Donald Trump is playing victim in New York
The Butcher of Brentwood, OJ Simpson, is appealing a court order in Nevada that says he owes at least $60 million in judgments to his victims. These judgments stem from his 1994 killing of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend, Ron Goldman. Simpson thinks the whole thing is racially motivated and unfair. It turns out murdering two human beings has inconvenient consequences.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, Donald Trump’s lawyers are suing the state of New York for allegedly wrongfully terminating contracts the Trump Organization had to operate city facilities, calling it “politically motivated” and unfair. It turns out New York wants nothing to do with Trump because he started a violent insurrection that killed five people, and he attempted to overthrow the United States of America. It turns out attacking your own country has inconvenient consequences.
To hear some criminals tell it these days you’d think they were victims. Where exactly do they get this kind of gall?
Maybe it comes from decades of watching others playing victim. For example, for years we’ve been forced to listen to gun owners whine that there’s an inexorable march on their rights to own guns. So today “open carry” is the law of the land in many states where unlicensed loonies have access to just about every military-style weapon known to warfare, from rocket launchers to AR-15s. Meanwhile tens of thousands of Americans die every year from guns and gun violence.
Clearly, playing victim sometimes works. So in the great tradition of victim playing, Trump’s lawyers are declaring they are outraged — outraged! — to learn that the state of New York would deprive him of his right to operate city facilities. In order to do this they must pretend that Trump is some kind of normal person, that January 6th was something other than it was. But it was exactly what it was.
January 6th was about an evil man who stood in front of an angry crowd seething with artificially-enhanced resentment, a man who told them their rights had been stolen from them. He lied to them and told them the election was fake, that they didn’t lose the election after all, they actually won it, and the people who stole it from them were right down the street, and he was going to march with them right down that very same street and explain why they were angry. Then he went home to laugh about the violence he inspired.
There comes a point when we have to stop catering to fools and start calling things exactly what they are. OJ Simpson murdered two people. The Catholic Church didn’t tolerate the abuse of some people for a few years they facilitated the rape of children for centuries and tried to protect the monsters responsible. Guns kill people. They’re good for nothing. Racism is still a fact and it’s endemic and institutional. Donald Trump tried to overthrow the United States of America. Donald Trump is a traitor.
These are facts. We need to start speaking in facts again. Too many people are operating scams on the slippery edge of vagaries. We need to relearn the language of the concrete and start applying it to reality. Too much crap has been tolerated for too long in the name of fair play, but there comes a point when it needs to stop. That point is now. That point has arrived. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.