Posted on by rjonakait

My Astrology Class

A flier at my local branch of the public library announced that on Tuesday evening there would be an “Intro to Astrology with Kristina.”  It went on: “In this two-hour overview of modern astrology we will cover the natal chart, the elements, and the modes. We will understand through the elements & modes. We will introduce the planets and houses before applying this knowledge to a chart.” No fees. Materials provided. I went.

Kristina was tall and thin. I am not good at ages, but my guess is that she was fortyish. She wore hoop earrings but no other jewelry. She said that she had been interested in astrology all her life and had seriously studied it since she was nineteen. She was a “practicing astrologer” and “read charts.” She practiced online and with a smile said that she was a “global practitioner.” She referred often to “my teacher,” clearly someone important to her.

The flier warned us to come early because the class would be limited to sixteen. No problem. There were eight of us, all but one of whom seemed more knowledgeable about astrology than I was.

We started with basic information about a “natal chart.” Apparently, the location of the birth does not have to be more precise than a city or town, but the birth time, Kristina said, needed to be within seven minutes of the actual delivery. This concerned one of my classmates. She had two adopted children, one from Ethiopia and another from Bangladesh. Not only did she not know the seven-minute window when either was born, she did not even know the dates of their births. She had been told that she could pick a birthday, but now she worried that she had chosen “bad” ones for astrological purposes. I did not know what that meant.

We were told that everything was made of four things—water, fire, air, and earth. (I resisted bringing up atomic and subatomic particles.) Apparently, one of these substances predominates in each of us, and on a handout we were asked to write down our thoughts on what it meant if a person was, for example, a fiery person. I could list traits for a fiery person and for an earthy person. I could not think of anyone, however, who I had ever thought of as a watery person. At first I wrote, “no idea” under watery. Then I wrote, “Perhaps goes with the flow—wishy washy.” I realized that a thin gruel was watery and perhaps a watery person was one of little substance. When we later discussed this, others referred to still waters running deep and another to thundering waves. I thought that if a watery person can evoke a calm that masks layers of thought or the turbulence of crashing breakers while to me it evokes someone without principles or nutritionless cream of wheat, the range of opinions made the label…well, useless.

My confusion increased when we discussed what it meant to be an airy person. I don’t remember ever labeling someone as airy, although “airhead” has been in my lexicon. For airy, what immediately came to mind was Tinkerbell, places such as Ireland and Iceland where Little People had burrowed into the folklore, and those late nineteenth century photographs that had gossamer-like creatures with diaphanous wings. However, one of my classmates said, “Flighty,” and Katrina said, “Yes, intellectual.” I intruded for one of the few times and said that I was confused: “Intellectual and flighty are antithetical.” Others looked at me in bewilderment; Of course they meant the same thing. One classmate said, “My mother is flighty and an intellectual.” I thought that that was possible but not at the same time. Einstein was an intellectual. He may have been flighty at other times, but not when he was trying to unravel the deepest secrets of the universe. The instructor said you should figure out what watery and the other words meant to you. I asked if the terms were meant to be objective or subjective. If the words were merely subjective, there could not be meaningful communication between people about them. I did not get an answer.

We got another handout that listed the well-known astrological signs with their accompanying human traits. Nothing was said about how the characteristics had been determined and assigned. They came to us as self-evident assertions. We were asked to look at our signs and see what we recognized in ourselves, but I tried to look at all the signs. I noticed how the traits for each sign almost always contradicted themselves. Under Aries, for example, it said, “Initiating: Starts things but finds it difficult to see them through once routine replaces creativity.” That seemed consistent with “Spontaneous: Likes things to happen straight away and loses interest if there is any delay.” However, they were seemingly contradicted by “Focused: Not easily distracted from within by self-doubt and second thoughts, nor from without by the reactions of others.” Hmmm. Focused but loses interest easily.

I could recognize characteristics of mine in the Taurus description, but I could also recognize as many traits I have in every one of the signs. And none of the Taurine signs that fit me were immutably ever present. “Patient: Unconcerned with how long things to take to happen.” Sometimes yes, sometimes no. My last trait was supposedly “Stubborn.” I laughed to myself. Aren’t we all stubborn some of the time, but I know that I am not always rigid. Just the other day, I had lunch with a friend. When the check came, I reached for a credit card to split the payment, but Tony said, “You had to make a special effort to come [true], and I am going to pay.” I swallowed my stubbornness, put my wallet away, and let him pay.

I was slow on the uptake, but I finally realized that I was being urged to think in stereotypes. A Gemini was adaptable and expressive. A Virgo was analytical and practical. I had no idea where the stereotyping came from, but I wondered if this is worse than the stereotyping that confronts us regularly — stereotypes based on nationality, ethnicity, race, religion, geography, age, education, politics, accent, hair style, and so on.

I also realized how much of the class was based on a common but basic flaw in human thinking. Too often when an idea is presented, we look for confirming evidence, and that is often easy to find. I could see some confirmation in myself for almost any astrological characteristic for any sign. (Exception: I am not stubborn. How many times would I have to tell you this for you to believe it?) But if we want to advance our knowledge, we must go beyond just confirmation and look for the disconfirming. None of that happened in this class.

But I wondered if this belief system is any more bizarre than others. People believe in transubstantiation and predestination. Others believe that the dictatorship of the proletariat will come. Some believe that the New York Jets will win a Super Bowl. Some believe that one sect comprises the righteous religious heirs of Muhammad while others believe in a different sect. And so on.

Finally, if I had more knowledge, I might know bad things done in the name of astrological beliefs. On the other hand, I know many horrible actions that have been done in the name of other belief systems. So, what is the harm if some believe in astrology?

And if I had not come to the class, I never would have heard a proclamation, said without any sense of irony, like this one from Katrina: “My Libra is in Venus (or perhaps my Venus is in Libra) so I pay close attention to balance.” Even after the class, I had no idea what this meant, but I had never met someone who could say it with a straight face.

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Trump Can Testify. The Irony

Outside the courthouse where his trial is being held, Donald Trump said, “Well, I’m not allowed to testify. I’m under a gag order, I guess. I can’t testify.” The next morning the judge began the proceedings by saying that he needed to “clear up any misunderstandings” about the gag order preventing Trump from publicly remarking on witnesses and jurors. “I want to stress, Mr. Trump, that you have an absolute right to testify at trial, if that’s what you decide to do.” The gag order “applies to statements made outside of court. It does not apply to statements from the witness stand.”

