Rejecting calls for a truth commission, Jill Lepore (Washington Post, 10/16/20) argues that “what the nation needs, pretty urgently, is self-reflection, not only from Republicans but also from establishment Democrats and progressives and liberals and journalists and educators and activists and social media companies and, honestly, everyone.”
Disturbing as it is to see politicians and pundits advising a Biden administration to vehemently reject progressive policy goals, there’s more. As Eoin Higgins notes in a piece for Business Insider (10/30/20), a concurrent strain of argument is that Trump himself should face no real public reckoning. Higgins cites a column by historian Jill Lepore in the Washington Post (10/16/20)—heralded as “eloquent” by the New York Times‘ Nicholas Kristof (Twitter, 10/18/20): “Let History, Not Partisans, Prosecute Trump.”
Lepore, a Harvard professor, says it would be inappropriate to have a reconciliation commission like other countries have had; Trump’s “wrongdoing” instead “should be investigated by journalists, chronicled by historians and, in some instances, tried in ordinary courts.” How those courts can adequately address such “wrongdoing” as allowing, through corruption and mismanagement, the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people is unclear. Her moral point is, though: “Many Trump critics will find this suggestion maddeningly insufficient,” Lepore notes, but chides “the appetite for vengeance is a symptom of the same poison.”
The call to coddle Trump—like the same outlets’ insistence that it would be mean to send bankers whose fraud derailed the economy to jail—is evidence of the total divorce between real people’s lives and experiences, and the puppets and caricatures in media’s narrative. There is no accountability to the millions of people who lost their lives, their loved ones, their homes, their jobs. Then as now, protecting the status quo involves marginalizing calls for justice, by portraying them as an “emotional” desire for “vengeance,” better tempered by cooler heads.
“Higher capital requirements may not satisfy blood lust the way a CEO in chains would,” wrote the Washington Post (9/12/13) in 2013, “but they’re going to do a lot more.” At the New York Times (2/25/11), it was: “You’re entitled to wonder whether any of the highly paid executives who helped kindle the disaster will ever see jail time. The harder question, though, is whether anybody should.”
The call to let Trump go gently also evokes the call not to prosecute those who committed acts of torture for the US—purporting to be some sort of healing gesture about “looking forward, not back,” while in fact preserving the conditions that led to the horrors. Now as then, doing what we’re told is the dry-eyed, grown-up thing to do involves erasing the real harms done to real people. That’s not “politic,” or “pragmatic”—it’s perverse.
Thank you.
Every president should be prosecuted
Which is precisely why they aren’t
Bravo! I’d often thought we’d do well to have each president physically devour their predecessor, for motivation as well as entertainment value? If there was some kind of trap door or ejection seat, activated by cellphone app or a giant button, ostentatiously labled, out front? Maybe have chain the NEW president to the burned-out, shriveled up OLD one. Allow the preceding spouses easy access to depicrate and revile each while pleasuring the other. Of course, constant webcam access would benefit our many victims, foreign and domestic?
I’ve came to this article with an open mind, but it is actually an unFAIR article.
You can do better than this.
Aw poo poo, Trump is a moron
I so appreciate the light you cast on truth, justice and sanity in these dark times.
If we prosecute Trump for his crimes, will we prosecute Bush and Obomber for torture, murder, and aggression against Libya and Syra—the crimes for which we hanged the Nazis at Nuremberg?
One would hope so.
If bad actions have no consequences, then people will continue to act badly.
Bad actions against Americans or also the rest of the world? In that case many Presidents would be charged.
Absurd! Don not let that idiot get away with anything! Lock him up!
First off, thank you, Ms. Jackson, for your many years of exceptional work at FAIR and CounterSpin. I’m a longtime fan, admirer and listener and I am so grateful for the invaluable work done by you and the other terrific journalists at FAIR. I am writing today because I also very deeply appreciate and admire the work of Jill Lepore, and I was surprised by your singling her out for criticism on yesterday’s edition of CounterSpin. I do not think she was in any way suggesting overlooking the crimes of the Trump Administration, his enablers or the Republican Party; far from it. I think she would be the last person, as a historian, to support the kind of “looking forward” nonsense that was, for example, the approach of the Democrats when it came to the horrendous criminal behavior of the Bush-Cheney Administration. And I did not see that as her argument in the Washington Post Op-Ed. To be sure, interpretations can vary, but I think she was calling for a deliberate and rigorous calling to account, for careful investigations of, documenting AND prosecutions of the crimes of the current administration. Her Op-Ed seemed to be triggered by the calls for “Truth and Reconciliation” commissions. And given the entirely toothless and failures of such commissions to provide even an illusory “cathartic” salve for the crimes they reveal, I think she is right to question such calls. I think we all want meaningful, significant accountability for the horrendous crimes committed by this administration (as well as for ALL past US administrations). I did not see Lepore’s Op-Ed as arguing against that in any way, shape or form.
A lot of reprehensible things the Trump Administration has done simply aren’t crimes. The accountability for that is at the ballot box.
