Fiction: Orville Baumgardner and Carrion Crows 2

 By James Hanna

“Dear Students of Stanford University Law School, thank you for inviting me to speak here today in this splendid auditorium. Since I am not an attorney, nor in any way vested in law, I am honored beyond words that you have invited me to speak here today. But words I shall seek since today I am determined to rival Mark Anthony, and I hope this foolish ambition will not wholly embarrass me. So please extend me the charity you might grant the most woeful of men and look upon me as Yeats’ rough beast whose hour is at hand.  

“Young man, you have a question, I see—your arm is high in the air. You wish to know what qualifies me to stumble from my lair. Good sir, I am a Republican Party castoff, a man who’s been stripped of his tribe—I am such a rare bird that the university feels I have something of value to say. 

“Alas, we live in perilous times—times so uncharted and bare that carrion crows have befouled a horizon that eagles alone once dared. And since these scavenging multitudes have banished me from their ranks, I now have every incentive to reveal their rakish pranks. So, allow me to give you my background, and that way, you shall see that no one is more familiar with carrion crows than me. 

“I was born in Castleberg, Indiana, sixty-two years ago, and I spent my childhood collecting stamps and gathering butterflies. No childhood excesses for me—I was utterly content to sit in the back of my classrooms and peek at Playboy mags. I attended Butler University where I in no way distinguished myself. Still, my gentleman’s Cs were sufficient to earn me a bachelor’s degree in economics. After graduating, I challenged the Democrat incumbent in State House District 54, and to my amazement, I won the seat with seventy percent of the vote. I do not attribute this to the power of my ideas but because I had the instinct to express no ideas at all. Ideas are invariably half-baked at their time of implementation, so I spent my time reading great books instead of proposed legislation. I daresay I have read over two hundred books, including all of Shakespeare’s plays, and I believe my talents would have been better served had I been a thespian. But instead, I chose to upstage my cronies and call them what they are: disciples of distraction and darlings of disarray.

“I wish I could say that a burning bush prompted my rebellion—that I cast off the yoke of servility because of divine inspiration. But, sadly, my turnabout was born from the merest of jealousies—from the fact that I, the most accomplished of bounders, was not handed my fair share of the plunder my fibs and embellishments enabled our party to steal. It was I who concocted the rumor that the dreaded COVID vaccine was injecting socialist dogma into unsuspecting brains. It was I who claimed that kiddie soccer was coached by pedophiles— perverts whose calling was not to teach soccer and nurture good sportsmanship but to march our dear boys to drag shows and turn them into queens. I even improved on the rumor that school shootings are staged events—I did this by assuring my constituents that the deep state wanted their guns so that government surgeons could storm their homes and make women out of men. So ingenious were my fables, so infectious my deceits, that I blush to confess that my docile supporters swallowed every word. How sad it is now to look back on myself as no more than a pickpocket’s shill, a raconteur whose gift for diversion and uninhibited tongue enabled the robber class to get away with its sleight of hand.

“And so, the topic I have chosen to share with you today is the fibs of minions more artful than me in the art of skullduggery. I speak of those black-plumed scavengers who clutter the balcony where justice is thrown to us peons below like chaff from a threshing machine. But don’t be surprised by the myriad freedoms this flock is determined to steal, for surely they showed us what they were when they made their Faustian deal. ‘We did not lie to get our positions!’ these indignant jurists insist, to which I reply that had they not lied, their sponsors would have cast them adrift.

“So now, I shall speak of the ruling these birds of foul feather hatched to shield our Mussolini from the fallout of his acts. I shall lay bare the convolutions this document contains—twists that ensure that only the specter of justice will remain.

“Now to stay out of the graveyard of bad ideas, a usurper must honor three rules—rules which those kleptos of history who failed to finish the job supplanted with a pomp that made them targets to angry mobs. But, after reading this Court’s postulations on the reach of immunity and after struggling to make sense of its impenetrable legalese, I say without reservation that this quasi-judicial tool has risen to the occasion by satisfying all three rules.   