Of course, Trump has a right to testify in his own defense. In 1987, the Supreme Court in Rock v. Arkansas held that under the Constitution, “it cannot be doubted that a defendant in a criminal case has the right to take the witness stand and to testify in his or her own defense.” That is clear, but some of the comments about that right have been misleading. For example, I have heard on television commentators say that no defense counsel would ever allow Trump to take the stand.

The right to testify is so fundamental that the accused, not the lawyer, is responsible for the decision. Defense lawyers may advise whether they think it wise for a client to be sworn as a witness, and clients may follow that advice. However, if the lawyers advise against the testimony but the client insists on testifying, the accused testifies. The decision whether to testify is so fundamental that criminal defendants who indicate that they are not going to testify are asked by the court whether they know that they have a constitutional right to testify. The affirmative response is followed by questions to make sure that that decision not to testify is a knowing, voluntary, and intelligent one. Even half-wit defense attorneys know this and discuss the right to testify with their clients in planning a defense. It would be incompetent lawyering of the highest degree if Trump’s lawyers had not done so. Of course, it is possible that Trump was not listening when the subject came up, or perhaps he knew it was BS when he said that he can’t testify.

There are no comprehensive records of how often the accused testifies. Even so, legal “experts” give us this “information” although it is often inconsistent. In a few minutes online I found some commentators saying that criminal defendants “rarely” testify while others said that defendants without criminal records testify 65% of the time and those with criminal record 45% of the time. And so on. In short data are sparse.

Similarly, I have heard commentators saying that a conviction is more likely when the defendant testifies and from others that a conviction is less likely. Such pronouncements are mere hunches. We would have to run trials twice with the defendant testifying in one and not the other to get information about the effect taking the stand has on the outcome. Take what the legal experts say with a giant grain of salt.

We do know that special evidentiary rules come into effect when a criminal defendant testifies. The jury may hear evidence they would not otherwise hear. Like all witnesses, the testifying defendant’s credibility is at issue. He can be cross-examined about matters that go to his credibility that otherwise would not be admissible. Most often this concerns criminal convictions and activities. The jury may not hear about prior convictions if the defendant remains mum. But if he testifies, the defendant may be asked about them under the theory that a person with certain convictions is less likely to tell the truth than someone who has not been similarly convicted.

Trump has no criminal convictions, but the doctrine goes beyond convictions to other actions that can affect the issue of credibility. The trial judge has ruled that if Trump testifies, he can be asked about the yearslong fraud that a civil jury found he was involved with; his violation of a gag order in that case; and about the defamation case of E. Jean Carroll. If he does not testify, the jury will not hear about these matters.

Defense attorneys have often said that the most difficult decision they have is whether to advise a client to take the stand. I have no idea what Trump’s attorneys will recommend or whether Trump will follow the advice. What is clear, however, is that Trump has a constitutional right to testify and to control the decision as to whether he will testify. And therein lies an irony.

Trump ran for president saying that he would appoint pro-life, pro-Second Amendment, “conservative” judges. He was not very explicit about what he meant by conservative judges, but the assumption borne out by his appointments is that they would be “originalist” ones, that is, they would interpret the Constitution as it originally was. They would not find constitutional rights that did not exist when the Constitution and its amendments were ratified.

The Constitution, however, does not contain a right to testify. Instead, at the time the Constitution was adopted, criminal defendants were prohibited from testifying. The law in all the states and the federal courts expressly forbade testimony from criminal defendants. That may seem strange to us now. We might think that fairness requires the opportunity to testify, but that was not the law. That bizarre stricture only began to break down in the Civil War era when Maine was the first to allow defendants to take the stand. Soon other states and the federal courts allowed such testimony, and eventually criminal defendants could testify in all jurisdictions.

The Supreme Court in Rock v. Arkansas that pronounced that there was a constitutional right for a criminal defendant to testify was not an originalist court. If they were true to their principles, originalist judges — including the ones appointed by Trump — would not have come to that conclusion. Indeed, the present court, if given the chance, could abolish the constitutional right since it is not specifically included in the Constitution. Trump has the constitutional right to testify, but only because non-originalist judges said so.

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A Place to Die

We have recently returned from Florida where we were looking look for a place to die. Of course, that is not the express purpose of the institutions — sorry, communities — that we visited. As the spouse explained after a similar trip last year, (See post of September 19, 2023 “Please Take Good Care of…Me”), they are called “continuing care retirement communities” or CCRCs. Here’s some of what she wrote:

“These popular retirement options (increasingly known as “life care communities” or “senior living solutions” [who thought up such an awful term?!?!?] ) are designed to make your last years on earth as pleasant and carefree as possible. Towards that end, they promise independent living in a comfortable apartment (or free-standing “cottage” or “villa” or “townhome”), meal service (usually one meal a day), housekeeping, a fitness center (machines and pools), day trips, art workshops, chapel, library (either check-out or book swap), book clubs, bridge, mah-jongg, musical events, etc. etc. etc. (God forbid you should just want to relax and read your book.) Importantly, the best ones offer “assisted living” should daily activities (like bathing and dressing) get to be overwhelming, memory care should dementia raise its ugly head, and skilled nursing should such be required. For all this fun one usually pays an entrance fee (higher the bigger the dwelling you select) and a monthly fee. The monthly fee may remain constant as one moves from, say, independent living to memory care, or it may start off small-ish (never really small) and get steeper as one moves to more hands-on levels of care.

“Now. There are several problems with all CCRC’s. While they offer some welcome activities to those of us who no longer get up in the morning to go to work, they also tend to remind us that we no longer get up in the morning to go to work, and we need other things to keep us engaged with the living. Moreover, it requires us to come to terms with the fact that bad things happen when one gets older. But the main problem with all of these CCRCs is that everyone, I mean everyone, is OLD. Some of us old people don’t like the idea of always being around old people. I know, I know, but there it is.”

