Chagrin and Trump and Katharine Valentino

Chagrin and Trump and Katharine Valentino

Merriam-Webster says that chagrin is “disquietude or distress of mind caused by humiliation, disappointment, or failure.” That is a reasonable description of how I feel after the Trump verdict. Thirty-four felony convictions. Holy shit! Really? What does that mean for me? For America?

I am a casual student of Russian history. American, too. Don’t ask me why, it’s an involved story. At any rate, the Trump trial has many similarities to Stalin’s show trials of The Terror during the late 1930s: 

1 an out-of-favor politician defendant, 
2 novel legal theories created just to persecute him, 
3 important witnesses barred from testifying,
4 a prosecutor who was (s)elected on his promise to “get” Trump, 
5 a judge with a potential political bias, 
6 a jury pool where 90% of the voters voted against Trump in the last election.

I can see my friend Katharine Valentino rubbing her hands together in glee and giggling (cackling?), “The witch is dead. That proves I’ve been right all along. We got the monster.”

But that stimulant bounce (for me it was alcohol, cocaine for others) will wear off. The dawn will break. The question will be, “What have we done?” Then, “How can we make this right?”

In the Soviet Union, making it right took place as the “rehabilitation” of improperly punished individuals. Those individuals were, sadly, dead by then, having received their own personal “9mm salute” as the result of their convictions. After rehabilitation, officially and permanently, they had done no wrong. Inter alia, their families could get jobs and buy food now. Go and sin no more.

Enter Trump. I think his convictions were improper. I’m not a lawyer but I can see, hear and read. If it was, the appeals courts will sort it out in due time. But the result will remain, “convicted felon.” Opprobrium was always the desired result. Trump’s Scarlet Letter. Whatever punishment he may receive is just frosting on the devil’s-food cake.

Trump’s opposition will ask, “Is that really who you want in the White House? A felon?” It’s already happening. I saw a report this morning that the Biden campaign has raised nearly fifty million dollars just off this conviction. But the Trump campaign has already raised more than a hundred fifty million with more coming in too fast to count.

The dawn will break in November and it will likely find Trump as our president with some appeals still pending, all of which will reverse his convictions. We will wake up in a disheveled bed in a cheap hotel room and ask “What have I done” and “Who was that?” and “Why was I attracted to him?” and “Did I really do all that just for the money?”

Katharine Valentino hyperventilates as her emotions dictate: “Everything Trump has been saying during the trial has been a lie.” Well, no. Trump didn’t testify during the trial and his gag order prevented him from speaking his mind outside the courtroom. That’s what gag orders are for, though he spoke right outside the courtroom more than once, and paid for each violation.

She takes great issue with Trump’s dalliance with Stormy Daniels, if such there was. The story is not a secret. It has been, if anything, over-exploited by the media for years. It has been denied by both parties, then admitted by Stormy, then denied again. WTF?

There was a payment of a hundred thirty grand that can’t be denied. She cashed the check that someone else wrote. If anything, it proves that hot young women are attracted to rich old men, and vice versa. I already knew that.

Will Katharine write as passionately later about the wrongs that were done in the name of “Get the monster?” Perhaps so, but I doubt it. She is an excellent writer but she may not have the grace to say "I was wrong" should events turn out that way. She doesn't need to say that today, I grant you, but tomorrow, when the appeals are upheld at some level or the other? I hope so, for her soul.

Or will she become a member of a dismal opposition whose purpose will ever remain the same: “Get Trump.” Disregard the will of the American people, disregard the crises facing America, just punish the bastard. Just get him. Get him. Get him. Get him.