04 Apr Paying Off the Mistress: Then and Now
This may seem like a fictional bit, but we assure you – especially you youngsters out there – that it’s all true.
Once upon a time, there was a man who was the President of the United States – not a hopeful or a candidate, mind you, but the actual sitting president. While he was president, this man started an affair with a 22-year-old girl who worked at the White House for free, which is to say that she was an unpaid intern. In time, this girl was removed from her position at the White House but given a different job – a paid job – at the Pentagon, something highly unusual for unpaid summer interns. She grew tired of her work at the Pentagon, however, and tired of Washington more generally and decided she wanted to move to the City that Never Sleeps, the Big Apple. And so, she asked her friend – the president – to see if he could help. And amazingly, he did! He called his friend, the United States Ambassador to the United Nations, and then the Ambassador called the girl straightaway. He interviewed her promptly and then offered her a job in his office at Turtle Bay, far away from the muck and mud of DC. And its reporters, of course. What luck!
Now, as any schoolboy knows, this president’s real troubles started when he lied about that relationship under oath and then hinged his defense of his first lies on the definition of a copulative verb (while under oath a second time). In addition to his own fabrications, he encouraged – or, one might say, suborned – others to create their own fabrications to tell while under oath. In the articles of impeachment brought against him, the prosecutors put it all this way:
(1) On or about December 17, 1997, William Jefferson Clinton corruptly encouraged a witness in a Federal civil rights action brought against him to execute a sworn affidavit in that proceeding that he knew to be perjurious, false and misleading.
(2) On or about December 17, 1997, William Jefferson Clinton corruptly encouraged a witness in a Federal civil rights action brought against him to give perjurious, false and misleading testimony if and when called to testify personally in that proceeding.
(3) On or about December 28, 1997, William Jefferson Clinton corruptly engaged in, encouraged or supported a scheme to conceal evidence that had been subpoenaed in a Federal civil rights action brought against him.
(4) Beginning on or about December 7, 1997, and continuing through and including January 14, 1998, William Jefferson Clinton intensified and succeeded in an effort to secure job assistance to a witness in a Federal civil rights action brought against him in order to corruptly prevent the truthful testimony of that witness in that proceeding at a time when the truthful testimony of that witness would have been harmful to him.
In sum, then: the president, WHILE PRESIDENT, had an affair with a young woman barely old enough to drink who technically worked for him for free. He tried to buy her silence, not using personal funds, but using TAXPAYER-FUNDED jobS. He committed perjury and encouraged others to do so in his quest to keep the whole thing quiet.
We mention all of this today for a couple of reasons. First and most obvious, those who are, at present, accusing Donald Trump of “unprecedented” behavior are, once again, spectacularly wrong. Trump’s purported escapades here are grotesque. About that, there is no question. And yet…he can say, legitimately, “at least I used my own money and NOT the taxpayers’.”
Second, and more to the point, we lived and worked in (or around) DC at the time that all of this took place. And while we rather disliked the perjurious president, it never occurred to us to go up to Capitol Hill to cheer and scream and unfurl banners when he was charged and tried (through the impeachment process). And nor, for that matter, did it occur to anyone else. The very idea would have been preposterous: cheering one man’s misery and the corruption of our political system just because we disliked that man’s politics. To be honest, we would have been ashamed to be associated with anyone who would have thought that was a good idea.
Twenty-five years later, a man who is NOT the president any longer and whose sinister actions all took place before he became president is under indictment in New York. We will leave the commentary on the legal soundness of the indictment to others far smarter than we are. We will, however, comment on the crowds this circus has generated.
Much has been made about the media and their obsession with this story and about the Trump supporters who have taken time out of their lives to offer encouragement to their guy. Whatever. We get it on both counts. The media have built their business models around Trump, and he is, after all, the first president to face criminal indictment. It makes sense for them to be there. The same goes for the supporters. They think their guy is being railroaded, unfairly prosecuted, treated differently because of who he is. We get standing up against that and seeing oneself as a defender of liberty against a politicized legal system.
What we don’t understand are the people there in New York – by some accounts far outnumbering supporters – to cheer for Trump’s prosecution, the people who have so much invested in this that they had banners and signs and t-shirts made and have taken time out of their lives to be there and to feel the joy…or…catharsis…or…whatever of having evil personified brought to “justice.” It boggles the mind.
All of this, we’d argue, is terrible for the nation. It is the byproduct of the ongoing politicization of everything and our ever-quickening descent into the Total State. No longer is it enough for criminals to be punished in order to see justice done. Now, we – or at least some of us – want to see our political enemies punished because it brings us joy and personal satisfaction. We can hardly put into words just how ugly and destructive this is and just how likely this one incident will lead to the next such incident and then the next one and the next one and the one after that. The cycle will not stop unless we will it to stop, but that becomes less and likely with each passing day and each subsequent incident of politicization. People will be too busy demanding revenge and calling those who disagree with them “criminals” in desperate need of public humiliation.
As we said, Trump’s presumed actions were morally grotesque. At the same time, the response to his actions by those who see him as an “enemy” is equally grotesque. The difference is that his actions likely were victimless, while theirs have the potential to further inflame the tensions that threaten the nation itself.
