If Only This Were a Movie

essay

Sometimes, watching and listening to President Trump and his minions, you may slip into imagining you have been watching a movie. At first, maybe you thought Hollywood had conjured up a comedic American type, the fast talking big city conman who sells bridges to gullible farm boys.

Remember how we all laughed? What’s with that hair? He doesn’t have a favorite Bible verse or constitutional amendment? ALL OF THEM are his favorite! Really? His bullshit answers were hilarious. But then the bridge-selling scallywag rises to power not once, but twice.

Not so funny anymore, is it?

And he convinces millions of his fellow citizens, not all of them naïve farm boys, that they are beset by enemies on all sides. Enemies Without: sending monsters spilling across our borders or so-called friend-countries “ripping us off” in trade deals. Enemies Within: spewing fake news, snobbish educators poisoning the minds of our children, “very bad people,” “sick” people stealing elections.

They do not “love America.” He will rid us of these enemies if the Democrats, those “communists and Marxists who hate America,” get out of the way. He can build a wall to keep out the rapists and murderers, and he won’t spend a penny of our money doing it. Mr. Master Dealmaker will make Mexico pay. He’ll do all this and end foreign wars and fix the price of eggs on Day One.

But, then, he ignores the price of eggs and can’t seem to get that wall built. No matter. He’s convinced even more of his people that the dangers from their enemies, gangs at the top of the list, are so terrible that they are willing to look the other way as he rounds people up and sends them off to some faraway gulag.

Now the comedic scallywag has transformed into a different Hollywood type, the lawman/vigilante we all know so well. Things have gotten so bad in this plot, so corrupt, that this Clint Eastwoodian character is “forced” to act outside boring old due process. If he is “saving America,” no action he takes is outside the law.

The name of the game now is vengeance and righteous wrath. The bad guys are not worthy of a court hearing. In the movies, they are simply gunned down. In this version, they are identified by their tattoos or by their unpopular speech, and they disappear into a friendlier jurisdiction.

Listen to Congressman Tom Emmer, whose Easter Sunday responses to CNN’s Dana Bash coincides with those of the president himself and his surrogates. Accused gang member Kilmar Abrego Garcia has been mistakenly sent to a Salvadorian prison without so much as a court appearance, and Trump has washed its hands of him.

Sorry, nothing we can do about it now, he claims, despite a Supreme Court order that he “facilitate” doing so. Making unsubstantiated claims about Garcia and misrepresenting what led to his abduction, Emmer defends Trump’s actions as simply fulfilling campaign promises.

As Bash presses him, the dissembling Emmer plays the lawman/vigilante card we all know. “Nobody seems to want to talk about the MS13 issues,” he says. “I find it very interesting that your network and others like the senator from Maryland are doubling down on an illegal alien when they won’t talk about all the Americans who have been harmed by illegal aliens. You’ve heard the story over and over about Rachel Morin, the senator’s own constituent, who he doesn’t even give words of comfort to her family, but he will fly down to El Salvador to deal with an illegal alien who is a resident and a citizen of El Salvador.”

This is the gangs-are-such-an-existential-threat-that-the-rules-don’t-matter-anymore plot.

When read actual court transcripts, his response is, “Well, Dana, you want to make it about a much bigger thing.” In other words, he is willing to trivialize Trump’s skirting of the rule of law. Trump has defined an existential threat, gangs, and should be free to clean house as he sees fit, judges’ orders be damned.

It’s an emotional appeal that we readily consume at the movies. We pay money to go see “Taken,” and relate to the father who takes the law into his own hands to track down the kidnappers of his daughter. Who wouldn’t feel as he does? Or “Walking Tall,” cleaning up Dodge, so to speak, is not pretty, but the hero gets the job done. We assume, of course, the righteousness of the heroes, more or less.

This is the emotional appeal police states depend on. If you demonize the “other,” and frighten your own people enough, they’ll look the other way while you tighten your grip on them. Trump and every other tyrant understands this—and that a hefty portion of the public won’t realize they’re not at the movies until it’s too late.

We need the rule of law. Not everyone with power and pious professions of loving God and the Constitution can be trusted, so we have checks and balances. We average Americans do not really know much about Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who may or may not be some sort of criminal. We do know, however, that we have a legal process for figuring out what the just and fair way of dealing with him is. Staying true to that process is a big deal.

So, yes, Mr. Emmer, this is about something much bigger than what you seem to think.

It’s not a movie.

Check out past posts of stories and essays @ stephenmpeters.substack.com