Got excited Tuesday that Donald Trump was going to be indicted. I had an article written to post and then did not because I was numbed that he wasn’t. Maybe I trust Trump too much, although to be sure he didn’t announce his indictment with a definitive date. It’s two days later and he’s not indicted. Maybe when this is posted tonight he will have been indicted and the title will seem really topical. Or maybe you’ll scratch your head and say he hasn’t been indicted, why am I suggesting he has been.
The truth is I came to life on January 6th from thirty-eight years of slumber. I was reborn that day. I was given a new sense of optimism and hope. Not that Trump would succeed in his coup. I fully expected he had little chance of doing that. Nor did I have any hope that he would succeed. Quite the contrary, I expected that when order was restored and the dust had settled the next morning would see Donald Trump handcuffed inside the White House and marched out in public view to a waiting paddy wagon where he would be held until his trial two or three months down the road without access to media during that period. I mean that is what always happens when coup attempts fail. I didn’t expect the invaders of the capitol building to go home, I expected them to be marched to prison, and just as George Bush had suspended Arab-American rights after 9/11, that the rights of the insurrectionists would have been suspended, habeas corpus would have been denied as Lincoln had done during the civil war. I expected , that since they had invaded the American capital the trials would have been conducted in military tribunals since, even though it was largely a sticks and stones armada, they did attempt to militarily overthrow the government, and at the instigation of Donald Trump, and especially since he had instigated the attempted overthrow as commander-in-chief, that it was a military operation.
Well I was really wrong! We patted everyone on the back, said go home and if we find out who you are maybe we’ll put you in jail in a year or two for a little bit. Well that’s just not how it’s been done elsewhere. That’s not how it would have been done I can guarantee you if Trump had succeeded. Biden’s corpse would now be rotting away, news commentators or others who might have protested the successful coup would have been silenced, military leaders who might have opposed the coup would have been defrocked from office, and more than likely executed, and any congressional opposition would have also been imprisoned. That’s how it would have been done. That’s how it might still be done, if they can grasp power again, even if it’s not Trump himself.
Thirty-eight years ago
Anyone who reads this column knows I spent most of my early working years in labor. I worked my way through college, backhandedly as a provisional student allowed to take classes but not admitted officially. Good grades allowed me to earn credits for the classes and so starting in 1971 for the next eight years I worked my way through and earned my degree, actually amassing one hundred and eighty four credits instead of the requisite (where I attended) one hundred and twenty. Ten years after I first started college I moved to the suburbs and started becoming involved in political campaigns and for the next three years began working on environmental systems analysis, but environmental organizations weren’t too impressed with my dry analysis and primarily focused on particular “issues” that could create a noisy dialogue. I ended up getting work for a non-profit challenging a rate increase, but I got sidetracked on utility and electrical systems and was not very productive for their purposes and so a small group of us started trying to lobby the U.S. congress to pass legislation to transform the way energy was being controlled by corporate utility companies and large power plants and trying to facilitate for direct energy as an alternative. In 1984, Jesse Jackson was running for president and I became active in the campaign. Simultaneously our non-profit to campaign for direct energy supplied by small local affiliations was not getting any traction, nor were we able to gain any contributions. We had obtained a few grants from the government initially, but they were not renewed, and we were camped out together in a small decrepit apartment in east Washington. But I was fortunate enough to have become involved with the Jackson org. while still residing across the Potomac in northern Virginia. I was allowed to be part of the Virginia delegation to the Democratic Convention that year, but homeless and unsure if I would have the finances to attend, I declined but was offered the opportunity to attend as a non-voting part of the delegation if I could get there.
So let’s fast forward to that convention because I did manage to get there. Mondale of course, had the nomination sewed up before the convention, and something just snapped inside of me–I left that convention believing that the way we allowed our primaries fueled by money and our elections dominated by two parties as an antithesis to democracy. I never took part in electoral politics again. I decided to never be directly employed by anyone again. I went my own way and tried to become my own democracy and at least be my own boss as best I could by contracting for jobs rather than working for others directly. I did continue to vote, but never for the office of president because I thought elections were stolen by money and advertising, by subterfuge and by direct lying.
