Cake or Death?
America Takes Death, Please
Back in 1998, the comedian Eddie Izzard did a live show for the launch of her album Dress to Kill, the whole of which is a scathing critique of American and European empire, that included her now-infamous sketch, Cake or Death.
Cake or Death begins with a cutting critique of empire and its collapse, colonization, and how we normalize mass death. It then goes on to describe how the Inquisition could never have worked with the Church of England, because of norms, and politeness, and formality.
If forced to choose between cake or death, goes the hilarious bit, the answer would be easy: cake.
One would think, if given the choice between a slice of cake and death, the choice to opt for cake is a given.
In America, apparently not.
Last night, Rachel Maddow opened her show with a bit of breaking news, namely a memo from Merrick Garland to all employees of the DOJ, entitled “Election Year Sensitivities.” You can read the whole thing here.
In sum, it discusses the putative need, in light of the midterm elections, to be “particularly sensitive to safeguarding the Department’s reputation for fairness, neutrality and non-partisanship,” and to abide by DOJ policy that “partisan politics must play no role in the decisions of federal investigators or prosecutors regarding any investigations or criminal charges.” It goes on to note that “[l]aw enforcement officers and prosecutors may never select the timing of public statements (attributed or not), investigative steps, criminal charges, or any other action in any matter or case for the purpose of affecting any election, or for the purpose of giving an advantage or disadvantage to any candidate or political party.”
In principle, the memo itself is not unusual. Prior officials have noted (and then conveniently broken) DOJ policy to be mindful about public statements concerning investigations related to political figures in close proximity to an election.
However, Garland’s memo goes one step further, a step that’s quite a bit beyond the pale even if you’re a fan of political “norms.”
Garland’s memo, in somewhat stunning fashion, explicitly endorses prior guidance from then-Attorney General Bill Barr that was created to make certain that his boss, Donald Trump, was not investigated in advance of the 2020 election.
Particularly, it says the following: “Department employees must also adhere to the additional requirements issued by the Attorney General [Barr] on February 5, 2020, governing the opening of criminal and counter-intelligence investigations by the Department, including its law enforcement agencies, related to politically sensitive individuals and entities.”
That memo, as authored by Bill Barr, requires direct approval of the Attorney General to investigate any political candidate or campaign.
In sum, Garland’s memo, dated in May of this year, endorses the position of the corrupt prior Attorney General that no investigations into a candidate or his campaign can be initiated during an election season without the direct approval of the Attorney General, and does it under the cover of departmental norms.
It is worth noting that any position taken by Barr to protect his autocratic boss should never have been endorsed or continued by the current administration.
It is also worth noting that the hearings into the January 6th insurrection did not begin until June, well after Garland’s memo was issued.
It is also worth noting that DOJ officials were apparently “astonished” by the testimony in those hearings that plainly established a seditious conspiracy involving the former President and his inner circle— a fact that caused many to wonder whether the DOJ was even engaged in an investigation of January 6th that went beyond the bit players who invaded the Capitol, and up to those who actually organized and called for it (my bet is no).
Finally, it is worth noting that based on the memo, it is profoundly unlikely that there will be any indictments of Trump or anyone related to his campaign before the midterms, and if Trump declares for 2024 in the coming weeks, as he has indicated he plans to do, the likelihood that he will be indicted or prosecuted before the next presidential election is slim to none.
And that, of course, will mean there will be no accountability at all.
Cake or death?
Cake is prosecuting an attempted coup for which there is so much evidence that the trial of the collaborators at the top would be, no pun intended, a cakewalk.
America, through Merrick Garland, would apparently prefer its own demise.
The thing about norms is that they uphold the system as it was designed.
As I wrote here last month, our entire judicial system was founded on principles designed to uphold white supremacy, to benefit white slaveowner men, with loopholes designed to evade real democracy in the event that we became too representative (see, e.g., the filibuster).
Indeed, in just the same way as vague and arbitrarily applied norms of “professionalism” are consistently levied against Black and brown people to keep them out of corporate leadership positions, judicial norms are weaponized to prevent accountability for those in charge.
That is, indeed, exactly what Bill Barr did in 2020 to protect his violent, criminal, seditious boss.
So let’s consider the present political landscape:
We have a growing and emboldened fascist white supremacist movement in this country, armed to the teeth and barely hidden in the professional political clothing of the GOP.
