Signifying Nothing

A “travesty” is defined as a “perversion,” or “distortion,” or even, “farce.” The phrase, “travesty of justice” is often over-used.  When anybody doesn’t get what they want, they are heard to say that their loss was a “travesty of justice.” When the diner has run out of the raisin toast you wanted on your sandwich, that’s not a “travesty of justice.” We have been treated during the past week, however, with something that truly does qualify under that rubric – the so-called Impeachment trial of Donald “I’m Getting Away With It Again” Trump.

What else could you call it? Could any rational person, after hearing both sides, come to any conclusion other than that our former leader deserved the only possible constitutional penalty? Not the Republicans. Those troglodytes refused to do anything but bow to the dictates of their own bottomless self-interest.  

I’m reminded of the story of the man’s wife catching him in bed with another woman.  

“What are you doing with that woman?” the wife screams. 

“What woman?” the husband answers, “there’s no woman here.” 

“I’m looking right at her,” the wife says.

“So, what are you going to believe,” the husband responds, “me or you’re lyin’ eyes.”

Apparently, the Republican Senators would have believed the husband. There was no woman in that man’s bed and there was no incitement to riot in Trump’s rhetoric. The verdict of Not Guilty is just that ignorant. Remember, the root of the word, “ignorant” is “ignore.”

There were so many examples of the flaws in Trump’s defense it minimizes their number by just citing to a few.  And not just in the facts.  Trump’s lawyers knew they didn’t have the facts so they barely touched them (except to lie about them). Instead, they emphasized the law.  And they lied about that, too. 

1. Jurisdiction.  They said that there should be no trial because the Senate can’t try a former President.  Set aside the fact that this is historically and legally wrong, The Senate decided it. They voted – yes, voted– to allow it.  In a sad irony upon an irony, some Republicans still refused to convict on those very grounds.  So, in order to acquit Trump from charges that he tried to ignore a vote that he lost, they ignored a vote that they lost.

• Due Process. Trump’s lawyers argued that Trump did not receive the kind of due process he would get at a trial. Seriously? You liken this to a trial.  For God’s sake, the judge also serves as the jury who, in turn, is also the victim.  I bet that doesn’t happen in even those traffic accident cases in Philadelphia that Trump’s lawyers are so proud of handling.  Due Process means, literally, that you get the process that you are “due.” The Senate set the rules.  They were fair. What they allow, they allow. Trump’s lawyers lied their asses off.  Is that due process? 

• Hate. Trump’s assortment of “Not Ready for Prime Time” legal talent also made the claim that the real motivation behind the trial was the Democratic hatred of their client. “You guys hate me! Waaaaaah!” Were they in the United States Senate Chamber or on an elementary school playground. They based this baseless assertion on the folly that Democrats were obsessed with impeaching Trump because they had been trying to do it for years. Well, duh. He deserved it.  Imagine a serial killer on trial for his fifth murder raised the same defense. “The cops are obsessed with convicting me because they have been trying catch me since my first kill?”

We were treated to what has now become America-in-action. Or, more accurately, America Inaction. Trump was victorious in more ways than one. He won the trial, yes, but beyond that, he also won the war on facts.  Facts no longer matter.  This “fact” has been gestating for some time now.  But, it’s culmination came this week when this trial ingloriously gave the concept the stamp of approval. The House Managers case was powerful. But, this week, it mattered not. It never did.

Like in everything else, Shakespeare said it best.  He was speaking of life, but we can substitute this trial instead:

The trial was but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury

Signifying nothing.