And the Blood: millions of other-than-pink-skinned humans obliterated with bombs and bullets and starvation and torture, and now pandemic disease.
All that Blood and Treasure. Our Blood and Treasure! For what possible purpose? Surely not just for psychopathic thrills. The American People would never stand for that. If they thought that was his purpose he'd be gone yesterday, last year. No. There had to be a purpose. Seventy million voters thought they knew what it was.
Nobody has ever gotten very far with a brute-force attack on the system. Until now. Only one person on the planet can get away with this one. It's an action that negates every notion of justice, whether retributive or restorative, technical or philosophical. Ok, or moral (but that was gone before this clown showed up).
Pardoning men who tried to sell the country out to Russia (whether or not Russia is buying) doesn't seem to have assuaged the Pulpit Bully even a little. Let's pray that letting Blackwater's convicted mass murderers loose with a presidential pardon comes close enough to that mighty purpose. I have trouble imagining what else he will do in the long, long days to come that could top that, before his term is really, finally over. Come to that, I have trouble even imagining that it is. It's easier for me to believe he intends to take us all with him. There's no denying the sheer efficiency of this man's unique talent for inflicting the most massive amount of pointless damage with the smallest effort.
Cause he did it: he let people out on the streets, here in America, who fired heavy weapons into cars full of civilian families with their kids, just to see them die. And then shot them again, over and over. And were convicted fairly in American courts of law. You can see Jeremy Scahill's documentary on this, and hear a nine-year-old's father tell about his son's brain falling on the road when he opened the car door. And about how he asked them to give the money they offered him to go away, to a US military family, in gratitude for their service "liberating" his Iraq from Saddam.
Why did 45 let these rabid monsters loose? Was it because their former boss's sister is Secretary of Education? What shall we say to our kids about this? Cause they have already done the math on this.
I remember when the release of a man named Willie Horton was used to crash another presidential candidate's campaign, by another Republican. And we thought that was low, back then. And now I suppose the pundits will tell us it's just his way, going around breaking norms.
***
Writing that last bit made me cry.
Some will say the legal system deserved what it got. Others will say that any legal system worth its wig should be able to mete out justice to a man so clearly responsible for so much wanton killing. Not the Blackwater thugs: the president. The guy who told us from the start of all this that he could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue, and get away with it.
But this is going to stand. The Pardon Power is absolute. And all that furniture in Congress is going to go on being sat on, and re-elected.
After ICE, tearing children from mothers, and now we find, tearing mothers' wombs out of them in detention for traffic violations, women who have lived peacefully just down the street for twenty years; and after all those Black lives (and counting) that continue not to matter; and after all the Yemeni children who continue to die under our bombs and rockets and drones; and after all the infected meat packers forced back to work at Tyson; and after all those virtually enslaved farm workers who continue to feed us our veggies; and after all those front line medical workers who continue to save our lives or deal with our infectious remains safely; and after the grandmothers and grandfathers and great-grandmothers and great-grandfathers in all the assisted living facilities who are dropping like, yes, flies, dammit; and after all the school kids and teachers and principals, and the millions and millions more of us out there just doing our terrorized and terrified best, including the neighbors in my little rural town that came down with the Virus for the holidays; and with my own 99-year-old Mom I can't visit who can barely use the phone; and now, after the president has pardoned actual homicidal maniacs on a child-shooting spree; there is no more Justice.
It's done. It's over. You want redress, you'll have to pay for it like anybody else now. Unless you know the president. Then you can go shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue. Cause if you're White, you can get out of jail free, and if you're Other, you can go to Hell.
It was a mighty purpose he had after all. Since his past seems to have caught up with him, finally, with that New York DA, and maybe the IRS and the FBI, and a couple dozen rape victims, sharpening up their pencils, and oh: some truly pissed off oligarchs he stiffed... there's just one thing to do, and he's the only human on Earth who can do it:
Destroy the law itself - and get away with it.
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