Mugged

In a few days, a former president of this country will be arrested, fingerprinted, and posed in profile for a mug shot. That mug shot will go viral. Some will have it framed. Others are crying, “Outrage,” and damning both the district attorney and the grand jury.

Personally, I wish one of the other likely indictments had come first. Neither consensual sex commerce nor hush money paid to prevent embarrassment are on my list of high crimes and misdemeanors. Whose business are they really except the parties involved? I’m convinced that Bill Clinton could have done us all a favor if, instead of lying, he’d simply replied, “Nunya.”

That said, we’re entitled to some healthy schadenfreude at the expense of our inciter-in-chief. Comedownance is overdue for this man who has cost our country and its governance so much for so long. His antics have riven democracy and tolerance down the middle and made frightened lemmings of half our representatives.

I would have preferred that one of the stronger, more serious cases had come first: urging riot on January 6th, demanding the vice president falsify the electoral results, or conspiring for fraudulent votes in Georgia. Acquittal in New York would only embolden this demagogue and his dangerous followers.

So, for the moment, let him at least be mugged, and his legacy stained with a permanent asterisk. Let it mirror, in a small way, the larger, darker stain he leaves on America.