January 6, 2021
I had been throughout the previous year, the year of the great pandemic, in and out of the hospital, that really had no time to worry about me. But they finally decided to keep me in the hospital from November 4th and then I went home for a couple of days and was able to spend Christmas with family. On the 27th I was back in the hospital. I hadn’t wanted to go back, and of course I doubt they wanted me back, but the reason I spent nearly two months in the hospital was I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t even imbibe liquid, everything merely came back out. And of course I couldn’t go to the bathroom either,so they had to feed me intravenously and expel my waste manually. I was ready to let go. I sent everyone a good-bye letter and went home to die. My kids and a couple of close friends came over new years for a small goodbye gathering. But as I was expiring away from this earth and had gone into a semi-coma, my wife, unable to let it be, called the ambulance once again. But the hospital was totally full and I was transported to a different one. I was not conscious during that last visit until the last couple of days, but a new doctor had done yet another biopsy and requested a test for celiac. And it came back positive. All I needed to do was change my diet. No one had been looking for it in a 70+ man. She cut a pathway in my throat to enable me to swallow and made a channel from my stomach (which was not completely ulcerated as were the intestines) through the intestines to the prostate and once again in the late afternoon of January 5th of 2021 I was brought home. I was lying in bed when a young man we had taken in, had rushed into the bedroom shouting “Ken, they’ve attacked the capitol!”
Now, finally! people would realize that if we wanted to keep this democracy we would need to alter our system of bribed elections. They would realize how the two-party system had to be pilloried and the government would have to face the needs of the people and not remain dominated by the John Galts who would never quit on their own. Now, finally!
Before I had left the convention in 1984, I had written a little pamphlet, never submitted to anyone, and I never mentioned it. I had, instead, ceased to believe. What I wrote in essence was that Reagan could not be stopped by Mondale, that he would be slaughtered in the coming election because he had no alternative plan other than dying unionism and no way to reach those Reagan had been able to convince people that if the pie expanded, even though they had a smaller piece of the pie, since the pie was bigger they would have poor. I wrote that idea would permeate but their experience would be they had less and their houses would be filled with more and under such conditions democracy would not live because people would eventually fall under the sway of an autocratic bully who would convince them that only he could save them and that democracy could only harm them by giving too much away.
So it wasn’t overnight. It took thirty-eight years. But I came alive thinking it would end now, that Trump’s clumsy attempt would make people aware, that we would dispense of him quickly, dispense of his acolytes preaching his vitriol, alter our method of selecting representatives, and bring down those still preaching they were Entitled Lords.
Once again I was wrong. When I realized that I had been wrong again, I became engaged, and I began to write. I think there is an opportunity for salvage of democracy. But we’ve been piddled too long and another election is looming. I wouldn’t count on a big “democratic” victory. And it would not solve the problem were it to happen.
Yes, Donald Trump will get his comeuppance. But we’ve done nothing to create a democratic democracy. We’ve done nothing against the Entitled Lords, and unless democrats actually realize that GNP prevents rather than enhances democracy, the democracy they claim to favor will not remain in place.
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Good article, Ken. I don't understand why Trump was able to remain free and unencumbered from 1/6/21 until early 2023. I don't understand why Jack Smith wasn't appointed in 2021. I do agree that we have our very own oligarchy and like all such entities they are rotten to the core. Like Bezos and Musk they are so greedy and self centered they cannot see beyond their own egos. Like you, I hope Trump goes to trial in May 2024, I hope Jack Smith gets an indictment on the January 6 charges. I hope Fani Willis is allowed to proceed with her indictment of Trump in Georgia. The best chance we have of convicting Trump is in DC with the insurrection (treason) charge. Trying ti get a jury impaneled in Florida or Georgia may be the bridge too far. Certainly all southerners are not MAGA followers, many in the South are intelligent thoughtful people, but they are not the ones Trump's attorneys want to hear the case against him. And we know he is going to try as many delaying tactics as possible to stretch beyond the election. I have NO faith in States like Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Tennessee to conduct fair and honest elections. I just hope I'm wrong. As to the Democrats and Democracy, we do have a few incumbents who claim they will not take a nickle from PACs, that's good, but how about direct from the horses ass to their bank accounts. I hope we win and win big in 2024, then all of us capable of doing so need to rattle the cage of every Democratic legislator to write and pass a bill overturning Citizen's United and get the billions of dollars out of elections. Other wise we might as well hand the reins of government to the oligarchs and be done with it.