What will probably become known as the Stormy Daniels trial began yesterday. There was much effort to delay it. There was wailing and gnashing of teeth as the good book says. Barring any unforeseen developments, the justice system has finally arrived at a place that it should have upwards of 40 years ago.

There is one nagging question that MAGA is asking and it deserves to be answered. Aren’t these prosecutions politically motivated? We’ve been ducking and side-stepping that question long enough. The simple answer is yes. They are politically motivated. However, I’m not sure if the details behind that answer really line up with what MAGA thinks it means.

The fact is that all of this is a prison of Donald’s thinking. Even if we take the facts from this particular case, we’d have to reach that conclusion. Would he have lost the election if the voting public found out he had a fling with a porn star? My guess is that it wouldn’t have had much of an effect at all. After the Access Hollywood tape came out, there was no doubt about who he was.

The defense is essentially the same one we give to the police officer when we get pulled over for speeding. Look at all the other people speeding. While that might seem persuasive, we cannot deflect from the obvious point that we were in fact speeding. Similarly, Richard Nixon could point to dirty tricks that others had pulled throughout history as some sort of relative defense, but he was caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

I surmise that at least half of these prosecutions wouldn’t be happening at all if he weren’t running for president again. Of course, that observation cuts both ways. A normal president would have accepted defeat, went back home, and made a killing on the lecture circuit. He would have sold books or been a guest professor at some prestigious university. He likes golf. He could have played every day on just about any course he wanted.

History has seen this happen before and history has seen similar deals go awry. Most of western Europe made a deal with Napoleon in order to get him out of power without bloodshed. That didn’t work, Appeasement didn’t work with Nazi Germany. I suspect that overtures were made behind the scenes to broker a similar deal with Trump. Just return the documents and move on with your merry life and no one would be the wiser.

The Donald cannot accept defeat even if it is the prudent thing to do. That’s all this has been about and all that it ever will be about. He lost in 2020 and couldn’t accept it. He continues to lose and can’t accept it. He lost for decades in business and refuses to accept it or learn from it. It is essentially hubris mixed liberally with idiocy. A wiser man would have walked away a long time ago.

Donald is not most people. I suspect most of us wouldn’t have sex with a porn star when our wife was pregnant. I suspect most of us wouldn’t consider stealing confidential or secret files from our place of work. We certainly wouldn’t hide them from the authorities after the fact. Donald is clearly not most people. So, would you or I be prosecuted in a similar situation? I suspect just about anyone else wouldn’t be in this position in the first place and that is kind of the whole point.

Tragedies follow the same formula. Someone gets themselves into an easily avoidable situation and suffers the ultimate demise. Usually the cardinal sin is hubris. Hubris can be defined as “exaggerated pride or self-confidence.” Nearly all of our tragic characters think of themselves as invincible for one reason or another. They are all tragically wrong.

There are any number of days that go by when I lose faith in the universe. The universe can be loosely defined by whatever cosmic force you choose to adhere to. Some traditions call it karma. Others say it is fate. The idea is that eventually everyone gets what is coming to them. That could be positive or negative depending on what we render.

That brings us to our ex-president. He has been found liable in civil court for sexual assault. He has a judgement against him for business fraud even though the total amount is still up in the air. It could be that he will end up owing upwards of 400 million plus in those combined judgments. That can seem like justice, but as we know, those numbers can seem about as real as Monopoly money. You have appeals. You have cries of poor. You have numerous delays and running out of the clock.

E. Jean Carroll might end up fetching a small portion of the money owed to her. After you consider the fees her lawyers will collect you have to wonder if she gets anything other than a symbolic victory. The same will be true for the state of New York. Meanwhile, millions of addle=brained meth heads will send in their five and ten bucks to shield their orange Jesus from feeling the effects of his own stupid crimes.

At each step of the way I have been overwhelmed. I never thought he would be charged with anything. He has found ways to weasel out of these things before. His life has been a life free of responsibility for anything. So, when asked how much jail time he will serve for his 91 counts I still set the over/under at zero with zero being the heavy betting favorite. I don’t know what the excuse will be, but I’ll bet it will be a good one.

The ultimate irony is that none of this needed to happen. He could have continued to live a responsibility free life well into sand trap induced dementia. He could have accepted defeat following 2020 and been a fairly benign figure in history. Most of the 91 counts are directly related to his inability to accept defeat. Some of them are loosely related like the documents case. Sure, the documents aren’t directly related to him refusing defeat but I’m sure he convinced himself they belonged to him because he was still the rightful president.

Even the Stormy Daniels stuff would probably have gone away if he had just walked away. Hubris thy name is Donald. I have no idea if the civil fraud case would have continued, but he probably could have stemmed the tide on all of his civil trials by simply walking away. You got to have a pretty big ego to be president. None of the other presidents have had trouble walking away. He is alone in that regard.

The hope here is that somehow the inability to accept defeat will bring it all crashing down on him. The universe demands it. Our collective sense of judgment demands it. Our own faith in the universe is at stake here. True accountability would be death in prison. Obviously, someone guilty of treason as he most certainly is deserves far worse, but I have to be consistent to my own convictions. I do not believe in the death penalty. So, I’ll take death in prison. Let’s go universe. Let’s get a move on.