Copeland's Corner: August 25, 2023

One sinister picture may tell my granddaughter all she needs to know.

On Thursday, the world got a glimpse of something unprecedented in the 247-year history of the so-called “American Experiment.” For the first and only time, we saw a criminal mugshot of a former President of the United States for crimes committed in service of subverting a free and fair election. Legal accountability for what can best be described as a direct attack on our democracy. Truth be told, I don’t know what it is about this whole thing that scares me more: the fact that Donald Trump and his confederates attempted to pull of such an audacious coup or the fact that they almost got away with it.

I became a grandfather for the first time late last year and as I watch my baby granddaughter peacefully asleep in her crib, the question that goes over and over in my mind is, “How the hell am I going to explain this to her?” How am I going to explain how millions of her countrymen voted to elect a president who was recorded on audio bragging about sexually assaulting women? How can I help her understand that there was an attempt to bar people from entering our country because of the way they chose to worship their God? How will I make her comprehend babies put in cages and children separated from their parents with no plan for reunification and a million unnecessary deaths because of the politicization of wearing a mask and getting a shot?

How do I tell her how on our watch, a man a Manhattan judge literally labelled a rapist retained the support of hordes of brainwashed followers who, at his instigation, attacked the U.S. Capitol and went to jail for it while he relaxed at his Florida golf club?

What am I going to say when she asks me how a man twice endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan and white supremacist groups described “good people on both sides” when they clashed with those who wanted the statue of a Confederate traitor removed? What do I tell this little girl of color when she wants to know how the (former) leader of the free world openly referred to people who look like her as “racists,” “thugs” and “animals”? What do I tell her when she asks me how millions could stand by and cheer him on as he did it?

When she asks how the masses could disassociate themselves from their families and their friends to follow a person who has no friends and no family who hold anything but disdain for him? What do I tell a little girl who wants to know how a person could be so evil that he couldn’t even get a dog to be his friend?

Most importantly, how do I explain to her that the very autonomy over her own body and the fair administration of her Constitutional right to vote were stripped from her on my watch? How do I explain these things and so many more egregious and unconscionable things that have happened during this dark period in our history?

Maybe the answer to her questions will simply be that mugshot. That glowering photo of a man who has somehow lived for eight decades without a scintilla of accountability. That picture of a frightened little bully who is trying much too hard to look tough and ominous but can’t mask the fact that like all bullies, he is a coward. A coward who is deathly afraid of finally reaping what a lifetime of lying, stealing, cheating and gaslighting have sown.

Maybe, just maybe, I won’t have to explain anything to her at all because that one sinister picture will tell her all she needs to know.