Trump defenders: He is incapable of telling right from wrong
It seems Charles Blow had a reaction similar to mine when Rep. Liz Cheney said of the immediate past president during Tuesday’s Jan. 6 committee hearing, “President Trump is a 76-year-old man. He is not an impressionable child. Just like everyone else in our country, he is responsible for his own actions and his own choices.”
“Impressionable child” is one reading of Trump defenders’ latest strategy for helping him escape accountability for the attmpted coup on Jan. 6.
“Now, the argument seems to be that President Trump was manipulated by others outside the administration, that he was persuaded to ignore his closest advisers and that he was incapable of telling right from wrong,” Cheney said.
Blow writes:
Basically, Trump lied about the election because he was lied to about the election.
But, as Cheney pointed out, Trump actively chose the counsel of “the crazies” over that of authorities, and therefore cannot, or at least should not, “escape responsibility by being willfully blind.”
Willful blindness is a self-imposed ignorance, but as Thomas Jefferson put it: “Ignorance of the law is no excuse, in any country. If it were, the laws would lose their effect because it can always be pretended.”
If Trump is a pro at anything, it is pretending. He is a brat, but he’s not a child.
Blow contrasts Trump’s offenses with the case of Black activist Pamela Moses, sentenced to six years and a day in prison for registering to vote on bad advice while still on felony probation.
Blow observes:
People without power, particularly minorities and those unable to pay expensive lawyers, are trapped in a ruthless and unyielding system, while the rich and powerful encounter an entirely different system, one cautious to the point of cowardice.
Earlier this year, Moses’ conviction was thrown out because a judge ruled that the Tennessee Department of Correction had withheld evidence, and the prosecutor dropped all criminal charges against her.
Still, by the time the ordeal was over, Moses had spent 82 days in custody, time she couldn’t get back, and she is now permanently barred from registering to vote or voting in the state.
Our two-tiered justice system (Jamelle Bouie elaborates elsewhere) is not a reflection of liberal democracy, but rather the design of members of an elite, southern, slave-holding planter class. It is a definitionally conservative system that, as Frank Wilhoit suggested, protects but does not bind them, yet binds but does not protect those considered their inferiors. It exists as a variation on “The king can do no wrong.”
Thus, says Blow:
The way we target people for punishment in this country is rarely about a pursuit of justice and fairness; it simply reflects the reality that the vise squeezes hardest at the points of least resistance.
The fact that Trump has thus far faced few legal repercussions for his many transgressions eats away at people’s faith.
Trump’s history to date and that of unindicted bankers who crashed the economy in 2008 demonstrate that inequity as clearly as Trump’s personal attempt at witness tampering demonstrates his mens rea. There is nothing innocent about him.
Correction: Started with the Charles Blow citation, but still had Jamelle Bouie on the brain from my previous post. Screwed up the references. (h/t AP).
● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●
Request a copy of For The Win, 4th Edition, my free, countywide get-out-the-vote planning guide for county committees at ForTheWin.us.