So, we went to Florida not just to look at life plan communities, but to check out Florida itself. The spouse and I had felt that we had understood the good and the bad about Florida. She had spent formative time there, including her junior and senior high school years. The spouse worked there after graduate school. Her mother continued to live there after her father died. My parents moved there from Wisconsin after my father’s heart attack. I volunteered in a public defenders’ office on the west coast. However, now we were no longer so sure that we understood Florida. It had gone bonkers, banning books and rejecting abortion rights. We were particularly concerned about what seemed to be attacks on the LGBTQ+ community. Would the gay, transgender, and nonbinary members of our families feel comfortable visiting us? Would we feel that we could find a comfortable community in this atmosphere? So we took our son along for a read on the place.

The first leg of our journey to find a place to die started with a hired car to take us to the airport. Our Uber driver—surprise, surprise—was an immigrant. He had come from the former Soviet republic of Georgia. He talked about Georgian restaurants in New York City. He also said that driving for Uber could become boring. But it was only a part-time gig. He also worked for a family business. His father owns a sixty-acre vineyard in Georgia, and our driver was helping to set up a business to import the wines into the United States. We talked about varietals and the name of the family wines. His English was nearly perfect even though he had been in the U.S. only for eighteen months. His mother had taught him, he said. She had gone to veterinary school at the University of Florida.  

Although we had often driven ourselves to the airport, being driven meant that we saw things we hadn’t noticed before. In one short stretch there were three billboards extolling the services of various personal injury attorneys and one reminding us that Jesus saved. I wondered if you had Jesus in your life whether you would have the need for a PI lawyer. In Florida even more attorneys advertised. Indeed, car accident victims are more numerous than in New York City.

On the last leg of our trip to find a place to die, we used Lyft to take us from the airport back home. The spouse asked the driver why he drove for Lyft and not Uber. He said that he drove for both but preferred Lyft. Uber customers, he said, were more obnoxious than Lyft ones.  He–surprise, surprise—was an immigrant. He was born in Jamaica but had been in New York for nine years. He was married with two sons, nine and four, and was looking to buy a house on Long Island. His driving was also part time. He had a computer science degree and had a retinue of clients he helped with their technology issues. His real passion, however, was soccer. He had played professionally in England in one of the lesser leagues with a team hoping to work its way up, but he had blown out his knee. His dreams disappeared with torn cartilage. His four-year-old, however, loved the game, and his father already dreamed of having him play professionally.

Why regale you with taxi driver stories when I’m talking about moving to Florida? These two conversations are part of a broader New York experience. In this city under all sorts of circumstances, I have met people who in a small way have expanded my life. They have given me glimpses into other societies and lives and have given me vicarious new experiences. Perhaps it would happen as much to me elsewhere, but I know it happens to me often in New York City, and I will miss it. Onward to Florida.

Instead of using hired cars, we rented one, which was fine except for one thing: When we returned it, we were a quarter tank short of full because we had not seen a gas station as we neared the airport. We had neglected to learn how much the car rental company would charge us for topping it off, but I assumed it would be the usual extortionate six or eight dollars a gallon. Wrong. It was $12. Fifty-two dollars later, we left the car.

We stayed at a two-bedroom condo on the beach in Fort Lauderdale. It was a high rise among a bevy of beach high rises. This not-exactly-new building was part condo and part hotel. The clientele was American. We had stayed at a Miami Beach place a few years back where most seemed to have come from South America. In any event, the clientele was…well…not to put too fine a point upon it…tacky.

We were hungry and frazzled when we arrived, so we headed downstairs for a drink and some food. We passed up an Italian restaurant off the lobby and headed outside on what was warm and lovely evening. A tiki bar was next to the pool. When we went to check out the water temperature, a large man came over to help us. We asked him his name. He said that everyone called him Big Mike. There was a reason for this. He was BIG. Maybe 6’6” and solidly built. He looked over at his sidekick, an even larger man, and said that he called him Big Fabian. Fabian stuck out his hand and after the question told us he was 6’9”. I nervously wondered why this tiki bar needed to employ these gentle giants. A cat sauntered by as if it owned the place. Big Mike said that he had adopted it and took care of it. The cat’s name—ready for the surprise?—is Tiki. A number of dogs were also in evidence. A sign said that only service dogs were allowed, but Floridians apparently have even more need for service dogs than patrons on the New York subway, or maybe that rule was not enforced.

We sat outside the tiki enclosure and ordered. The drinks came quickly although I am not sure that there was alcohol in my dessert-like tropical concoction. The food took a long time to come, and the order was only partially correct, but the servers were welcoming and friendly, so who cared? One of the servers came over urging us to go to the beach because a full moon was just rising. She helped the spouse to get to a viewing area. Watching a full moon coming over the horizon of a body of water, which I have seen many times, is always a spectacular sight. This was no exception. Huge and golden it rose out of the sea. (Two nights later we watched a spectacular sunset from our apartment windows.)

We passed the tiki bar frequently since it was on our way to the pool or beach. The patrons may have changed from day to day, but somehow the crowd always seemed the same. Even though this was Florida, there were not many old people of our age. And while some colleges were on hiatus, it was not a spring-break crowd. A lot of the people seemed to be local. As I mentioned, it was not a particularly high-class place, but I found consolation in seeing that my overweight body looked almost svelte next to most of the men who had bodies that strained extra-large clothing. There may have been some not-so-young women “negotiating” with older men. There was a middle-aged man with a dog on his lap so small that he should have been embarrassed sitting with it and a woman on his right with a large dog. His hand regularly stroked her ass. I do not know if she welcomed it, but she certainly did not object. Perhaps the bar was best summed up when the son reported that he had seen one woman drinking a can of beer from another woman’s cleavage, urging some men to join in the revelry.

The next day we visited two places to see if they might be good places to die. That evening we headed off to a popular seafood place on the intracoastal waterway. It did not take reservations. When we pulled into the valet parking lot, we could see people — mostly young (duh!) — spilling out of the restaurant and heard blasting music. The parking lot attendant informed us that there would be an hour wait. We left and headed inland where we found a place that could seat us immediately. We sat outside in the balmy air and were especially pleased to be introduced to a new to us dish, a delicious grilled artichoke.

The next day was Saturday and not a day to look for a place to die. Instead, besides walks on the beach, we went off in search of the former home of the spouse. She remembered the neighborhood of the house but not its precise location. The house was on a canal and a half block from the intracoastal. She thought it was a wonderful spot when she was twelve since she could take a powerboat on the waterways. Her house was a modest one, and modest ones still existed in the neighborhood, but not surprisingly, many of the original homes had been replaced by much larger ones. The Fort Lauderdale of the spouse’s youth had changed dramatically. The city only extended a few blocks west of the intracoastal then, but now it goes miles further into what was once Everglades territory.

