Only a small step, keep marching

This is one of those comic illustrations that are burned into the brain of every person above a certain age. “Guilty, guilty, guilty” is the phrase that immediately came to my mind yesterday.

We felt a kind of glee at this rare occasion when a rich and powerful person gets the same justice we peons routinely experience, as they should. But take a moment and exercise your empathy: how would another rich and powerful person react to the demonstration that they could be held to account for their crimes? I know, I know! Let’s ask Elon Musk!

After Trump was found guilty on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in relation to a scheme to silence a porn star and unlawfully influence the 2016 election, Musk moaned that the history-making outcome of the trial is bad news for all Americans. “Indeed, great damage was done today to the public’s faith in the American legal system,” he wrote in a post on X.

Personally, my faith in the American legal system is far more shaken by Alito and Thomas and Roberts and the decisions of the Supreme Court that have privileged corporations, and the stock trading of our senators, and the thuggery of police officers. There have been many things in the past several decades that have eroded my confidence, and seeing a con man getting convicted in a jury trial of something he actually did isn’t one of them.

Musk’s comment came in response to another user who bemoaned that the first conviction of a former president had occurred not because of the “Iraq or Afghanistan wars, illegal CIA coups, drone striking weddings, or spying on Americans” but rather because “Trump misclassified a $130,000 payment for a porn star’s NDA.”

Musk apparently also saw Trump’s crimes as insignificant and questioned the legitimacy of the prosecution. “If a former President can be criminally convicted over such a trivial matter—motivated by politics, rather than justice—then anyone is at risk of a similar fate,” he wrote.

I agree in part that I would like to have seen more high officials convicted of their great crimes, and it’s terrible that they have such impunity. It’s pathetic that I have to accept justice for the little stuff — it’s like Al Capone getting convicted for tax evasion rather than racketeering and murder.

But wait — “little stuff”? What am I thinking? Paying $130,000 for the silence of a porn star is not a little thing to most people. That’s about two years salary, before taxes, for me! This is not a small crime to the majority of people in this country. That’s robbing your local bank money — not a gas station or 7-11 holdup, but hitting a up small business on payday. And the rich people think the sum is “trivial” or “insignificant.” Musk probably breaks into a cold sweat at the thought that he could be punished for a crime that represents the price of one cybertruck, rather than the millions and billions he has in his coffers.

My dream is to see every billionaire get their butts kick and their profits taxed heavily. A guilty verdict for Trump is just the first small step.