Kurt Vonnegut advised, “pity the reader.” Last week’s piece was long and true; this week the selection is short and fictional. Who has time to read all this drivel?
After Trump failed to win re-election in 2020, he became the subject of three criminal prosecutionst: one in New York, another in Washington, D.C. and the third in Atlanta, Georgia. “Lawfare” is a word coined to describe the use of criminal prosecution against a political foe. After his conviction in New York, it looked like Trump would be sentenced to prison there.
This is a selection from a novella that asks, “what if” Trump had been incarcerated in a New York State prison following his conviction? It has been decades since I’ve looked at the Federalist Papers, but I don’t think the Founders contemplated this scenario.
Whatever you think of Trump, it is a truism that a political leader who fears retribution will hang on to power if there is nowhere to go. Haiti’s Baby Doc had France, Uganda’s Idi Amin had Saudi Arabia; Mexico’s Salinas de Gotari, Ireland. More recently, Assad left Damascus for Moscow. Without a place of refuge, all of these might have decided to cling to power.
Trump must realize that after 2028 he will not be protected and prosecutions will follow.
At the beginning of this novella, Trump is in a prison cell in New York.
Can’t happen here…
The entire text is in a somewhat amorphous form, I couldn’t keep up with the changing facts on the ground. Originally, the story assumed that Trump wouldn’t be elected but the “Four Colonels” busted him out anyway. If you’d like to see the abandoned but more or less complete version, let me know.
