Donald Is No Cersei

For my own amusement and edification, I've been juxtaposing current events with my recent TV watching, trying to work through possibilities that I'm otherwise not reading about in the news.  These days I mainly watch TV while exercising, mostly the treadmill and then some light weights and other light exercises to break up the routine.  I'm on my second go round of Game of Thrones, in the middle of season 5, so just past the halfway point in the series.  This season introduces us to the Sparrows, a religious cult whose call is to weed out sin and corruption in the capital city, King's Landing.  They do this with very harsh methods.  I'll elaborate some on this below. 

Now I want to turn to President Biden's aspirations, to eliminate the civil war in our country, for all citizens to think of us as one people, and to come together to achieve goodness for the whole.  Those are noble aspirations and I support them.  But my normal skepticism makes me ask, can they be achieved?  If they can be achieved, what needs to happen under the present circumstances to get us there?  Are those things happening now?

I should point out that at the time of this writing we are less than one week into the new Biden-Harris administration. Most of the Cabinet member have not yet been confirmed by the Senate.  Indeed, Merrick Garland, who was chosen to be Attorney General, and is the most interesting potential Cabinet member from the perspective of this post, is not likely to be confirmed soon as the Hearings have not yet begun for his position.  Readers should recall that President Obama nominated Merrick Garland for the Supreme Court, but then Majority Leader McConnell refused to bring his candidacy to the Senate, saying that position should be filled by the next President.  That decision rubbed many people the wrong way, including me.  It hangs over the current nomination and confirmation process.  If we do get through Merrick Garland's confirmation, it will be interesting to see how his office proceeds in moving forward the Biden objectives.

Now let's consider the main idea of this piece.  Trump clearly committed sedition in stirring up the rioters on and before January 6.  He likely committed many other crimes, while in office and during the campaign in 2016.  So far he has been held accountable for none of the prior crimes, and it is unclear how the Senate Trial for the sedition will turn out.  What is clear is that Trump had many enablers, including many Republican members of Congress, but also those in the media who promoted his lies as truth, those in the tech world who gave him a social media platform to speak to his base and to the rest of the world, and high roller donors to the Republican party, who provided the glue to keep this all together. Whether any or all of these enablers are thus themselves guilty of crimes, perhaps as accessories after the fact, perhaps in some other capacity, I will leave to others.  Instead, here I want to argue that it is necessary for the Biden objectives to be achieved that these enablers own up to what they've done and do so in a straightforward way.  Then they must atone for this and do so in a way that is acceptable to all.

Will we get there without further concerted effort or is a current day version of Sparrows needed to "encourage" the enablers to find the right path?  This piece, Why McConnell Dumped Trump, suggests that there may now be a civil war within the Republican party.  The various corporate sponsors have pulled their funding as a consequence of the denial that Biden won the election and the January 6 attempted coup.  Those who represent corporate interests are on one side of the war.  The Trumpistas are on the other side.  If the corporate side feels a need to speak honestly about the time when they refused to recognize the Biden victory and then make various amends for the damage they have wrought, that might be enough.  But Republicans in Congress have been living in a world of denial and corruption.  To expect an honest accounting now may simply be too much to ask. 

Thus, the idea of 21st century Sparrows, whose aim is to fight corruption and blatant lying in public affairs, has some appeal, at least as a fantasy, especially if they can reform the public servants so they behave decently henceforth.  I want to note here that Sparrows would not otherwise have a political agenda; their entire objective would be focused on getting rid of the lies and corruption in politics. 

In Game of Thrones, the Sparrows kidnap very important people and then imprison them in the Sept, the physical home for their religion.  While the imprisonment is harsh, the harshness is needed to cleanse the souls of those imprisoned.  It seems to work, and the persons who go through the regime are changed in a fundamental way.  They no longer focus on their own needs and instead look to benefit others.  There is one exception to this, Cersei.  I don't want to be a spoiler.  Seasons 5 and 6 of Game of Thrones are worth viewing just for this part of the story.  (It is a many threaded show and there is much other intrigue going on at the same time that I won't write about here.)  

Cersei is Machiavellian in the extreme and in that sense is similar to Donald Trump.  But, to make sense of the title of this post, she does things with planning and forethought.  Trump seems much more impulsive and tends not to think things through very well, if at all. Even a very harsh regime might not fundamentally change someone who is so Machiavellian.  It may instead create an urge for revenge.  

I started to wonder what 21st century Sparrows look like and do.  I quickly found myself out of my element, so I'm not even going to try to sketch some alternative.  Others who read this piece might be able to offer up suggestions of how it might work.  So, instead, I will close with the following observation.  During Trump's Presidency, many of those who worked for the Executive Branch resigned in disgust, and likewise many of those in Congress did not seek reelection in 2018.  These people had some insider information, but didn't have a way to use it in a way to change the course of how things were done.  There are whistleblower laws, but they aren't sufficient to get this outcome.  Perhaps a current version of Sparrows could for based on those observations.