Surfers. Dr Strange. You get the idea.
Of course we were kids, so we read the ink off the pages, rendering them valueless, but not to us. We were aficionados of the art, revering the Kirbys and Ditkos of the world. And as any fan knows, slant eyes were the hallmark of villains back then, obviously playing on the fear of evil Asians.
Those were different times.
But when I look at Trump’s mugshot, I see a comic villain, eyes slanting, staring holes into his enemies, and it makes me laugh.
Not the desired reaction, I’m guessing.
When it came out I could only think, I’m already sick of this guy’s mug and now we have an image that we will see ad nauseum, as he trades on his notoriety with his fans to raise money to pay lawyers. Though those fans may think they are supporting his efforts to reclaim the government.
He could care less about the government or those suckers who send him checks for five or ten or twenty bucks, doing their part. They may well be his final grift, taking small bills off rubes in a sideshow booth.
Someday this portrait will be a joke, a blip in history, the great mistake of the American democracy that naively left the door open for a grifter to jump in and take power.
What fools we all were, even myself, a moderate horrified by reality in 2016. Those primal comic book fears came to life and the bad guy was truly worse than we could imagine.
Stan Lee would laugh if he still lived, to see the mugshot. And I find myself laughing with him.
A picture of a stooge trying to look badass. That’s all I can see, a pitiful man, terrified and trying to tough it out, but making himself an even bigger fool in the process.
A small man trying to look big. It’s come to that.
Impeachment is Not a Toy To Be Pulled Out When You’re Angry
GOP, have you heard about the boy who cried ‘wolf’?
The right has a new toy to pull out when they are threatened or feeling ignored. That toy is their hope that a bright shiny object will blind American voters to what they are doing in the darkness.
When you are backed into a corner by your own desires and fantasies you’re going to lash out, grabbing whatever you can find to defend your ideas, even when they are proven to be unpopular or even illegal.
It is what people do who cannot admit they are wrong or that maybe they need some new ideas. New ideas and approaches are how we solve problems, but they require innovation and collaboration, concepts which are anathema to the current Republican Party and its far right hostage holders.
If you look across American political news, from local to national, one word seems to be the rallying cry for these small thinkers. Impeach, impeach, impeach.
Never mind that impeachment has historically been the last step in ending actions against the American people, actions taken illegally by elected officials, and as a means to remove those in power who use the law to enrich themselves and others.
It was intended to be a serious last response to grave crimes against the nation, not to stall the courts, eliminate progress on issues a party disagrees with in defiance of the voters’ will, or to pursue personal vendettas.
But like any powerful weapon, it must be wielded as a last resort and with the understanding that it can backfire when used haphazardly and politically without any basis in law.
It is a serious thing, or was. Now it seems, anyone from a local official to a sitting President can be threatened with impeachment without any legitimate reasons, other than their party of choice.
In the hands of Republicans it has become a fearsome toy sword, at first frightening, until we turn up the lights and reveal it to be made of cheap plastic, plastic that will shatter at its first encounter with the rule of law.
In Wisconsin, right wing Republicans who have soundly lost on every front, are reaching into their toy chest and threatening to use their toy sword against a Democrat judge elected by a large majority who has not yet even ruled on anything in court.
Their logic? She talked in her campaign about her beliefs. Which, apparently, is now an automatic reason for disqualifying an elected official from performing their duties in the name of those who elected them.
That, btw, is the way democracies work. We place ourselves in front of the voters as candidates for office, explain where and why we stand for certain ideas, and voters choose us or not based on those ideas.
This is the core of any democratic system, the will of the voters. Politicians used to pay attention to that, even when it disagreed with their personal beliefs and desires.
No more. Now it is merely another way to grandstand or to bend the law to conform to a party’s needs rather than those of the people.
Much discussion emanates from the House of Representatives regarding impeaching Joe Biden, for…something or other not yet revealed, in part because there’s not much to reveal other than conspiracy theories and the fantasies of small-minded people vying for attention.
You want to impeach a sitting President? Show us impeachable offenses with rock solid proof of crimes against the people and the Constitution, not unsubstantiated rumors.
There is danger to the right in pursuing baseless claims just because they have a public pulpit. If you are going to constantly cry wolf, eventually you have to produce a wolf, the genuine snarling real thing.
And if you try, and you are wrong, your toy sword will not protect you from ridicule and worse. Are you listening?
No, I don’t think so. Impeach, impeach, impeach!
The war cry of political children everywhere.
It’s Not Democrats or Zealous Prosecutors Indicting Trump
It’s normal citizens doing their duty
The right to a fair trial before a jury of your peers.
That’s a fundamental right that we take for granted, but it is a powerful bedrock of our justice system designed to protect us from rigged kangaroo courts and decisions made behind closed doors.
This right is conveniently ignored by Republican and right wingers screaming witch-hunts and conspiracies each time an indictment is handed down against one of their leaders.
Obviously it is a political lynching by rabid Democrats and their lackey prosecutors. This ignores the reality of a defendant’s fundamental right to be judged by a jury of peers. Not just insiders from one side or another, but fellow citizens chosen by both attorneys for the prosecutor and, eventually, the defense.
In the case of the recent indictments against the former President and his alleged co-conspirators, the special juries deciding to indict were composed of 24 citizens.
24 is enough to dispel claims that the selection process was rigged. Few of us could round up 24 Americans with a shared ideology from a random election off the streets. Which is how juries are formed.
The goal of this complex process is fairness, plain and simple. And it has been working for over two hundred years, in which the rule of law has stood test after test and somehow managed to survive largely intact.
To put it bluntly, Donald Trump and his buddies are being indicted by regular folks trying to exercise good citizenship.
Yes, that sounds hopelessly idealistic, and it is, by design. A design that has passed the test of time over and over again.
The beauty of this system is fairness and that is why those seeking to claim a rigged process ignore this reality while screaming bloody murder and claiming dark motives.
There are cases where judges and prosecutors work together to determine whether indictments are justifiable, but these very high profile case are not done that way. Again, by design, because having a large and diverse jury defuses those hysterical conspiracy claims.
This is, to paraphrase Al Gore, an inconvenient truth. Trump is not being indicted by political operatives, he is being indicted by people like you, doing their civic duty.
And we should all find this a relief and a vanguard against corruption and the injustice of autocracies we see all over the globe, where a right to a free and fair trial is a joke.
It is still working here, for now.
Busy week doing my writer thing. As if all this isn’t enough, I’m tackling a new kind of project, kind of by accident. When I know what it is, I’ll share.
See you soon,
Martin Edic
1712 words
Laying it out step by step in logical order and simple to understand. Perfect! Something the ranting republicans couldn’t do with a thesaurus and AI helping them. Good job