As our former president negotiates his way through a fourth set of indictments it seems pertinent to talk about why it hasn’t had much of an effect on his base. In point of fact, he is still the odds on favorite to win the Republican nomination. The concept might seem foreign to most of us, but I have a working theory. Simply put, most of us think small. I could get into advanced psychology here, but suffice it to say this gets into moral and ethical development. Essentially, most observers see moral development in three stages. The early childhood stage has people simply meeting their needs and ignoring moral norms. In early childhood we wouldn’t even know those norms anyway. Most things exist as an extension of self. So, concepts like the self-determination of other people or family pets are foreign concepts.

When we enter adolescence we start moving to the second or third stage depending on how much we develop as people. We recognize the rules and norms of society and we follow them because we are afraid of what will happen if we don’t. That’s the second stage. A good chunk of the population never gets past this point and as long as we get to this point then society functions smoothly. The third stage involved us developing our own moral and ethical code that can exist simultaneously with the norms of society. These norms are usually beyond that of society and move us to a higher moral plain. It is more the question of what we do when the world isn’t watching.

It is this paradigm that has many Americans trapped in his moment. It is the belief that someone that might be guilty of the same kind of nepotism that we see in our walks of life is somehow morally equivalent to someone that has brazenly broken the law at every turn. Ultimately, the same is true for all of these indictments. It all seems too much. No one could be that horrible. So, it immediately seems like a double standard. We want to indict the other guy because we “know” he must be doing the small stuff. If your mind will not allow you to do the big stuff then it will have difficulty recognizing the big stuff that other people are doing.

Essentially we are watching a Discovery True Crime documentary before our very eyes. One of my favorites involves the “monsters” in our own home. We didn’t think they could do it, but there were signs. Signs. In each and every episode the living victims talk about how they saw some horrible things, but couldn’t believe that the monster would do THAT. The audience is frantically shouting, “get out now. Leave. Hurry and don’t look back.” Yet, it never seems to happen. Those willing to do the big are monsters. We elected a monster in 2016. He will keep doing these things. He has been indicted in four different jurisdictions. He was found civilly liable for sexual assault in a fifth jurisdiction. He is overtly threatening judges, lawyers, and witnesses. He is calling on his supporters to fight in his name. He isn’t hinting at it anymore. Go big or go home. When someone tells you who they really are you have to believe them.

Decades of unbalanced coverage and a profound misunderstanding of the job of media has finally come home to roost. As you’ve probably heard by now, Donald Trump has been indicted again. I won’t belabor that point specifically as we have covered this over and over again, That’s a large part of the problem. What we have is an intersection of lack of proportion with a steady diet of misinformation to create what apparently appears to be our collective decent into nihilism.

Those are big words. That’s also part of the problem. Conservative America and conservative media have managed to pull off a dumbing down of society in general which has led to a whole separate universe. So, the House of Representatives continues to go after Hunter Biden and Joe Biden. Hunter Biden has almost certainly taken short cuts in life and traded on his name to get ahead. Of course, that pales in comparison with what the Trump children have done, but that is an example of the problem we will get to. Did Joe Biden use his influence to help his son? Perhaps he did and if he did that’s a bad thing, but we certainly haven’t seen proof of it yet.

Let’s compare that with a president that literally committed treason. Let’s compare that with his children that made money hand over fist from foreign governments while actually working in the White House. Let’s compare that with a president that has now been found liable for rape, indicted for paying off a porn star to keep the story from impacting the election, been indicted for illegally possessing documents in his bathroom, hiding it from the authorities, and apparently showing them off to any Tom, Dick, and Harry that came to see him in his office.

Anyone other than someone like Trump would be standing before a firing squad. This is not hyperbole. This is literally true. We haven’t even gotten to his efforts to subvert the election and end our democracy. We haven’t gotten to him being on voice mail openly asking the Secretary of State in Georgia to find him enough votes to win. He will literally be indicted in four different jurisdictions and will be held civilly liable for defamation in another one.

The problem is perfectly plain. We do not live in a balanced world. There is no “well your guy did some stuff so it is okay for my guy to do stuff.” Even if that were remotely true, there is no comparison between the two things. They want you to believe it. They want you to believe that all politicians are overwhelmingly corrupt. They want you to understand that Biden has committed impeachable offenses. They aren’t quite sure what yet. They can’t prove it and they’ve spent the better part of a year trying, but by God it’s true.

The problem is that it all sounds like a fantastical conspiracy theory. It sounds similar to the yarns that are spun on the right. So, it all becomes political theatre, They say stupid stuff without any facts to back it up, so the seemingly bizarre truth that happened before our very eyes has to be equally nuts. Except it isn’t. We saw it with our very eyes. We heard it plainly with our ears. We aren’t stupid. Except maybe we are. Sometimes some things are so over the top and so up front that it is nearly impossible to believe. Would someone really be that stupid to do something that blatant? Well, the answer is yes.

Yesterday the DOJ announced the arrest and charging of 3 insurrectionist leaders who planned and led the attack on the Capitol.  In an extensive 23 page indictment, 3 individuals were named, Thomas Caldwell, Donovan Crowl, and Jessica Watkins, associated with extremist groups including Oathkeepers, Proud Boys, and the Three Percenters.  The charges detailed how they forcibly entered the Capitol, assaulted officers, destroyed property, interfered with Congress, and pursued members of Congress.  One particular chilling part of the indictment describes FB messages Caldwell was receiving from co-conspirators that were actually guiding him down flights of stairs and through tunnels as he pursued fleeing members of Congress.  In messages between other co-conspirators, they even talked about “Paul” who has “the goodies in case things go bad and we need to get heavy.”  And stupidly, they put a lot of this communication and evidence of their lawbreaking up on social media for all to see.  Unbelievable.

It’s becoming very clear that the attack on the Capitol wasn’t just a demonstration that got out of hand.  The attack was planned among conspirators in multiple states in multiple extremist groups.  Their military training, radical rhetoric, and threats made it clear they intended to capture, and even kill members of Congress whom they had decided had somehow committed “treason”.  The evidence is also becoming clear that they had help from the inside of the Capitol.  Who that is, we don’t know yet, but I predict we will.

The feds must continue investigating, arresting, trying and convicting as many of these conspirators.  These extremists are gun nuts who advocate unlicensed and unregulated ownership of all firearms.  Many are convicted felons who are excluded from owning guns, by law.  Even though many of these radicals are not allowed to own guns, they can still get them through private sales and black markets, but the feds must continue pursuing these criminals and enforcing the law.  The Congress in collusion with George W, let the genie out of the bottle in 2004 when they let the Assault Weapons ban expire.  Millions of weapons of war have flooded into the market feeding the violent tendencies of extremists groups that have proliferated all over the country.  The only tool we have remaining is charging, convicting, and jailing thousands of these gun nuts who threaten our democratic republic.

This is at least a start.