The media teases us with stories such as the recent news that federal investigators exercised a search warrant against Rudi Giuliani, searching his apartment for evidence related to his attempts in the Ukraine to manufacture evidence against Joe Biden. But through the years of the Mueller investigation and two impeachment trials in the Senate, we are justifiably cynical about it meaning anything. We have every reason to view our Justice Department as being a tool for controlling minorities and the poor, but when it comes to the powerful and the wealthy, there is no functioning justice system.
We know that Trump colluded with Russia, asked China to tamper with our election system, and threatened the president of the Ukraine if he didn’t manufacture false evidence against Biden. We know that Trump threatened the Secretary of State in Georgia to falsify election returns in Trump’s favor. We know that he used his Trump charity to pay personal bills and he raised millions for veterans’ charities and pocketed the money.
But nothing compares to the attempted violent overthrow of the government of the United States on January 6th in an insurrection organized and directed by Donald Trump with the assistance of our own junior Senator, Josh Hawley, and Texas embarrassment, Senator Ted Cruz, along with probable assistance from Republican members of Congress. Historically, when an insurrection fails, those involved are executed, often very publicly, being hanged for the world to see. We don’t have state sanctioned public hanging anymore, though, at Trump’s instigation, insurrectionists built gallows on the Capitol lawn to hang Mike Pence because Pence refused to illegally throw the presidential election for Trump.
But has Josh Hawley been put on trial and then imprisoned for life for his part in the insurrection? No. He has not even been removed from the Senate but is allowed to participate in the democracy he tried to overthrow by doing things like casting the lone vote against the Anti-Asian Hate Crimes Bill. In spite of all of the openly racist and xenophobic members of the Senate who at least voted in support of this Anti-Asian Hate Crimes legislation, Hawley sought to distinguish himself as being more racist, more despicable, and less ethical than any other member of this one honorable institution.
More than three months after the insurrection, only a few of the gullible “soldiers” that Trump, Hawley, and Cruz inspired to attack the Capitol have been arrested and we have no reasonable hope of ever seeing the actual masterminds serve time in prison because, sadly, America’s justice system is little more than a joke. Except for the fact, that it isn’t a very funny joke. Two million Americans are currently in prison and nearly ten million are on parole, none of whom have ever come close to threatening American democracy as much as Trump, Hawley, and Cruz very publicly have. The incarcerated’s primary crime was having broken the law without being rich or being elected to national office. I can applaud much of the progress that Joe Biden has made in restoring America’s sanity, but I have no roses to throw in the direction of our justice system. Every cruel dictator in every corner in the world has reason to defend themselves saying, “Well, at least I am not as corrupt as the USA.”