Stay Tuned to See if Trump Will Face the Music, or Not…

Sunday Reader –
By Glynn Wilson –

CATOCTIN MOUNTAIN, Md. — Down in Washington, D.C. at the National Archives a team of investigators are combing through all the classified documents seized by the FBI in the recent raid at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago.

Outside the building, there is a special philosophy displayed on a statue of a woman holding an open book.

The official name for the statue is “Present,” although it also known in some circles as “Future.” Carved in 1935 by Robert Ingersoll Aitken, on the statue are inscribed the words, “What is past is prologue.”

It’s taken from a line in Shakespeare’s tragic comedy “The Tempest.”

“What’s past is prologue,” as spoken by Antonio, the usurping Duke of Milan and brother of Prospero, the rightful Duke of Milan, in contemporary use is interpreted to mean history itself sets the context for the present and the future.

According to the physics of time, however, there is no such thing as the present, since it is gone before you can grasp it (whoops, it’s gone). So in reality, there is only the past and the future, and we can only grasp some interpretation of the past while attempting to anticipate or plan for the future.

Time travel is only science fiction fantasy as far as know to date, although the Webb telescope can look back in time at the universe and see something of how it developed.

For us it seems, here on this “blue” planet, every time we turn around these days and check the news we find ourselves in uncharted territory, much like the characters in the play. They were on a ship sailing to the newly discovered (by Europeans anyway) land called America, ran into a massive storm (a tempest) at sea, and ended up on a deserted island.

Never before in the 249 year history of the United States have we had to deal with a president so ignorant and corrupt that our top law enforcement officials had to obtain a search warrant and seize classified documents from a place that was a presidential residence and now the residence of a former president.

The biggest related scandal we’ve ever faced was when Richard Nixon left the White House with hours of taped conversations from a secret recording system in the presidential residence in Washington. That case set the precedent for the one we face today.

Because of that scandal, Congress quickly passed the Presidential Recordings and Materials Preservation Act of 1974 and ordered the General Services Administration to obtain Nixon’s records — all 42 million documents and 880 hours of recordings — and archivists had to determine what was personal and what was of public interest for preservation.

Congressional investigators and Justice Department lawyers were looking at the documents and listening to those recordings for potential crimes too, until Nixon agreed to resign and Gerald Ford pardoned him.

The Nixon recordings are still kept at the National Archives and can be accessed by researchers to this day.

It will take some time to determine what records Trump took with him and why, and for investigators with the United States Department of Justice to determine what crimes, if any, Trump committed by taking the documents — and lying about taking and possessing them. There is much speculation on the web that national security secrets were potentially accessed by foreign agents, perhaps Trump’s friends in the Putin administration in Russia?

Then U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and his team will have to determine whether we lurch out into more uncharted territory, getting a grand jury to issue an indictment of a former president charging him with crimes, and whether to arrest him and put him on trial.

This is no deserted island. But it is certainly uncharted territory. That is to say there is no map showing what to do here, no court precedent to go by, only a doctrine enshrined in the philosophy our Constitution stating that “no one is above the law.”

If Will Shakespeare were alive and writing plays and poetry today, he might wonder:

No One is Above the Law

Is that a mere slogan,
a myth for the establishment?
To prop up a system,
men called democracy?
Government of, by and for the people,
but governed by the rich.
Just as all the religious monarchies of old.

Have we truly trod new ground here,
or simply tread on old patterns?
Perpetuating a king and serf system,
keeping the little man in chains.
And letting the rich man go.

If what’s past is prologue,
Let he who shall remain nameless
go into exile on a deserted island.
And never seek public office again.

That should be the negotiation. Either face a public trial and become the first American president ever convicted of a crime and sentenced to federal prison. Or relinquish your public, political ambitions and leave the country.

We will see if what’s past is prologue, or if we can indeed face the difficult path of chartering new ground. We claimed we did it here on these shores, although we now know there were many nations here before arrived.

Further Reading

Pressure Mounts on Justice Department to Bring Charges Against Trump

The Tempest complete text, in the public domain

Nixon White House tapes

What Humanity Needs: A Shared Narrative for the 21st Century

Smithsonian Opens ‘Nation to Nation’ Treaty Exhibit in National Museum of the American Indian

Setting the Record Straight on the Lewis and Clark Expedition

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