It sets in stone a new world of total impunity

Cool! Two movies in one weekend! Yesterday I wrote that on Friday evening I saw Soul. Today I went to the Detroit Film Theater, yes, inside a real theater, to see Hello, Bookstore. In Lenox, Massachusetts Matthew Tannenbaum owns a shop simply called “The Bookstore” so the way he answers the phone became the title of this documentary. Tannenbaum has owned the place since 1976. An observer said he sits around all day talking about things he loves, interrupted occasionally by people giving him money. He talks to his customers to try to find out what they like to read so that he might suggest the perfect book. He loves them and they love him back. That is a big reason why he survives in the age of Amazon. The movie shows him with normal bookstore tasks (such as unpacking boxes – Christmas every day!), chatting with customers, and reading excerpts of favorite books to the camera. Then the pandemic hit and he couldn’t let customers browse. He took credit card numbers as people talked through the closed door. Then he asked them to back up so he could place their books on the stool outside the door. He was making in a week what he used to make in a day. He needed help – and the community responded. This is a sweet and charming little movie and will be a delight for anyone who loves books. Mark Murray of NBC News tweeted:

Chief Justice Roberts has long talked about importance of public trust in the court. And Justice Sotomayor warned that the court wouldn't survive "stench" of reversing Roe v. Wade.

He included a chart of NBC News polls over time (note the poll dates are not spaced by the time between them). It shows that in May 2022 the view of the Supremes was 36% positive, 35% negative, and 27% neutral. In just three months the neutral has dropped and the negative view has increased. The numbers now are 42% negative, 35% positive, and 22% neutral. Back to posts that accumulated while Brother was here. Rebekah Sager of Daily Kos reported that Liz Cheney is getting quiet support from nasty guy allies and the Koch network. She has also vowed to support Democrats who are running against 2020 election deniers. I’ve mentioned she lost her Wyoming primary and is considering a kamikaze presidential run in 2024 as a way to take down the nasty guy. Mark Sumner of Kos, in a post from last Tuesday, reported the nasty guy has been accusing the FBI, DOJ, National Archives, and Biden of harassing him for keeping the top secret documents he had stashed at his for-profit estate. But he had done nothing in court until last Monday, two weeks after the FBI searched that estate. What the nasty guy and his lawyers submitted to the court is ... a puzzle. Or a mess. It didn’t follow the rules of a court motion. It complains without actually specifying a complaint for which he wants court action. It doesn’t list the laws that show the court has power to act on his complaint. Sumner quoted Marcy Wheeler at emptywheel, who said the document does include such things as a confession to violating the Espionage Act and proof that the FBI search was conducted like other searches. That this court filing is two weeks after the search and it was so bad that other attorneys are “giggling” means this was all for show. It is to quiet the voices that said if he was treated as bad as he says he was why doesn’t he go to court? He uses the courts so quickly in so many other cases. Michael Sallah of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette tweeted with a link to the full story:

A 33-year-old Russian-speaking immigrant posing as Anna de Rothschild -- a member of the European banking dynasty -- infiltrated Mar-a-Lago and Trump's entourage. Said one guest: "How did they allow it?"

Which is why the nasty guy storing classified documents at his for-profit estate is so dangerous. And illegal. I’ve seen other news outlets take up the story. Greg Dworkin, in a pundit roundup for Kos, quoted Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times in an article titled, The Idea That Letting Trump Walk Will Heal America is Ridiculous:

And these 2020 deniers aren’t sitting still, either; as these election results show, they are actively working to undermine democracy for the next time Trump is on the ballot. This fact, alone, makes a mockery of the idea that the ultimate remedy for Trump is to beat him at the ballot box a second time, as if the same supporters who rejected the last election will change course in the face of another defeat. It also makes clear the other weight-bearing problem with the argument against holding Trump accountable, which is that it treats inaction as an apolitical and stability-enhancing move — something that preserves the status quo as opposed to action, which upends it. But that’s not true. Inaction is as much a political choice as action is, and far from preserving the status quo — or securing some level of social peace — it sets in stone a new world of total impunity for any sufficiently popular politician or member of the political elite.

