America has become a Country of the Absurd

Reprinted, with permission, from ABSURARAMA! June 6, 2021.

In the United States, perhaps 50-70 million voters, including a vast majority of Republican voters and almost all Republican legislators and elected officials, are living in a fictional parallel universe ruled by Donald Trump.

Trump and his sycophantic supporters are earnestly embarked on a mission to enact state laws that will suppress the Democratic vote, particularly among African Americans and other minorities, and to amend state legislation in ways which will give Republican governors, legislatures, and other officials the tools they need to nullify or overturn the results of popular votes in future elections.

These developments represent an imminent threat to American democracy–imminent in the sense that they could thwart the people’s will as early as 2022, and could overthrow the true popular and electoral results in the 2024 presidential election.

Donald Trump led an attempted coup d’état following the November 2020 election, committed numerous election-related crimes after November 3, and through his four years in office committed numerous crimes involving obstruction of justice and other crimes for some of which he was impeached in 2019 and 2021, Nonetheless, the former president is allowed to militate openly in support of the delusional alternate universe and propaganda bubble which keeps him in the public eye. His public appearances are reported with excerpts on top television programs. His co-conspirators are interviewed and reported on as if they were legitimate political leaders who support democracy.

It as if some foreign country that is an enemy of democracy had launched a massive missile attack on the United States that unleashed a tasteless, odorless gas on the entire population, causing total amnesia regarding certain tenets of democracy and the rule of law.

One such bedrock principle of the rule of law is that crimes must be punished, suspected criminals must be indicted and tried, and, when found guilty, sent to prison.

In the absurd country which America has become, however, the feckless Democrats have become complicit in the Normalization of Impunity for high public officials who commit political crimes while in office.

If Trump gave us the Normalization of the Unthinkable and the Normalization of the Unforgivable, President Joe Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland have given us the Normalization of Impunity.

The scene is reminiscent of the situation in Medellín, Coloumbia in the 1980’s when Pablo Escobar, the notorious head of the Medellín Drug Cartel,lived undisturbed in his mansion in Medellín, and even undertook certain charitable activities to bolster his support among the population.

The situation in America is so absurd that one turns to one’s imagination to try to understand what is going on. One uses one’s imagination to enquire into what life in Germany might have been like if Adolf Hitler had not committed suicide in April 1945 and, even after Germany’s surrender to the Allies on May 8, 1945, had been allowed to militate for a resurgence of Nazism.  What might it have been like if, after a few years, Hitler had been allowed to propagate a second Big Lie, that Germany had not really lost World War II, but had only come under Allied Occupation as the result of a second “stab in the back” and the machinations of a massive worldwide Jewish Conspiracy?  What would it have been like if Hitler could have given interviews on the radio and in the press and held mass rallies in support of his resurgent Nazi party?

That, of course, would have been ABSURD!

What is going on–TODAY–in the United States is equally ABSURD!

America has become a Country of the Absurd, in which democracy is hanging by a thread.

The Moderator of the Absurd

About the Author

James Rowles
"The Trenchant Observer" is edited and published by James Rowles (aka "The Observer"), an author and international lawyer who has taught International Law, Human Rights, and Comparative Law at major U.S. universities, including Harvard, Brandeis, the University of Pittsburgh, and the University of Kansas. Dr. Rowles is a former staff attorney at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) of the Organization of American States OAS), in Wasington, D.C., , where he was in charge of Brazil, Haiti, Mexico and the United States, and also worked on complaints from and reports on other countries including Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Guatemala. As an international development expert, he has worked on Rule of Law, Human Rights, and Judicial Reform in a number of countries in Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, and the Russian Federation. In the private sector, Dr. Rowles has worked as an international attorney for a leading national law firm and major global companies, on joint ventures and other matters in a number of countries in Europe (including Russia and the Ukraine), throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, and in Australia, Indonesia, Vietnam, China and Japan. The Trenchant Observer blog provides an unfiltered international perspective for news and opinion on current events, in their historical context, drawing on a daily review of leading German, French, Spanish and English newspapers as well as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and other American newspapers, and on sources in other countries relevant to issues being analyzed. Dr. Rowles speaks fluent English, French, German, Portuguese and Spanish, and also knows other languages. He holds an S.J.D. or Doctor of Juridical Science in International Law from Harvard University, and a Doctor of Law (J.D.) and a Master of the Science of Law (J.S.M.=LL.M.), from Stanford University. As an undergraduate, he received a Bachelor of Arts degree, also from Stanford, where he graduated “With Great Distinction” (summa cum laude) and received the James Birdsall Weter Prize for the best Senior Honors Thesis in History. In addition to having taught as a Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School, Dr. Rowles has been a Visiting Scholar at Harvard University's Center for International Affairs (CFIA). His fellowships include a Stanford Postdoctoral Fellowship in Law and Development, the Rómulo Gallegos Fellowship in International Human Rights awarded by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and a Harvard MacArthur Fellowship in International Peace and Security. Beyond his articles in The Trenchant Observer, he is the author of two books and numerous scholarly articles on subjects of international and comparative law. Currently he is working on a manuscript drawing on some the best articles that have appeared in the blog.

2 Comments on "America has become a Country of the Absurd"

  1. Michael Mauldin | June 11, 2021 at 8:15 am |

    Absurd indeed!
    I like your thought experiment and the calling out of Biden and his AG.

  2. Michael Mauldin | June 6, 2021 at 4:54 pm |

    The TO is on Fire!
    You need to get these articles out into the world.
    Your words and logic are clear and forceful
    Ring the bell of freedom and keep telling the truth. Thank you TO.

Comments are closed.