This document that boasts of denying safe haven to ‘ Corrupt and Un-Democratic Actors’ is part of America’s manufactured exceptionalism.
Maybe, as a slogan it works but in reality it is the typical document of imperial thinking… that these ‘Corrupt and Undemocratic Actors’ can only be products of foreign countries…preferably those that speak English in limited fashion and with accents that do not comport with white-skinned American descent.
That its application excludes the man who once made President, then made evading “all legal efforts to convict his “Engagement in Actions that Undermine Democratic Processes or Institutions” so successful that he is now a contender for the office again, decimates exceptionalism…as a positive.
The whole concept of this vaunted standing, as condensed by the intellect and eloquence of George Will, proved to be a foppish fancy when Trump, with his rancid character, brought his boorish brand of exceptionalism to the highest office in the land and the political world at large.
He is amusingly short of all the main ingredients—intellect and pluralism, the capacity to define and deliver happiness, the integrity to accept the rule of law as it applies to him and insatiably uses grievances and manufactured bleak outcomes as a governing tool.
And we’re just matching the “pellucid prose” and “elegant explanation” of George Will’s synopsis of exceptionalism which doesn’t refer to the moral decay of a Trump or debasement so low that his choice between evils would always be “the one he hadn’t tried before”…(Mae West.)
If ever there was a correlation between character and the US Constitution and its Laws, it was when Trump started getting indicted and summoned to defense in the nation’s courts of law. Then his reprehensible character was put on trial and on many levels, the issue was settled.
That the system seems impotent in the face of Trump’s Corrupt and Undemocratic acts suggest that it was not conceived to withstand deceitful propensity of his magnitude or that it was formulated in contemplation of moral fiber and integrity…all of which Trump has none.
Maybe the Constitution and Laws were formulated in a period of comparative purity when honor was a practicing virtue.
And because it never tested its in- house practitioners of Corrupt and Undemocratic Acts with the purposefulness and pursuit reserved for foreign actors, it was unprepared for its home grown criminals, those who would collude with foreigners to undermine democracy, use the office of presidency to solicit funding for money management endeavors of family members, share state secrets and even steal high secret national and international safety plans.
Monikers abound with America being a ‘Nation of Laws and not of Men’…, In other nations’ the King is Law but in America Law is King. And these may have been the intentions, except that in America, freedoms have intersected with interpretations and politics has become the reason for jurisprudence – creating one big, blocked, political artery.
It is in this law-clotted society that America’s 45th President, a prolific indictee and felony-scented politician, apprenticed and learned how to subordinate the law because of its deferential treatment for some to escape it, while it creates penitentiary areas for others to be incarcerated by it …in silently approved scheme to that benefits the national economy.
We’re now in a state of lawlessness where a candidate for President uses ‘free speech’ to condemn the legal system that has imprisoned insurrectionists, re-brand the imprisoned hostages, then term them a choir, as they offer an imprisoned rendition of the nation’s national anthem which he authenticates with hand on what he calls his heart and a gesture of fingers to forehead, in a desecration of a salute to this anthem of honor.
The reservation of corrupt and undemocratic for foreign actors that fall short of ‘American Exceptionalism’ always smelled like prejudice for those not considered equal. Insurrection that has been part of American law long before 2020, now has unclear interpretation, inconsistent with 8 U.S. Code § 2383.
The convenience of textualism, originalism structuralism and the benefit of legal interpretation seems employed to spare Trump the penalty of conviction, let alone imprisonment. It’s the hyper intellectual detour for America to save face as it berates other nations, via its seat on the UN, for instability which it ascribes to underdeveloped and third world countries.
Trump now enjoys the excesses of running for office; the tax payer paid secret service protection, the privilege of intelligence debriefings and the platform to attack a legal system designed to discipline everyone but him…sufficiently.
He has the benefit of a media ecosystem that amplifies his authoritarian language, his school yard taunts and his call to action SWAT team convergences on his enemies. He gets free marketing from the coverage of his con games, selling bibles, gaudy gold shoes and using the electoral system to raise and use funds that the Federal Election Committee (FEC) has declined to prosecute.
Another popular maxim is that “the institutions will hold”…suggesting inherent strength in American Institutions and a resilience to survive and preserve its Constitution.
That, too, remains under challenge as Trump’s hostility to the pillars of democracy has shown the tenuousness of their strength. What we’re sure of is that his incitement to divisiveness, antagonism to towards the rule of law, is systemically manipulating the legal structure to delay any accountability with the intention of absolving him of crimes.
It’s not genius that predisposes him to repulsive coarseness or political savvy that makes him support the rolling back of civil rights, women’s rights and equity programs. It’s his abject lack of capacity to engage in more than self- love and emote in more than aggressively hostile or petulant belligerence, that makes him the puppet of the geniuses behind his rise.
At last, they’ve found a man so defectively core-less, so intellectually hollow, that he gloats over being chosen to be the social scavenger for the humanitarian efforts past governments have enshrined into law that he now seeks to devour…in the name of a tight fitting Christian Evangelism and a perfectly tailored racism that only this mascot of Conservatism would consider his custom made suit.
He used his cunning to supplant himself upon his Party as its Presidential Candidate with historical earliness and has the level of dissonance to feel that they clamored for his return.
We’re reminded of how pridefully he boasted of acing his screening test for dementia…and think ‘American Exceptionalism’….mmh.
Voting against this comical incompetent is a civic imperative for more reasons than we’ve listed here.
And this means VOTING and for President Biden; not staying home or leaving the presidential slot blank , which will assign your vote to Trump, by proxy.