President Trump's lack of objectivity — can be demonstrated in one deliciously layered example

© 2018 Peter Free

 

26 April 2018

 

 

Consider the President's response to his embattled lawyer's predicament in Federal Court

 

From Business Insider:

 

 

US District Court Judge Kimba Wood said she would appoint a special master to initially review documents seized during the FBI's raids of Cohen's home, hotel room, and office earlier this month to determine what falls under protected attorney-client privilege and what prosecutors could use against Cohen.

 

Wood appointed Barbara Jones, a partner at Bracewell who specializes in white-collar litigation, as the special master.

 

Jones, a former federal judge for the Southern District of New York, was not among the candidates submitted by either Cohen's team or the government.

 

© 2018 Allan Smith and Sonam Sheth, A federal judge just sided with Michael Cohen on the biggest issue in his case — and added another wildcard, Business Insider (26 April 2018)

 

 

 The indicative piece to this is that the President had volunteered himself to do this review.

 

 

Consider the lack of objectivity displayed by the President's suggestion

 

He apparently assumes that Society should trust him to be objectively even-handed, regarding materials that might implicate him in bad things.

 

He assumes, despite having no legal training or experience, that he knows what is lawfully privileged and what is not.

 

He presumes that the Court should trust him to protect others (from among Cohen's clients) upon the same privilege grounds — despite having repeatedly proven that the President does not give a toot (of hot anal air) for anyone but himself.

 

He overlooks the fact that, should the Court appoint him for this review, it would set an atrociously inept legal precedent.

 

And last, the President has no idea why his volunteering of himself for this review is institutionally ridiculous precisely because it mocks the supposed objectivity of the legal process.

 

 

It's that last element that is key to my theme

 

A President "must" have the ability to pretend that he and she believe in worth of the fair-minded, rule-applying that the Law is supposed to engender.

 

Without its purported even-handedness, as applied to conflicting sides or principles, our judicial system could not survive even a few years.

 

 

That said — a major caveat

 

I do not mean to imply that American law and justice actually are objective and fair-minded. They're not.

 

Our legal system, like others, was established for the benefit of the powerfully privileged. The system is "objective" only insofar as those same privileged folks get entangled with it. Which is why, by spreading money around, nothing unpleasant ever really happens them.

 

The only objectivity that the rest of us can count on is that taken with regard to our poverty, lack of influence, religion, culture, and the colors of our skins. Those "facts" will be "objectively" noted, but left unmentioned, as the System grinds most of us up exactly because of them.

 

 

The moral? — President Trump lacks the ability to pretend to believe in the System's rule-bound even-handedness . . .

 

. . . as that bundle of purported fairness applies to even the elite classes that it was created to protect.

 

This personality handicap makes him an enemy of Convivial Appearance, as well as of the Deep State.

 

Our System — and its Deep State permutation — depends on nothing so much as it does concealment under a veneer of unquestioned illusion.

 

The President's rambuctiousness makes our national camouflage difficult to maintain. People who are dependent on their ability to delude themselves and others — so as to gain or stay in power — wet their pants.

 

President Trump is rebellious. His disbelief extends to anything outside his ego. These qualities make him erratic and challenging to control. His flamboyant disrespect for institutions and "law" are a threat to the System, even when his actions are not.

 

In truth, we Americans prefer well-oiled hypocrisy to flaunted rebellion and disbelief.

 

Thus, we see why the President's systemically uninsightful willingness to review Michael Cohen's documents, as those documents perhaps pertain to conceivable wrongdoing on the President's or Cohen's part, is so symbolically telling.

 

President Trump does not play by the "rules." This may be why so many people, who are also infuriated by the Way Things Are, like him.

 

As much as the President's personality offends my sense of what is admirable, his conduct may ultimately force some us to see this nation's institutionalized antisocial and anti-humanitarian predilections more insightfully.

 

To wit, recall these words:

 

 

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

 

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, —

 

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it,

 

and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

 

United States Declaration of Independence (04 July 1776)