A friend writes to offer an article by Christian Esch, a German journalist, about how Russia’s assault on Ukraine has changed Moscow as came to know it over more than a decade of reporting from there. The change has not been for the better. Sensible people in press and media have left the country or gone silent as the Russian government chokes off the slightest departure from the official line on what Russia is perpetrating next-door.
He also offers, in the context of the FBI’s execution of a search warrant at Trump’s Florida home, an American journalist’s concern over prospects of Trump’s being prosecuted. That concern — “bringing him to justice could have some awful consequences” — yields the question, “Is that justice worth the associated risks” of violence from Trump supporters and eventual political retribution from his acolytes in Congress?
Our friend sees parallels. Where Russia’s invasion is the culmination of developments — including missed chances by the West to deal with the creeping authoritarianism and irredentist actions and rhetoric of Putin — so the January 6 invasion of the Capitol was the culmination of a years-in-the-making destructive political and social dynamic (MAGA).
“I am the first to say that we do not have real democracy here … but neither do we have autocracy. In particular, our plurality of ‘the word’, free speech, the press, has been our savior.
While we know the dangers of closed systems of social media, they are not really closed, for anyone willing to look around. Yes, there are a great number of our fellow citizens that do not bother [be it in Moscow or the US]. They become desensitized to the truth, to fact, accepting as ‘authority’ the words of pathologic liars like Sidney Powell, but most especially, of course, the former White House resident who uttered over 26,000 untruths in his 4 years in office, all thoroughly documented. From anti-vaxxers to stop-the-stealers, millions mechanically repeat the dissimulations, prevarications, distortions, and downright falsehoods.
The last remaining glue that holds our institutions together, that provided for their functioning in late 2020 and early 2021, was the powerful concept of the rule of law. That rule is only if it applies universally. To permit the greatest conman, the greatest scofflaw in our history to escape without account would, I submit, deal a mortal blow to that concept of the rule of law. On the contrary, its employment against him would, I dare say, reinvigorate that concept as would almost nothing else.
Is there a risk, of violence? No question. Is there a risk of civil war? Civil war happens only when the armed forces are split. There may be some in our forces who would go to the dark side, but I am talking here about the part of the armed forces that matter, the officer corps: I see no evidence whatever that there is any fracturing in that cadre. They would obey and, if necessary, could be used to put down that violence. The ‘civil war’ so frivolously articulated by the Right would be very short-lived, and could possibly even serve a salutary purpose: the cleansing of a putrid excrescence from our polity, at least in the short term.”
Our response:
The worst is indeed the dull — and deadly — sameness, the repetition of patterns seen countless times before, where the feral lead the gullible and willfully ignorant, while the decent stand by, wringing hands at what they suspect is coming [season to taste: catastrophe, chaos, disaster, mayhem] but wishing it weren’t so.
Even if flavors differ, the sameness is everywhere because the mental maps are the same. History plays a central role in defining those maps. Of course, not “history” in the sense of professional historians’ forensic examination of the past in order to reach a more accurate understanding of what happened and why, but the ever-astounding, seemingly perpetual ahistoricity, that stew of myth, invention, misdirection, and mendacity inculcated over generations in all sorts of ways (and to which the entertainers tasked with “enlightening” the public are essential).
When matters do go bad, there’s always the same scramble for (sensibly enough) personal safety first, then justification and recrimination, as people argue over who is to blame, who’s more virtuous in suffering, and whose is the more legitimate voice in rectifying the situation.
The result? In Russia, narratives about exile and loss, and resentment at having to answer allegations of betrayal from those who stayed within the clutches of the beast, be it by choice or absence of viable alternatives. Arguments over who speaks out and doesn’t and, therefore, who is legitimizing the execrable. And acts of very real heroism by individuals who dare to speak out in the face of equally real risk to life and limb. The effect on the beast? Zero.
