The New Yorker in New Hampshire

 

In the mid 20th century, moving to New Hampshire from New York City or from Washington, DC or any other sophisticated urban environment might have been a leap into a backwater, something like the scene of Dr. Zhivago stepping off the train from Moscow, with his family, at the Varykino train station in the Urals: you were launched into another world, not alone, but surely disconnected from the people, values and ideas you had lived with before. 

Of course, with the internet, with podcasts, even with the old fashioned snail mail delivery to your rural mail box, you can read what they are saying, hear what they are thinking in Manhattan just as much as if you really lived there. After all, when I lived in Manhattan, did I ever have lunch with David Remnick or Jane Mayer? No. I heard what they were thinking the same way I do now: I read the New Yorker. I might as well have been in New Hampshire, for all the actual connection I had with the minds at the New Yorker.

But listening to the New Yorker's podcast about the January 6th committee and its recommendation to the Justice Department that Donald Trump be prosecuted for his crimes of January 6, I can only marvel at how marvelously disconnected these urban sophisticates are from the rest of the country, as opposed to the other way round.

Jane Mayer

Jane Mayer describes the actions of John Eastman, one of Trump's "lawyers" and she has to pause to gather her breath when she describes how he recommended Trump simply refuse to accept the results of the election, while admitting the case he would make to the Supreme Court would almost surely fail, and she says, almost choking at the enormity of the risk Eastman was taking: "He could be DISBARRED!"

Oh, the Horror!

Susan Glasser

Ms. Glasser added that Mr. Eastman had admitted he thought the Supreme Court would have rejected his argument as if that is the same thing as saying he did not believe in his argument or that he thought they would be correct in doing so.  And he had such stellar "credentials" having clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas! As if clerking for Thomas proves you have been molded in the most clarifying fires, and have a mind like tempered steel! He must have know what he was saying and advocating was wrong!

No, actually, Ms. Glasser, I don't think serving as a clerk for just any Supreme Court Justice makes you a legal scholar, or even a smart lawyer.

John Eastman on Jan 6

I tried to imagine Ms. Mayer, Evan Osnos and Susan Glasser having their conversation in a diner in the 14th Congressional district of Georgia, the one that sent Marjorie Taylor Greene back to Congress with a 65% mandate, after she informed her constituents that the wildfires in California were started by  space lasers devised by the Jewish bankers, the Rothschilds, and after she advocated for the execution of Nancy Pelosi.

Evan Osnos

"Sophisticate" means, at its essence, "knowing." It suggests a type of knowledge from worldly experience, which, when gained, allows one to operate in a setting where the stated rules of church and state are well known, but broken, and other rules which allow people to pursue their pleasures or their own ideas, really prevail.

So, in that sense, these New Yorkers are essentially unsophisticated because they know only their own world, their own rules.

What would Ms. Mayer have said to the woman who took my passport ID photos at the local Walgreen's, who told me the charge was $16.99, "Which ought to satisfy the government, which makes you do this but doesn't do anything for you."

"How's that?" I asked.

"Well, when has the government ever done anything for you? The government isn't good for anything."

"Oh, I think the government is good for a lot of things, like Social Security and Medicare," I replied. 

"Yeah, and they won't even pay for COVID tests any more," she retorted.

I hardly knew where to begin with that one, as it implied she thought it was the role of government to offer free COVID tests, and, in fact, I had just that day read the government was once again sending out free tests, so I said, "Well, the government got the COVID vaccines done in a year, which was amazing.

"Yeah, and I got three vaccines and still got COVID twice and my husband didn't get any vaccine and never got it. And COVID only had a 0.5% mortality rate."

"Closer to 1% with the first go round of the virus. And that would have meant 3 million dead," I rejoined.

"Yeah, well, have a nice day," she said.

So, what would Evan have had to say to her?

What these three lovely and intelligent people focused on was the 1000 witnesses, the slow, methodical accretion of evidence the committee had created and the obvious malfeasance of Trump.

What they seem oblivious to is what the Walgreen's clerk knows instinctively: The truth is, as Roy Cohn once told Trump, "Don't tell me about the law; tell me about the judge."

The law is just one long argument and as Mr. Trump knows well, the longer you extend the argument, the less likely you'll ever have to pay a price.

What counts, in the end, is how you are judged and that depends on who is doing the judging--the 14th Georgia or the New Yorker.