“Never before has this court been presented with such a unique and remarkable set of circumstances,” Justice Juan Merchan said shortly before announcing the sentence, calling it a “truly extraordinary case”. When Trump’s New York trial adjourned with a final bang of the gavel on Friday, it also brought to a close this particularly fraught chapter in his personal and political history. When he is sworn in 10 days from now, he will do so as the first US president to have ever been convicted of a felony.
As he concluded his sentencing on Friday, Justice Merchan had one final message for Trump.
“I wish you Godspeed as you assume your second term in office,” he said.
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It would be irresponsible of me to ignore this latest bit of news. Thoughts concerning it are traveling about the globe. For many – including not only those abroad but also Americans themselves – this unflattering celebrity of an American president is a milestone of American politics and history. The resonance is not however favourable; indeed most spin on the topic is that it cements the decline of what was once considered an enviable society. Or at least it marks the finality of removal of America from the pretence of an enviable society (one parenthetically marked by “despicable” looting in the Pacific Palisades and Eaton Fire areas of Los Angeles).
What rings in my ears following this latest news, apart from the now gutless adage that “justice must not only be done but it must be seen to be done”, is the deeper less constrained complication that we all make mistakes. And while it is discernibly easier to point the finger at someone else, I have to ask, “What if that were me? What if that were you?” Would my conviction response be as enthusiastic about a fabricated human adage? I mean, we’re not talking about gravity here. There is room for both finesse and interpretation; and, even if there were not, there is room for forgiveness and carrying on in spite of it all. Once again I ask, “Who doesn’t make mistakes?” And, since when were juries this mana from heaven, this seemingly pure thinking crowd of uninfluenced personalities? Juries were the same people who, in the south of the United States of America, routinely ordered people to be hung for inconsequential or unproven or irrelevant behaviour, except what currently drove their own electrical circuits.
Let’s face it too: Trump has become a martyr to his followers. FOX NEWS has adopted its own unique interpretation:
Once considered the premier legal system in the country, figures like New York Attorney General Letitia James, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, Justices Arthur F. Engoron and Juan Merchan have caused the system to be weaponized for political purposes. Trump will walk away from this trial and into the White House in less than two weeks, but the New York system will walk into infamy after this day.
By Jonathan Turley Fox News
And, you know what, in the larger scheme of things, just as the American public has decided its scope, ambitions and projection, even Trump with all his bravado is not behind the wheel. The American society is clearly driven by behaviour which has proven itself above and beyond any of those law school debates about entitlement or tolerability or judicial reasoning. Who cares! Already Elon Musk has taken the lead, no doubt encouraging a stream of similarly minded rich men and women to follow his lead both nationally and internationally. The rule of the masses by well-to-do autocrats is nothing new. And, on the subject of rationality and educated behaviour, I can’t help but think that in the normal manner of comprehension and conduct, successful people like Musk are not to be dismissed. Having him show up at one’s luncheon would not likely be disparaged.
The human condition does not readily avail itself of social constructs. Instead, like the changeable creatures we are, our tastes and decisions alternate. Much for example has lately been made of the American fatigue with so-called woke thinking. The moment these underlying responses and themes begin to surface, the superficial gleam is easily wiped aside.
In philosophy, a construct is an object which is ideal, that is, an object of the mind or of thought, meaning that its existence may be said to depend upon a subject’s mind. This contrasts with any possibly mind-independent objects, the existence of which purportedly does not depend on the existence of a conscious observing subject. Thus, the distinction between these two terms may be compared to that between phenomenon and noumenon in other philosophical contexts and to many of the typical definitions of the terms realism and idealism also. In the correspondence theory of truth, ideas, such as constructs, are to be judged and checked according to how well they correspond with their referents, often conceived as part of a mind-independent reality.
It is for this reason that I safely abandon logic and legal theorems in this otherwise controversial topic. What we’re dealing with here is animal parturition. Its putative baseness is no more than its inheritance, its breeding, its history. We seek to contradict humanity in its most elemental form. And what we have unwittingly disclosed and discovered in the process is that once we begin to dissolve those highlighted features of human thinking, what remains are mere particles of thought, indicia of reasonableness. But we shall within the context of human behaviour ever reach the synthetic, axiomatic, rarefied level of mathematics. To reach that lofty place is, after all, no more or less succinct than 1 + 1 =2, not what I would call a particularly enlarging conclusion. As for the broader fields surrounding the theory of relativity, I shall resist contaminating that esoteric arena with either human or arithmetic influences.
Lastly, confining myself to the matter at hand, what speaks to me most loudly is not the possibly inopportune or inaccurate assault upon a man about to be seated at the desk in the Oval Office of the White House; rather, I say once again, admitting at least the possibility of error, combined with the regularity of error affecting any one of us, and facing the reality of decision and leadership at the behest of an aristocracy, oligarchy and plutocracy, maybe it is time for Americans to get behind one another and do the work they propose for their mutual benefit. Conflict and lace of compromise have long ago proven their worthlessness. There is so much more value to be derived from reciting, instead of personal abuse, the means to accomplish the work to be done. I have no doubt that, with moderate application, each member of each party of government could usefully propose an agenda of action to be discussed and resolved without further disruption or obstruction. Wringing one’s hands and weeping over the outcome of a problem is already long past its resolution. It’s time for a new focus. We do not need to “enjoy poor health”. And while we needn’t necessarily fully understand the approach of the other side in an argument, we must at the very least acknowledge the entitlement while never losing sight of the objective of compromise at any cost. To do otherwise is to walk out of the room in a huff. That is indeed a small compliment!