At the core? Whether in Russia or the US, too many people are simply fucked in the head. We know this because, modern technology — with its unrivaled ability to spread manure instantly worldwide — lets us see in real time the cogitative processes at work, starting with the immovable mental map, that decades-long accretion of factoids (some real, most not) essential for many to understand their world. Facts that don’t comport with the map bounce off the structure and, via the reflexive how-dare-you-challenge-my-beliefs; they’re mine!, even reinforce it as if someone were threatening to take away a child’s cherished thing, however demented. Thought — including the ability, let alone willingness, to analogize correctly, or to think a matter through — is nowhere in sight. I believe, therefore I know.
It’s not news that, to be adamant in one’s adherence to beliefs even when confronted by countervailing facts is easy when immune to the consequences of whatever is happening. Tula to Bucha is some 750km, over the course of which transmissions of eyewitness testimony and other evidence of gruesomeness occurring in the latter will evaporate by the time they get to the former; on arrival, reality will have morphed into fiction created by unpatriotic individuals with bad intentions. Just as for the guy in Greenwich, Connecticut — enjoyer of all the privileges and immunities and conveniences that come with the exercise of fundamental rights — objections to multi-faceted vote suppression efforts 1,600 miles away in Dallas, Texas are “extremism” by socialist liberals.
Nonetheless, for all the sameness, there are two differences. First, for a generation, roughly half of the American electorate has willingly chosen the people who have brought the country to its current state. (That a good portion of the public doesn’t care is true but still a choice that has an effect on outcomes.) Americans have long had limitless access to accurate information. They’ve been governed through functioning institutions. They’ve enjoyed legitimate elections. These factors fill the average American’s mental map of traditional assumptions and beliefs, and while these are different from a Russian’s, the seduction by myth is the same.
So, here we are. Do you want the chance at a decent living? Nah, religion and abortion are way more important to me. For all of our “deliberative” democracy, we’re hostages to the (temporary?) triumph of the circus of [your choice] deplorables, ignoramuses, clowns, spiteful cretins, morons, thugs, and the unhinged. That’s a function of elected representatives chosen to follow, not lead, and to do the business of those who pay for them to get to power while stoking and justifying voters’ basest instincts. It means it really is the public that’s driving the train, even if it’s off the rails. Whether this is democracy’s glorious apotheosis (vox populi, unless you prefer rapture) or a portent of its voluntary destruction remains to be seen. That we’re even having the debate is disturbing.
Debate is admittedly a luxury that Russians no longer have, though they did have 30 years to practice. Given Russian history, especially its 20th-century tumult, Venediktov (cited by Esch) is somewhat justified when, discussing Russian reaction to the invasion of Ukraine, he says, “It’s not Putin that surprises me, but Russian society”. It would be churlish to claim that he should have known, both as to the decision to invade and Russian society’s response to it.
But what’s the Americans’ excuse? They (those interested in anything beyond their own navel) have been watching this coming train wreck since 1980. By 2016, when offered the charlatan of charlatans, millions were delighted to buy in (“Finally! Someone who tells it like it is!!”) originally and, mind-bogglingly, even more so after four years of peacock-proud — and deadly — psychosis. (Russians, by and large, are less dim. They might not have minded Trump’s mobster ways, but they’d have recognized — and rejected — the obvious stupidity of the man.)
The second difference is indeed the laws and institutions through which Americans govern themselves. For now, it is the fundamental distinction. To date, at least among those who kinda sorta know things, there’s been a consensus on fundamentals that have kept the place upright.
But even that is starting to sway, most obviously with the perverse way in which the Supreme Court was engineered to result in a 6-3 majority of culture warriors for whom the law is a tool of power to construct the reactionary society they pine for as part of their belief system. (The breathtaking addiction on the part of a half-dozen ahistoricist Papists to ignore facts in the record and manufacture their own version of the country’s history matches that of Russians in Tula who claim Bucha is “fake news”.)