“Firstly, a lie must offer the ghost of legitimacy—an assurance to those it swindles that the authors of the scam are not flatterers to plutocrats but cultivated men. The ruling meets this condition with over a hundred pages of glitz—writing consisting of decorative but inaccessible text. Consider these passages penned by the glib majority—phrases of such eloquence that they chill all scrutiny: ‘A president is entitled to presumptive immunity for all his official acts.’ ‘There is no immunity for unofficial acts.’ ‘Determining when prosecution may proceed requires careful assessment.’ 

“How regal these sentences sound to an uncultivated ear, but what they actually mean is in no way clear. The ruling wields hazy abstractions to differentiate such flaws as may fall under the cloak of the Constitution or be subject to criminal law. It raises many more questions than it claims to have addressed, so it appears to have left us with an indecipherable mess. Dear students, I weep when I think of the justice this ruling will hold up, but the thief in me applauds it as a cryptic masterstroke. 

“Young lady, you have a question, and may I humbly say that the slingback pumps you are wearing complement your thighs. You wish to know if I tremble when my former colleagues cry that I am a friend to anarchy and a traitor to my tribe. Ah, given the chance, I am sure those scoundrels would place my neck in a noose, but although I am truly a turncoat, I am no longer a traitor to truth. So let me boldly continue with what I have come here to say, and I hope that if comeuppance finds me, it will come on another day.

“So, what is the second of the three rules a flimflam must obey if it is to ensure its survival and not be swept away? If it hopes to prevail, a sham must have plausible deniability—the capacity to claim that its draconian plans were not trumpeted at all. Let me repeat that this ruling is founded on ever-shifting sands—that hardly a single example betrays its dictatorial aims. When naysayers claim that its heir now has license to stage a military coup or assassinate a political rival and pay no price at all, those who have opened the door to such deeds need only shake their heads and accuse their rash detractors of histrionic fibs. ‘Show us where we have stated such nonsense?’ they only need to exclaim and then they can credibly claim for themselves the innocence of lambs. Ah yes, the fall of democracy is lurking within its text, but when it comes to disguising its dark intent, this ruling is a masterpiece.

“I see that another of you has a question. Yes, young man, state your piece. You wish to know what the country can do to thwart this pack of cheats. Sadly, we have been hogtied. We have fostered such factional woes that we are a republic no longer but meat for carrion crows. And so, we must stand and listen to the condescending taunts of those who have seized the right to stall justice and accept all the bribes they want. So let me discuss the third of the rules these thieves have so deftly obeyed, and you will better understand what has spawned their monopoly.

“To nullify a populace and take away its voice, a liar must first convince it that it has an actual choice. The ruling accomplishes this by dignifying those deeds that clearly aren’t official acts but illegalities. ‘Ah,’ cry the justices, ‘these cannot go to trial without a Constitutional blessing, and so we remand them to the original court for further definition.’ Of course, they fail to mention that, if the lower court stands its ground, these matters will boomerang back to them on a flood of bogus appeals. And so, by distracting us with the ghost of deliberation, the Court has granted itself alone all ultimate decisions. Good students, the scoundrel in me applauds this magical sleight of hand, but I howl when I think that this pack of thieves is now totally in command.

“My time is up, good students. I believe I have said my piece, and I hope one day you might rise like a phoenix and purge the land of these cheats. For myself, I shall honor Bob Zimmerman’s forecast and go where a hard rain is falling—where pellets of poison are hammering the waters and the executioner’s face is well hidden. And there I shall perch on the baldest of hills and prophesize our doom, but if any of you still have questions, I shall wait at the back of the room.”

 

James Hanna is a retired probation officer and a former fiction editor. His work has appeared in over thirty journals, including Crack the Spine, Sixfold, and The Literary Review. His books, all of which have won awards, are available on Amazon.