Donald Trump, the race-baiting, woman-hating, rapist/serial sexual predator, was indicted yesterday by — get ready for this — a black woman prosecutor, and she did it in that bastion of the Old Confederacy, the great state of Georgia.
The democracy that Trump tried to destroy coughed up the most fitting answer to his depredations against women and black people possible, and in the doing of it demonstrated the power and the hope that democracy represents for all of us.
Trump took the best that America had to give; the best schools, the highest office, the limitless opportunity for anyone, even a psychopathic lying rapist grifter, to grow up and be president, and he poured the sewage and filth of his own self absorption all over it. Trump staged a coup attempt to overturn an election that he wasn’t man enough to admit he lost so that he could make himself America’s first unelected dictator.
Almost all of the Republican members of Congress supported Trump in this vicious attack on our country. The ones who didn’t support him have mostly been flushed out of office by a Republican Party that has become as psychopathic and anti-American as Trump himself.
This coup attempt was the culmination of a lifetime of cheating and grifting, lying and sexually assaulting. Literally dozens of women have come forward to accuse Trump of assaulting them, and there are almost certainly many more women who did not come forward for fear of the abuse they would receive at the hands of Trump’s crazy mean supporters.
A jury of his peers found Trump guilty of defaming one of these women, the courageous E Jean Carroll. He was found guilty of sexually abusing her, but not of rape, because he rammed his finger inside her instead of his penis. But a higher court later clarified that the jury had, indeed, found Trump guilty of “digital penetration” and that this is rape as any sane person would define it.
His career and life are littered with the people he’s used, cheated and assaulted. From the poor folks who paid tuition to his phony “university” to the little guys and gals who were cheated out of payment for their services to his businesses, to the American people who nearly had their democracy stolen right out from under them and who are still being forced to fight to save that democracy from Trump and his rapacious band of not-so-merry right wing Republican nut jobs in the media, behind the pulpit, and in elected office, Trump has left a stain across our democracy that we will never completely wipe away.
Thanks to Trump, the unthinkable is thinkable now. Right wing Republicans talk openly of “civil war” if Trump is held accountable for his many crimes against We the People. Trump himself goes on the internet and issues thinly veiled threats against prosecutors, witnesses and the American people at large of what will happen to them if they “come at” him.
He’s a crude, vicious crook and a master manipulator of millions of weak-minded fools who appear to be willing to destroy the country that feeds them, shelters them, protects them, and, yes, coddles them. Life is good in America, and they are willing to turn it into the hell of civil war to back … what? An aging grifter, and a bunch of sloganeering puppet politicians who do not have one single idea or thought about how to help the people of this country between them.
But yesterday was a good day, a hopeful day, a day of something that only democracy can provide. A black woman, a descendent of the slaves who weren’t killed, a member of the group of women who have not been cowed by the love of violence against women that right wing politicians and their whore clergy both seem to regard as righteousness, announced that Trump and 18 of his co-conspirators in his coup attempt against American democracy had been indicted by a grand jury in Georgia. She — she — was the one who led the investigation and she — she — will prosecute the case in court.
E Jean Carroll had the almost unbelievable courage to stand up against the abuse from Trump’s followers and take the old sexual pervert to court and pin him to the judicial mat. She was the rape victim who didn’t slink away in shame but came right at him. And America is the country which gave her the opportunity to do this, despite Trump’s money, despite Trump’s power, despite Trump’s many slavish religious followers who confuse him with Christ the Lord.
Fani Willis is the black woman who will, Lord willing, prosecute him for his crimes against our Constitution, our democracy, and our nation. Trump tried, as part of a larger coup attempt, to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia by using the office of President to intimidate, terrify and coerce local officials and private citizens into becoming co-conspirators in his crime themselves by lying, destroying votes and creating phony votes to replace them. They had the guts to say “no” to him. And now this black woman has had the guts to hold him accountable under the law.
I’ve heard one of the tapes in which Trump leaned on a Georgia state official to “find” votes for him. So have you. I’ve read that District Attorney Willis has more tapes.
The miracle of democracy is that someone like Fani Willis can be elected to office, and with the power of the people of the State of Georgia, she can, despite Trump’s power, despite Trump’s money, despite Trump’s right wing media who will lie for him, despite Trump’s filthy whore clergy who will deify him and conflate following him with following Our Lord, despite Trump’s millions of nut job followers, despite all that, she can bring this monster to trial.
Fani Willis is a woman. She’s a black woman. She’s everything Trump and his followers despise and want to put back in their “place.” And she’s going to put him on trial.
That is the miracle of America. It is why democracy is worth fighting for. It is why we must save this country.
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