We have a current president who, when confronted with the end of rights for more than half the country in the form of the overturning of Roe, simply says “too bad, so sad, go vote,” rather than using the executive power he has to make abortion legal on federal property in every state.
We have mass shootings daily, many of which are carried out by white supremacists radicalized on social media, which continues unabated (along with Fox and Newsmax and others) to spew hatred and fear designed to create terrorism to maintain power.
We have Republican governors who are actively engaged in persecuting and purging trans people, the parents of trans children, and trans children themselves from their states. Those same Republican governors are engaged in book banning, restricting public education to propagandist history, and requiring academics to register their political views with the state.
And through all of this, over this summer, we have had scathing, stunning testimony every week from the January 6th Committee that makes plain the abject criminal conspiracy, the efforts by the former president and his entire inner circle, numerous members of Congress, senior officials across government, his advisors, and their friends in the Proud Boys and the Oathkeepers, to violently overthrow the whole of American government to install him as a dictator.
The evidence could not be more plain.
But sure, let’s stand on norms and departmental policy. Let’s not prosecute senior officials of one party who plainly attempted to violently overthrow America for fear of appearing “partisan” or not “neutral.”
Cake or death? Death, obviously.
Last night, after news of the Garland memo broke, I was discussing with some friends the implications of what the memo contains, and what the endorsement of Barr’s prior guidance means for the future of democracy.
It was a lively debate, with the general consensus being that Garland was never going to prosecute Trump, and the memo was just more evidence of how unfit he is for this moment, and how unreasonable the response of the current administration in the face of looming fascist collapse. There was quite a bit of discussion on how we deal with this recalcitrance, how outrageous it is to do nothing, and how emboldened Trump and his white supremacist lackeys, as well as those like DeSantis and Abbott and the don’t-even-need-the-white-hoods leaders coming up next, have become and will continue to be in the face of a refusal to hold them accountable.
And then, one of my friends mentioned the Choluteca Bridge.
The Choluteca Bridge was a bridge in Honduras, a feat of engineering that was much beloved by locals, an emblem to the success of infrastructure that was considered to be an architectural masterpiece when it was rebuilt in 1996.
And then, in 1998, Honduras was hit by a Category 5 hurricane. Roads were wiped out and buildings fell. Miraculously, the Choluteca Bridge survived.
However, nothing around it did.
This is what it looks like today.
January 6th was our Category 5 hurricane.
Merrick Garland is standing on the bridge of American democracy, praising its structural norms and demanding that the foundations hold, not realizing that the entire landscape of America has changed.
And that absent a change of direction, an establishment of a new route toward freedom that includes whole new structures of accountability, a safe passage across the waters toward a better future, well, we’re headed right off the edge.
Cake or death.
One would think the choice is easy.
It’s hard to miss the collapse that’s happening all around us.
It’s hard to miss how accustomed we have become in the last six years to the rollback of rights, to mass murder, to mass death, to so much neglect of so many, to so much violence and so much hate and so much threat to the last bastions of a democracy that never lived up to its promise.
It’s hard to miss, let alone live through.
And yet.
If there are no indictments, and no accountability, and soon, there will be another coup attempt, and this one will not come with an invasion of the Capitol but instead with legislation and a corrupt Supreme Court, and a decision that it’s just fine to throw out election results if you don’t like the outcome.
One would think the choice is easy.
One would think.
But complicity and indoctrination and a steadfast belief in the mythology of America, a refusal to look the current moment dead in the eye and fight, a continuation of the ideals of white supremacist founders and their legacies that norms matter more than lives or crimes or even our entire national future, can make death look a lot like cake.
There’s no sweet treats at the end of this story. No one is coming to save us.
Time’s up.
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My jaw dropped open when Rachel delivered this news last night. WTF! How could things get worse? What was Garland thinking? Of all times to make it easier to let Trump off the hook, just as the investigation is providing more and more evidence of his premeditated wrongdoing. I just don't understand this move.
Meanwhile, peaceful protestors are being set up for show trials as soon as the GOP wins control. Please see HR 8196 by Marjorie Taylor Greene, labeling Ruth Sent Us a terrorist group by conflating with the shadowy vandalist group Jane’s Revenge. We suspect she’s sent letters to big tech, and our social media accounts were suspended, throttled, permanently banned as a result.