After cruising the old neighborhood as if we were teenagers, we went to a nearby fish market to get seafood we were unlikely to find in New York City. The spouse settled on yellowtail snapper filets, which she cooked perfectly that evening.

Sunday was a beach and pool day followed by dinner in a lively, popular Greek restaurant with good food. On Monday morning we looked at another possible place to die, which we liked and might choose.

So we might have found a place to die, but how about Florida? Its politics are terrible, but our transgender son deemed it “okay” and “non-threatening.” We were helped in that conclusion with a conversation with a woman who showed us around one of the potential places to die. Her son is transgender, and we learned that he had good medical care and had carved out a life for himself in Florida. Maybe we can live in the state and join its librarians in fighting book bans.

Monday afternoon we flew back to New York City, and if I believed in omens, my future would have been decided. On the one hand, it makes much sense for us to move to a place to die. On the other hand, I will miss New York City and don’t want to leave. As we approached JFK airport, we could see an almost complete arc of a rainbow welcoming us back to our home.

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First Sentences

“On the night of May 28, 1988, my dad took me to a baseball game.” Russell A. Carleton, The New Ballgame: The Not-So-Hidden Forces Shaping Modern Baseball.

“Trey comes over the mountain carrying a broken chair.” Tana French, The Hunter.

“When white-sheeted nightriders first appeared in the dark Southern night, many people thought they were ghosts.” Timothy Egan, A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them.

“. . . I know, I understand, I shouldn’t have done it.” David Diop, At Night All Blood is Black.

“In winter, when the green earth lies resting beneath a blanket of snow, this is the time for storytelling.” Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants.

“He hardly ever spoke of magic, and when he did it was like a history lesson and no one could bear to listen to him.” Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell.

“On January 25, 2011, on the first day of the Egyptian Arab Spring, nothing happened in Abydos.” Peter Hessler, The Buried: An Archaeology of the Egyptian Revolution.

“You will notice in just a second that this book actually begins on page 145.” Paul Reiser, Couplehood.

“He was like the hero in an action movie: cool under pressure, always ready with a quip.” Reid Mitenbuler, Wanderlust: An Eccentric Explorer, an Epic Journey, a Lost Age.

“They had come to the spot in the freshness of June, chased from the village by its people, following deer path through the forest, the valleys, the fern groves, and the quaking bogs.” Daniel Mason, North Woods.

“Probably the strangest way anyone celebrated the accession of King James I of England was when a gentlewoman in the far north of Lancashire organised a mock wedding in a country church, between two male servants.” Jonathan Healey, The Blazing World: A New History of Revolutionary England, 1603-1689.

“Mas Arai didn’t think much of slot machines, not to mention one with a fake can of Spam mounted on top of it.” Naomi Hirahara, Snakeskin Shamisen: A Mas Arai Mystery.

“I stood on the ship’s deck in my long underwear and fireproof jumpsuit, watching a pale silver sunrise and gauging the wind.” Susan Casey, The Underworld: Journeys to the Depths of the Ocean.

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To Kayfabe or Not to Kayfabe

News over the last month has me wondering again about how people in important positions with at least a modicum of intelligence continue to maintain that the 2020 election was stolen. Some do so because they are not concerned with facts. John Eastman, one of Trump’s lawyers, comes to mind. A judge recently ordered the disbarment of John Eastman because, the judge wrote, Eastman, in representing Trump, made “false statements about the 2020 election without conducting any meaningful investigation or verification of the information he was relying upon.” (Emphasis added.) In short, he didn’t seem to care whether his statements were true or false.

Others, whether lawyers or not, do a lawyerly dance. (A bad metaphor; I have seen lawyers dance, and seldom is it a pleasing sight.) For example, news reports state that interviews for positions with the Republican National Committee have included the question: Was the 2020 presidential election stolen? Many have given an answer that does not answer the question by saying that there had been irregularities in that election that had created “cause for concern.” No evidence cited.

Recently that guy whom you would not recognize if you brushed shoulders with him on the street, Mike Johnson (reminder: He is Speaker of the House), meets with Trump and issues vague statements about “election integrity.” This was said not with irony even though Johnson tried to undercut election integrity in 2020 by failing to vote to certify the vote, and Trump is the chief underminer of election integrity in our history. No facts were presented to indicate that we have a problem with our elections.

And then there are those who, when it suits them, maintain that they did not really believe their own falsehoods. Ronna McDaniel, after she resigned as co-chair of the Republican National Committee (as an unacknowledged act of wokeism, the RNC has both a male and female co-chair), was signed as a political commentator by NBC. A backlash ensued because throughout November and December 2020, McDaniel supported former President Trump’s efforts to throw out the election results. At one point she even called Michigan election officials to ask them to delay certifying the state’s results. As late as 2023 McDaniel said that Biden had not “won it fair.” Now, however, she smiles and says that she was only kidding and indicates that she never believed the election theft claims. “When you’re the R.N.C. chair, you kind of take one for the whole team, right?” Apparently, you “take one for the team” even when the team is trying to overthrow a democratic election.

A common thread through all of this is that Trump supporters feel that they can create their own “reality” (remember “alternative facts”?). Without any sense of irony, they seem to think that they can change “reality” when a such a change suits them. In considering this phenomenon, I did what any deep-thinking political scientist would do: I looked for guidance from pro-wrestling.

Shortly after Trump became president, I wrote that his rallies bore a strong resemblance to the “promos” of pro wrestlers. (See post of January 26, 2017, “Shut Up, You Elites.”) In that post I concentrated on the performances of Donald Trump. A wrestling fan since childhood, he sponsored two of the early WrestleManias.

Trump, however, has been more than a fan of pro-wrestling; he was featured in one of the WWE storylines. I don’t remember all the ins and outs of this “drama”, but as I recall, Vince McMahon, then the head of the WWE, backed one wrestler and Trump another. Either Trump or McMahon would have his head shaved depending upon which wrestler lost. The buildup went on for weeks or maybe even months, but, of course, no one could really believe that Trump was going to become bald to further wrestling ratings. The mere thought of it, however, whipped up the crowd, and in the end, Trump helped shave McMahon’s noggin.

