President Donald J. Trump Is A Convicted Felon

Alex Vickery-Howe probes the partisan reluctance dissuading us from accepting those pesky facts that challenge our ideologies.

Subeditors generally change the title of articles. Not today, Chris. [Haha. Touche – Ed] We must spread the word far and wide….

No matter what happens at the upcoming US Presidential Election, no matter how loudly and how insanely the mob cheers for their false idol, no matter the lies, no matter the spin, no matter the desperate attempts to deny reality and confuse voters, future generations will know that Donald Trump was judged by a jury of his peers and found unanimously guilty.

Donald J. Trump is a criminal.

In the wake of today’s Pennsylvania shooting, Trump’s supporters are seizing on hysteria to rewrite history. The narrative now reads something like this: “He paid hundreds of thousands in legal fees because he’s fighting for us.”

No, he’s paying hundreds of thousands in legal fees because he’s a criminal and he needs the best lawyers your money can buy.

“He’s fighting for America and look what they did to him.” We don’t yet know who was behind the shooting, or what their motivation was, but we do know Trump only fights for himself. The attack was inexcusable, but that doesn’t make him a martyr.

Donald J. Trump is a criminal.

The next time he claims to be ‘tough on crime’, the next time he claims to be allied with the police, or a ‘champion of law and order’, the world will laugh. The world often laughs at Trump. But now we’ll laugh harder and longer, until our eyes stream with mocking tears. Him surviving this abhorrent attempt on his life doesn’t change who he is.

Donald J. Trump is a criminal.

He’s a loser. Again.

Anyone following the recent trial – or the other parallel trials detailing Trump’s sexual assaults (spoiler: guilty), his thieving from his own supporters (well done, sheeple), his stealing of classified documents and his cosying up to Putin like a lovesick Russian bear – knows that the corrupt ex-president has an uncanny ability to shrug off hard truths that would bury any other candidate.

It’s a mystery to me how Republicans – you guys really need to admit to yourselves that you’ve been played by a conman – still claim to be embarrassed by ‘Sleepy Joe’ Biden as your guy continues to be an international punchline who persistently and tragically weakens America’s global standing. Don’t let what happened at that rally make you forget what happened in that courtroom.

While he erodes America’s international reputation, Trump is making you look even dopier for following him as he slips his sticky fingers deep into your pockets, uses you, humiliates you, and degrades you… all while he pretends to be your friend. Reclaim your dignity. America was much greater before y’all started drinking Kool-Aid.

Donald J. Trump is a criminal.

It’s hardly a hot take to point out that Obama wouldn’t have been able to dance his way out of a disaster like this. The same must be said for either of the Clintons, or even Bush and son.

Normal, legitimate politicians are held to basic public standards. Bill Clinton was impeached for lying about an affair. The Christians were horrified. Pearls were clutched. Donald Trump cheats on his pregnant wife with a porn star and the same people now treat him like a hero?

Normal, legitimate politicians are held accountable for what they say. Donald Trump glitches more often than Max Headroom. His tragicomic boasts about ‘acing’ a dementia test while forgetting the doctor’s name are Larry David brilliant.

He routinely confuses his words, claims windmills cause cancer and bleach cures COVID, doesn’t understand how batteries work and believes electric vehicles can only drive for fifteen minutes… but, until today, the hot story of the month has been President Biden’s ‘cognitive decline’?

Normal, legitimate politicians are subject to the rule of law. Even as I draft this, a majority of Supreme Court Justices are actively betraying their profession in a sycophantic and dishonest effort to exonerate their sweet baby. Two in particular – Brett ‘I yell loudest’ Kavanaugh and Amy ‘Under His Eye’ Coney Barrett – are manifestly unfit to serve as objective arbiters or challenge the man who gave them both a job they didn’t deserve.

