Legal Justice, Social Justice and Trump’s Pyrrhic Victory

The verdict is out. Trump was not convicted. Forty-three Senators – all Trumpublicans voted against his conviction. Though the majority of the senators – fifty-seven – voted to convict and bar trump from ever holding public office in his lifetime. So for those who will gloat including the Donald, let this sink in – that 57% of Americans found Trump guilty as charged.

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However, due to political rules, this is an example where you need two-thirds and not just a simple majority to determine the outcome. But one thing is clear, the trial has conclusively proved that you can impeach a leader even after he leaves office.

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This puts the lie to the position peddled by Trumpists and insurrection supporters and senators devoid of the courage of conviction that you cannot impeach a man already out of office. That has been settled.

A Nigerian leader once said legal justice is not necessarily social justice. At the time I was much younger and though I got the gist of his meaning, this Trump trial puts that assertion in bold relief.

Thanks to television and social media, the entire world saw in vivid relief the build-up to the US 2020 Presidential elections, the harmful rhetoric of the then incumbent President Donald Trump, the attempt to disrupt the elections by incapacitating the post office and hampering voting by mail, the lies and lies about inexistent election fraud as well as the unsuccessful multiple challenges of electoral outcomes in the courts.

Then we saw the build-up to the evil attack on the US Capitol – the symbol of US democracy – by insurgents mobilized by Trump and his children and cronies. We saw the horrific attack itself which led to the death of seven people and near-miss assassination attempts on elected public officers including Vice President Mike Pence and Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

We saw confessions from social media posts by demented insurrectionists and outcomes of investigations of some insurgents already arrested. But what will be said and Trump and his acolytes and surrogates will trumpet are that Trump came out victorious!

This is what his lunatic fringe will be fed by Fox News and Newsmax. And they will swallow it hook, line and sinker. They know no better!

Don’t tell me it doesn’t matter what the majority of Americans feel and believe. Trump is guilty and that’s what 57 – 43 votes against him means. Simplicity. That the votes are not enough to formally convict him does not make him guiltless.

This bi-partisan outcome means 57 folks out of a hundred saw him defecate in the marketplace. His character is therefore tainted forever in the village and his offspring would be recognized and taunted with this sacrilegious incident in time to come.

He may have got legal escape but he can never wash off the smell of social opprobrium that would accompany him forever. Besides, the issue as suggested by a spineless, cunny, hypocrite called McConnell, lawsuits would follow this. It’s not over till it is over. Trump still has many rivers to cross and the world is watching.

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A few lessons and observations stand out in this Trump fiasco. We run a democracy too and there are lessons to learn and booby traps to avoid for, as they say, a wise man learns from his experience, but a wiser man learns from the experience of others.

We, Nigerians, cannot afford to go through what the USA has just gone through because here, other combustible variables like ethnicity, money, geopolitics and religion would come into play.

I must concede though, that some elements of these were at play in America too but their influence was insignificant as seen in the unity of the Democrats and the courage of the seven heroes from the GOP.

I would like to walk through some of them, in my view, significant aspects of this debacle and what lessons need to be picked and used to deepen our democracy and democratic engagements going forward.

The former GOP Senate Leader and Trump enabler now Minority Leader – Mitch McConnell – has proven that speaking from both sides of the mouth and taking hypocritical self-serving positions on issues of critical national importance does not faze him.

How can you prevent the trial from taking place while Trump was still in office and then turn around to argue later that it is no use putting him on trial because he was now out of office? How can you tell Americans Trump is responsible for the despicable insurrection but vote to stop his conviction?

What example are you giving to future politicians and the youth of America including your children? Passing the burden to the courts after you just demonstrated a lack of moral will to put America first? This political acrobatics and gymnastics stink sir!

I had thought that it was only in the third world that this sort of attack on democratic institutions can be tolerated, even celebrated. Yoweri Museveni must be feeling justified in his antics and even referred to this in his last interview with Christian Amanpour.

A number of aspiring demagogues across Africa, Nigeria inclusive, are already happy with the verdict just wrought by Trump, even as pyrrhic as it is. So would many conservation and reactionary legislators in many a Parliament.

They could be planning to use elements of this American macabre drama to tinker with their democracies for self-preservation and long-term plans to pocket their countries. But it would always backfire in the long run. They should tarry a little because it is not over.

Trump may still wear the orange jumpsuit after the courts do their duty without fear or favor as demonstrated during the vote count.

There was a surprising demonstration of ignorance, bigotry, unbridled fanaticism, violent extremism, racism, and crude loyalty to a lying demagogue that told a maddening crowd what they wanted to hear at every turn.

This was at a level never before thought possible in America by the rest of the world. It made their counterparts in Africa and Haiti look like amateurs. Was this America? Folks traveling almost a thousand miles with concealed arms and Molotov cocktails in monster trucks to go listen to their amoral commander-in-chief’s orders to go attack the US Capitol and deal with lawmakers including his Vice?