The only things that I’m seeing that could be prosecutable would be trying to obstruct justice in the Mueller investigation and attempting to sell out the national security interests of the country in exchange for Ukraine investigating the relative of a political rival.
And maybe a hundred counts of contempt of Congress.
He was already impeached for that, though. It’d be tough to justify another prosecution for it.
Sounds good to me. Arrest Trump, and Obama, the Clintons, Bush, Biden, Kissinger, Bolton, Kristol, and many others for their war crimes. Finally some justice.
“How those courts can adequately address such “wrongdoing” as allowing, through corruption and mismanagement, the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people is unclear. ”
Arrest and charge Trump for sure, as well as Cuomo and Newsom for the thousands of deaths they failed to prevent due to their corruption and mismanagement. And Biden for telling people it was safe to vote. And Tom Perez for threatening states who wanted to postpone their primaries with loss of electors. Put them all in jail.
Glad we agree!
Our US society historically has a justice system — both formal and cultural — that is basically inversely proportional to the perpetrator’s class. As someone once said about our US capital punishment system, “you’ll never see a rich-person executed in the US”, and that holds true for accountability in general in our society — the higher-up you are in government or business, the less accountability there is in any meaningful sense. The worst ‘penalty’ that people at the top experience is that they lose their position and either get a cushy lobbying position/book deal if they’re in government, or a golden parachute severance package if they’re in business.
Janine Jackson, proof that a degree in sociology is not just stupid and non-productive, but it produces hateful people.
Tim the resident FAIR troll, proof that even Trump supporters are hungry for a non-partisan watchdog group who offers a critique of our for-profit, non-transparent, corporate elitist “Mainstream Press”.
I see that you post here often, and that you mainly have judgment and contempt for the work they’re doing over here at FAIR. Hey, at least you are stopping by. Lord knows there isn’t anything even remotely like FAIR over in what I assume is your normal media skim of ZeroHedge, Breitbart The Daily Caller and Stormfront.
Usually if a person doesn’t like a website they stop visiting it, so you must come here for something other than the lightly moderated comment forum, right?
It is true, as some have suggested, that all previous Presidents should also be tried for crimes against humanity, yet Trump is unique in that he has intentionally killed hundreds of thousands of American citizens, and thus it is our duty as Americans to have a Nuremberg type tribunal to publicly try Trump, his administration, and the media outlets that furthered his murderous policies.
Intentionally killed? That’s called murder. He murdered 100k Americans? Your claim is ridiculous. TDS at work. I don’t see you claiming the same for Cuomo where there is a more direct, causal relationship? Partisan much?
Yes it’s true, the power we entrust to the holder of our highest office of the country does come with a grip of responsibilities. The buck stops with the President; and when he fails to “intentionally act”, all of the “unintentional consequences”, from his sheer negligence, are his fault alone.
All of the decisions of a POTUS have unintentional consequences. That your man failed to use his power to effectively handle the pandemic, was a highly unethical act of inaction, one that he will have to face, here or in the afterlife.
This was an administration who acted as if it didn’t even care about regular people’s suffering. In many people’s minds, it even felt like the man was intentionally being cruel. This is why the majority of citizens voted him out, the second time in my lifetime that an incumbent Republican was stunningly repudiated at the ballot box.
My hope is that we will get to see some sort of spectacular eviction of Trump from the Whitehouse: like how the sheriff are deputized by property owners to throw poor families out on their ass, when not having the bread to make rent. Hopefully it won’t go so far as that, with stacks of gold plated furniture and giant bundles of the New York Post piled up all over the Whitehouse lawn.
Let’s see if the Southern District of New York State Court, is able to finally find out what Trump was hiding in his financial portfolio, I hope that whatever scandalous information they find becomes part of the public record. FAIR can post a critique of the inevitable New York Times article that will be written about the “bombshell” of Trump being indebted to foreign oligarchs with ties to organized crime.
One can only ponder why he was so scared to show his tax withholdings. It is probably reaching to think he will ever be convicted in court, thrown in the clink and that Congress will pass a legislative condemnation to censure all of Trump’s and McConnell’s judiciary appointments.
If there was a way to censure this past presidency in some formal parliamentary way, it might help the case for restructuring the court, to restore the checks and balances of our three co-equal branches of government. The purpose of checks and balances are to allow one branch to subvert the other democratic branches of government when they do things we abhor.
In one of my daydreams we actual had an co-equally powerful SCOTUS during the dumpster fire of the last four years. It was a SCOTUS of 50 justices, a branch of government that was self governing and less incentivized to be beholden to corporate power. Such a high court would have been able to step in on behalf of the majority of We the People, to subvert Stephen Miller’s nativist bigoted executive orders.
Either way, you know ole’ Boss Tweet will go down in history as probably the worst person to have ever occupied the office of the presidency. Trump is indeed the polar opposite of the man that he replaced. Barack was a very popular president, one whom most of the country when polled admitted they would sit down and have a beer with, Trump could only dream of ever feeling that kind of love.
Peace Timmy-Timnilli and stay frosty