By Sid Schwab / Herald columnist
There must be a universe in which America hasn’t descended into anti-science denialism; in which all members of America’s majority religion actually followed its teachings, rather than promoting hate and fear of otherness, and elevating its amoral political “leader” to a status higher than their religious one.
Somewhere in the multiverse, America never elected a lifelong liar and flouter of the law, a narcissistic destroyer of the once-touted “guardrails” of democracy; a wrong-doer never held to account, unable to accept recant or renounce transgressions of decency and the law. Surely there’s a universe in which the party that elected him took responsibility and corrected its mistake. By producing superior candidates capable of correcting the error, refusing to reinstall the one, fealty to and fear of whom facilitated the downfall of party and country.
These Friday columns are sent in by Wednesday evening, allowing this page’s editor to lay out the opinion section on Thursday morning, for publication the next day. So, at this writing, we don’t know if the inevitable indictment of Donald Trump by special counsel Jack Smith has yet dropped. But we know the reaction. From Republican leaders and their admitted-liar media, the meas won’t be culpa. We’ll hear of witch hunts, crazed Trump-haters, liberals seeking vengeance for something or other, rather than supporting punishment for obvious crimes, as should be the case, in a nation of laws, for all people, even former “presidents.”
We’ll hear praise of the Jan. 6 desecrators, pretense that stealing classified documents, lying about it, and getting others to lie, too, is no big deal; and claims that, in a supernatural act, the documents became declassified the minute they were stolen. There’ll be calls for impeachment, imprisonment, or worse, of investigators, prosecutors, and Democratic leaders, top to bottom. Trump’s poll numbers will rise. “Truthless Social” will run out of capital letters. Despite his undeniable criminality, he may still become his party’s nominee. Too late to admit their mistake. For those with time and inclination, here’s documentation of Trump’s crimes, created by former prosecutors, which they propose would be similar to Jack Smith’s “prosecution memo”: (Just Security: tinyurl.com/longmemo4u)
https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/schwab-hope-for-democracy-among-trumps-challengers-if-only/
