Absolute Disharmony
A reading of the “absolute immunity” brief as authoritarian script.
March 19
Take away the legal jargon of the brief Trump lawyers filed today before the Supreme Court in the January 6 case a certiorari plea this week and one grasps the arcane legal world Trump inhabits. It is not a world for you and me:
it’s a world where living things are suffocated, wither and die.
Hyperbole? Perhaps. How else can one describe the magnum opus Trump has created for himself to show off his followers? How else configure the space to use his followers as props for subverting the rule of law? The show of red hat toting minions is a show one can watch and lose oneself in.
That’s the point.
What we see at a Trump rally in Ohio is eerily reflected by last week’s swarming white-faced Russian Gen Z-ers sharing the election victory speech stage with Vladimir Putin. It’s the authoritarian overture: you can be one of us. Come and be one of us. You are one of us.
The “absolute immunity” brief filed by Trump’s lawyers claims the adversarial: without “absolute immunity,” democracy can’t happen. But the argument goes further: there is but one outcome.
A former President enjoys absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for his official acts. Criminal immunity…
