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Friday
With Donald Trump now arguing in court something that he has believed all his life–that he should be able to act with impunity—I am dusting off the blog post that I bring out at such moments. In his 1897 novel Invisible Man, H.G. Wells captures the thrill of being able to commit crimes without fear of repercussion.
Here’s Trump’s making the case, via Truth Social, what he has his lawyers arguing before various judges. To make sure we hear him, he uses all caps:
A PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES MUST HAVE FULL IMMUNITY, WITHOUT WHICH IT WOULD BE IMPOSSIBLE FOR HIM/HER TO PROPERLY FUNCTION. ANY MISTAKE, EVEN IF WELL INTENDED, WOULD BE MET WITH ALMOST CERTAIN INDICTMENT BY THE OPPOSING PARTY AT TERM END. EVEN EVENTS THAT “CROSS THE LINE” MUST FALL UNDER TOTAL IMMUNITY, OR IT WILL BE YEARS OF TRAUMA TRYING TO DETERMINE GOOD FROM BAD. THERE MUST BE CERTAINTY. EXAMPLE: YOU CAN’T STOP POLICE FROM DOING THE JOB OF STRONG & EFFECTIVE CRIME PREVENTION BECAUSE YOU WANT TO GUARD AGAINST THE OCCASIONAL “ROGUE COP” OR “BAD APPLE.” SOMETIMES YOU JUST HAVE TO LIVE WITH “GREAT BUT SLIGHTLY IMPERFECT.” ALL PRESIDENTS MUST HAVE COMPLETE & TOTAL PRESIDENTIAL IMMUNITY, OR THE AUTHORITY & DECISIVENESS OF A PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES WILL BE STRIPPED & GONE FOREVER. HOPEFULLY THIS WILL BE AN EASY DECISION. GOD BLESS THE SUPREME COURT!
Of course, Trump and his GOP supporters only believe that he should have full immunity, not Joe Biden. As political scientist John Stoehr of Editorial Board points out, however, this is not so much a case of hypocrisy (although it is certainly that) as an unapologetic belief in a double standard. Republicans believe, Stoehr says, that “Trump should be immune to the normal rules that govern democratic politics, including the Constitution. They are saying that impunity is the point.”
Before turning to Wells’s novel, I look first at the work that inspired it. In Plato’s Republic Glaucon, arguing with Socrates, contends that all that keeps us from committing crimes is our worry that we will be caught. As he argues,
No man would keep his hands off what was not his own when he could safely take what he liked out of the market, or go into houses and lie with any one at his pleasure, or kill or release from prison whom he would, and in all respects be like a god among men.
The story Glaucon uses to illustrate his contention involves a ring of invisibility discovered by the shepherd Gyges. Gyges ultimately uses the ring to seduce the queen of Lydia, murder the king, and become the king of Lydia himself. As an aside, I note that the ring of Gyges is also one of the inspirations for Lord of the Rings.
Socrates counterargues that no one can find happiness with such a ring since he or she would become a slave to appetite and could not therefore maintain self-control, the key to happiness.
While I agree with Socrates—Trump is undoubtedly a slave to his appetites and never seems to find happiness—that doesn’t keep people from desiring Gyges’s ring. As I’ve written in the past, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, one of the world’s foremost authorities on fascism and authoritarian leaders, notes that something more than sheep-like conformity or fear of retribution accounts for Trump’s political success. His secret lies in his apparent ability to always escape accountability:
Something else drives [South Carolina Senator Lindsay] Graham and other GOP Trump devotees: the thrill of partnering with an amoral individual for whom there are no limits or restraints. Enablers of authoritarians always imagine the power they can wield when the rule of law has been vanquished.
Many of us first saw this dynamic at work when Billy Bush laughed delightedly at Trump boasting, during the 2016 campaign, “When you’re a star, they let you [kiss beautiful women]. You can do anything… Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.” That Trump paid no price for saying so seemed to prove him right: when you have power and have dispensed with normal checks and balances, you can do anything.
I think one reason that Rudy Giuliani thought he could so freely defame the Georgia election workers is because he deluded himself into thinking he had Trumpian powers. (Instead he has been fined $148 million.) Same with Peter Navarro, the Trump advisor I wrote about this past September, who will be going to prison for thinking he could defy a Congressional subpoena.
A lot of the Trump supporters who have been harassing people of color on the streets—so-called Karens—have versions of the same illusion. Some of them too have gone to prison. The reason why the court cases against Trump are so important is because he will continue to have this same malign influence if he continues to get away with everything.
Picking up what I have said in previous posts, I note that Wells’s Griffin gives us a close-up view of the thrill. He describes a “feeling of extraordinary elation” when he realizes that people can’t see him. Confiding his history to his college friend Kemp, he says he immediately burned down the house so that others wouldn’t discover his secrets:
“You fired the house!” exclaimed Kemp.
Fired the house. It was the only way to cover my trail—and no doubt it was insured. I slipped the bolts of the front door quietly and went out into the street. I was invisible, and I was only just beginning to realize the extraordinary advantage my invisibility gave me. My head was already teeming with plans of all the wild and wonderful things I had now impunity to do.
He uses the word “impunity” again further on:
Practically I thought I had impunity to do whatever I chose, everything—save to give away my secret. So I thought. Whatever I did, whatever the consequences might be, was nothing to me. I had merely to fling aside my garments and vanish. No person could hold me.
Griffin proceeds to engage in the same range of behavior that we are seeing from those bad cops who think they can act without accountability, from shoving to outright killing. At the beginning, his social infractions are minor:
My mood, I say, was one of exaltation. I felt as a seeing man might do, with padded feet and noiseless clothes, in a city of the blind. I experienced a wild impulse to jest, to startle people, to clap men on the back, fling people’s hats astray, and generally revel in my extraordinary advantage.
When Kent asks about “the common conventions of humanity,” Griffin replies that they are “all very well for common people.”
As Griffin’s madness grows, so do his dark ambitions. Thinking he has successfully enlisted Kemp, he plots ways to wield total power:
“And it is killing we must do, Kemp.”
“It is killing we must do,” repeated Kemp. “I’m listening to your plan, Griffin, but I’m not agreeing, mind. Why killing?”
“Not wanton killing, but a judicious slaying. The point is, they know there is an Invisible Man—as well as we know there is an Invisible Man. And that Invisible Man, Kemp, must now establish a Reign of Terror. Yes; no doubt it’s startling. But I mean it. A Reign of Terror. He must take some town like your Burdock and terrify and dominate it. He must issue his orders. He can do that in a thousand ways—scraps of paper thrust under doors would suffice. And all who disobey his orders he must kill, and kill all who would defend them.”
Note that he uses one of Trump’s favorite words here: “dominate.” He’s prepared to use violence if necessary.
A sadistic thrill comes with asserting your dominance over others, as rapists know well. The satisfaction does not go as deep as serving humankind—this is Socrates’s point—but Griffin, racist cops, and authoritarians like Trump don’t care. They prefer the rush of acting with utter freedom.
Or as Ben-Ghiat says of Congressman Jim Jordan, who is currently seeking to weaponize the House Judiciary Committee against his enemies: “[H]is “beady eyes positively gleam with anticipation.”