Are we having fun yet?
In the early days of Donald Trump’s criminal trial, I reminded everyone that while it was perfectly okay for us to find catharsis and even fun in watching Trump be put on trial, the process itself was not meant for our enjoyment. There would be parts that were overly clinical, parts that were legally confusing, and parts that were just plain boring in terms of entertainment value.
Sure enough, the trial has indeed been a lot of fun for those of us who are looking for Trump to get what’s been coming to him. The guy’s a career criminal and thug who sold out his country. The very least he deserves is to have some lower level felonies hung around his neck for cooking his books. And this trial has helped prove that he never even legitimately won the 2016 election to begin with.
But large chunks of this trial have also been more about the legal process than about any potential entertainment value. For every high profile witness talking about what a corrupt loser Trump is, there was an obscure witness whose job was simply to confirm that a document said what it really said and such.
That’s because in the end the only intended audience was the jury, and they were chosen specifically because they don’t approach politics for entertainment value. These are the people who were screened to make sure they’re not on a “side” and can therefore simply look at the evidence in unbiased fashion and determine guilt. This is about them, and now it’s their job – not ours, not Trump’s, not the job of anyone on TV – to decide how the trial went.
Still, as we wait for the jury to do its very important thing, this sure has been a lot of fun, hasn’t it? We’ve earned that. We’ve been fighting against this corrupt bastard for years. And we’ll continue doing so, for as long as he’s foolish enough to keep feebly getting up each time we knock him down. I don’t think he has much fight left in him. But I do know just how considerably much fight we have left in us.