The ties between Trump and McMahon are strong. Vince’s wife Linda McMahon donated $7 million to pro-Trump super PACs in 2016 making her one of the largest Republican donors. Trump responded by appointing her Administrator of the Small Business Administration, where she is said to have performed credibly. The ties are so close that Abraham Riesman in his recent book RingMaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America reports that McMahon may be Trump’s closest friend. McMahon “is said to be one of the only people whose call Trump takes in private, forcing his retinue to leave the room so the two old chums can chat in confidence.” It comes as no surprise that Trump is a member of WWE Hall of Fame, inducted in 2013.

The recent bits of news, however, made me think not just about the possible connections between Trump’s rally performances and pro-wrestling, but also about the connections between wrestling fans and Trump’s supporters. My cursory internet research found no data about the percentage of Trumpistas who are devotees of the WWE or similar organizations. I did, however, come across an article by David S. Moon, a Senior Lecturer at the UK’s University of Bath entitled “Kayfabe, Smartdom and Marking Out: Can Pro-Wrestling Help Us Understand Donald Trump?”  Political Studies Review, Volume 20, pp. 47-61 (2020). I am seldom astonished by anything in the academic world, but I was somewhat surprised to learn that there is an academic field of professional wrestling studies, with its own association and journal. However, what most interested me about Moon’s article was what it set out to explore: “How to explain a cynical American electorate’s engagement with and emotional investment in the campaign of such an obvious political fraudster.”

The exploration starts with the historical premise of pro-wrestling captured by the term kayfabe. Abraham Riesman explains: “Kayfabe (rhymes with “Hey, babe”) is a term of unclear linguistic origin. It emerged from the worlds of carnivals in the 1800s and, in its original definition, simply denoted the public-facing fictions of professional wrestling. . . . It referred to the business’s central conceit: that it was a legitimate, unscripted athletic competition.” (My understanding is that entire matches are not necessarily scripted but only the beginnings and ends with the middle improvised by the wrestlers.) Reisman further explains that a work was anything that was scripted (kayfabe), and a shoot was anything that was real.

The performers were expected to maintain their characters or storylines even outside the arena. They were “to stay in kayfabe” or “to kayfabe.” If a wrestler was billed as Native American, he couldn’t be known to be Italian. (The real name of Chief Jay Strongbow was Luke Joseph Scarpa.) If two wrestlers were supposed enemies, they could not be seen drinking together in off hours. In a famous incident, the supposed fierce enemies “Hacksaw” Jim Duggan (James Edward Duggan Jr.) and the Iron Sheik (Hossein Khosrow Ali Vaziri), broke kayfabe when they were caught driving together under the influence of drugs and booze. The WWE fired them not for the drugs and booze but for breaking kayfabe.

Of course, never in the history of wrestling did all the fans believe that the matches were genuine contests. The industry divided its fans into marks who believed wrestling was real and smarts who accepted it was fiction. No one knew how big each category was, but the assumption was that the majority were marks. That may never have been true, but Riesman reports “that wrestlers believed that fans believed it.” (Riesman’s emphasis.) Thus, the pro-wrestling industry thought that breaking kayfabe would undermine the industry.

The WWE itself, however, broke kayfabe. Vince and Linda McMahon did it to avoid regulation. When pretending to be an authentic sporting event, pro-wrestling came under the jurisdiction of state athletic commissions, but the WWE wanted to avoid the health regulations and other measures that were mandated for athletes. The McMahons publicly acknowledged kayfabe, and pro-wrestling now became “sports entertainment.”

The end of the pretense, however, was not the end of pro-wrestling as once feared. It goes suplexing along. Both Moon and Riesman conclude that kayfabe still exists, but in a new form. Moon states, “The term kayfabe has taken on a different meaning. It now describes a new form of audience engagement that involves in the first instance, a willing suspension of disbelief with which performers, promoters and the audience all ‘keep kayfabe’.”  

Might not this also describe much of our modern politics? Surely neither Trump nor his supporters can believe all the things he says — some of which is ignorant blathering and some of which is blatant lies. Some of his supporters now even acknowledge that they did not believe what they said when they echoed Trump. But Trump and his supporters keep kayfabe. They all suspend disbelief in order to act as if what is being said is an authentic reflection of the world. But what is the point to this?  In wrestling it is to entertain and be entertained, but while politics may provide entertainment, it is far more serious than that.

Riesman also writes that wrestling fans today know it is fiction, but now there is a new status, which the author calls neokayfabe. Wrestling is a lie, yes, but the fans now believe that “the lie encodes a deeper truth, discernible to those few who know how to look beyond what’s in front of them. To these fans adept in reading the signs, another narrative emerges, and another beyond that. Suddenly, the pleasure of watching a match has less to do with who wins than with the excitement of decoding it.” The smarts now are different. In the past they understood the scripted nature of what they saw, but now smarts want to be insiders, learning the rules of the game, getting smart to how the business works. The audience tries to guess the outcome not from who is the better wrestler but from the promulgated story lines and from guesses or knowledge about who is favored and disfavored by the wrestling bosses and others who create the story lines.

It is a small jump from this to Trump’s politics. Many are convinced that what is said and done on the political surface is not real. It needs to be decoded. Other forces control. Call those forces the deep state or conspirators in our law enforcement and justice system or communists who promulgate environmental regulations. Of course, these political smarts don’t take Trump at his word—who could?—but you can understand the world if Trump’s pronouncements are decoded. It becomes a visceral activity, not a cerebral one. Wrestling is in essence a conspiracy, and so is politics, or at least Trumpian politics.

I thought these insights explained a lot about Trump supporters. They did not believe the fraudster but were operating in a world of neokayfabe where the surface hid the true meanings. However, as I thought more, I doubted my analysis. It butted up against data, information, facts. For example, polls indicate most Republicans maintain that Trump did not try to overturn the election. Half say that he did not take top secret and classified documents from the White House. My notion was that Trump supporters were, in wrestling terms, smarts, but polling indicates many are not. Perhaps most undercutting my neokayfabe approach is that polls show that the percentage of diehard Trump supporters who believe that the 2020 election was fraudulent and stolen is increasing. In the wrestling world, fans go from marks to smarts, but in the political world, it has been the opposite.

 Of course, it is possible that Trumpistas stay in kayfabe even when responding to a pollster; that is, they don’t believe the election was stolen but will maintain the fiction when asked. But now I feel that I have entered the world of neokayfabe on top of neokayabe. Shouldn’t I take them at their word or are these many, many people also fraudsters? I feel like a cartoon character whose head is about to explode.

