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Friday
A week ago Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker observed that we seem to be stuck in Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot as we await a Trump indictment. For years, we have been wondering whether the former president would ever be held accountable for his dodgy behavior as for years he has gotten away with everything from fraud to sexual assault to corruption to an attempted coup d’etat. In the play, Godot—perhaps an allusion to God—never shows up, and we’ve been wondering if, in our case, it will be the same with justice.
As Parker puts it,
His arrest could happen any day now. . . . Or, like Beckett’s Didi and Gogo, we could wait forever for Trump to have his day in court.
In the play, the closest we get to hearing from Godot is from a messenger boy who, towards the end, conveys a message:
BOY: (in a rush). Mr. Godot told me to tell you he won’t come this evening but surely tomorrow.
This is like all the hints of possible or pending indictments that we’ve been hearing about for years.
Only, as of yesterday, Godot really has shown up. In the words of The Washington Post account,
A Manhattan grand jury has voted to indict former president Donald Trump, making him the first person in U.S. history to serve as commander in chief and then be charged with a crime, and setting the stage for a 2024 presidential contest unlike any other.
In Beckett’s absurdist vision, the non-appearance of Godot is a comment on the human search for meaning. We look and we look for some deeper significance to our lives, only to come up with nothing. By invoking the play, Parker foregrounds the issue of whether our society and our system of government has any higher meaning. If those with wealth and power are unaccountable, then our ideals ring hollow.
We may have become so cynical concerning Trump as to fear that nothing will change. Even with this indictment, we may fear that Godot, in showing up, will fail to infuse our lives with new meaning. Perhaps Godot is nothing more than a two-bit actor, talking a good game but empty of substance.
Given how cavalier Trump has been about the rule of law —including how he used the presidential pardon to ensure the silence of his corrupt friends—our cynicism is understandable. And we could wish that this particular Trump indictment had been more consequential. Why couldn’t we have started off with his attempt to carry out a coup?
Nevertheless, if justice is shown to apply to all, then the ideal of all being equal before the law will have been served. Justice is a transcendent ideal of the kind that Beckett is questioning. If even a former president can be indicted, perhaps we don’t entirely live in an absurd world.