And this briefing happening on the hallowed grounds of the Whitehouse? Even our Aso Rock occupants haven’t got this brazen, this crazy. And we hope they never will. Those that used their SUVs to bring hoodlums to fight peaceful protesters in Abuja last time should beware that there is a day of reckoning and such antics do not pay in the long run.

It is easy to ride the back of the tiger but disembarking can be fatally hazardous.

Did our National Assembly see their legislative mates in action? Did they see any GMGs being shared to alter outcomes? Did they see voting along ethnic or regional lines? Did they see inarticulate Senators or Representatives inattentively involved in unrelated banters while vital issues were being discussed?

Did they see aimless movements across the floors during debates? I could go on and on. Yes, here too, we do see sparks of courage and rigorous presentations, and altruistic deliberations in the national interest. But these are few and far between. Challenging the executive is part of the duty of the legislative arm, provided it is being done constructively and in the interest of the country and people.

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This American example shows that there are timorous senators more interested in the next election than democracy and the next generation. But would you rather be counted among those? Would you rather be a Ted Cruz than a Nancy Pelosi? The choice is stark and has political and moral implications.

There was also the strength of the American Institutions on display for the world to see. And oh, was it a pleasant sight? No matter Trump’s feelings about CNN’s attacks and microscopic evaluation of his every action through a very partisan, in some’s view, lens, he could only rant and rave and call them fake news.

Fox News was even more partisan and saw everything Trump did as unquestionably perfect and praiseworthy. It was even worse than Newsmax came into the fray and for them, Trump was a god. Yet all these media were left to do their jobs and no one arrested or jailed their reporters or closed their premises.

Trump banned a CNN reporter from the White House beat but soon reversed the decision following a backlash. The courts were never under the control of the executive even after the partisan appointments made to them by Trump. They gave judgments in line with the constitution and without fear or favor. That judiciary is a shining city on a hill – apologies to Ronal Reagan.

That iron lady, the unbendable 80-year-old that told Trump in no uncertain terms that the legislature is a co-equal independent arm of government and it is its duty to check and balance the Executive Branch is a hero of this Trump imbroglio. The Honorable Nancy Pelosi.

Fearless, strong, unyielding, and an advocate for holding political office holders to account. She did the womenfolk a lot of good – showed what women can do in an environment that treats them as co-equal to men.

We must educate the girl child and empower them to be what they can be. Our emancipation and future economic development may lie with them. Conversely, it could be that our current quagmire is due to their near exclusion from our politics and national life.

Do we know how many women that would have added value in our political space are languishing in obscurity due to our disposition toward them?

Another aspect worth highlighting is the heroism, tenacity, intelligence, and restraint of security operatives during the attack on the Capitol. They faced the insurrectionists in spite of being hopelessly outnumbered.

One of them even masterfully led the deadly rioters away from a door that would have brought them face to face with the Vice President. Only God knows what the outcome would have been.

It is also instructive and remarkably reassuring that Officer Eugene Goodman has been compensated with the position of Sergeant-at-Arms and awarded the Congressional Gold Medal for his heroism and quick thinking.

It was also significant the way the dead police officer was honored too by everyone from the then President-elect Joe Biden to his police colleagues while his hearse drove across the streets and while his remains lay in the Capitol.

Would Nigerian leaders do that for a lowly policeman or soldier who dies in the line of duty? Would the nation’s flag fly at half-mast for him or her? Do we pay such’s families their entitlements timely? Do we remember them? Food for thought!

Did anyone here notice the speed with which issues were disposed of by the courts? More than 60 cases were disposed of in a matter of a couple of weeks to allow a seamless transition of power.

Here, it is interminably endless waiting and it beats me how lawyers cope with the waiting and waiting that accompany litigations here. I sometimes wonder too if our judiciary will not benefit from technology as its processes are currently of the outdated analogue mode in most cases.

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Reform is desperately needed here if we are to make progress and join the best-in-class.

Trump has been acquitted. That is how it is being reported. This is the critical outcome of this Senate trial. But the verdict of history may be different. So is the verdict of public opinion. And those may prove more enduring and important than the senators’ judgment or rather the political judgment of the 43 Trumpublicans.

They know. And the world knows. That is why Mitch McConnell spoke shamelessly from both sides of his mouth. He is concerned and afraid of the judgment of history. The process however put in bold relief for the world to see, what happened at the Capitol and who instigated it.

Trump may pretend to laugh now, but even he knows it would not be for long. For he has been diminished by his sojourn to the Presidency which institution he tried to diminish. Political justice may not be in sync with social justice. Big lessons.

Ikeja, Lagos. 14th February 2021 – Austin Isikhuemen

Download the first chapter of The Storytelling Series: Beginners’ Guide for Small Businesses & Content Creators by Obehi Ewanfoh.