More Indictments! Let The Hot Takes Begin
The Intensity Keeps Intensifying, Plus Federalism Rocks
Trump Indicted — Again
Breaking news late, late Monday night is that Georgia’s Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis announced a grand jury indictment against former President Donald Trump and 18 associates for racketeering and election fraud related to the 2020 election.
Approximately a zillion analysts are no doubt writing analyses as we speak. One thing the Trump era has brought is punditry on crack.
We do it, too, but we’re also trying to ramp up this new nonprofit here so I’ll keep my analysis focused on two things: 1) intensity intensifying, 2) how cool federalism is turning out to be as a tool for countering authoritarianism, and 3) how now we’ll need to hold it together.
The Intensity Intensifies
What I saw in tonight’s Fulton County press conference was a diverse group of lawyers walking onto the press conference stage, followed by a Black woman reading the riot act about how she intended to uphold the law with all the might and power of the authorities of the state of Georgia — against the most powerful member of the US Republican Party and a large cabal of his cronies.
I saw power, government, and the law.... represented by a diverse cast of Americans that looked like America.
I also saw a very, very real and also likely a very perceived threat to the status-quo Republican power structure made up of primarily pale male people.
As the saying goes, a cornered dog has the sharpest bite. Nothing riles up today’s Republicans more than people of color having more power than them in any given situation; especially women. Republican MAGA types like to think they have power — as the former president, or former district attorney, or what-have-you — but now that they’re co-defendant citizens with warrants for their arrest they’re suddenly in positions of being very much not powerful.
The bites back will be spectacular. Trump’s power play will be media influence through obnoxious things he will say that everyone will be appalled by, and also very likely more stochastic terrorism. Trump’s game is all about driving the narrative — and he will. It’s increasingly his only big card to play, and as such it’s likely to get more appalling and more shocking. So far that’s been his trend.
Our media is likely to continue to normalize this behavior as well, which will just add to the weirdness, awkwardness, denial, and collective failure to take on these threats head-on and in a strategic way as a society.
If actual violence does occur in follow-up to Trump’s likely incitement or just the general ramping up of the far-right extremism and authoritarian movement, everything will likely become that much more intense.
Terrorism and fear work completely differently when they are coming from inside your own population versus from an external threat like after 9/11. We’re weak (or we think we are) and we’re scared and we’re in shock and we’re not very sure what to do about it.
I don’t think this is going to go well, I do think it’s going to escalate, and I think that escalation could happen in many unexpected ways and with lots of cascading effects.
It’s part of a larger moment, too. The setting on the stage of tonight’s late-night press conference in Fulton County, Georgia reminded me of a smaller-scale press conference just last week out of Montgomery, Alabama. Here it is:
Once again, we had a diverse array of characters upholding the law and speaking for government — in this case against a group of white people who attacked a Black riverboat co-captain who was a city employee. It was powerful and helpful there too to see government run by a diverse cross-section of people who are representative of the communities they govern and serve.
Both of these cases show the power, potential, and functional effectiveness of a government run by it’s own multi-racial, multi-ethnic cross-section of people. We can do so much more like that — it reminds us of who we are and who we can be as a people and as government.
Reaction to both of these actual legal scenarios by the ypipo (a clever Facebook-slang term for “white people”) MAGA crowd has not gone well and is not likely to go well. I suspect the anger and resentment will be deep, swift, vile, abhorrent, and possibly violent. One of the dangers of an activated, empowered far-right extremist movement is that you never know when one super fired-up person or small group of people will become motivated enough to become violent. Especially when many of the MAGA crowd are heavily armed. Take a look at the pale pontoon boat guys in Montgomery, Alabama for an example of ypipo who suddenly have “had enough” of people of color having more power than them… and who suddenly pole-vault into group violence.
The majority of Americans don’t want violence, blatant bigotry, conflict, and hostility to be part of our everyday lives, though. What we’re doing now with all this mishegoss is not what we want for ourselves, for our people, or for those who come after us.
The good news is that so far, we’ve been able to hold this country together. Can’t say that we’re stable, but we are holding. Federalism helps.
Federalism Rocks
The other most notable thing to me about what’s happening with the Fulton County indictments is that federalism is turning out to be not only a super cool tool for countering coup attempts themselves especially due to our very dispersed election administration processes — but also to be a super helpful tool for holding people accountable when they do conspire to overthrow the government. So that’s nice.
For all of it’s messiness, federalism is turning out to really, really help this country be resilient in ways that the founders likely never anticipated. Which is working out because they also put a bunch of stupid stuff in place like the electoral college because they didn’t trust the masses (despite not having empowered most of the masses to even have a vote). If we didn’t have the electoral college, Donald Trump wouldn’t have gotten to be president in the first place since he lost the popular vote in 2016 but won the electoral college.
In any case, even the electoral college process was complicated enough by aspects of federalism that it was a bit too much for Trump and Company to successfully outmaneuver and overthrow in 2020. They were sort of trying to overrun the system with clown cars full of Keystone Cops so that was also a problem, but federalism definitely helped minimize damage. Bureaucracy itself also counters power grabs, and that helped too. Lots of things to be grateful for there — and people too. Principled people spread throughout our federalist system also helped to uphold election processes even as the Trumpists sought to undermine them. Federalism has brought resilience and complexity that has helped our system to hold so far.
Now We Just Have To Hold It Together
One of our greatest challenges for the next 14.5 months will be to hold these federalism pieces and parts together so that they hold — both during the increasing intensity we’re living through, and so that they hold during the 2024 election. There are obviously lots of things to do to make sure those pieces hold. We’ll collectively need as many people engaged as possible holding government together. It will get trickier if we see increased threats, political violence, or other terrorism.
It's helpful to see progress happening from inside government itself. That’s one obvious reason why there’s a lot of excitement about what’s happening in Fulton County. It’s a sign of both systems holding and of overdue accountability.
It’s also saying the uncomfortable things out loud that aren’t getting said enough. We need that.
There’s good stuff happening out there. It’s helpful to see some of it out front and center and tied to big institutions — because overwhelm, shock, and disempowerment are key features of authoritarian attempts to weaken resistance to power grabs.
Today we can be grateful for Georgia’s unique laws; for Georgia’s unique approach to enforcing these laws which is helping to create this legal situation as announced Monday night; and for the people of Georgia for electing some good folks to run at least part of the government there. We got good people.
Take care, be safe, look after your people, and keep the faith — in us. We have power, and we’re going to keep using it.
Onward.