Posted on by rjonakait

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.

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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.

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Redacting Easter

I picked up a program on my way to find an empty seat. As usual for the “Bach at One” series at Trinity Church, the left side of the page contained the libretto in the original German and the right the English translation. However, this program for a performance of Bach’s St. John Passion also contained an Explanatory Note, which informed me that portions of the libretto “continually harp on the responsibility of ‘the Jews’ and Judaism for the crucifixion of Jesus.” It continued. “There is, unfortunately, no escaping Luther’s embrace of John’s view of Jewish culpability for Jesus’s death. . . . To avoid giving unnecessary offense . . . we have eliminated references to ‘the Jews’ even in passages where such wording could reasonably be taken to be neutral or positive, given the sensitivity of the topic today.” It noted that changes were indicated by underlining, but my program did not have this.

This Note later sent me scurrying to my favorite Bible, the one given to me on my tenth birthday when I attended Sunday School, to read again John’s version of the Easter story. And yes, it contains references to “the Jews,” but I had not thought that this meant that the Jews as an ethnic group or a religion were responsible for the death of Jesus. The Gospel also refers separately to “Caiaphas the high priest” and “the chief priests.” Thus, when John refers to the Jews, I believed he was referring to those chief priests who were advocating for Jesus’ death: “When the chief priests and the officers saw him, they cried out, ‘Crucify him, crucify him!’ Pilate said to them, ‘Take him yourselves and crucify him, for I find no crime in him.’ The Jews answered, ‘We have a law, and by that law he ought to die, because he has made himself Son of God.’” The Jews being referred to, I had thought, were the chief priests and officers, not all Jews everywhere.

This limitation made sense to me. The powerful and the rich did not condone Jesus’ preaching because His teachings often undercut the rich, the powerful, and the self-righteous. Thus, the whole eye-of-the-needle thing; the moneychangers-in-the-temple thing; the cast-the-first-stone thing. In short, I rich, the powerful, the chief priests and officers were threatened by Jesus. He upended the religious status quo. He also criticized Jewish dietary restrictions. As recorded in Mark 7, Jesus averred that food did not make a person unholy. (“Thus he declared all foods clean.”) Instead, people were defiled by their evil thoughts and actions. Jesus was undermining the religion espoused by religious leaders, and they did not like that. And, thus, when Pilate asked, “‘Shall I crucify your King?’ The chief priests answered, ‘We have no king but Caesar.’” And Jesus’ fate was sealed not by Jews generally, but by those threatened chief priests.

The Gospel according to John says that Pilate placed a title on the cross that proclaimed Jesus as King of the Jews. According to John, “[M]any of the Jews read this title,” but then John becomes more specific and writes, “The chief priests of the Jews” asked Pilate to amend this to read, “’This man said, I am the King of the Jews.’ Pilate answered, “’What I have written I have written.’”

However, the libretto at the performance I attended had altered “King of the Jews” to “King of the nation” (des Landes König). This bothered me for it changed the theology of the gospel, or at least the theology I wanted from John. The title King of the Jews perhaps mocked Jesus, but it also mocked the chief priests and other high officials. In my mind, the Jewish elite did not want any suggestion that theirs was not the final word about God and religion. They could not admit that there might be a revelation that superseded their own teaching. Even the hint that Jesus was King of the Jews threatened their powerful positions, which they wanted to remain inviolate.

The libretto’s change also undercuts the meaning of an interchange between Pilate and Jesus. Pilate had asked him whether he was King of the Jews, and according to John Jesus answered, “’My kingship is not of this world, my servants would fight, that I might not be handed over to the Jews; but my kingship is not from the world.’” “King of the nation,” as the new libretto had it, would seem to indicate that Jesus was claiming dominion over land, which might have been threatening to the Romans, but not necessarily to the Jews. “King of the Jews,” however, is more ambiguous. It may indicate dominion over a people, but it can also indicate a leader of a religion that emphasizes how to worship and live. “King of the Jews” did not threaten the Romans, but it did threaten the high priests.

But there is still another reason not to sanitize John’s Gospel. We should remember that many have used the Easter story to justify antisemitism. Of course, others have read John differently from the way I have. I wanted Jesus and Christianity to stand for love, the Golden Rule, and the Beatitudes. Perhaps sometimes it is about those things, but others have fastened on John to justify discrimination and persecution of Jews. The sad truth is that religion, including Christianity, often has been as much about hate as love. To combat that hate we have to be aware of it and its supposed justifications. We may want religion to be about charity, goodwill, altruism, and benevolence, but if we ignore the prejudice religion has fostered, evil too often takes over.

