The unnamed narrator [in Edgar Allen Poe’s short story “The Pit and the Pendulum”] is brought to trial before sinister judges of the Spanish Inquisition, charged with offenses that are never stated. As seven tall white candles on a table slowly burn down, the narrator feels his hopes of survival diminishing as well. He is condemned to death, whereupon he faints and later awakens to find himself in a totally dark room. At first the prisoner thinks that he is locked in a tomb, but then he discovers that he is in a cell. He decides to explore the cell by placing a scrap of his robe against the wall so that he can count the paces around the room, but he faints before he can measure the whole perimeter.
When he reawakens, he discovers food and water nearby. He tries to measure the cell again, and finds that the perimeter measures one hundred steps. While crossing the room, he trips on the hem of his robe and falls, his chin landing at the edge of a deep pit. He realizes that had he not tripped, he would have fallen into this pit.
After losing consciousness again, the narrator discovers that the prison is slightly illuminated and that he is strapped to a wooden frame on his back, facing the ceiling. Above him is a picture of Father Time, holding a pendulum measuring "one foot from horn to horn". The pendulum is swinging back and forth and slowly descending, designed to kill the narrator eventually. However, he is able to attract rats to him by smearing his bonds with the meat left for him to eat. The rats chew through the straps, and he slips free just before the pendulum can begin to slice into his chest.
The pendulum is withdrawn into the ceiling, and the walls become red-hot and start to move inwards, forcing him slowly toward the center of the room and into the pit. As he loses his last foothold and begins to topple in, he hears a roar of voices and trumpets, the walls retract, and an arm pulls him to safety. The French Army has captured the city of Toledo and the Inquisition has fallen into its enemies' hands.
“The Pit and the Pendulum”, Wikipedia article
I read this story in high school, but I have to admit it didn’t affect me much. It seemed bizarre, frankly, and besides, there was a cute guy in my English class and I was distracted. But as I watched the news evolve this week, I was reminded of this story when I thought that “the walls are closing in” for the former president.
In this metaphor, the narrator is the former guy, the pendulumis Jack Smith, and the walls are Fani Willis (Fulton County GA DA). If the pendulum doesn’t slice you to ribbons, the walls will shove you into the pit. TFG has tried mightily to avoid the pendulum by feeding the rats in an effort to escape. He escapes the pendulum, but then the red-hot walls begin to move in, and he realizes that falling into the pit is unavoidable. (The metaphor is a bit tortured, but go with me here.)
The narrator in this story is improbably saved from the Spanish Inquisition by the French Army; the former guy can expect no such deus ex machina. The walls are closing in on him, and there’s no escaping it. He’s going to be sliced up the pendulum or shoved into oblivion by the walls.
For those of you who continue to moan that he and his allies are going to get away with everything, shouting that the DOJ is DOING NOTHING, we need to remember that the only Attorney General to serve jail time for misdeeds in office, Nixon’s Attorney General John Mitchell, went to jail in 1977 for crimes he committed in 1972. He wasn’t arrested and charged until 1975. Momentous acts like criminally charging top government officials must be done cautiously and thoroughly.
So what walls are closing in around TFG?
Well, Special Counsel Jack Smith is charged with investigating two crimes – the Fake Electors scheme (otherwise known as The Big Lie) and the Mar-a-Lago documents case. Both of those cases seem to be moving along. Within the last week, Smith has subpoenaed former Vice President Mike Pence and TFG’s Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. Meadows cooperated with the January 6 Committee until he didn’t; Pence had claimed a variety of bogus privileges to escape accountability thus far, but legal experts say that he won’t be able to dodge investigators forever.
Meanwhile in Georgia, Fulton County DA Fani Willis is continuing her investigation into whether TFG and his allies broke Georgia law with their Fake Electors scheme. Yesterday, a Georgia judge released the report of the special grand jury charged with hearing evidence on this case. The report, which was published without naming potential defendants in order to protect their right to a fair trial, nonetheless drew two conclusions: there was no evidence of voter fraud in Georgia sufficient to overturn the election results (no, there weren’t 11,780 votes for Brad Raffensperger to find, despite TFG’s pathetic phone call), and unspecified people lied to the grand jury. Indictments will follow.
