Only We Can Fix What Ails Us

Whether by Constitutional amendment or faceless alien benefactor

Glamorous alien didn’t put her face on (photo ©2020 Weldon Berger)

Prognostication isn’t really our strong suit, but we don’t like the chances of Trump going to prison. Precedent is lacking. Presidents don’t get sent up even if they go on TV and say yeah, hell yeah, I did it.

We’d be happy if he would just shut the fuck up.

We do think some of his lawyers and other parties within his blast radius are already putting their affairs in order. And we do have a remedy—two remedies, if you count the aliens— for criminal presidents such as those we discuss below.

Most recently in the field of “bygones,” President Obama seems to have given less than a thought to encouraging his justice department to investigate the crimes of George W. Bush, which include launching an illegal war of choice and legalizing torture.

As it happened, little investigation needed done: the first crime played out on television for years, and Bush acknowledged the second one in prime time and in print.

But Obama let him skate, himself violating every day for eight years the UN Convention Against Torture, which requires signatories to investigate and, if evidence supports, prosecute torturers or send them someplace that will.

It also anticipates to the word the excuses Obama made on Bush’s behalf—it was war time, exigent circumstances, men of good will, lawyers said it was legal and so on—and shit-cans them one and all. You can’t legally torture people, and you can’t legally excuse the torturers.

The treaty further requires signatories to support legal redress for torture victims, which Obama’s DoJ blocked in court throughout his tenure.

(We saw not one single contemporaneous story mentioning the treaty in connection with Bush’s or Obama’s violations of it. Way to go, media.)

Obama had issues other than those arising from torture. Assassinating an American citizen, and then the citizen’s citizen son (and Trump killed a daughter about a week into his presidency); the Libyan adventure, in which Obama avoided the War Powers Resolution calling for congressional approval after 30 days of hostilities by redefining “hostilities” to exclude air wars in which U.S. military personnel are not substantially at risk; and his St. Augustine- and Thomas Aquinas-approved drone wars.

We’ve done Bush fils’s obvious crimes.

Unlike Bush and Obama, Bill Clinton never went on television to confess violating a treaty against torture and coverups. He just aided a notorious terrorist group that sided with him in the Serbian air campaign, blew up an embassy and killed a bunch of civilians. Fundamentally an uninteresting president.

Bush père invaded Panama in the most open and blatantly criminal fashion imaginable; his kid at least tried to make some sort of excuse for his big invasion.

Père also presided over Iraq-gate, in which the U.S. gave, or had others give, billions in loans and material support to Iraq, and which earned former two-time Attorney General William Barr his first big-league coverup experience, prompting former Nixon administration adviser and speechwriter Bill Safire, then a New York Times columnist, to dub Barr “the Cover-up General.”

And that’s only the immediately apparent. Who knows what the elder Bush got up to as CIA director, or with Iran-Contra as Reagan’s vice president.

Which brings us to Reagan, and that same Iran-Contra affair which his administration used to fund the drug-running, mass-murdering psychos trying to bring down the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. Reagan thought, or pretended to think, or was told that he thought, that the Contras were akin to America’s founding fathers.

Reagan. What a motherfucker. Dressed the Birchers up in movie star clothes and installed them in the White House.

We incline toward giving Carter a pass considering his post-presidency career, but one really can’t overlook his assistance to the Indonesian genocide in East Timor, which Ford and Kissinger initially propelled.

Nixon: fuuuuck. The man left no category of crime untouched. Secret bombings, slush funds, B & E, even a little light treason, as the elder George Bluth would have it.

One can make a decent argument that regularly trying past presidents for their crimes would be disruptive, but we think the basic reason presidents don’t hold their predecessors accountable is that they don’t want their successors doing the same.

Thankfully, we’ve devised a solution which addresses both the potential for political and social disorder, and the self-preservation angle: a Constitutional amendment mandating a minimum five-year post-presidency prison sentence. President comes in, president goes out, president does time.

Problem solved, and we’re convinced potential candidates wouldn’t be put off by the measure. We’d get the same sterling we get now.

Partisans would have the expectation that their successful candidate is bound for the pokey no matter what, thus short-circuiting the shock and rage that might accompany a trial and conviction.

People concerned about war crimes and the like might be disappointed by the brevity of the term but why let the perfect be the enemy of the good?

(Finally found a legitimate use for that exhausted old exhortation.)

It is, frankly, genius. It is even-handed. It is better than any president deserves. It is social engineering at it’s finest. We can’t imagine any reasonable person objecting.

We do need a name, though. Maybe the Equal Time Amendment.

We recognize the off-chance that the amendment might not immediately succeed; hence our holding the faceless aliens in reserve. We know where they live.

(Musical contributions to this post include Artifacts “…And Then There’s This”;
Puss N Boots “Sister“; and Charlie Hunter and Bobby Previte “12 Galaxies.” We’re always looking for new music, so drop your recommendations in the comments if you have some.)