There also is, though, the alarming trend on the part of lower courts to defy Supreme Court rulings when it suits. The only reasonable conclusion is that, with the resulting silence from Roberts, he approves the circumvention, part of his mystifying — what are judges for? — hands-off approach to the train’s obvious heading for derailment. But, see reference above to “immune to consequences;” he and his cohort will remain unsplattered all along their (taxpayer-financed) road to the pine box.
Which brings us to the puzzling debate over a prosecution of Trump. We see opinion-makers, only some of whom seem to understand our legal system, who admonish Garland that he’d better have a rock-solid case; that he must take political realities into account; and that he’s entering uncharted waters. Or else. (1) Trump supporters will engage in violence if their guy’s indicted. (2) Trump will allege political persecution. (3) Trump’s guys in Congress will retaliate if they get the chance.
So what? None of this is news. Garland’s DOJ is prosecuting more than 800 people involved in the violence of January 6; most defendants chose to plead guilty, while some have received stiff sentences; the prosecutions have not caused more violence; and claims of political persecution have become muzak as the hearings in Congress reveal ever more evidence of knowledge, planning, and coordination. And there’s already plenty of history showing us how Republicans will pursue in perpetuity facts that simply don’t exist because it’s the narrative that must be kept spinning for the believers’ benefit; the facts are neither here nor there. That they’ll do so if they come to control the House is like saying Monday follows Sunday.
Assuming, though, that there really is a balancing-of-interests argument to be had (e.g., George Will’s sniffed and characteristically selective concern about “domestic tranquility” vs. the need for legitimate enforcement of the laws), the implications of the worriers’ arguments are unsettling. That Trump happens to be a politician does not make prosecution of him on well-founded facts “political”. DOJ routinely prosecutes thefts of government documents, especially classified ones. Unprecedented is a former president’s stealing them, not the government’s response, a distinction that the press has been woeful at making.
Further, to use the prospect of violence as a reason not to prosecute suggests that the forces of order would be unwilling or unable contain that violence. Certainly, as with the rest of American society, law enforcement agencies are infected with the same Trumper mind-set to whatever degree. But we have to proceed on the premise that, when called on to suppress violence, they’ll do so. Granted, given the shade of the likely perpetrators, suppression will be kid-gloved.
Most alarming, though, is the cognitive dissonance. How do advocates of non-prosecution — of well-founded facts, it’s worth repeating, facts that Trump himself hasn’t denied — square that position with their acknowledgment that nothing in the Constitution or the nation’s statutes immunizes a former president against prosecution … for acts, it so happens, committed after the expiration of his term? Or that prosecution decisions should be based solely on facts and the law? Yet, here they are, arguing that Garland must take political and social consequences into account, purely because of the defendant’s prior employment status which just might annoy his fans.
This gets to what, for the American context, for the essence of the American experience, is truly weird. It seems Trump deserves special treatment because (i) he used to hold high office; and (ii) his supporters would be displeased if their ex officio champion were treated no differently than they would be. (Maybe it’s just too painful for them to see, at last, how he is the Lump that they are, just richer.) The purportedly thoughtful people who promote this idea by implication seem not to comprehend how un-American it is. Isn’t that what 1776 was all about? Isn’t the founding premise of the country the idea that, when it comes to the law, we’re all obligated the same way?
Will Republicans exact revenge? They’re guaranteed to try, just as they avenged Nixon by impeaching Clinton (who, of course, idiotically helped them). But that’s a future bridge. Meanwhile, without facts showing that the DOJ’s case is contrived for political ends, there is no persuasive argument against prosecution.
It’s the opposite. A prosecution of Trump — using standard processes through which he can avail himself of all the Constitutional protections afforded every other defendant (excepting, of course, the poor ones … and the black ones) — would affirm the most basic principle of the American system. It’s criminal acts, not a defendant’s identity, which decide whether we prosecute.
The appearance of malcontents, even violent ones, is inevitable. If the responsible institutions fail to respond effectively, it’s because they choose not to, not because they don’t have the law or the tools. In that case, though, we will be talking a problem of far greater dimensions, one that uncomfortably will shrink the distance to Russia.