It is a strange world where one can make more sense of pro-wrestling than of aspects of the political world.

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Snippets

The House Speaker Mike Johnson, who I am convinced came to life after being a character on the Simpsons, is in trouble. His problem is he may allow a vote on aid for Ukraine. You might think that the point to the House of Representatives is to vote on stuff, but for many Representatives, apparently not. Why would you oppose voting on an issue? One reason is that you expect your position will lose, and you want to thwart the will of the majority. Another reason to oppose a vote is that you do not want to take an authoritative stance on an issue. If there is no vote, I may avoid criticism. In other words, cowardice. We may call ourselves a democracy or a republic, but those reasons for preventing a vote indicate we are neither. Furthermore, how in democratic or republican theory, does one person control whether the House votes or not?

I go to the theater for the play, but I experience more than that. For example, I recently saw a matinee at the Belasco Theatre. It is on a block with several other theaters. The street was crowded with people waiting to get into various shows, including many school children and easily spottable tourists and suburbanites, as well as Broadway denizens. I absorbed the air of excitement and expectation. New York’s vibrancy was also palpable from a conversation I had at the intermission. Before the play started, I heard the woman next to me say that she had been a law librarian. When the break came, I asked her about that. I learned that she and her husband were from the San Franciso Bay area and were soaking up New York City for a couple weeks. They were going to shows—they highly recommended Merrily We Roll Along—and galleries and museums. They had been impressed by the Harlem Renaissance exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum but not so much by the Biennial at the Whitney. (I generally agreed with them about the museum exhibits.) They told me about an installation in the Soho district I was not aware of. And then I thought about all the baseless claims about how bad and scary New York is. My afternoon on Broadway told me otherwise.

I was seated on a round, backless stool at a long lunch counter. The diners were engaged with their phones or the menus, not with each other. As I ate my unusual sandwich—corned beef with chopped chicken liver on rye—I glanced to my right. A young woman who had not yet ordered sat there. Tears soundlessly streamed down her cheeks. I looked away. As I got close to finishing my lunch, I looked over again. She was no longer crying. Should I have said something to her?

If Trump, as he suggested, would have immigration only from “nice” countries, would that include Russia?

I left the Metropolitan Museum after viewing its Literary Poster exhibit. I wandered down Fifth Avenue, and I saw that the street was closed. I asked a police officer at a barricade what the event was. He replied, “The Greek Independence Day parade.” “Who knew?” I said. He told me that I was in luck and could see it because it was about to appear, and it was short. I walked a few blocks south and coming north were people in uniform carrying a blue and white flag, another flag saying, “Correction Officers Hellenic Association,” and a third flag bearing “1895.” Soon came similar contingents from the police and fire departments. I spotted a couple standing on a bench waving smaller versions of the blue and white flag. I asked them, “From whom did Greece get its independence?” The man answered, “The Ottoman Empire.” Showing off what I thought was my new knowledge, I said, “1895?” “No. 1821.” The man paused and then continued, “But maybe 1895 by Greek time.” I responded, “That’s not true. The service is fine in Greek restaurants.” He smilingly said, “That’s because we Greeks love our food.”

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Snippets

I recently saw the play Patriots, which was written by Peter Morgan and directed by Rupert Gold. The production came from London where it won awards. I knew that the play had something to do with Vladimir Putin but didn’t know much beyond that. Within a few minutes, I realized, however, that I was familiar with the story from having read Masha Gessen’s book, The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin. In both the play and book, we learn how Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky elevated the obscure bureaucrat Putin from insignificance to the dictator of Russia. The play — the set, the acting, the direction, the writing — was outstanding. I enjoyed it, but it also made me think about the creative process. How does one learn about Berezovsky and Putin and decide to make a play about their dynamics? How does one read Ron Chernow’s Hamilton and decide to make a hip-hop musical of it? How does one read American Prometheus and decide to make a movie of it?

The menu said that a dish contained “tofu and other stuff.” I eschewed it.

Are desert flowers more vibrant than others or does it just seem that way?

I apparently need to learn more about the Bible. Or football. Or perhaps both. Deion Sanders, now a football coach, in promoting his book Motivate and Dominate: 21 Ways to Win On and Off the Field, was asked: “What book (fiction or nonfiction) best captures the game of football as you know it?” Sanders replied, “The Bible.”

A friend said, “All my life I said I wanted to be someone. . . . I can see now that I should have been more specific.”

From her dress, I pegged her as a street person. She was pushing a cart filled with bulging kitchen trash bags. She reached into one. She pulled out latex gloves. She put them on. She reached back into the bag and pulled out sanitizing wipes. She then scrubbed the subway seat before sitting down.

At a New England town’s used book sale, a friend held up Smallbone Deceased and said I would like it. I did. The mystery by Michael Gilbert published in 1950 is set in a London solicitor’s office where the corpse of Marcus Smallbone is discovered in a large deed box. I had not heard of Michael Gilbert before, but I learned that he was a practicing solicitor as well as the author of many books in different styles. Perhaps what I found most intriguing is that Gilbert only wrote on his weekday commute from the suburbs to London, averaging five hundred words a day. This schedule produced over thirty novels and more than 180 short stories. I assume he commuted by train, and since I also assume that he was writing in longhand, his train rides were smoother than my subway trips.

The first mysteries I remember reading were Freddy the Pig books by Walter R. Brooks. The Library of Congress cataloging data printed on the copyright page above the ISBN for Freddy the Detective states: “Brooks, Walter R. (1886-1958) with illustrations by Kurt Wiese. Summary: Freddy the pig does some detective work in order to solve the mystery of a missing toy train.” Below the ISBN it continues: [1. Pigs—Fiction 2. Domestic animals—fiction. 3. Mystery and detective stories.] How could you not want to read this?

My idea for a book group: Everyone reads three-quarters of the same mystery and then gets together for a discussion.

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First Sentences

“At the turn of the twentieth century, before Zionist colonization had much appreciable effect on Palestine, new ideas were spreading, modern education and literacy had begun to expand, and the integration of the country’s economy into the global capitalist order was proceeding apace.” Rashid Khalidi, The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017.

“Those little bastards were hiding out there in the tall grass.” Percival Everett, James.

