I’ve overheard or been involved in quite a few conversations lately that contained the phrase, “I’m not a lawyer, but…” I won’t bore you with the details except to say that these conversations involved appeals to the due process clause of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution. The context, of course, was what took place in the Southern District of Manhattan last Thursday in the trial of former President Donald Trump.
Trump was convicted of falsifying business records, which under New York State law is a misdemeanor except that Alvin Bragg, the district attorney, elevated the charges to felonies with the help of former Department of Justice attorney, Matthew Colangelo, among others. Bragg was elected on a pledge to “get Trump” and, unfortunately, that’s what he did. I say unfortunately, because I naively thought that we were beyond show trials and weaponizing the legal system in such a blatant way to “get” political rivals. How wrong was I? If Netflix decides to make a drama based on the trial, I suggest they call it “Sons of Tammany.”
But something else happened this week that I found even more disturbing. It involves the wife of United States Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito. Apparently, she likes to fly flags at their Virginia residence and summer home. Some on the Left have taken offense at this, since the flags include ones of a religious and patriotic nature as well as an upside-down American flag, signifying distress. They claim that flying these flags prejudices Alito against their cause.
What cause is that? you ask. The Supreme Court is about to hear arguments concerning the January 6th protest and whether Trump acted lawfully in his capacity as President during that protest and the subsequent storming of the Capitol. This is the “immunity” issue you probably have heard about.
Honestly, I have something of a soft spot for Alito. He is a Jersey boy whose father was an Italian immigrant who earned a master’s degree and worked for New Jersey state government. His mother, Rose, was a schoolteacher. He attended Ivy League schools and went into the Army after ROTC. I remember him from his nomination hearings in 2005 and the disdain with which Senator Ted Kennedy, no pillar of virtue, treated him.
I thought of that again just this week when Alito issued a defense of his decision not to recuse himself from the January 6th cases. In a letter to two Senate Democrats, he put the flag issue in the context of a “very nasty neighborhood dispute” and described how a certain neighbor put out a sign attacking his wife personally and then “trailed her all the way down the street and berated her in my presence using foul language, including what I regard as the vilest epithet that can be addressed to a woman” (see PBS NewsHour).
It’s a republic, ma’am, if you can keep it.
Benjamin Franklin at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 in response to the question by Elizabeth Willing Powell, “Have we got a republic or a monarchy?”
Here’s the thing. I am not squeamish when it comes to these things, but I am amazed at the crudity some people display concerning politics. To make a spectacle of yourself in the street with a justice and his wife because they do not agree with your ideological agenda is disgusting. But it’s not just politics. You see this kind of behavior everywhere. It’s what happens when adults have no self-control and act like brats.
I see it on the road. People are tense, anxious, and hyped up about getting to where they have to go. God help you if you get in their way. Maybe I notice it more because I have less to do now that I am retired. That’s possible. I drive three miles down the road to the gym and twenty miles to see family on Sunday. So, I do not spend a lot of time behind the wheel, which is a good thing, since I admit I have become an awful driver. I just don’t get driving anymore, but that’s another post.
The upshot of all this–a show trial, obscenities in the street, road rage–is that I worry about our country and the lack of civic virtue. Frankly, I am shocked by our unwillingness to see issues from other people’s point of view and to concede error for the sake of the common good and truth. Now, it is all about power, but the obsessive quest for power can bring down a republic. It turns out they’re more fragile than we thought.
Image credit: feature by Joseph-Siffred Duplessis at Google Cultural Institute, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21880454. Want more? Go to Robert Brancatelli. The Brancatelli Blog is a member of The Free Media Alliance, which promotes “alternatives to software, culture, and hardware monopolies.”
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The problem is we have a collective psychosis on the left and on the right, and if you’re part of either variant you can only see the psychosis and dysfunction on the other side. Many, many flaws in this particular case against Trump, but … well I won’t do the usual what aboutism. If you’re not able to see that Trump and the cult of Trump is also the source of so much of the degradation of the system in a thousand ways, your view is colored by one side of the psychosis allowing you to see only the shadow on the other side. Should the children be watching Trump as an exemplar? Perhaps this case shouldn’t have been brought, but it was decided by a jury, no? Do you find anything about Trump appalling? The appalling actions of both sides feed each other, so if your capacity to be appalled is reserved for one side only, you’re part of the problem. We’re both from NYC– you don’t remember all the well-researched articles about the small business people, contractors Trump bankrupted when he was an abortion supporting Democrat? Any New Yorker paying attention was well aware that Trump was con man in 1980. Let’s try this thought experiment, if Katanji Brown Jackson were flying an upside down flag at her house do you really thing sententious voices on the right would calmly point out how minor the infraction or would their heads explode with indignation? Bill Maher is one of the few public commentators able to see the shadow on both sides. What the children are watching, as well as any grown ups that have both eyes open, is an appalling one-sideness of vision that can only see the shadow on the other side, but not the shadow monsters on their side. We need stereoscopic shadow vision.
Thanks for the comment, Jonathan, but I’m not sure you get my point. I don’t believe the jury judged the merits of the case. They judged Trump and his “cult” as you put it. By the way, is that any different from Obama Nation? But I would say I am not an apologist for Trump or his past business practices. I am a defender of due process and the Constitution. It doesn’t matter who the defendant is or what he did in the past. Both are irrelevant. The biblical tradition of justice being blind seems to me to be the optimal way to look at any case. Going after someone because you don’t like him, even for good reasons, doesn’t work or at least shouldn’t work in a republic. Just in a practical sense, what happens when the other side gets back in power? What then?
Despite foreknowledge of this Stalinesque (Leninesque? The Soviets were at it for a while) trial, it was still disturbing to hear the verdict . . . and then to READ the instructions from the judge to the jury. It might be the first time Majority Rules rendered a verdict in America.
Regarding Alito. I understand your sentiments. Even at this advanced age of 67, it takes a lot of self-control for me to NOT punch someone in the face when I am sitting in a grad school class of skulls full of mush. I have one more class to go. Pray for me.
Yes, hearing the verdict was depressing. Depressing…Will pray for you.
Excellent post, Robert. I wish there was something that I could speak or say that would magically result in people thinking to themselves, “You know, he’s right; I now see (and respect) the other side”.
Sadly, this will not happen in my lifetime, if ever. Too many individual liberties have been stripped, too many news outlets have taken sides, and the desire for partisan power comes at the expense of the desire to actually fix the many things that aren’t working right in our country.
Retired also, and at age 75, there’s not much I can do except vote, and that I will. The rest is a sad sideshow of hate and disdain, and I am doing my best to block it out. There is much that is interesting and good in this world, and that is now what I seek.
I agree, Vic, there is much good in the world. It’s just that this week wasn’t in my top ten. Thanks for the comment.
Rob, I found your last two sentences to capsulize the current inability to have reasonable discourse in this country, from the East Coast to the West Coast. It is no longer looking for ways to find the greater good, it is what good is greatest for ME! All the best, Bill Hutchins
You know, one of the most important lessons I learned in life is that the best way to help myself is to help others. It’s a natural thing. Thanks, Bill.
“….I am amazed at the crudity some people display concerning politics.” Me too. And (not that I like to call politics the top of the food chain), the trickle down effect in many segments of our society is chilling.
Exactly. I was going to end the post with, “The children are watching,” but I couldn’t make it work with the flow/rhythm. Hope Columbia is back to “normal.”