Initial reaction to Trump's indictment

 What is your goal?  To ask the Shadow question, rather than the Vorlon question (apologies for the outdated and obscure geek reference), what do you want?  Donald Trump will not be convicted, particularly not on the hush money charges.  To reiterate my central argument, no prosecutor can keep all Republicans off a jury, and no Republican juror will vote to convict Donald Trump.  When the Mar-a-Lago Papers scandal broke, I thought there might have been a chance of a conviction on those charges, but once Biden's attorneys found papers at the Penn Biden Center, and his own house, the politics of that changed because to Republican eyes, they are the same thing.  No Republican will vote to convict Trump, and these are not even close to the most serious charges, nor is the evidence as damning.

What do you want?  If your goal is the salvation of American democracy, your goal is the Republican Party divided against itself, and more specifically, divided on Donald J. Trump.  What just happened?  Even Trump's 2024 opponents for the nomination feel forced to rally to his defense.  The greatest danger to American democracy the cult of Donald Trump, and the risk that in 2024, they succeed where they failed in 2020.  By unifying the party around him and strengthening his grip on the party, based on charges that cannot possibly stick, this backfires.  Don't unify your enemies.  Divide them.

And because it's Friday, here's some jazz.  First up, David Gilmore (-re), the title track from Unified Presence.  Then, Nicole Mitchell's "Shiny Divider."