Dimwits

Having said that, we however “should not start from good old (or future) things, but from bad new things,” to quote notable author Berthold Brecht.

And, one bad new thing that quickly popped up is the fact that it didn’t take long for some senator-judges to swiftly and totally dispense with being judicious or impartial.

On the trial’s first day, some senator-judges, by obviously playing tag with the defense, quickly made the trial about themselves. The senator-judges themselves were on trial as the Veep. A turn of events that jarringly reminds us that the impeachment trial is more about politics than justice.

And that the judicial process, which really is only supplementary to the whole impeachment exercise, is there for politicians to play around with toward a historic political outcome — that is whether or not the Veep is still fit to hold office or some other higher office.

How did we get duped?

Perhaps the answer lies in the fact that some of the senator-judges put a premium on strict legal technicalities rather than on the liberalities of political narratives.

In other words, legalities were convenient weapons to distort rather than clarify a largely political impeachment exercise, wherein probable pieces of evidence were either quickly dismissed as inadmissible or labeled as “chismis.”

A turn starkly shown on the eighth day of the trial when a hyper-ventilating senator-judge openly berated, without basis, the House prosecutors “to do their job” with regard to the affidavit of the NBI chief and pursue a lead into the alleged assassination threat against the President, a national security issue. The senator-judge’s “lost notes” had the effect of being treated as a joke.

Still, granting that judicial requirements temper emotional narratives, the proceedings showed how weaponized things could get.

A shortcoming graphically shown when a chill House prosecutor effortlessly lectured a non-practicing, stubborn lawyer/senator-judge that “subpoenas are not findings of guilt. These are instruments for discovering evidence. A court cannot determine whether evidence proves or disproves allegations if it refuses to obtain that evidence,” as a viral social media post put it.

“That is elementary litigation. In every civil case, criminal prosecution, administrative proceeding, and impeachment trial, courts routinely issue subpoenas precisely because the purpose of a trial is to examine evidence, not to avoid it.”

An embarrassment which another critical senator-judge said was too much: “I have attended many court trials, especially during my law enforcement days. I never witnessed a counsel, either for the prosecution or defense, lecture a judge on the Constitution, Rules of Court and leading jurisprudence. Awkward and shameful.”

The same senator-judge also salted the festering wound, declaring that “when the prosecution and defense lawyers are good, it’s nice to listen, we learn a lot. The problem is when a dim-witted senator-judge comes in, it’s just plain stupid. Win some, lose some.”

As the old adage goes, in a village there is always one — the idiot.