Pardon me

Darius The Mede
Aug 28, 2017 · 6 min read
A bus that brought a group of undocumented immigrants from Phoenix to the 2012 DNC in Charlotte. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons (user: firedoglakedotcom)

Why do presidential pardons exist?

In another timeline — indeed, in all timelines other than the one currently engulfing Earth Prime — we remain blissfully indifferent to this question until November, like every year. President (NOT-TRUMP) will parade a turkey before the cameras. Those assembled in the Rose Garden chuckle. The turkey goes on its turkey way and everyone forgets about pardons for another year.

Alas, on Earth Prime, I fully expect our President to broadcast a live turkey slaughter, in which the unlucky bird, much like the winner of Shirley Jackson’s lottery, is de-feathered by a ravenous mob of “real news” acolytes, each plucking their own souvenir, before roasting the naked creature alive in a ritualized excrescence of warmed over KFC batter. But I digress.

The relative banality of the contemporary presidential pardon, until this past weekend at least, signals its vestigial nature. Pardons originate in a world we barely recognize anymore. Under the divine right of kings, the monarch was God’s representative on earth: Christlike in his dual nature as human being and vessel of unearthly power. When the king bestowed clemency, he was re-enacting Christ’s ultimate display of mercy at the cross.

I’m sure some MF’er has argued that displays of political mercy thus always double as — indeed, reduce to nothing more than — exhibitions of sovereign power. Be that as it may, Alexander Hamilton felt differently. To him, the presidential pardon was a necessary check in a world where “the criminal code of every country partakes so much of necessary severity” that it perpetually risks “wearing a countenance too sanguinary and cruel.” Faced with the Leviathan of the law, Hamilton argued, the people needed a President who could counter the creep of legislative bloodlust.

In America, then, presidential pardons don’t derive from a fantasy of divine right. They derive from a system of checks and balances that is, in theory, supposed to check tyranny in all its guises. Presidential mercy is not a passive-aggressive display of sovereign power. It is the will of the people, expressed through a president they elected, working to “serve the public welfare…by inflicting less than what the judgment fixed.” And I would argue that this egalitarian form of mercy, as a picture of the Christ story, supersedes its monarchical predecessor. The Gospel was always about God expressing Godself in the human victim of Leviathan. About a deity who spurned the imperial throne, who delivered mercy from the electric chair, so complete was his identification with the ones crushed by the state.

Crushed at the border, perhaps.

With all this in mind, what are we supposed to do with the fact that, under cover of Harvey, Trumpbird just pardoned one of the most vicious law enforcers this country has ever known? A person in whom zeal for torture, maniacal prejudice against Latinos, and indifference to child molestation converge like the constituents of a perfect storm?

Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio’s pardon is not simply a travesty of Justice. It is a travesty of Mercy. It perverts the essentially egalitarian basis for the presidential pardon, and in doing so, bestows mercy on a man whose crime consisted entirely of mercilessness.

The bitter irony is that Arpaio, Monster of Maricopa County, completely embodies the “sanguinary and cruel” excesses of Leviathan. This is a man who housed pretrial detainees in a self-described “concentration camp,” parading them in chains before the cameras, with garments clearly labeling them as “UNSENTENCED.” A Captain Ahab so fixated on his (non)white whale that he diverted resources away from 400 unsolved sex crimes, and continued to hunt his prey in contempt of court. He wasn’t convicted for nothing.

Some will say that presidents have always abused the powers of pardon. Fox News devotees will no doubt cite Clinton’s soft spot for Mark Rich. Disillusioned liberals may point to Ford pardoning Nixon. Yet we lose too much if we downplay what has taken place. In addition to legitimizing racism — an obscenity about which much has been eloquently written already— Trumpbird’s pardon stokes the very bloodthirst that presidential pardons were intended to deny. His “mercy” nakedly celebrates institutional mercilessness, just like his populist appeals disempower the people.

When I started this post, I was angry. Reading about the details of Arpaio’s crimes, I sifted through the mountain of incriminating evidence to a steady crescendo of fury. Nothing unusual about such a tableaux: outrage is the lifeblood of our resistance. And, to a degree, it should be. But the more I reflect on mercy and its total distortion at the hands of Trumpbird, I realize I’m more determined than angry.

I’m determined not to let these power drunkards sap my love of mercy.

I won’t let them bully me into accepting the persecution of immigrants and Latino citizens as the inevitable outcome of a ruthless legal code.

I won’t let them bully me into staying silent as this legal code is relaxed for fratboy rapists and xenophobic demagogues, but not for those they terrorize.

But I also won’t let them bully me into hating them, thereby affirming their vindictive creed. I will not let my anger blot out the people in the background of the photo below, while magnifying the moral ugliness in its foreground.

Getty Images

When those people become vague occasions for raging against the machine, they are dehumanized twice over, pawns in a game I’d rather not play.

So I will not be exhausted by hatred of a 71-year-old manchild in the grip of early onset dementia. Nor by hatred of his 85-year-old totem of white supremacy, who, barring an act of divine grace, will likely pass from his rapidly approaching death to the lowest circle of hell. (Do I speak metaphorically? Let’s save that question for another day.)

I will continue to cherish the example of people like the members of Fort Smith, ARK’s Al-Salam mosque, who asked for leniency on behalf of the young man who defaced their house of worship with a swastika. I will choose not to see their act of mercy as a mere means of catalyzing white enlightenment, as the Times article on the case subtly suggests. I will instead venerate their mercy as a radical reclamation of the presidential pardon, a sign of ordinary citizens doing the job that Trumpbird has thoroughly botched.

Closer to my own faith tradition, I will sit at the feet of Emanuel AME’s heroes, who stood before Dylan Roof at his bond hearing and proclaimed forgiveness to the racist who slaughtered their loved ones. I will not reduce their mercy to the Nietzschean lens of weakness resenting strength. I will learn from it, as a sign of triumph over the force that sought to destroy them. I will see their mercy as the very foundation of justice, not a distraction from the same.

Sure, I’ll join the resistance in opposing this injustice. But ersatz mercy won’t fool me into abandoning the real thing. The real thing is what prevents the Arpaios of the world, and the Prosecutor they serve, from getting the last laugh.

Anger at the oppressor is deceptive fuel for action; it burns brightly and depletes quickly. Desiring mercy for the oppressed, and even for the oppressor, is a quieter engine. But it grows stronger over the long haul. Let us resist in mercy’s name, anticipating the day when these turkeys are toppled from their pedestals, disarmed at last, cowering before the terror of our compassion.

Darius The Mede is a stranger in a strange land.

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