Whaling is the most despised form of hunting in the world. Or at least it was until Donald Trump replaced Melville’s whale as the target of unscrupulous, unprincipled, and sea-sick hunters using imaginary legal harpoons.
The “Great Orange Leader” replaced the “Great White Whale.” In both cases the quarry vanquished their pursuers, drowning them in a death of their own making. Trump the victor trailing the flotsam and jetsam of illegitimate prosecutions in his wake.
Judge Juan Merchan joined the ranks of the vanquished when he sentenced Donald Trump for conviction on charges brought by portly prosecutor Alvin “I have nothing upon which to” Bragg.
After years of chasing Trump like Melville’s mythical white whale Democrats, progressives, and politically weaponized federal agents like their fictional whaling counterparts are left splintered and sunk. Their last harpoon harmlessly reduced to a foam dart.
Merchan held that last skewer, and he missed his target by a mile.
Moby-Dick was scarred and injured during the penultimate battle, but at least the great fish didn’t have to endure the hateful sea captain wishing him “godspeed” in the aftermath of his utter defeat.
Instead, Merchan both wished Trump the best and introduced Americans to the legal phrase, “unconditional discharge”.
Under the New York Penal Law Section 65.20 the sentence of unconditional discharge achieves only one outcome – the recording of a conviction.
“When the court imposes a sentence of unconditional discharge, the defendant shall be released with respect to the conviction for which the sentence is imposed without imprisonment, fine or probation supervision. A sentence of unconditional discharge is for all purposes a final judgment of conviction.”
So, a conviction on a nothing-burger of a crime results in nothing: no fine, no jail time, no home confinement. Merchan, no doubt thinking he was getting the last laugh, made certain that Trump enters the White House as its first “convicted felon”.
So what?
Merchan, Bragg, Engoron, Smith, Willis all boarded their respective prosecutorial whaling skiffs armed with their hate of Trump and an insensible, victimless, and outright made-up quiver of crimes.
Each in turn hurled their missiles, which bounced off Trump’s thick skin. In the end his pursuers are left afloat or sinking to destinies of infamy which they all richly deserve.
Where is their quarry? What has become of their great and terrible enemy?
On Jan. 20, their nemesis enters the White House for a second time. Boy, they sure showed him.
The political weaponizations of America’s legal and federal law enforcement systems perpetrated for the sole reason of undoing Trump failed. The core corruption these efforts represent may yet be the death of the very agencies used in his pursuit. We cannot be a nation of laws if only some of which are enforced and then only against some of the citizenry.
Melville might well have been speaking about corrupt and power mad establishment aristocracies when he wrote, “In this world, shipmates, sin that pays its way can travel freely and without a passport; whereas Virtue, if a pauper, is stopped at all frontiers.”
Politics is a hotbed of sin and thus has no place for virtue, so we’ve been told. Shouldn’t we expect virtue, nonetheless?
Trump’s election victory is an unequivocal rejection of lawfare. Americans may never understand the legal ramifications of unconditional discharge, instead they know Trump’s victory is an unconditional surrender by progressives, liberals, and the all-out woke imposed by the American people.
As for me, I think I will take Melville’s attitude on the future under Trump’s second administration, “I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I’ll go to it laughing.”
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