By Edward M. Cook
Special to the Reporter
After a stretch of “chain smoking impeachment hearings,” as Jon Lovett said, with the addition of another Democratic presidential debate, I was a steaming mess of political addiction.
As a respite, we watched the 1982 David Mamet movie “The Verdict,” which set in Boston and stars Paul Newman as the burned-out lawyer Frank Galvin.
In the climactic scene, Galvin faces the jury to give his summary. His most important evidence has been thrown out –after the jury had heard it. All he has left to rely on is his belief that, in each of us, there is the desire to do the right thing. I was deeply moved by the pertinence of that scene, and of Mamet’s reflection on justice, to our present circumstances.
We are heading toward the trial of the century in Washington. The plaintiff is our democracy. The defendant is the cabal of power that has put the foundation of our republic on life-support. The jury is the United State Senate. As in the movie, the evidence has been seen by everyone, including the senator-jurors. The facts are not in dispute. I wish that every senator will review Frank Galvin’s summary to his jury:
“You know, so much of the time, we’re lost. We say, ‘Please, God, tell us what is right. Tell us what’s true.’ There is no justice. The rich win, the poor are powerless… We become tired of hearing people lie. After a time, we become dead. A little dead. We start thinking of ourselves as victims. And we become victims. And we become weak… and doubt ourselves, and doubt our institutions… and doubt our beliefs… we say for example, ‘The law is a sham… there is no law… I was a fool for having believed there was.’ But today you are the law. You are the law… And not some book and not the lawyers, or the marble statues and the trappings of the court… all that they are is symbols. Of our desire to be just… All that they are, in effect, is a prayer…a fervent, and a frightened, prayer. In my religion we say, ‘Act as if you had faith, and faith will be given to you.’ If we would have faith in justice, we must only believe in ourselves. And act with justice. And I believe that there is justice in our hearts.”
Those who defend justice, the Constitution, the rule of law, they must rely on facts, on rules, on honesty. The other side has no such constraints. Lying, breaking the law, refusing to abide by the rules, are their tools. They operate in the open without shame. The model for Trump and his supporters and co-conspirators, for all tyrants since the 1930s, is the overthrow of the Weimar Republic by the Nazis. In three years, that thriving liberal democracy was replaced by the most violent, vicious tyranny ever seen in history. Let us not forget that Hitler was elected to the Reichstag and legally made chancellor.
The difference between the movie jury and the Senate jury is that Frank Galvin was appealing to ordinary people while the Senate majority is made up of Republicans who are personally wealthy and/or represent those who are. Not even an idealist as brilliant as Paul Newman’s Frank Galvin will likely move that bunch, who believe that corporations are people, that women don’t have a right to choose, or that the Russians have been undermining democracy for the past ten years.
At the end of the 1787 Constitutional Convention, a Mrs. Powel of Philadelphia asked Benjamin Franklin, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” With no hesitation whatsoever, Franklin responded, “A republic, if you can keep it.”
Edward M. Cook is a Dorchester resident.
