MARCH 21, 2023 – When the Duly Defeated came to Minneapolis for a rally in October 2018, the best parts of the show were the clever protest signs among the thousands of demonstrators in the street outside the rally. My favorite: “WHERE DO I START?”
At around the same time, I encountered a well-educated, well-heeled individual who loved Republican tax cuts more than he despised the Duly Defeated’s character. In self-justification, he quipped, “You can’t get comfortable lying down on a single nail, but on a whole bed of nails? You can adjust quite comfortably to that.”
Today, many nails later, one has to ask, “WHEN WILL IT END?”
I’m no fan of Governor DeSantis, and in many respects, I believe he poses a bigger threat to American democracy than does the Duly Defeated, principally because the Florida governor is a good deal younger than the 77-year-old, twice-impeached former president. But I think DeSantis rang the bell when he said, “I wouldn’t know what it’s like to pay off a porn star; I wouldn’t know anything about that . . .” DeSantis’s follow-on joinder of the Republican refrain that the Stormy Daniels case is politically motivated was perfunctory and lost on the Duly Defeated.
Today, Senator Lindsey Graham told FoxProp(aganda) that the (indictment and) arrest of the Duly Defeated would “blow up the country.” I’m still recovering from whiplash caused by Graham’s shameless about-face from being the Duly Defeated’s harshest critic, calling him in 2016, “a race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot” to becoming Duly Defeated’s most sycophantic supporter.
Graham’s political sleaze aside, if his assessment is correct about a blow-up of the country over Duly Defeated’s indictment for a crime arising out of payment of hush money to a porn star . . .
FULL STOP!
Remember Gary Hart, the Colorado senator whose run for the Democratic nomination for president was torpedoed when a photo surfaced featuring the senator and his woman friend aboard the good ship Monkey Business? (Fact is invariably richer than fiction.) But that was back when America, for all of its flaws and foibles, was a few shades greater than it is today.
When Senator Graham surmises that Duly Defeated’s arrest would blow up the country, it’s not over a revelation about moral squalor on the part of the most notorious politician in the land. Graham is upset that a politician bereft of any hint of a redeeming human quality would be charged with a crime—any crime—under the same laws that apply to the rest of America’s +330 million citizens. Absent from the mushroom cloud of Republican outrage—shouted in fealty to the Duly Defeated—over an indictment and arrest, is any acknowledgment that between a criminal charge and actual conviction lies the presumption of innocence.
But no, we’ve lost our compass. If the country “blows up” over the indictment and arrest of the Duly Defeated—as the result of any of the pending investigations—future historians won’t blame Alvin Bragg, Fani Willis or Jack Smith/Merrick Garland. They will blame us for having lost our heads; for having dispatched sensible judgment and eschewed decency, respect for facts and what should have been taught and learned in middle school civics.
Most of us can identify with DeSantis when he says he “wouldn’t know anything about paying hush money to a porn star.” But all Republicans should know that Duly Defeated’s calling the Georgia Secretary of State to “find” 11,780 votes and inciting rightwing extremists to tread on the rest of us by storming the Capitol are grounds for banishment from the party—irrespective of a criminal indictment or conviction in either regard.
I’m not interested in retribution against the Duly Defeated, but as a voter, I want restoration of accountability.
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© 2023 by Eric Nilsson