“An ocean mapper once told me about a sponge that had shaken up his perspective on surveying the seafloor—not some ordinary dish sponge, but a fantastic deep-sea sponge that is among the oldest life-forms on Earth.” Laura Trethewey, The Deepest Map: The High-Stakes Race to Chart the World’s Oceans.

“Nicole often wondered what had happened to the body.” Vanessa Walters, The Nigerwife.

“Vince McMahon, like many of his wrestlers, didn’t grow up with the name he now uses.” Abraham Riesman, RingMaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America.

“I have no hatred in me.” Robert Olen Butler, A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain.

“In the first five years that I lived in America, four of the five deadliest shootings in the nation’s history took place—at a school, a nightclub, a concert, a church.” Dominic Erdozain, One Nation Under Guns.

“So I’m writing again. Which is good news, I suppose, for those wanting a second book, but more unfortunate for the people that had to die so I could write it.” Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone on this Train is a Suspect.

“Chris Pearce grew up in the loud silence of his own mysterious origins.” Alexander Stille, The Sullivanians: Sex, Psychotherapy, and the Wild Life of an American Commune.

“Nigel Bathgate, in the language of his own gossip column, was ‘definitely intrigued’ about his week-end at Frantock.” Ngaio Marsh, A Man Lay Dead.

“Eugene Pacelli sat in a chair beside the simple brass bed, watching as the once robust pope, his face shrunken, labored to breathe beneath his oxygen mask.” David I. Kertzer, The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler.

“Simon Diggery and Ethel, his pet boa constrictor, were about fifty feet from Simon’s rust buck double-wide. Ethel looked comfy over a branch halfway up the tree.” Janet Evanovich, Hardcore Twenty-Four: A Stephanie Plum Novel.

“Heading out to dinner on a summer Saturday night, Byron and Emma Haines-Pescott (not their real names) couldn’t have expected much.” David Howard, Chasing Phil: The Adventures of Two Undercover Agents with the World’s Most Charming Con Man.

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Snippets

The Trump Bibles cost $60, but for $40 more, you can get a limited edition signed by Jesus, a recent immigrant from Chiapas, maybe undocumented. But, hey, who’s to know?

My doctor was excited that he had turned 66. He runs sprints competitively, and was now moving into a class where no one was younger and sprightlier than he. He went to a tri-state meet recently and found that he was one of six entered in the sixty-yard race. Three would get medals, and he thought that finally he would get one. He finished fourth and said that the 69-year-old winner was really fast.

I have stepped up my playgoing recently. The other week, I saw Appropriate written by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins at the Belasco Theatre, which is a Broadway venue. I don’t go to many Broadway productions. Often they are not serious plays but spectacles aimed at tourists. I’ve already seen some of these in the past and am looking for something different now. And this year quite a few potentially interesting plays are opening. A brief description indicated Appropriate was a thought-provoking play, and because I could get tickets on one of my discount services, I went.

The play reminded me again of my ignorance, this time about Broadway and its denizens. I often don’t recognize stage actors even though they have performed repeatedly on Broadway and are significant stars to others. Listed above the title of this play was Sarah Paulson, who received a round of applause when she first entered. I had no idea who she was but apparently many others did.

I had complicated reactions to the play. On one level, it seemed clichéd: Yet another dysfunctional family, this one set in a former plantation home in the southeast Arkansas of 2011. However, it transcended the usual clichés. It was not only well-written and well-acted, it also had shocking twists that made me wonder how well we can know someone else and how we should react to the skeletons in our family’s closets.

Other than a brief description I had read of it, I knew nothing about Appropriate before going. Afterwards I read Jesse Green’s New York Times review. It was an unusual one. He said that a decade ago when the play opened at a smaller theater, he had given it a scathing review—“neither understanding nor enjoyment were forthcoming,” he had written. Now he was giving it a rave, and he felt he had to explain why. He said that the playwright’s rewriting had sharpened the focus of the play as had the direction by Lila Neugebaur. He also praised the “daredevil cast,” but he said that these improvements only partly explained his present reaction. “Perhaps this does: Playwrights who show us things we are reluctant to see may have to teach us, over time, how to see it. And we must be willing to have our eyes opened. I guess I’ve changed at least that much in 10 years of reviewing, and Jacobs-Jenkins is part of it.”

I was not entirely sure what the playwright was trying to tell us. I know that I have sometimes had an intense reaction to a play or movie. Often, however, this has been highly personal, and I did not expect others to respond in the same way. Perhaps Green meant something like what has happened to me with books: I try to read a classic and give up. But after time goes by, I pick up the novel again, and understand why it has been thought marvelous. Moby Dick comes to mind. (I am still waiting for this to happen with War and Peace. Three times I have tried and have yet to feel its magnificence.) For whatever the reason, some books were not right for me when I first attempted them but became so later in life. (On the other hand, there are books that I thought good when first read but later did not think highly of. I read some early Hemingway right after college and enjoyed it, but when I tried to reread those early novels decades later, I found them embarrassingly adolescent.) In any event, although I might not be as effusive in my praise as Jesse Green, Appropriate is worth seeing, at least with discount tickets. And it will produce a reaction from you.

Posted on by rjonakait

Unnatural Immunity

The Supreme Court will soon decide whether Donald Trump has immunity from criminal prosecution for his actions that culminated with the events on January 6, 2021. Immunity is most frequently granted when a prosecutor agrees not to prosecute a person in exchange for testimony against someone else. Trump, however, is not seeking immunity as part of such a bargain. Instead, he wants it for his status as ex-president of the United States. Status, however, has not prevented the prosecution of governors, members of Congress, judges, CEOs, religious figures, or others.

While status has not given others immunity, it has been argued that a president enjoys limited immunity while in office. The Office of Legal Counsel of the Department of Justice (OLC) in 1973 and 2000 concluded that it was, in fact, unconstitutional to prosecute a sitting president. The Office reasoned in part that the president “is the symbolic head of the Nation. To wound him by a criminal proceeding is to hamstring the operation of the whole governmental apparatus in both foreign and domestic affairs.” And, of course, the time that a sitting president spends defending criminal charges is time not spent governing.

Other prominent legal thinkers have not agreed with the OLC and have maintained that even while president, a person can be criminally charged. The Supreme Court has never decided this issue, but the OLC’s rationale would only protect a person while in office. Trump, however, wants something much more. He wants immunity now even though he is no longer the symbolic head of the country and a criminal trial would no longer interfere with presidential duties. He wants immunity for his status as ex-president.

