Shaming? Absolution? Jail? How to treat those complicit in Trump's wrongdoing [View all]
By MICHAEL HILTZIK
Among the glories of democratic government, the historian Jill Lepore wrote recently, are that after an election “the loser concedes without violence, and the winner accepts without vengeance.”
Lepore was right in her observation, but wrong in assessing its current implications for the U.S. She was arguing against a reckoning of Trump administration wrongdoing that takes the form of either a South Africa-style “truth and reconciliation commission” or criminal prosecutions.
Either option would inevitably become an instrument of partisanship, Lepore argues. She approvingly quotes Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden as warning that criminal prosecutions of Trump officials would be “probably not very ... good for democracy.”
“In the trade-off between prosecution and stability, Biden chooses stability,” Lepore writes. “Much of the left does not.” Her conclusion: Let history judge.
https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2020-10-30/jail-shaming-absolution-complicity-trump
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