The beheading of the American rule of law will be televised.
It will be advertised as the impeachment trial of one President
Donald John Trump, and it will be supported by the generous funding of Wall
Street donors, Christian Evangelicals and the president’s cult-like followers.
The last rites were administered Thursday in the Senate chambers in a mocking display of pomp and circumstance.
You saw and heard it, didn’t you, unmasked senators placing their hands on the Bible of their faith and pledging to impart impartial justice, a sacred oath they have sworn publicly not to uphold?
Fittingly, the spectacle will be presided over by Chief of Justice John Roberts.
He will be cloaked in his see-no-evil, hear-no-evil and speak-no-evil ceremonial robe, but his reticence will resonate loudly as tacit approval of the proceedings.
Yes, the beheading of the American rule of law will be televised, and many of us will wail in disbelief at the cold, calculated callousness of the execution.
But if we are honest, we would acknowledge that this is nothing new; that this is merely the reality television version of a practice as old as the country
That is why black and brown people will not be watching this televised beheading, at least not closely. They have been seeing this execution on a loop all their lives.
They know the American rule of law has built-in exceptions, one being the implicit understanding that black and brown people are not guaranteed its full protection.
Martin Luther King Jr., whose birthday we celebrate today, explained it from his Birmingham jail cell, “An unjust law is a code that a numerical or a power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself?” he said.
However, many people, some of them good people, have been willing to live with the implicit color exception to the rule of law.
But we can’t run and hide from the truth now. MLK spoke that truth when he also said from jail, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” which is to say the color exception to the rule of law presaged its inevitable execution.
After the coup de grace is administered by the Senate, the chief justice will return to his high seat on the Supreme Court to hear cases and judge them on an emasculated constitution.
And we will call it justice.
Congressional lawmakers will move on to find more opportunities to lie in the name of god.
And we will call it democracy.
And the people?
Well, some will dream of a 20/20 elections’ restoration of the rule of law. I am hopeful too, even though I know that such a restoration would quite likely retain the color exception.
The truth, I believe, is that most of us will go on living with whatever injustices might come. We will put our shoulders to the wheel of our 9—5 lives, and we will do all we can to protect our children from all hardships and pain.
And we will keep their dreams alive. We will place money under their pillows and say it’s from the Tooth Fairy; and gifts under the Christmas tree and say they are from Santa Claus.
And we will call it living, because it’s our nature not only to deceive, but to also embrace and celebrate deceit.
