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Fairness Means Treating a Prince Like a Pauper. Or Trump's Conviction is Good [1]

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Date: 2024-06-03  

I have seen some commentary fretting about, or pretending to fret about, wanting to see Trump in jail if you are a prison abolitionist or reformist. I don’t think that is a valid concern and a book series from the last century about democratic space wizards can show you why.

When I was a wee tot of ten or so, my Grandfather took me to the fantasy/sci-fi section of the local Waldenbooks (yes, I am old. Shut up.) and let me pick out basically anything I wanted. One of them was a reprint (well, I assume it was a reprint given the fact that it first came out in 1969. I’m not that old. Shut up.) of the Christopher Stasheff novel a Warlock in Spite of Himself. I eventually read all dozen or so books in that series, and they are a hoot. The hero is an agent for a society dedicated to bringing democracy to the galaxy who finds a planet whose colonizers deliberately froze it in the Middle Ages. Oh, and everyone has some physic powers due to inbreeding. Plus, there are Neanderthals sent by an authoritarian counter-group who can speak complex thought but don’t understand them.

Like I said, a hoot. They aren’t great art, and they don’t hold up well in all respects (I re-read a couple a couple decades ago and hoo-boy, the sexism), but they are painfully earnest in their belief in the power of democracy and ordinary people’s ability to manage their own lives. One line in particular has always stood out to me: Fairness does not mean you treat a prince like a pauper. It means you treat a pauper like a prince. I think that sums up my attitude toward the Trump situation pretty well.

It is okay to want Trump to go to jail. He has broken the law and done real harm to our society as a result. If his scheme to cover up the affair he had with a porn star while his wife had just given birth hadn’t been successful, it might have been enough to cost him the election. He committed fraud on the American people and may have won one an election for perhaps the most important office in the country. Do you know how I know that? Because the system worked.

Trump was tried in front of a jury of ordinary citizens who heard the prosecutors’ case, who heard Trump’s defense, and decided that he was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Anyone who tells you this was a political trial is lying or being lied to. Trump was treated at least as well as any other defendant and given how often he violated the gag orders restricting him from attacking the families of court officers, probably better than most. A political trial would not have treated him with such kid gloves, nor would its outcome been up in the air. Twelve people took their civic duty to heart and did their jobs. The system worked.

And it would have worked if they had found him not guilty. I would have disagreed given what I know, but outside proof of tampering, a trial by jury is how our system works. Even when you don’t agree with the verdict.

Whether or not Trump goes to jail is likely to be determined by his own actions — how remorseful he can be in public, how much he can restrain himself, etc. So far he is not off to a good start, but the sentencing is not until July 11th. Maybe his people can convince him to reign himself in. Michael Cohen, the man who carried out his scheme, went to jail for three years for, well, carrying out the scheme. Jail may be appropriate here, but I am not an expert on sentencing guidelines in New York State. Regardless, you don’t need to feel worse or better about him going to jail than you would about anyone else.

If you think that jails in this country are terrible, well, they are. They make criminals rather than reform them. They are often places of sadistic torture. Many of their standard practices should be outlawed. But they are terrible for everyone. The solution to the problem is not to treat a famous man differently, but to reform the entire system. If we subjected more rich, powerful, and famous people to prison when they deserve it, perhaps there would be a stronger push to create humane prisons focused on reform. Putting Trump in jail is good not because he is Trump but because, if he deserves jail time, the more powerful people who have to experience the system the rest of must, the more likely is reform.

The goal should not be the prices get out of prison time out of some sense of misplaced sympathy for prominent people. The goal should be creating prisons that do not brutalize paupers or princes.

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