My God!
The enormity of a jury’s verdicts in a New York courtroom yesterday is difficult to grasp whether one is strongly anti-Trump or whether one is violently pro-Trump. Years from now, generations unborn today will read in their history books of yesterday’s verdict as cold fact with no way to understand the depth of the national emotions triggered by a jury ruling that a former President of the United States is guilty of 34 felonies.
Thirty-four.
The number will never be the same, just as 9-11 was transformed into something beyond a numerical value, just as 1-6 is a waymark in American history.
Some hoped the jury would issue 34 NOT guily verdicts; many—perhaps most—thought at least SOME guilty verdicts would come. But all 34?
It is stunning. And although there will be appeals, it seems impossible that all 34 convictions will be reversed.
Donald Trump can and will—already has—repeated his attacks on the judge, the prosecutor, the jury.
But twelve people, chosen in the historically-honored system of picking a jury of fellow citizens, have convincted him of 34 crimes.
What must it be like away from his normal public bluster when this 77-year old man realizes that for the first time in his life, he has not been able to control or to ignore the responsibility for his actions? In the privacy of his own rooms and with his own thoughts, what must this overwhelming rebuke of the way he has run his life be doing to him? He may rage in public and in private but surely he knows, deep down, many of those he has bent to his will are now realizing his blood is in the water and they must transform themselves into sharks for their own self-preservation.
The bus is waiting. How many of those he thought he controlled will decide it’s time he is the one thrown under it?
Much is made that he is the first president to face criminal charges and now the first to be convicted, a statement though often repeated has no practical effect. Once just a frequently-spoken statement, now it is a statement of national tragedy.
And what shall be done with him, this man who has flouted decency, honor, and the law throughout his life of self-seeking power?
If the convictions are upheld he should go to prison, whatever form prison takes.
Prison for Donald Trump could mean being cut off from public participation in events, to being relegated to a world without spotlight, a world of tightly-scheduled activities from waking up to eating a common menu, to being isolated from public exposure, restricted perhas to a couple of rooms at Mar-a-Lago where visitors are allowed only at certain times and certain days. His greatest punishment could be imposed insignificance in contemporary times.
Yesterday was a day that instantly became history and we knew it the second we heard of the verdicts. For both those who hoped for a different result as well as those who hoped for the result that came, yesterday was a “My God!” day.
Today we will try to grasp what has just happened, what we have experienced. Maybe for some of us as well as for him, it might take more than just today.