Unpardonable

 

Our concerns seem trivial compared to what is going on in Syria.  The country so long abused and despoiled by Bashar al-Assad (now getting his mail forwarded to Moscow, the last refuge of scoundrels) is celebrating but also grieving.  These people are combing through Sednaya Prison, considered to be the worst of Assad's many torture centers.  They fear that people in underground cells have yet to be found and may be starving or suffocating.  Nobody knows exactly how bad it is because no one has ever emerged alive to tell the story.  Perhaps 136,000 people are unaccounted for.  The group that drove out Assad, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, are described as Islamist militants, which means Syria could follow the path of Afghanistan or Iran, but right now nobody seems worried about that.  Nor do they care about the damage to Russian "prestige."  Finding relatives and friends is more important.

One day Syria will have to have a reckoning.  It could take the form of more violence, or public trials for Assad and his collaborators, or a version of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission.  What they must not do is follow the American practice of sweeping it under the carpet.  When Lincoln called for "malice toward none and charity for all" in his Second Inaugural, this was taken to mean let bygones be bygones, move on, don't look back, all better now.  Of course, it wasn't all better and it still isn't.  No Confederate was punished except Henry Wirz, for the fairly minor crime of running Andersonville prison camp where hundreds of Union soldiers died.  Far worse men went on to write their memoirs, bask in the admiration of fellow traitors and die in their beds.  Many even served in Congress again.  We always want to wipe the slate clean and start fresh, usually at the cost of people who don't matter.

We're doing it again.  Rep. Jim Clyburn told Jonathan Capehart that he convinced President Biden to pardon his son Hunter, not because he was the victim of a selective and politicized prosecution but "if we keep digging at things in the past, I'm not too sure the country will not lose its way."  Clyburn was born eighty years ago in South Carolina.  If Lyndon Johnson and a lot of other people didn't decide in the 1960s that it was time to dig at things in the past, he still wouldn't be able to vote, much less become majority whip in the House of Representatives.  He wants Biden to pardon Trump so the vicious clown can begin his second attempt to roll back civil rights and most other hard-won achievements with a nice clean slate.  

Is Trump listening to all this kumbaya?  At around the same time Clyburn was talking to Capehart, Trump was telling a surprisingly feisty Kristen Welker how much he relishes deporting all the immigrants he can lay hands on "on day one," even the citizens.  Welker had to quote the Fourteenth Amendment to him, getting the response, "We have to end it.  We're the only country that has it, you know."  (He's an expert on all the other constitutions he's never read, too.)  He's a little unclear on how to "end it," but he tried this back in 2017 and it didn't work then.  Wait, there's more:  he thinks Bennie Thompson, Liz Cheney and everyone else on the House Select Committee "should go to jail."  Jim Clyburn doesn't understand that Trump never stops digging at things in the past -- he's still mad at Rosie O'Donnell for some reason no one else remembers.  This is exactly what Rep. Jasmine Crockett meant when she cheered the Hunter pardon and added, "Democrats are bringing a butter knife to a real fight."  Someone tell Clyburn.  Just because he peddles tarted-up Bibles and knows enough to close his eyes when the evangelicals are laying hands on him, don't mistake Trump for a Christian.  He's not a cheek-turner, he's Sweeney Todd -- he never forgets and he never forgives.  

Who's surveilling New Jersey?  And Pennsylvania and New York?  Many people are reporting drones flying in formation at night, and the FAA takes it seriously enough to impose flight restrictions over Picatinny Arsenal in Wharton, New Jersey.  In Florham Park the police chief says they're especially interested in reservoirs, train stations, police departments and military installations.  The FBI is investigating before they have to go out of business and become the private gestapo of Kash Patel.  It's not just idle curiosity -- drones over New Jersey reportedly prevented a medical helicopter from picking up an accident victim.  

This seems more significant than Luigi Mangione's "manifesto" proposing violence as a solution to the greed of the healthcare industry.  Mangione is the person arrested for the murder of Brian Thompson of UnitedHealth.  (Perhaps the NYPD can explain why he was arrested in Pennsylvania.)  

Remember all the wackaloons who were destroying 5G towers because of reasons?  They spread coronavirus, they cause brain cancer, they make you vote against Brexit, whatever.  Now imagine one such wackaloon being put in charge of the Department of Health and Human Services.  You don't have to imagine very hard.   Four years ago Roadkill Bob wrote, "The next generation telecommunications network should be discontinued until it has been 'sufficiently demonstrated that there are no real and serious health risks.'"  Of course, he sees "real and serious health risks" in pasteurized milk, vaccines, chemtrails, cell phones and probably serial music.  I'm not sure he's wrong about the last one.

Are you ready for more news about Roadkill?  It seems the Trump campaign paid $100,000 to his California law firm weeks after he dropped out and endorsed Trump.  I wonder what sort of legal work they did for him.  (No, I don't.)  This is four times the payment to Pam Bondi's 2016 campaign.  Inflation must be worse than I thought.

This is how we do justice:  Harold Pryor, state attorney for Broward County (Ft. Lauderdale), Florida, is vacating the convictions of 2,600 people who were convicted of buying crack more than thirty years ago because -- you'll love this -- they bought it from police who were making it inside the Broward County Courthouse for the express purpose of arresting the sort of people who bought crack.  Yes, mostly Black people.  Why do you think the law was harsher than for buying powder?  Sorry your lives were ruined.  Have a nice day.  Any consequences for Sheriff Navarro and his helpers?  No, slate wiped clean.  I said have a nice day!