Posted on by rjonakait

Snippets

A clerk at a Trader Joe’s in La Quinta, California, said that she, unlike most others who lived there, was a native to the area. She said that she hated the snow and cold and labeled herself a Desert Rat. She was very pale, however, and explained that she stayed that way because she never went outside.

A server at a Japanese/California fusion restaurant brought to mind the scene in Miracle on 34th Street when Santa at Macy’s sends customers to rival Gimbels for a Christmas present. I had asked the server whether the symbol on the menu of two hot peppers meant that the sushi roll would blow the top of my head off or only make my eyes water. The latter, she said. She was right, and I enjoyed the dish. When she inquired about our desire for dessert, I asked if the tempura ice cream was worth it. She said no and explained that at this restaurant they often did not fry the batter-covered ice cream long enough, and it came out gummy. I did not get any dessert, but her tip went up.

It is always good to learn something new. At Joshua Tree National Park, the volunteer ranger explaining the distinctive geology said that the rocks behind her were plutons, a word I had never heard before.

For a week, I wore my cap that said “Jesus Is Us” on the back and “Jesus Was Wrongly Judged” on the front. If anyone asked about it, I was prepared to say that the organization’s website said that they would send me a free cap and shirt if I promised to do a good deed. I promised and got the merch. I rehearsed saying to inquirers that I got the stuff because “I believe in free enterprise, free trade, free love, and a free cap.” No one asked, however. I have learned that the group that sent me the shirt and cap, although they try to hide it, is anti-LGBTQ+ even though Jesus said nothing about gays (or abortion or contraception.) I have trashed the cap and shirt.

In a radio interview, she fervently indicated her support for Donald Trump and said, “This is the worst economy of my lifetime.” Although I did not see her, the voice was that of a mature woman, not a child. She must have lived through the recession of 2020 when the unemployment rate jumped in two months from 3.5% to 14.7%. By the end of 2021 it was under 4% again. Trump was president in 2020.  Joe Biden was in 2021. And she must also have lived through the Great Recession of 2007-2009, when the GDP dropped by 4.3% and unemployment peaked at 9.5%. That recession, which was the worst since the 1930s, started under George W. Bush. It ended under President Barack Obama and Vice-President Joe Biden. I thought about the woman on the radio: Ignorance remains strong.

After I had found the book I was looking for, I scanned another library shelf and saw The Hot Country by Robert Olen Butler. The jacket copy told me that it was the first in the series of Christopher Marlowe Cobb thrillers by Robert Olen Butler. I checked out the book and found that Cobb was an early twentieth century war correspondent and that the book placed him on the eve of World War I in Mexico with its complicated history of that time. I enjoyed the book and noticed that the jacket also proclaimed that Butler was a Pulitzer Prize winner. I assumed that Butler had been a newspaperman and had won the prize for some reporting. Instead, I found that he had been awarded the Pulitzer for fiction in 1993 for A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, a collection of short stories. Although I seldom read short stories, I was curious and got A Good Scent as an e-book from another library. Most of the stories are told in the first person by Vietnamese refugees living in the New Orleans area. When I told a friend about the book, she assumed that the stories were depressing, but no, they aren’t. Some go all the way to heartwarming, and all are wonderful. Serendipity worked out.

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Marching Through Madness

In this time called by some March Madness, I learn yet again that I subscribe to TruTV, and I learn yet again where it is on my cable system. March Madness refers to the college basketball tournaments. They have so many games that some plop onto otherwise obscure cable stations.

Before the tournaments begin, sports commentators speculate and speculate some more about which teams will be the #1 seeds. There are four of them, which, of course, is contradictory, but the tournament is divided into four sections of sixteen teams each with a #1 seed. Despite all the discussions of #1 seeds, it hardly matters whether a team is a #1 or a #2 seed. The #1seed plays the #16 seed, and the number two seed plays the fifteenth seed, but the designation of fifteenth or sixteenth are semi-random. Although sports pundits may say some team should have been a one seed instead of a two, I have never heard a commentator say that a team got screwed by being designated a sixteenth seed when it should have gotten a fifteenth designation. Whether a team is a first or second seed, it is certainly a heavy favorite, and, of course, if the seeding really works, the first seed will end up playing the second seed on a neutral court. Whether a team is a first or second seed should hardly matter, so shut up about it.