Normal, legitimate politicians don’t fantasise about turning a democracy into a dictatorship. Trump parrots Hitler and his fans love it. These are the same fans who claim they need AK-47s to protect them from tyranny. In the wake of the violence that has occurred, there are now calls for more violence – more guns – to ‘right the wrong’.

This kind of blinkered, slavish hypocrisy can only come from a cult.

The special sauce for Trump, and anyone seeking to manipulate the credulous, is that empirical truth is no longer trusted. Now it’s all ‘my truth’ and ‘your truth’, which is a dangerous habit indulged by both the far-right and the far-left.

As Andrew Calcutt pointed out, eight years ago, ‘Post-truth’ is “the latest step in a logic long established in the history of ideas, and previously expressed in the cultural turn led by middle-class professionals. Instead of blaming populism for enacting what we set in motion, it would be better to acknowledge our own shameful part in it.”

My cynicism around this phenomenon and how it has infected Western education and common parlance is absolute. We don’t have personal truths and we shouldn’t presume the right to upgrade our opinion into canon. Truth is truth. Opinion is background noise. It is indeed shameful to conflate the two. David Pinsof captures this brilliantly:

“Paris is the capital of France” – that’s a fact. “The Barbie movie is feminist propaganda” – that’s an opinion. The former is true, and the latter is…well, it’s a matter of opinion. We hate it when people try to pass off their opinions as facts. It’s part of what makes opinions so dreadful.”

As Pinsof tells it, we’re all engaged in the ‘opinion game’, desperately trying to win followers and influence others to our point of view. This has polarised us politically and made many of our assertions meaningless. It is especially dangerous to dilute facts with feelings in the wake of a major public event… particularly a violent public event.

We see this conflation of fact and feeling on our newsfeeds now as some recast Trump as the star of a Marvel movie – he’s not that guy unless you’re thinking of Red Skull – and others jump straight to accusations of the attack being ‘staged’. I myself immediately thought of the Reichstag Fire of 1933, before I checked my own bias. We all have opinions, ideas and theories… but facts must determine our collective action.

You may wonder at my own hypocrisy here, as I’m writing yet another opinion piece, so let’s make it clear exactly what the empirical facts are.

Donald J. Trump is a criminal because he ran a sham university specifically designed to fleece his flock. To any Trump supporters reading this: I’m talking about people like you. He screwed his groupies out of their life savings. Trump was ordered to pay $25 million in damages.

Donald J. Trump is a criminal because he sexually abused E. Jean Carroll. The judge was explicit: Trump is a rapist.

Donald J. Trump is a criminal because he was found guilty of 34 felony counts in his attempt to cover up his infidelity with Stormy Daniels, knowing it would impact his electoral prospects. He lied to the American people because he wanted to be your dictator.

He still wants that. He isn’t hiding his intentions.

Look all of this up for yourself. Think critically. Don’t believe me any more than you believe Donnie.

Empirical facts remain empirical facts regardless of anyone’s opinion. They stand true whether I’m an objective observer or a greenie commie mouthpiece for the leftist independent media scene.

The messenger doesn’t matter when truth is impartial.

I can hear you say, “But, Alex, none of it means anything. We’ve all decided to ignore truth and favour our own side.”

Yes, we have.

Ignorance is in fashion, especially when it comes to politics, and anti-intellectual sentiment has penetrated not just our social media behemoths but our schools and our universities. Around the globe, academics lament the ideological assault against empiricism, neutrality, scholarly enquiry, curiosity, and critical thinking. In this environment, a con artist can start throwing around some big claims.

‘Truth is subjective.’

‘News is fake.’

‘It’s all a witch hunt.’

Without a robust scaffold to underpin our educational institutions, they can become proxy churches and easy, therefore, for adherents of rival churches – opposing ideologies – to tear down. ‘My truth’ vs. ‘your truth’ is the antithesis of academia, and it’s both strange and sad to see our bastions of knowledge fall to the persuasive power of feelings.

I have one more empirical fact to share with you, however. The jury was ignorant too.

