The announcement that the organization of our ex- has now risen, so to speak, into a criminal, not just civil, investigation, has filled me with dread. No, not that kind of dread. Quite another.
Since his electoral defeat and banishment by Facebook and Twitter, there have been few pictures of him in media. After all, he isn't president anymore. He has been squirreling himself into his luxurious pad in Mar-A-Lago, and is due to wriggle himself out of it this weekend in North Carolina.
The great thing about that is that I haven't seen him much. I do despise him, but in a way I've reserved for few other people. He simply makes me upset when I see a photo of him.
So the above announcement has brought forward photos, often the same photos exactly, of him usually speaking, which is basically what he's done anyhow, from the past. I suppose the media's just doing its job, after all. I just can't stand it.
I don't wish him dead because it isn't Christian to do so. I just want him to go away for as long as possible until his ultimate demise.
Except he's going to have a meeting in which he'll spew his typical nonsense. And he wants no media coverage. Rather, he has ordered it.
That means he's going to tell everyone how he'll undermine Democrats and the media and whoever else is standing in his way, and do it so secretly that, or so he must think, nobody except Republicans will be able to figure it out until it's too late.
The problem with that is that everything he's done has been incredibly transparent. His sudden obsession with secrecy is not only not likely to work, but is actually unnecessary. Barring legal intervention on past wrongdoings--and that's an increasing possibility though still not a big one--he'll get away with whatever he's going to try anyhow.
Besides that, don't expect him to disappear. Autocrats crave the attention, so he'll be with us until he's dead. As Ariel Dorfman pointed out in the May 27 edition of The New York Review of Books:
As for [ex-'s] future, it could be like (Juan) Peron (strongman dictator of Argentina in the mid-20th Century), he makes a comeback. Or, also like Peron, who still hold his country in thrall almost fifty years after his death, Trump could continue to influence our vulnerable and imperiled land. Or perhaps a worse and more dangerous incarnation of his persona and policies is brewing right now [I would guess Josh Hawley]. What ever the coming years bring, we should not forget [ex-'s] terse last words as president, before being flown off to his Elba-in-Florida: "We'll be back in some form."
Unquestionably, the influence of his thinking was begun before he actually circumscribed himself on our political scene; the ridiculous notions and outright lies that carried him to the presidency, nearly twice, began far before but weren't catalysed successfully until 2016. As we have seen, that thinking has been catapulted into state legislatures and continues in the Congress by extremists elected in 2020.
Do not count on successful prosecution, either. We already know that he's dodged that for his entire life in a number of realms. He knows all the angles. It will take a herculean effort, and at least a little luck, for that to transpire.
His alternative world lives on. We would do well to consider what it means, and confront it wherever it rears its ugly head. That's beyond his own head, which is ugly enough the way it is.
Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
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