Trump will not be convicted. How will you maintain perspective and rationality?

 Donald Trump has committed among the most egregious criminal offenses ever committed by an American public official.  One must go back to the Civil War to find worse.  He will not be convicted.  Facts do not have any bearing, laws only matter when we, collectively, agree that they matter, and half the country decrees Donald Trump to be "axiomatically" innocent in all matters.  He will not be convicted.  Is this fair or just?  No.  The world is not, has never been, and will never be either.  What will you do?  How will you respond?

One question to ask in order to maintain perspective is this: how will Donald Trump's further evasion of justice affect you?  It may.  There are benefits to living in a society in which we collectively agree to live by laws, and there are costs when that agreement ceases to hold.  Just look at any city in which law enforcement has stopped, crime has surged, and quality of life has plummeted.  Law matters, and corruption matters.  Yet what specific effects will there be?  That is actually a much harder question.  Would we be in a better position if a dispassionate jury could evaluate the evidence and call a crook a crook in the case of the United States v. Donald J. Trump?  Yes, but the specific costs to you will be hard to state, as you ask yourself to state them.

Either way, you get up tomorrow morning and go to work, plan your studies if you are still a student, save and invest based on the premise that for-profit companies will continue turning a profit, and thus by doing what you should do anyway, you insulate yourself to the degree that you can from the stupidity and vileness of others.

Agency lies not in holding a sign, but in responsibility.