In New York City, there are at least two cases involving TFG. One involves a hush-money payment made to porn actress Stormy Daniels in 2016. His former attorney Michael Cohen, who has now testified 16 times during this investigation, went to jail in 2018 for his role in this. The indictment that eventually sent him to prison also implicated an unnamed person “Individual #1” as bearing responsibility for this crime. Individual #1 was called as an “unindicted co-conspirator” and identified only as “a recent candidate for the Presidency.” You do the math. The only reason they did not indict TFG at the same time was because of a long-standing DOJ rule against indicting sitting presidents.
In the other New York City case, Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg was successful in December 2022 in convicting two subsidiaries of the Trump Organization of multiple crimes, including tax fraud, falsifying business records, and conspiracy. Allen Weisselberg, former CFO of the organization, was personally charged in this case and found guilty. He will serve five months in jail for his role in this case. The relatively light sentence (given the magnitude of the fraud) is most likely due to his willingness to cooperate with prosecutors. This means that the officers of the organization – TFG and his adult children – are in peril.
Meanwhile, in Albany (150 miles north of Manhattan), the New York State Attorney General Tish James is continuing her investigation into TFG’s finances. She has filed a lawsuit claiming that TFG engaged in a variety acts of financial fraud to obtain economic benefits – lower taxes, beneficial terms for bank loans, and the like. This suit claims that TFG and his adult children (Junior, Ivanka, and Eric) all engaged in this fraud. The suit seeks relief by permanently barring all defendants from serving as an officer in any New York corporation and prevents the organization from entering into any New York real estate acquisitions for five years.
On another front, Dominion Voting System’s defamation lawsuit against Fox News is proceeding nicely. This week, texts were introduced in court showing that the “news” organization knew that TFG and his allies like Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani were lying when they made claims about vote rigging and identified Dominion as the problem. At the same time that the Fox “personalities” (I won’t call them journalists) were communicating privately that these claims were all bogus, they were on the air pushing a variety of theories about the “stolen” election and encouraging people to join the “Stop the Steal” rally on the ellipse on January 6, 2021. The rally and the subsequent attack on the Capitol Building would not have happened if Fox had not been involved.
NOTE: It is important to recognize that the primetime shows on Fox are run by the organization’s entertainment division, not its news bureau. These are entertainers, not journalists. They are interested only in ratings and profitability
And for those of you who say, “well, MSNBC and CNN are just Fox ‘News’ for the liberals,” that’s not accurate. The two left-leaning news operations are staffed by journalists who employ dozens of fact-checkers, and they do not casually lie on the air. They have a liberal bias in the news they highlight, and their interpretations are generally more friendly to liberal interpretations of events, but they don’t lie with impunity. They have not had a multi-million dollar lawsuit filed against them for lying and thus inspiring a mob to attack the Capitol and prevent the peaceful transition of power. Just sayin’.
Let’s be clear. After a lifetime of f**king around, TFG is discovering the “find out” part of life. Because of his wealth and shady character, he has f**ed around his entire life without consequences. Now that he’s facing consequences, he’s lashing out at anyone and everyone that he can blame instead of taking accountability himself. During his presidency and its aftermath, he has forever stained the Republican Party. They won’t be able to recover from him. Right now, two candidates have declared that they are running for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination.
TFG filed because he thinks being a candidate will protect him from prosecution;
Nikki Haley filed because she wants to be the “term normal” candidate to oppose “team crazy.”
In addition, Ron DeSantis and Mike Pence are lurking as they plan to announce later this spring.
Here’s the problem for all GOP candidates these days: if they are on TFG’s side, they alienate mainstream Republicans. If they are on the anti-TFG side, they alienate the 30% rock-solid TFG base of voters.
The GOP will experience a series of blistering primary elections in 2024 as the party seeks to navigate the conundrum they created for themselves by becoming acolytes of TFG in the first place. TFG is encouraging people to enter the race – the more representatives of “team normal” who are in the hunt, the greater they will divide the anti-TFG vote, ensuring that he gets the nomination again. He almost broke the nation’s political institutions during his first term in office; we would not survive in any recognizable form if he served another term.
Great summation to date!
Excellent commentary and spot on.