When writing about why it’s taking so long, I forgot to bring up the unpleasant problem within our military and police.
Before any major prosecutions can be launched, the DOJ and individual state and city governments need to identify and root out the Trumpist factions (or maybe even majority) in these organizations.
Two people unlikely to be surprised: my friend Andrea and I. Long before the vaccine was available, we were walking into Washington Square Park. For whatever reason, the park was full of cops. Almost none of them was wearing a mask. It was not comforting.
If we can assume the police attitude toward vaccines and mask-wearing is a fairly overt sign of Trumpism in the ranks, how confident can we be about the cops’ mandate to protect us from potential domestic terrorism? So that, too, has to be a consideration for the DOJ before it announces indictments which might provoke some crazy people — the ones who are publicly threatening a civil war.
And I’ve read about numbers of military men, mostly retired but not always, and cops who participated in the January 6 assault. The outrage among cops over BLM protests, discussions about reforming the police and resistance against getting the shots do not suggest to me that cops are living in our real world, where we need them to be.
Now, look, I do not have a paranoid bone in my brain, so I doubt any of these bad things is going to happen. But the DOJ can’t afford to be like me, a genetically endowed optimist.
So this, too, will take some time.