Forgot seeking unity. The seditionists and their enablers needs to be relentlessly pursued, prosecuted and punished.
Shortly after the November election (once Biden’s victory was clear), my wife was on the phone with a good friend, a well-meaning woman who can best be described as “spiritual”. (The friend is the kind of person who once hosted a Winter Solstice party in which we turned out the lights and performed various mystical rituals.)
My wife’s friend was commenting — I could hear her on the speaker phone — that now it was time for reconciliation and peace. That was too much for me and I barged in on the conversation. I stated in no uncertain terms that the opposite was true, that we should show Trump supporters no mercy or grace because of the damage he had wrought. I barked that they all should be held accountable for their complicity, and the threats to the nation they had enabled. My wife’s friend, being the spiritual, forgiving soul that she is, rejected all that. She somehow believed that if we all conveyed thoughts of reconciliation that, magically, order would be restored to the universe.
Little did I now that just two months later there would be a full scale insurrection in Washington, DC, with the stated intent of killing or kidnapping elected officials (that’s what those guns & zip ties were for), and overturning a fair democratic vote. Looking back now, the friend’s naivety made me think of the impact of Lincoln’s lofty but ill-conceived notion of “malice towards none”.
Lincoln tried the olive branch. IT FAILED,
Lincoln’s approach of course to the end of the war was “. . . and charity for all . . .” As evidenced in Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln, the 16th President purportedly told Grant that he did not want hangings, and that he wouldn’t mind if Jefferson Davis and other Confederate traitors were allowed to escape the country.
For all of Lincoln’s magnitude, all that America got from treating the defeated Confederates with grace were:
- an assassinated President;
- subsequent enablement of the KKK and systematic violence against blacks in the south
- Jim Crow and a century and a half of systemic economic, social and criminal justice racism
The most important thing to take from the failure of a “unity” approach towards the South was that it enabled and encouraged the defeated to act as if nothing had really happened — and led to generations of continued inequity and discord.
The only remedy is to inflict maximum pain ON TRUMP’s die hard supporters
Today, we face a similar challenge. While Joe Biden speaks of unifying the country, the reality is that the significant minority of dead-enders will NEVER be brought back into the fold of decency. The only plausible way to prevent decades of dangerous dissent is to permanently crush the seditionists & traitors who still cling to the cult of Trumpism.
These people need to feel personal, economic, social and judicial pain to the point that they will never dare crawl out of their holes again to threaten the nation.
- We should start by naming names — expand the effort of internet sleuths to identify and create a national “Wanted for Sedition” database, which makes it easy for law enforcement agencies across the country to arrest, jail and prosecute those who invaded the Capitol in an attempted coup. A special court in Washington DC should be established to expedite trials and sentencing. Multiple charges should be stacked to result in extra-long sentences. And any individuals who can be identified in the assault which killed Capitol Hill Policeman Brian Sicknick should receive life sentences.
- Those persons identified from the Wanted Posters who cannot be arrested should be mercilessly shamed. Even without evidence of crimes committed, anyone who can be named should be subjected to humiliation and ruin. These seditionists’ employers should be contacted, their businesses boycotted, their families shunned. The power of the internet — combined with grass roots detective work — should be used to exact harsh penalties which make their lives miserable. Most importantly, rather than being allowed to feign remorse, these individuals should be made an example of with a message of “it’s too late”, thus discouraging others from acting out on their worst instincts.
- Law Enforcement Agencies and the Military should be purged of co-conspirators and sympathizers. It’s clear that these institutions are polluted and embedded with individuals willing to help enable a coup. In particular, retired military officers who remain subject to the the Uniform Code of Military Justice should be punished by the military. Traitors like ret. Gen. Michael Flynn and ret. Lt. Col. Larry Rendall Brock, Jr. (the zip ties guy) should be called back to active duty and court martialed, with long sentences in the military brig.
- The sycophant community of instigators and inciters must face both legal and economic ruin, losers such Rudy Giuliani, Sydney Powell, Lin Wood, etc. should find their personal and financial lives in tatters as they face criminal and civil penalties. Examples must be made of people like this who chose “fame by fascism”.
The trumps must be on the receiving end of a never-ending broadside of POLITICAL DISGRACE, LEGAL IMPERILMENT, ANd ECONOMIC SCORCHED EARTH policies.
Trump (and his family and the Trump Organization, as appropriate) should be:
- immediately (this week) impeached by the House and (subsequently — after 100 days) convicted by the Senate of an article of impeachment, followed prohibition against ever holding federal office again.
- simultaneously subjected to multiple local (New York City), state (New York State, and Georgia) and federal (District of Columbia) indictments, arrests (including a walk of shame) and trials. Bail should be denied and Trump’s passport revoked. He should rot on Riker’s Island while awaiting trial on New York charges.
- on the receiving end of relentless civil suits for personal behavior as well as to redress economic damages due to slander and foul business practices; these legal actions should continue even after criminal proceedings, to create a never-ending nightmare for Trump and his family
- permanently denied platforms for communicating to his cultists; Facebook, Twitter and YouTube should continue their bans, while Parler should be castrated and other networks (Fox, OAN, Newsmax) subjected to economic and legal attacks.
- stripped of the sources of his business income. The Trump organization’s properties should be boycotted and forced into receivership. Any attempt at gaining income from tv should result in economic boycotts against the offending network(s) and their advertisers. The ultimate comeuppance would be to force the sale of the Trump International Hotel on Pennsylvania avenue to a Jeff Bezos-type figure, who then renames it the “Barack Obama International Hotel of Diplomacy”
Payback is a b**ch. Let’s bring it on.