Donald Said It Would Be Like This

Absolute immunity corrupts absolutely

Donald said it would be like this. For ten years, he’s been telling us, on and off, that he wants the world to work this way.

Some of us believed it. Some who believed it wanted it. Some, not so much.

If you wanted it, this post isn’t really for you. I pray that, after seeing it, you change your mind. But really, I have to admit to myself that I don’t have a good enough mental model of who you are and how you think to persuade you, especially not through the medium of text, asynchronously posting at each other through the void.

If you believed it and tried to stop it, this post isn’t really for you either, except to say: we biffed it. Not that it’s all or even mostly on us, there’s plenty of blame to go around. But whatever it was we brought to try to prevent this, it wasn’t enough, or wasn’t right, or just wasn’t in the cards. I can’t say. So take a deep breath, look back on it, and try something different.

I really want to talk to the people who didn’t believe it. Maybe you still don’t quite, or don’t want to face it. Maybe you’re just on the edge of admitting it. How you react will matter a lot in the coming months and years. You don’t have to act as hastily as some people might be trying to insist to you. You don’t have to drink the wackiest Kool-Aid on whatever issues you’re hung up on. You don’t need to start chanting “defund the police” or “abolish ice”. You don’t even need to have an opinion on which of these killings is or isn’t murder.

I haven’t watched any of the videos. I shouldn’t have to, and neither should you. This is the kind of thing we have juries for. Right now, I honestly don’t know how I’d vote if I was on the jury for Renee Good’s killer – in part because I haven’t watched any of the videos, but also because I know the videos aren’t going to be the only things of relevance. But I know that there should be a jury. There should be a trial. There’s enough of a question about whether that killing was or was not criminal that the evidence needs to be collected, and presented by a prosecution and a defense, each striving to make the best possible case for their claims, subject to a solid foundation of law.

Right now, the administration is not even willing to pretend that they care about any of that. They are just asserting the answer they want to be true and hoping we’ll all go along with it, or that their opposition will make a big enough blunder that we forget about it.

Nobody’s perfect. Every administration, every president, every politician, every person, has their foibles and flaws. No system is going to get it right every time. You don’t need to let anybody convince you that their favorite candidate would definitely get to the bottom of this perfectly and make everything sunshine and rainbows. I’m just asking you to acknowledge, honestly, that the guy at the top, and most of his subordinates do not even want to try. If we aren’t willing to push back on this, we may as well ask Charles to take us back.

I’d take a lying, skeezy, deranged, senile scumbag who is constrained enough by public opinion to at least pretend to care about this over the lying, skeezy, deranged, senile scumbag who isn’t, and I think you should too.

Maybe, if we’re lucky enough, we’ll get a better choice than that. But that can only happen if we make it clear that what’s going on now is wrong and commit ourselves to making it politically unacceptable.