 Some find merit in his position. For example, Marco Rubio, as reported by Nick Robertson in The Hill of March 24, 2024, defended Trump’s claim of immunity. Rubio said, “I do think there’s a legitimate issue here that we need to talk about writ large, especially after what we’ve seen in the last three years. Do we want to live in a country where basically the opponents of the president can kind of extort them, can have leverage over them during their entire presidency and say, ‘Don’t worry, once you’re out of office, we’re going to prosecute you or we’re going to come after you, charge you with this crime or that crime.’ We’re living in a country now, where basically, if you’re president now, you have to think to yourself, ‘I gotta be careful what I do as president,’ not even legal or illegal, even on policy.”

Robertson reports that Trump’s attorney have made a similar claim: “A denial of criminal immunity would incapacitate every future President with de facto blackmail and extortion while in office, and condemn him to years of post-office trauma at the hands of political opponents. That bleak scenario would result in a weak and hollow President, and would thus be ruinous for the American political system as a whole. That vital consideration alone resolves the question presented in favor of dismissal of this case.”

Nowhere in the Constitution does it say that a president, much less an ex-president, has immunity. The only explicit constitutional provision about presidential immunity makes it clear that ex-presidents can be prosecuted at least sometimes. Section 3 of Article I states that a person convicted of an impeachable offense, which would result in the removal from office, “shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.”

If the Supreme Court were to find any sort of immunity for Trump, they would have to make it up. That, of course, is not what they will say they are doing. Instead, they will say that they are inferring it from explicit constitutional provisions. The Supreme Court has often been criticized for finding rights that are not explicitly stated in the Constitution, but only “activist” judges could proclaim prosecutorial immunity for an ex-president.

Even though it is not in the Constitution, I have some sympathy for the position that presidents should be able to make decisions without the fear of later prosecution. The only reason to give an ex-president immunity is to keep subsequent presidents free of such a concern. I leave it to you to decide whether that is a sufficient reason to infer that such a protection for ex-presidents is in the Constitution.

On the other hand, I hope that we can all agree that a president who brutalizes his wife leaving her disfigured and disabled should not be free from prosecution. A president who arranges for a political, business, or romantic rival to be killed should not have immunity. A president who barricades the polls to prevent citizens from voting can, and should, be prosecuted.

If an ex-president were to have any immunity, it should only be for presidential decisions and actions. It should only be for the use of powers granted by the Constitution to the president. Committing domestic violence is not a presidential decision. You don’t have to be a president to commit domestic violence. Nor do you have to be a president to kill a rival or, as our history has shown repeatedly, to intimidate or use violence to prevent votes from being cast.  Decisions that only a president can make perhaps should have criminal immunity but not for behavior that non-presidents also commit.

Although the boundary as to what constitutes a presidential decision may at times be hazy, some of the criminal prosecutions against Trump are brought for clearly non-presidential actions. It should be evident that any litigation concerning his behavior before he was president do not involve presidential decisions. His actions alleged in the New York criminal” hush money case”  occurred before he was president, so there cannot be any kind of presidential immunity for those actions. As I wrote before, perhaps we should be concerned that he was targeted by New York law officials (see post of March 18, 2024, “Targeting Trump”). If so, he should get the same legal protections that are available to anyone who has been arguably targeted by prosecutors, but nothing more.

The absence of immunity in the Florida case also seems straightforward. The transfer of records from the White House to Trump’s living spaces may have happened while he was president and perhaps could be deemed presidential actions. However, because he is being prosecuted in Florida for refusal to surrender classified documents after he left office, he could not have been making a presidential decision to keep them because he was no longer president. He was acting as a private citizen, and he should not get any kind of presidential immunity in that case.

That leaves the Georgia and federal criminal cases revolving about the events that culminated on January 6. Trump was president when these events occurred, and some have claimed he was acting within the duties of a president by insuring or inquiring about the integrity of an election or was simply exercising his free speech rights. The criminal allegations, however, allege that he was interfering with the integrity of elections and trying to prevent the rightful winner from peacefully taking office. Trials exist to resolve questions of fact. Thus, if Trump was not seeking to interfere with the outcome of the election or was not inciting or colluding with those trying to unlawfully interfere with the transfer of office, he does not need immunity. He will be acquitted.

If Trump was interfering with a valid election, he was not using powers given to the president by the Constitution. If he had lost, Biden might have tried to marshal fake electors, could have leaned on a state official to “find” more votes for him, and then encouraged a mob to march on the Capitol to prevent the lawful certification of the election’s result. If this is what Trump did, he was not exercising presidential authority; he was, instead, trying to manipulate a system that had rejected his presidential candidacy. He should not have immunity for these actions.

Finally, the alleged fear that political opponents will persecute former presidents in the future for partisan reasons has neither history nor logic behind it. These are the first prosecutions of a former president in our over two-century existence. This is so even though during those two hundred years we have had many fierce, partisan alignments. The immunity advocates may say the times are different now, but if so, they don’t want to recognize that the times may be different because Trump’s actions have made them different. They give us no examples of prosecutions of ex-presidents for trying to hide hush money payments, withholding classified documents after leaving office, the obstruction of results of an election, or any other reason. And our future history is unlikely to be rampant with similar prosecutions.

There are natural, institutional restraints on the use of criminal charges for presidential decisions against former presidents by successors. Most of what a president does—appoint a Secretary of State, prepare a budget, draft a new healthcare bill—is not even arguably criminal and will not lead to any criminal prosecution. Perhaps, however, ordering a drone strike that kills an American citizen claimed to be a terrorist leader in the Mideast or declaring an “emergency” to find the funds to build a border wall that Congress has refused to fund — these might arguably be criminal. Even if so, successor administrations are highly unlikely to seek indictments for such actions no matter what the partisan climate. Criminal charges would mean that the successor had restricted his own freedom of action. Someday he may want to do something akin to what a predecessor did, but if he labeled it criminal through a prosecution, he won’t be able to. Sitting presidents almost never want to limit their own power. Indicting and trying predecessors for presidential acts has not happened and will not happen.

The scare tactics are a false flag.

And in our country, you and I and ex-presidents are all supposed to be equal under the law.