welcome to the United States of Sweeping It the Fuck Under the Rug

holding Donald Trump accountable came this close to not happening

finally, Donald Trump is being held accountable for his actions, and watching it all unfold is satisfying as fuck.

but let’s not forget that it almost didn’t happen.

Merrick Garland had to be dragged kicking and screaming into investigating Trump’s crimes. he really didn’t want to do it. he didn’t want to appear “partisan.” it wasn’t until the January 6th Committee laid out their compelling case for prosecuting Trump that Garland was virtually embarrassed into appointing Jack Smith.

it came that close to not happening.

because that’s what we do in America.

when ugly shit goes down, when there’s a national stain, there’s never a reckoning. we never deal with it. we never process.

we sweep it the fuck under the rug.

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Barack Obama, his hands are dirty, too. when he came into office, he wanted nothing to do with prosecuting the previous administration’s architects of torture.

let’s not open those old wounds. let’s not have any unpleasantness. that’s in the past, let’s move forward.

hope! change!

and so John Yoo and George W. Bush and all the blood-spattered fucks responsible for Gitmo and Abu Ghraib and black rendition sites will never be called to account for their crimes. they will never face consequences.

we swept it the fuck under the rug.

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let’s go back a bit farther.

Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon and declared that “our long national nightmare was over” — but our national nightmare was only beginning.

because Nixon never faced a full accounting of his crimes, or bore any responsibility for them, Americans were denied the knowledge of the depths of his arrogance, and the satisfaction of seeing justice served — and future presidents learned that there was a path to getting away with it.

with a magical wave of his hand, Gerald Ford paved the way for George W. “The Constitution Is Just A Piece Of Paper” Bush, Ronald “Iran-Contra” Reagan and Donald “Just Find Me 11,780 Votes” Trump.

we swept it the fuck under the rug.

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now let’s go back to the granddaddy of American sin — the enslavement of generations of black people. we really never had a national reckoning over that, we just let white bygones be white bygones and to this day we pretend the Civil War was fought over some nebulous “preservation of the noble southern way of life,” completely glossing over the ugly truth that the “southern way of life” was owning human beings and running an entire economy off the backs of their forced labor.

we’ve taken a horrible reality and replaced it with a bullshit technicolor fairy tale of happy negroes whistling while they work, living in some Gone With the Wind fantasy of benevolent masters and their grateful slaves.

and so the south has their statues of Confederate war heros traitors, and fascists like Ron DeSantis pass legislation to suppress teaching the truth.

we swept it the fuck under the rug.

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South Africa held Truth and Reconciliation hearings to have a national reckoning and deal publicly with the horrors of apartheid.

in Germany, they teach their schoolchildren about the Holocaust, and they don’t pull any punches.

but not here in America. in America, we fire teachers who tell uncomfortable truths.

just sweep it the fuck under the rug and forget about it.

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so three cheers for Jack Smith. and three cheers for Fani Willis. and three cheers for Tanya Chutkan and Alvin Bragg and Letitia James and all the prosecutors and judges who are refusing to sweep it the fuck under the rug.

thank you.