Longtime readers are aware that I’ve been saying for years that the regime would railroad Donald Trump on upjumped charges.
Now, as predicted, a New York judge has convicted Donald Trump in a highly publicized show trial.
NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump became the first former American president to be convicted of felony crimes Thursday as a New York jury found him guilty of all 34 charges in a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election through a hush money payment to a porn actor who said the two had sex.
Trump sat stone-faced while the verdict was read as cheering from the street below could be heard in the hallway on the courthouse’s 15th floor where the decision was revealed after more than nine hours of deliberations.
Related: The Tragedy of Trump
Judge Juan M. Merchan set sentencing for July 11, just days before the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, where GOP leaders, who remained resolute in their support in the aftermath of the verdict, are expected to formally make him their nominee.
Speculation rages on the question of whether the judge will imprison Trump at the July 11 sentencing, or if his incarceration will be somehow deferred. The latter seems more likely to avoid the international embarrassment of the leading presidential candidate campaigning from prison. Not to mention Secret Service logistics. Then again, those are rational concerns, and our rulers are not rational actors.
In all honesty, understanding the regime’s behavior isn’t all that hard. The only people who have difficulty wrapping their heads around the ruling cult’s motives haven’t yet internalized that they are a cult.
It’s simple. The Cult sees democracy—by which they mean their unquestioned hegemony—as sacred. They are priests of the secular religion. Donald Trump was an outisder who dared invade their sanctuary, so they must punish him. It’s not about any practical political strategy. They don’t care about that. If they did, they’d be focused on practical matters proper to politics like runaway inflation, border security, or sane foreign policy. Instead, they’re obsessed with ritually burning the infidel. If that wasn’t clear when they raided his house on the flimsiest pretext, I don’t know how to help you.
Related: Court Disqualifies Trump for 2024
The secular ruling cult may disavow God, but they still need a Devil. Theirs is an entirely negative identity that relies on defining itself against an out group for meaning. As we have seen over the past decade, Donald Trump has become a living symbol of everything our rulers are not. That’s why they can’t take reasonable steps to defeat and sideline him. They have to destroy him symbolically.
They even admit it.
The conviction, and even imprisonment, will not bar Trump from continuing his White House pursuit.
Trump faces three other felony indictments, but the New York case may be the only one to reach a conclusion before the November election, adding to the significance of the outcome. Though the legal and historical implications of the verdict are readily apparent, the political consequences are less so given its potential to reinforce rather than reshape already hardened opinions about Trump.
At this point, there are three ways events can unfold:
- The GOP disqualifies Trump from the nomination. This is the scenario elected Democrats hope for most, but it relies on Republicans having the guts to use power, so this is a risky bet
- Trump is allowed to run (possibly from prison) and wins. He then pardons himself and goes after the enemies that sent him up the river. But Trump is also a Republican, so the same caveat above applies
- Trump is allowed to run (possibly from prison) and loses due to a combination of demographic change and democracy fortification. This is the outcome that Death Cult true believers want the most because it is the ritual recapitulation of Trump’s symbolic 2020 defeat.
What will really happen? Only time will tell.
The far more important takeaway is that the ruling cult has now de facto abolished the last vestiges of the rule of law. Voting at the national level no longer matters since the government has now claimed the power to jail unapporved opposition candidates. And once government gains a power, it never gives it up.
That is not a black pill. The regime’s democracy worship dictates that they must plausibly be able to claim an electoral mandate. People losing faith in the system in large numbers undermines the Cult’s rule. And they just did more self-inflicted damage to the integrity of the system than any act short of going full Grassy Knoll could do.
Prepare for chaos.
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Do you think there’s a chance they’re hoping for a Thomas Becket moment? I expect they’re smarter (or at least more cunning) than that, but I also think that if they were smarter, they would have tried to flatter Trump instead of going into fervid opposition from day one.
Was Henry II hoping for a Thomas Becket moment?
That’s not to say it can’t happen. As we discussed, we’re dealing with cultists, not rational actors. Attributing logical motives to them will only produce accurate predictions by random chance.
One thing to note about this is that the media consistently lies about what the trial was even about.
They say it is a “hush money” case, but none of the charges are about paying hush money and it isn’t illegal to pay hush money. The AP story says that it is about “illegally influencing the election” but that isn’t true either. The real (supposed) crimes were “falsifying business records” but in order for that to be a felony it has to be done to cover up a felony. What felony was being supposedly being covered up was never made clear, not by the judge, nor the prosecution, and the jury did not even have to come to a decision themselves. “Election interference” was one possibility, but not the only one.
Of course, since the trial was about nothing and as such in order to pretend as though this isn’t a naked display of power against a political opponent you have to lie. Though I don’t know why they bother with how shallow the lie is and how little their base cares. “We got him for not properly listing a business expense, which would have affected the election. Now we can say he is a felon, which will tank his poll numbers and allow us to win!” (The base flat out wants this to remove Trump from the election, making the “election interference” all the more obvious.) I don’t really know if they’d lose anything by just saying “yeah, there is no crime here, but we are using our power against our political rival. What are you going to do about it?”
What they’d lose is running the risk of actual civil war. There are too many loose young men without ties or much investment in the economy. That’s dangerous enough normally but if they go full on “fuck you forever” without already having enough secret police and holding facilities on stand by it will get hairy quick.
We’re quickly getting to the “Political persecution is good, actually” stage.
“I don’t really know if they’d lose anything by just saying “yeah, there is no crime here, but we are using our power against our political rival. What are you going to do about it?””
As our good host pointed out, this is a Cult, it’s not about sound governance or even open, cynical power grabs. The later at least tend to have some practical thinking behind them.
Their religion is based on an authority derived from and sanctified by Democracy and Rule of Law(TM). Thus they have to make the pretense of this being good for the people/democracy. They can’t come right out say “Enemies of the state can’t run for President”, because so much is invested in “democracy”. They would betray the foundational dogma of the Cult itself.
From the POV of the average person and someone like Trump, it mostly means adding an element of gaslighting and randomness to persecutions. I mean, when I wistfully look at the Chinese government and think: “At least they aren’t blowing smoke up your behind about it being good for you”, that’s a problem. Open dictatorships can have a problem with ever changing rule sets, but at least everyone knows the base rule that the king makes the rules.
They lie, we know they lie, they know we know they lie, yet still they lie.
It’s a humiliation ritual.
I’m at the “It’s all so tiring” stage. Lots of people excited by the verdict. I am at “Oh yeah, that’s happening, I guess.” It doesn’t hurt helped if Trump actually became President again, my faith in him is pretty close to zero.
“If that wasn’t clear when they raided his house on the flimsiest pretext, I don’t know how to help you.”
I joked that at the time that they locked up his papers as a warning that they would lock up him if he continued to run for President. I don’t know if this trial took him by surprise, but it seems to have taken a lot of people that way.
Looks like a lot of folks are still having trouble getting this, which is a compliment, actually.
Still, it’s amazing how often I inform people “We are ruled by a hysterical Death Cult.” And people nod their heads and say, “Yeah, yeah. We are.” Then in the next breath they ask a variant of “So how can we square this hysterical Death Cult’s behavior with some kind of rational motive?”
To ask the question is to answer it.