What goes around...

Never allow the simpatico any great power that you'd deny the antipatico.

Spring has finally sprung in Idaho

This week’s barrel-o-laughs comes courtesy of CNN. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anything more entertaining on a newscast (well, allegedly a newscast) than watching CNN anchors squirm unmistakably in their chairs on a brightly lit set, as if passing kidney stones, while their own legal experts explained to them how poor Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case against former President Donald Trump (regarding the Stormy Daniels affair) happens to be.

Again, my normal MAGA caveat: I loathe and despise Donald Trump. He is, in my view, a blatant huckster, a braggart, a liar, a cheat, and a paper-tiger bully who would do and say practically anything to further his cause, which is always himself. He’s demonstrated over and over that he’ll throw anyone under the bus when it suits his purposes. Trump may be one of the most morally corrupt leaders of our time. He’s a carnival barker whose success is due to razor-sharp populist instincts. He’s Elmer Gantry incarnated in flesh.

And those are probably his good qualities. It’s all downhill from there.

But more than one thing may be true at once. So while Donald Trump may be, at least in my view, a reprehensible character who was both legitimately elected and then defeated and doesn’t need to be anywhere near the Oval Office again, he’s also possibly the most put-upon president of my lifetime. The press, and especially television news, in this country broke themselves by aligning with or opposing Trump at all costs, without much regard for journalistic ethics.

Fox News has just discovered 787.5 million pieces of evidence in favor of this proposition. Most everyone else in the legacy media is finding vanishing trust, viewers, and readers.

Now it’s our legal system. The case against Trump by D.A. Bragg stinks. It’s obviously political. And I’m not opining here either; I’m quoting Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil, who, during a hearing this week, rebuked D.A. Bragg for claiming to operate outside the political arena when it was clear that he was doing everything but.

What goes around, comes around. That’s been the word for a long time. NYC may have a number of lefty prosecutors willing to pursue political enemies over, if you’ll forgive the pun, trumped-up charges (while inexplicably allowing violent criminals to walk in the interests of social justice), but I’m betting that there are plenty of righty prosecutors all over the country who see Bragg’s circus as an invitation to go after liberal politicians with lousy cases they have little chance of winning just to make their opponents’ lives miserable.

Yo, Scranton Joe. That’s you in a few years. Gird your loins.

A friend of mine who was involved in Republican Party politics for many years likes to say that you should never grant your political allies any great power that you’d deny your political opponents. I think that he’s spot-on in that analysis. Today, you might think that Donald Trump deserves his comeuppance, even if the legal case against him is incredibly weak. Serves him right. But how are you going to feel down the road when it’s your time in the barrel?

Both sides of the political spectrum play this game, and both have been gradually upping the ante. Even though I disapproved of Hillary Clinton as a presidential candidate and did not vote for her, the right-wing chants to "lock her up" were anathema to me. Clinton was neither tried nor convicted of any crime for which she could have conceivably been jailed. It was all delusional fantasy.

Entreaties to lock up political opponents are the elixir of banana republics, as is Bragg’s current crusade against Trump, which represents a significant escalation in a short-sighted, extremely dangerous game.

Yet that’s where we now find ourselves. It’s not good enough to just win elections and power anymore; you must destroy the opposition in the process. It’s winner-take-all. It’s greed, selfishness, and avarice. It’s complete anti-democracy. It’s unkind and goes against the golden rule. It’s also indisputably the current lay of the land in the good old USA of here and now.

I spend a lot of time writing about issues surrounding the broad and malleable topic of “wokeness.” My principal objection to wokeness isn’t that it’s all bad; it’s that it’s all one-sided. In a woke world, I’m compelled to listen to a particular point of view supported by scant data that, in many cases, flies in the face of reality. But I’m not allowed to object, debate, or present evidence that runs counter to the woke narrative. Worse, our bureaucracy has managed to enshrine many woke principles in law. As a result, the state's power compels me to comply with something I strongly believe to be wrong, with little recourse.

I’m as sure as I can be that the woke currently cracking the whip in government and higher education will guzzle the wine instead of using it as a libation on the altar of DEI as soon as calling a spade a spade again becomes fashionable. Once that first right hook from people who are fed up with their nonsense connects, they’ll understand what it’s like to be on the receiving end of arrogant and pompous crapola that you can’t stop.

I’m reasonably sure that many people's desire to be superior to others is what drives the woke, virtue-signaling leftist movement in our contemporary society, as well as the out where the buses don't run conspiracy movements of the right. If you can’t be a successful athlete, celebrity, entertainer, or professional, you have to figure out some way of setting yourself apart from and above the hoi polloi.

One way of doing this, which has the advantage of requiring little effort and no talent (other than brazenness), is to simply assert that you are morally superior; “holier than thou,” so to speak. If I don’t agree with you, it can’t possibly be over facts or legitimate differences in values. It must be because you are right, and there’s something wrong with me or anyone else who sees things differently.

Some just can’t comprehend that what goes around almost invariably comes around. The giddy view from the winner’s perch in politics seems endless right up until it ends. It's always prudent, in my opinion, to consider how the laws and practices that you support when you are in power could be used against you later on.

Along this line, I’ve long pointed out to my religious friends that while it might seem a grand idea to bring down the constitutional walls between church and state while Christianity is the dominant religion in America, how are you going to feel if the Muslim faith, which is growing around the world in leaps and bounds, becomes dominant?

Will you then still favor faculty-led prayer in public schools? Will you support giving taxpayer money to fund madrasas? Will you still support tax exemptions for religious organizations?

The far left's most outlandish idea right now is that confused children in the throes of mental crises and social contagion should be allowed to receive "gender-affirming" care without the consent or even knowledge of skeptical parents. This is absolutely crazy. It’s a concept that is popular nowhere outside of a few progressive bubbles. Yet in some places, it's inexplicably the way that things are now done.

I’m willing to bet way more than I can afford to lose that if conservatives were to propose secret Bible study for troubled kids, something that’s as popular with the right as gender-affirming treatment is with the left but equally ineffective as a solution for teen anxiety (though less harmful), those same people championing secret therapy would lose their minds.

And they’d be right to. The problem is that they just don’t see it the same way when they are calling the shots.

I’m generally not in favor of banning books, ideas, or most freedoms. I am for a robust examination of all of the above. But I have no problem acknowledging that some ideas, discussions, and freedoms are not universally appropriate. And no one, under almost any conceivable circumstance, should have an idea shoved down their throat.

That seems completely obvious to me, but not to many. Part of self-assumed moral superiority is that you must compel others to see things your way. By the law or at the wrong end of a gun, if proselytizing doesn't work by itself.

That’s all fine and good when you’re calling the shots, but how are you going to feel about it when what goes around, comes around?

Associated Press and Idaho Press Club-winning columnist Martin Hackworth of Pocatello is a physicist, writer, and retired Idaho State University faculty member who now spends his time with family, riding bicycles and motorcycles, and arranging and playing music. Follow him on Twitter @MartinHackworth