OPINION:
Last year, after the confirmation hearing for Judge (now Justice) Ketanji Brown Jackson, I penned an essay that analogized her testimony to the dialogue in a play in the genre of the French Theater of the Absurd. Judge Jackson’s inability to define the word “woman” because she is “not a biologist” struck me as the height of absurdity. I foolishly thought that with the judge’s testimony, we had reached a kind of apex of absurd behavior.
I was clearly wrong. I did not anticipate the events of last week.
In the week of June 12, we witnessed two events that, juxtapositioned as they were, evidenced a greater absurdity than we had observed at Justice Jackson’s confirmation hearing. Events in Miami and in Washington gave physical testimony to the absurdity of the era through which our nation is passing.
In Miami, we watched as a former president was arraigned on a 37-count indictment by prosecutors with evident animus toward the former commander in chief.
This is not to say that former President Donald Trump did not act improperly. He should have been far more careful with the documents that he removed from the White House when he left.
He should have demonstrated a far more scrupulous and serious comportment when handling sensitive materials. He should have been aware that cooperation is better than confrontation when dealing with the Justice Department.
But Donald Trump was being Donald Trump. He is and has always been boorish, self-centered, undisciplined and unpredictable. Those are not the elements of criminal behavior; they are the essence of regrettable behavior, especially by a political leader.
But it requires a maniacal mentality to seek to convict and incarcerate such a person, especially in reliance upon the Espionage Act of 1917.
If Mr. Trump is a spy, he is assuredly the most unprofessional of spies. Espionage is a delicate business, requiring dissimulation, discretion and subtlety. He is certainly an improbable spy, the most unsubtle of human beings. It is preposterous to assume that he had any thought of engaging in espionage.
Rather, we can assume that the retention of the White House documents was a kind of power play. He wanted to show the world that he could control the documents. While that was a terrible, even absurd mistake, it was not a crime worthy of full-fledged prosecution.
Faced with the character flaws and poor behavior of the former president, the Department of Justice has chosen to put the nation through an unparalleled trauma. This is absurd, and it is dangerous.
When people behave badly, it is appropriate to reprimand them. DOJ could have easily done that.
But no — the attorney general and his acolytes, filled with anger and disdain for Mr. Trump, had to throw the book at him. Sanctimony, of which the attorney general seems to have a generous supply, is a dangerous commodity.
But there was another event in Washington that also garnered ample press attention last week that further highlighted the absurdity of our times.
President Biden held a large celebration on the South Lawn of the White House to celebrate Pride Month. He festooned the White House with “pride” paraphernalia, including a prominent display of the pride flag, giving it equal dignity with the American flag, and he took ample time from his busy schedule to socialize with the hundreds of LGBTQ supporters on hand.
At one point, Mr. Biden saw fit, absurdly, to laud the gathered LGBTQ guests as being “among the bravest people” he knows. Apparently, it slipped his mind that he had recently met with armed services personnel who stand in defense of our nation.
He did not remember that he has met with police officers and firefighters, as well as other individuals who have taken actions at their peril to save lives.
To Mr. Biden, those people did not measure up in terms of bravery to the crowd of oddly dressed merrymakers frolicking in the White House gardens.
To crown the event, one attendee decided to disrobe and display his/her newly acquired breasts. That was certainly an act of unparalleled bravery or, perhaps more accurately, of unparalleled audacity. In a modest show of sanity, the White House condemned this inappropriate act.
Both of these events highlighted a notable failure on the part of the various actors involved to be restrained and rational in their actions.
Even though it is a hallmark of his public persona, Mr. Trump should know better than to disregard common sense in his dealings with sensitive materials.
The prosecutor should have known better than to turn foolish behavior into criminal acts. Mr. Biden should stop acquiescing to the pressures from the irrational “woke” left. He might even consider urging some semblance of proper behavior to those he calls “among the bravest.”
This same week, we also witnessed a prominent U.S. senator, who has served with distinction for decades in that august body, take to the floor of the Senate to provide information regarding potential corruption by the sitting president of the United States. There was nothing absurd about that.
The absurdity came when none of the mainstream media saw fit to run even the smallest of articles about the senator’s presentation. Inexplicably, plausible accusations of corruption against the president by a respected and serious member of the upper chamber of our legislature did not merit any mention. That has to be considered absurd.
The press needs to play an appropriately neutral role in preventing the absurdities we have been witnessing. By being evenhanded, by reporting all relevant news objectively and by being informative instead of being ensnared by political agendas, the mainstream press can help to bring a halt to the absurd behavior we are observing.
Otherwise, the mainstream press is merely another actor on the stage of our very own theater of the absurd.
• Gerard Leval is a partner in the Washington office of a national law firm. His book, “Lobbying for Equality: Jacques Godard and the Struggle for Jewish Civil Rights During the French Revolution,” was published by HUC Press last year.
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