Retribution: A Reckoning

His campaign of retribution had been horribly successful. He promised to be the avenger: “I am your warrior. I am your justice. I am your retribution.” Retribution captured the imagination of many voters, but the avenger is now unmasked. His “warrior,” his “justice,” and his “retribution” do not pay the rent, feed the kids, earn a living, or pay the doctor.

Being a warrior implies having not just an enemy but a righteous cause. There is nothing righteous here. To embody justice means no less than having respect for the rule of law and fundamental fairness. He respects our system of justice only when he can bend it in his favor. Retribution means exacting a fitting punishment for harm done. He does not measure up.

His appeal was all about payback and getting even no matter the lies told and injustices done in the process. It was about strength contrasted with a politics of joy offered by the other party. In his imaginings, he had won the 2020 election, and the rioters of January 6 were patriotic heroes (who had expressed their love for him by defiling the Capitol and brutally assaulting the police). He assumed that his voters only needed to imagine that wrongs had been done, that justice had been compromised, and that the other party—those he called communists and radical left lunatics—had inflicted harm on him and on them.

The vow of retribution stuck in the minds of his voters because everyone has had some bad luck in life. Everyone has felt unjustly wronged about something sometime. The conviction that someone has got to pay is a common complaint. He promised revenge. He promised they would pay, though it was never clear for what exactly.

An immovable thirty-four percent of the American people (judging from current polls) believed whatever he said on the campaign trail. An immovable thirty-four percent continues to accept whatever he says no matter how imaginary and untrue. His prolific lying may be a form of insanity, but they are unmoved by his falsehoods and mental abnormalities. 

The immovables are unmoved by incompetence. They are unmoved by cruelty. They are unmoved by someone whose only greatness is his great greed and outrageous fleecing of taxpayers. Corruption in plain view does not move them.

His desperate need for retribution is personal, having nothing to do with compensation for real wrongs done to the rest of us. His retribution is like so much gold filigree on the walls of the Oval Office. He needs to surround himself with gold to prove to himself that he has been successful in getting even with “many people” who he believes have mistreated him. His manner of getting even is to exploit the office of the presidency to grow his personal wealth.

His is a presidency of shame. It will be remembered for centuries and will become the subject of myth. It will be remembered for all of the harm done to our country. I leave it to historians to catalog the complete list of the damage done, but I offer the following sampler:

1. A Cabinet full of cronies and bootlickers unqualified to run the departments he appointed them to lead.
2. A racist and homicidal anti-immigrant policy enforced by cruelty, lack of due process, and arbitrary deportation quotas.
3. Deployment of the U.S. Navy to blow up small fishing boats, producing videos of explosions and killing those on board without proof that the boats were being used in drug-trafficking.
4. Starting an undeclared war in Iran with no strategic plan, curtailing shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, raising gasoline and fertilizer prices for Americans, and producing more videos of explosions.
5. Allowing a team of naïve children to decimate the federal workforce and steal private data.
6. Dismantling USAID, cutting off access to health care and nutrition for vulnerable populations.
7. Interfering with the government of Venezuela and with that country’s oil resources.
8. Destroying the East Wing of the White House.
9. Adding his name to the to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and replacing its Board of Trustees with sycophants.
10. Imposing tariffs and attempting to hide the resulting sales taxes on American consumers and businesses.

(But wait, there’s more! I forgot to mention the abandonment of Ukraine, the kissing up to Putin, the reflecting pool fiasco, the measles epidemic, the Epstein files…and more to come.)

His harms are now countless and could not be more plain, the need for retribution more justified and necessary. Punishment of this president and those who enabled him would, I admit, feel good. But trials and convictions, fines and imprisonment would fail to satisfy. Much could be repaired, torn down and restored, wars ended, policies reversed by remedial laws, but some of the damage will never be undone.

When the Civil War ended, Lincoln’s instinct was not retribution. It was reconstruction. It might have succeeded, if not for some who were immovable.

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Some other stuff for later,