The Republican candidate (possibly the leading candidate in general) for the Presidency of the United States of America is a convicted felon. Now… before I get in too deep… I am in no way throwing stones as I kneel here and type this from my glass house… but between the chatter between the guys in here and the dialogue in my own mind about the current landscape of how our criminal justice system and our political systems are colliding… I couldn’t write about anything else this week.
From inside these walls… I can somewhat understand the need for guys to feel comfort in the fact that a presidential candidate is now “one of us”. It helps soothe their own guilt from whatever they did to land themselves here by thinking… “Well… he did it so I’m not the monster they tell me that I am.” I do not personally agree with this practice but I understand it. I have heard things such as… “This conviction was just a political move. He didn’t really do anything wrong so who cares” or “Yeah… he lied about making a payment or changed some documents to hide where the money came from… but seriously… everyone in a position of power does sh*t like that”. These, though, are sentiments coming from currently incarcerated people… convicted felons. The problem is… this same rhetoric and nonchalance about a presidential candidate being a convicted felon is being said and believed outside these walls as well. That… is an extremely interesting and rather scary reality to wrap my head around. And more importantly… one that we as a society need to evaluate and figure out how we got to this place of complacency in positions of power especially when the person in question is “our person”.
And then I saw him walk out of the courthouse… after he was just convicted of 34 felony counts… with his hands in the air giving fist bumps to the world and declaring that our criminal justice system is broken and that he will begin his fight to appeal the conviction. I’m sitting in the TV room of a federal prison myself… watching this man with millions of loyal followers throughout this country in an almost celebratory mood on this historic day. It was mind blowing. Not only by the fact that he behaved this way (which was honestly not surprising) but more about what this whole situation says about the current state of our society. How is it that we can have a leading presidential candidate (who happens to be the former actual president) become a convicted felon and still be blindly followed… supported… loved and in some parts of the country worshipped? While in the same instance… I sit next to guys in here that were caught with less than a handful of illegal controlled substances and have been vilified and sentenced to mandatory minimum sentences of 10 years or more. How do we as a society justify the subjectivity of our thoughts… of our opinions and ultimately our prison sentences that are cast upon and handed out to individuals who put themselves at the defendants table in the court room? There is supposed to be uniformity to our criminal justice system… if a citizen commits a specific crime… he or she is punished for that crime the same way the person down the street would be or the person across the country. A punishment independent of who this person is or the number of times his or her name has appeared in press releases. This goes for the villainization of individuals as well… we find comfort in pointing the finger at someone else and saying “Well at least I’m not as bad as him”… “He is bad and I am good”. But when the bad guy happens to be the guy that we want to see win… we allow ourselves to show grace. And when the bad guy is the “other guy”… send him away and try to forget that he ever existed.
Overall… I don’t think anyone in here or out there is surprised by the outcome of the trial or the reaction and actions of the candidate or society that followed. It is just an interesting vantage point that I find myself in behind the walls looking outward at the whole thing… being one of “them” myself and trying to make sense of the rocky (at best) political and social landscape that we current inhabit. It will certainly be an interesting 5 months ahead…
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What is the message to our younger generations when now the President is a convicted felon?