It’s beginning to look a lot like prison
I am told by people who notice such things (like my wife, for instance) that advertisements for Christmas get earlier every year. It’s particularly egregious here in Britain where we have no Thanksgiving to absorb some of the commercial zeal of our more venal marketeers.
Well I don’t mind. In fact, I see it as a time to start thinking about Christmas presents. For instance, I can’t think of a better Christmas present than confirmation that Christmas 2023 could very well be the last Christmas Donald Trump enjoys as a free man. Think of that. That thought alone could make me happy for a whole week.
Such a thought seemed impossible in January. Now it’s hard to imagine how Trump can avoid it. I have never seen a man in deeper shit. I have never seen a man who deserves to go to prison more. What fun!
And that’s not all. The news just keeps getting worse for Trump. It gets worse on an almost daily basis, without letup. It gets worse in a fractal sort of way, in that his problems develop problems.
Recent examples include an increasing number of people apparently flipping on Trump in his federal criminal case (people like Mark Meadows and Yuscil Taveras), Trump getting slapped with a summary judgement in the E Jean Carroll civil case and Jack Smith’s filing about Trump’s social media posts corrupting future juries. The bad news keeps coming, fast, furious and unrelenting!
Trump is facing no less than four serious-as-a-heart-attack felony indictments, two blood-curdling civil trials, and a possible fifth felony indictment is being mooted by legal experts. Trump is finally incurring life-altering perils equal to his awfulness. And we get to watch.
Not so very long ago we were doomed to watch impotently as Trump coddled dictators, derided America’s allies, bungled the Covid epidemic, lied about the infrastructure and healthcare, abused the press and stochastically endangered the lives of Americans he was sworn to protect. What’s more, Trump betrayed his oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States” almost every day.
We had to endure this odious liar, this rapist, this destroyer of family businesses, this buffoon with a voracious ego, without any hope of recourse to justice. We had to endure him stoically, impotently. We patiently awaited our time. Well, our time has come at last.
Today we get to watch him squirm in endless agony. Each day for Trump is worse than the previous day. More and more people are turning on him because they are waking up to the fact that loyalty only works one way with Trump. Trump demands that more people throw their lives away for him, and more and more of his former idolaters, sycophants and toadies are waking up, growing up and responding with a resounding, emphatic “NO!”
So I hope you’ll pardon me if, in this artificially accelerated Christmas season, I bowdlerise a popular Yuletide song by proclaiming that “It’s beginning to look a lot like prison.” So happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night! 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.