Dwell on that for a second….

You can say the hush money trial was rigged, it was all a Biden-Harris scam, the ‘libtards’ suffered from ‘Trump derangement syndrome’, and whatever else the Church of the Demented Orange demands from its congregation. Fine. Sure. Whatever helps you keep your biases intact.

It doesn’t matter. The jury was ignorant too.

By ‘ignorant’, I mean these weren’t partisan representatives carefully groomed to believe in an ‘anti-Trump’ perspective. These were everyday Americans. Guess what… they still found your guy guilty.

The jury got their news from Google or TikTok. At least one drew their stories primarily from Truth Social.

The jury listened to the evidence.

The jury deliberated based on that evidence.

The jury ruled that Donald Trump was guilty AF, and they got there fast.

Regardless of what you think – or, excuse the involuntary vomit, feel – about the hush money trial, the jury of normal everyday Americans listened, debated and decided. This fact matters. The members of that jury were as ‘ignorant’ as everyone else. Heck, some of them were even predisposed to support Trump. But they came to a common decision clearly and swiftly.

If it really was a ‘witch hunt’, if the accusations ‘never should’ve gone to trial’, how can you explain the unanimous verdict from people who represented all points of the political spectrum? How can you dismiss other ordinary Americans who were presented with the facts and ruled accordingly?

Clinging to personal truth is one thing, but accusing peers of ‘collusion’ or ‘prejudice’ – just because the facts are too painful to face – stretches credibility beyond breaking point.

Again, people may say, “Alex, it still doesn’t amount to anything! People love their own truth too much!”

I think it does amount to something. I think, deep down, people do know when the truth is right up in their grill.

The fact that it was a jury of peers, a jury with no special knowledge and no favouritism, does have meaning. It wasn’t the ‘liberal elite’ that convicted Donald Trump. It was ordinary America.

Trump’s response has been to degenerate into scary speeches about ‘the enemy from within’. His tactic will be to ramp up the divisive rhetoric, the hate speech and the stupidity. We’ve seen this act before, but the difference now, the intractable and infallible truth, is that America gave him a fair hearing and America chose to convict.

Trump can try to split up the country all he likes, he can buy a judge here and there, but that truth will never wash off.

I’m the first to admit that ideological bias is destroying political balance and eroding our society at a deep level. I’m concerned that the bubbles we live in are blinding us to alternate perspectives, that our places of learning are becoming near-sighted and overly simplistic, that liberals failing to look beyond our own expectations are as much to blame for this splintered state of affairs as conservatives who’ve wedded themselves to an autocrat. Well, maybe not quite as much to blame, but we’re not as wide-awake as we think we are.

It’s equally tragicomic, on reflection, that we were genuinely surprised by Trump’s electoral win in 2016. In our superlative smugness, we didn’t pay attention to the generational neglect in many of America’s rural communities. All the signs were there.

I was less naïve when the Voice to Parliament went to a national referendum in Australia. The result was devastating, but eminently predictable ahead of the event. What amazed me was the shock expressed by others of my demographic – and, when I say ‘demographic’, I suspect what I really mean is the embedded classism of my academic cloister – many of whom seemed honestly blindsided by the calculable, if not the outright predetermined.

Feelings are seductive. Facts can be cold.

It seems to me that it is human nature, regardless of political persuasion, to hide from facts when they hurt us. Education is about coming to terms with that pain.

Instilling the next generation with anything less than informed resilience and critical thought is to betray our species and doom us to more wishful thinking cosplaying as truth. We can’t live in a world where we refuse to believe things we don’t like.

Donald J. Trump is a criminal. Now and forever. All the rallies in the world, all the appeals to emotion, all the assertions of personal ‘truth’, can’t change that fact.

What happened in Pennsylvania can’t change that fact either.

Donald J. Trump’s supporters largely belong to a demographic that has been neglected for generations. If we acknowledge that fact too, we may all find a way through this.