While this NYT article gives the progressive position, not all of them do. Dartagnan of the Kos community discussed a column by NYT guest essayist Damon Linker. The essay says there is no happy ending in how America might treat the nasty guy. Dartagnan wrote:

Linker’s conclusion is that the likelihood of permanent harm to the country from pursuing and forcing a reckoning of Trump’s criminal behavior outweighs the potential benefits of such an approach. I strongly disagree, and from the looks of things, many others do as well.

Some of Dartagnan’s rebuttal against Linker: Linker noted that Democrats (or any government entity) of prosecuting the nasty guy would set a precedent for Republicans to prosecute all future Democratic presidents. Dartagnan’s reply: Republicans plant to do that anyway. Also ...

When you submit to blackmail you surrender not only your integrity but your very freedom out of fear, and a government (or country) with its political institutions dominated by fear of the consequences of following the rule of law is not a government worth sustaining. It is simply capitulation to the power of fascist rule, with such rule in this case being imposed by a violent and delusional mob. That is by definition unacceptable to anyone who desires to live in this country as it currently exists, or even as it was intended to exist from the outset. In fact, the threat of such retaliatory tactics ought to be an impetus, not a deterrent, to prosecuting Trump.

Linker wrote that hauling the nasty guy before a judge will be seen as politically motivated (because Republicans will make sure it is seen that way) and part of the deep state. This spectacle would be corrosive, convincing many Republican voters that the rule of law is a sham. Dartagnan replied the way to handle these people is not capitulation to their followers, but vigorously prosecuting them. For all of our judicial system’s faults it is designed to deal with these types of people. And if it is incapable or afraid of doing so then our country is lost. Dartagnan wrote:

Where Linker departs the rails of logic is in his suggestion that because our institutions (including our elections) require a basic level of good faith and compliance, the conscious choice by the GOP to flout them somehow requires Democrats and other opponents of Trump to reconsider their zealousness in enforcing the rule of law. ... Linker seems to believe that by refraining from prosecuting Trump now, Democrats will somehow be able to ameliorate or diminish the violent tendencies and delusional predispositions of his followers in the future. In that, he’s dead wrong. Democrats and liberals aren’t under any illusions about what these people are capable of. Trump and the GOP under his thumb are now all of the same piece: They’re bullies, and they like it. They’ll keep being that way until they are pushed back. Appeasement or forbearance doesn’t work, it only emboldens them more. Put very simply, they have to be faced down and told: “No.”

In a second post Dartagnan discussed an NYT essay by Rich Lowrey. This essay, like the one by Linker, says prosecuting the nasty guy is a bad idea. Lowry’s basic premise is the GOP has reasons to be paranoid. That stems from the “national fiasco” and “hoax” of the Mueller report. It was those things because Mueller declined to prosecute the nasty guy. Dartagnan said the report was hardly a fiasco. It produced 37 indictments and seven guilty pleas or convictions. It showed the nasty guy repeatedly lied to investigators. A thousand former federal prosecutors concluded if other Americans did what he did they would have been indicted on multiple charges of obstruction of justice. But Lowry can make his claim because so few have read the Mueller report. Which Republicans don’t want anyone to read. Lowry repeats the threat that Republicans would prosecute Biden, then concludes:

In the tumult over a Trump indictment, both sides will accuse the other of violating the country’s norms and traditions. But there’s no doubt that a fierce Republican response, deeply distrustful of the authorities and openly defiant, would be profoundly American.

To which Dartagnan replied:

“Profoundly American?” Really? I would call it the exact opposite.

Then Dartagnan gets to the big question: Why did the liberal leaning Times publish these far right essays? He doesn’t have an answer yet.