In Moby Dick, Ahab gathers his crew and intoxicates them with his desire for vengeance on Moby Dick, the whale he had hunted that took his leg and all peace from him. That fixation has poisoned his life. His need for vengeance is more important than anything – the lives of his crew, the investment in this voyage made by the owners of the Pequod, his own soul. Vengeance is the sun around which he circles.
I’ve been thinking about vengeance and about Jack Smith, the Special Counsel responsible for prosecuting Trump’s crimes in seeking to overthrow the government on January 6 and for hoarding top secret documents in a closet at Mar-a-Lago. Yesterday, Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, who also seems to be competing to be Trump’s Torquemada, said of Trump’s enemies, “The hammer of justice is coming.”
One must take his repeated threats to seek vengeance against his enemies seriously. He’s a 78-year-old man fueled by hatred who has been given control of Congress by his voters and who has a willing accomplice to his crimes in the Supreme Court. Age and its afflictions come for all of us, and even Trump must suspect that he doesn’t have much time left. He will seek to destroy his antagonists while he can. He has told us again and again that he is going to do so.
So – Jack Smith, all his assistant US attorneys, Judge Merchan, Judge Engoren, many FBI agents, all the US Representatives on the House Investigative Committee into January 6, especially Liz Cheney; Nancy Pelosi, Officer Michael Byrd, General Mark Milley and many other brother and sister officers in the Armed Forces and many whose names I do not know but who would be known by Joe Biden’s staff.
Biden has the absolute power of the Presidential Pardon. I hope he is drawing up a list of all those who put themselves on the line in an effort to seek the truth of Trump’s crimes, to seek justice and to save lives. As his last official act, Biden could save hundreds from persecution.
I sent an appropriately revised version of this in an email to the White House this morning*. It will be helpful if you do the same. Please. This is where the fight begins.
*Changing, names, pronouns, etc. — making it a direct address to the President.