In other sports such as tennis, commentators will say that a player has made it to the round of sixteen or the quarter- or semi-finals, but not in college basketball. Instead, it will be the “Sweet Sixteen,” the “Elite Eight,” the “Final Four.” Perhaps this was endearing or cute many, many years ago, but they are just annoying clichés now. (Battology: “The continual reiteration of the same words in speech or writing; the wearisome repetition of words in speech or writing.” You’re welcome.) Could at least someone stop using them? (No one has come up with something approaching alliteration for a team winning the first game and being one of the remaining thirty-two teams. No one says the Thundering Thirty-Two or the Thriving Thirty-Two. Someone needs to work on that.)

The men’s tournament concludes after March concludes. Don’t we need something for games played in April? Since the games feature scholar-athletes, perhaps we could have a semi-learned shoutout to T.S. and call it April Cruelty, since somebody is going to lose. But I guess it has to be at least some weak attempt at alliteration. The best I have is April Apeshit. April Absurdity is alliterative but does not seem right. Surely you can do better.

Many are saying that the women’s tournament has bigger stars and will be more exciting than the men’s side. This is partly because of Caitlin Clark. When she is mentioned, we are usually told in the same breath that she has scored more points than any other Division 1 basketball player, either male or female. This points out the difficulty of comparing players from different eras. Of course, women did not play Division I basketball at all until relatively recently. And while Clark passed Pete Maravich in Division 1 scoring, the rules did not allow freshmen (first-year students, if we are being woke) to play varsity ball when Maravich was at Louisiana State University. He played three years while Clark has played four. Moreover, there was no three-point line when Maravich was in college. His per-game scoring average was, in fact, much higher than Clark’s. This takes nothing away from Caitlin Clark, who is an exciting player, one I love to watch. Nevertheless, I offer just a small caveat about comparing players from different eras.

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Targeting Trump

Targeting Trump

A conservative pundit on a “news” channel said that it is dangerous when prosecutors target individuals, and New York prosecutors had campaigned on the promise to “get” Donald Trump. He had a point.

Criminal investigations and prosecutions can be broken down into two broad categories. In the first, a crime is committed, and miscreants are sought. If purported criminals are caught, they are prosecuted. This is the pattern followed in the overwhelming number of prosecutions in this country. A convenience store is robbed; a person is murdered; or an illegal drug is sold, and an arrest and prosecution follow.

In other prosecutions, authorities determine that a person is “bad.” They investigate to find a crime that he has committed and prosecute him for that. A crime is not targeted; a person is. This happened to Al Capone a century ago. Prosecutors knew that Capone was a bootlegger who used unprecedented violence to protect and extend his operations. However, apparently because witnesses could not be found to testify to these activities, he was not prosecuted for those crimes. Instead, prosecutors convinced a jury that Capone lived well beyond the means possible on the income he reported on his tax form. Therefore, he must not be paying all the tax he owed. Thus, Capone went to prison for income tax evasion.

Similarly, there is now the recent complaint that Trump had been targeted. When it comes to New York State, that might be true. New York prosecutors, who are elected, seemed to make campaign pledges to get Trump. The commentator, however, said that such targeting is dangerous. Is it? The action by the New York Attorney General (this was a civil, not a criminal action but the same targeting issues apply) revealed that Trump and his organization monkeyed the books over many years’ time to benefit Trump. In other words, Trump, in fact, did what the Attorney General claimed. He was not manipulated into the equivalent of a false conviction.

In New York City, the Manhattan District Attorney has brought a criminal case against Trump. We don’t know what the result of this case will be, but if Trump is convicted, it will have been proved beyond a reasonable doubt that he did the illegal deeds (in this case, a form of money-laundering). He will not have been railroaded into a conviction for a crime he did not commit. How, then, can the commentator claim that targeting an individual is dangerous?

A certain kind of moralist may simply say, “If he did the deed, punish indeed . . . let him bleed.” But let’s combine some theology with the law. If you are of the Original Sin disposition, we all do things that are wrong. And even if you don’t buy into Genesis, you might know that we have many, many laws on the books with blurry boundaries. (Almost) all of us have committed illegal acts, but stealing a pencil from work, overstating a charitable deduction, or slapping an acquaintance is almost never prosecuted. Our justice system could not handle every violation of the law. However, if the authorities want to “get” someone, and they have enough resources to investigate that person thoroughly, they will almost always be able to bring some sort of criminal or civil prosecution. And, yes, that is a scary power.

So, I have sympathy for the conservative’s concern that Trump has been targeted in New York, but I do not know all that went into the decisions to bring the New York litigations. On the other hand, the Georgia, January 6, and classified documents prosecutions are not the targeted kind. Deeds were done and investigations leading to prosecutions followed. The conservative commentator did not make that distinction but should have.