Should Government Move Fast and Break Things?
No one believes in the rule of law more than I do. And no one believes more in the fact that Donald Trump is a grifter than I do. And yet, when the FBI swooped in to Mar-a-Lago looking for boxes of classified documents no one had more trepidation about the ultimate outcome of what it is doing than I do.
Why? Because I remember when the FBI swooped down on my friends Mike Lacey and Jim Larkin because the McCain machine wanted them accused of child trafficking on Back Page. Never mind that they were not guilty, nor even indicted yet, never mind that they had won dozens of previous lawsuits in other states on the same issue, and never mind that they had even offered to turn themselves in when they found out about the federal government's warrant.
But in a display of histrionics worthy of a crime drama the FBI invaded Mike Lacey's house while his mother-in-law and her visiting sister ( two women in their 80s) were in the shower, and forced them out of the shower at gunpoint while they helped themselves to Lacey’s art collection and everything else in the house that they thought might be connected to illicit gains from Backpage.
Three years and millions of dollars in lawyers’ fees later, a mistrial was declared. And rather than call it a day on these two seventy+ year-old men who never did anything other than run an alternative newspaper that won every editorial award given out, the state sat another judge and is ready to go through the whole thing again. Double jeopardy anyone?
This FBI experience, which I vividly remember because Lacey is a lifelong friend of mine, causes me great pause after the FBI swooped into Mar-a-Lago yesterday.
I know that the FBI can be wrong and can be politically manipulated. I understand why the Republicans who really like Donald Trump and don't understand what was wrong about what he might have done are completely incensed and fearful of our government. They are arming themselves against what they believe is an onslaught of IRS agents empowered by the ineptly named Inflation Reduction Act.
Are we sure we are not in one of these situations where only he who is without sin should cast the first stone? Are we sure the Democrats are without sin? This is a rhetorical question.
I started out my voting life as a Democrat, and saw a great deal of Democratic misappropriation of power in places like Chicago and New York and Boston where the great machines came to power and control the party. I wasn't a fan of letting Ted Kennedy run for president after Chappaquiddick. As I got older and lived in Arizona longer I became proud of being an independent and a progressive. My party in any election is the one with the person most apt to do the job at least competently.
No matter how this shakes out with Merrick Garland and Donald Trump, it will not make me think of the Democrats as virtuous and the Republicans as evil. Instead it shows the entire US government on both sides as a misogynistic dynastic family business not unlike Wall Street or Hollywood. In the eyes of the world we have lost all credibility under both Republicans and Democrats.
And now for the lede. Do I think Donald Trump should be prosecuted as a white-collar criminal? Of course I do. Do I think it should've been done in exactly this fashion, to tear the country further apart, not a chance. As a friend of mine who was a conservative Republican told me last night, the conservatives now have no one to vote for. But who can progressives vote for? Both of us have been disenfranchised.
We need both parties to participate if we are going to have a functioning government. Now all I can do is pray Merrick Garland did not make any mistakes and that no one is truly above the law..