Donald J Trump, the 45th president of the United States of America, has been convicted in a court of law in the state of New York. He has been found guilty by a randomly chosen jury of his peers on 34 counts of falsifying business records to conceal payments that he made to a porn star in the run-up to the 2016 Presidential Election. Immediately after the verdict was rendered, Trump claimed that the system was unfair to him and was, in fact, rigged against him. He has indicated that he will appeal the judgment, which is his right to do.

Whatever one may say about the trial, any well-thinking person who followed it judiciously cannot help but conclude that the trial judge, Juan Merchan, did everything in his power to be fair to Trump. Some would argue that he bent over backwards to accommodate him and only imposed gag orders against him when it became quite obvious that Trump’s public statements against witnesses and others could impair the trial process and even bring harm to them. It was clear that the trial judge knew that he was not dealing with an ordinary person and appeared deferential to him as a past president of the United States. The jury took time to deliberate on the decision and in the end did not think that there was even one count that Trump was not guilty of. In the end, what was displayed was the triumph of the rule of law and of the long and cherished principle that no one, not even a rambunctious past president, is above the law.

Trump’s minions did not hesitate to line up behind their perceived messiah. Members of Congress from the Republican Party flayed what they described as an abuse of the judicial process. They believed that the justice department was weaponised to go after Trump. That it was an attempt by the Joe Biden Administration to smear him and make it impossible for him to win the presidential election. These charges are vacuous, misleading, and patently false. For close to 250 years, despite its flaws, the rule of law has functioned optimally in the US justice system.

Trump has got to be one of the most unfortunate people in the history of American jurisprudence to be singled out for special negative treatment by the law or have the system rigged against him to the extent that is being claimed. All of a sudden the justice system has gone rogue because of one man, who, in his career, has shown a penchant for skirting the boundaries of the law and has had to pay millions of dollars in fines in civil suits, one for sexual abuse of a woman, Eugene Caroll.

He is under three other major indictments, two federal and one in the state of Georgia. Each have compelling contexts that could land him in jail for the rest of his natural life if he should be found guilty. Could the system have been wrong so many times? When are sensible people going to realise that the single common denominator in wrongdoing in all these unrelated cases is Trump? Why is he so special that the justice system has to single him out for special punishment?

When former US President Bill Clinton was being hauled over live coals during the Monica Lewinsky scandal he did not attack the rule of law but the depredations of Republican politics that were arrayed against him. In the long history of the courts, many prominent Americans have had to face justice, but they never attacked the system or the rule of law, at least not to the extent that members of the Republican Party are now doing. And they are not mental retards who do not know better. What is their agenda? What is to be gained by trying to defend the indefensible?

Some have been rejoicing that Trump has got his comeuppance. For me, the vindication once again of the rule of law gives a measure of hope. But the country that has the world’s hopes in its hands has reached a pathetic stage when a former president has to be called to account in this way. And this person can very well return to the presidency at a later date. This is the real sad and pathetic part of this unfurling contempt of the American justice system. What seems absent to me in the Republican attack on the system is the blatant absence of a sense of shame from Trump and his soothsayers as well as his acolytes, who seem willing to do his bidding, no matter what.

It has been said that you can know a person by the company he or she keeps. Those who would want to defend Trump in his most egregious behaviour seem blind to what has happened to many others who have lost their livelihood and any reputation they had. They were willing to abandon any moral compass in servitude to Trump’s most gross excesses. Do they also claim that the system was rigged against them? One can be sure that in their most quiet and meditative moments they have to regret ever knowing Trump. America and the world are watching those who would want to break down every guardrail of decency and truth in loyalty to a perceived messiah who would rejoice at such destruction.

Trump lives in denial of his fallibility as a human being. He behaves as if the rules do not apply to him, for he can do no wrong. So it is never his actions that are at fault but some perceived enemy with whom he will have to get even when the time comes. It is precisely his belief in his own invincibility and infallibility that lands him in trouble; that has led to him now having been declared a felon; that caused him to have been impeached twice as president; that has him staring down the barrel of three more serious criminal indictments; that will continue to cause him to fall prey to the most insidious and dark areas of his being.

This is what happens to you when you lose a sense of shame. Shame, or conscience, if you will, is a self-regulating principle that protects one from one’s worst excesses as a human being. Lose that and you are left open to dark forces that will overtake you and render you helpless. Such a personality should never be given authority over people’s lives. It is even worse when such authority is authoritarian, autocratic, or dictatorial. America, you have been warned.

Raulston Nembhard

Dr Raulston Nembhard is a priest, social commentator, and author of the books Finding Peace in the Midst of Life’s Storms; Your Self-esteem Guide to a Better Life; and Beyond Petulance: Republican Politics and the Future of America. Send comments to the Jamaica Observer or stead6655@aol.com.