In recent years, some people have put a new spin on the word petty. They use it as if being petty is a good thing: One example is Saints fans’ obsession with mocking the Falcons for blowing a big lead to the Patriots in Super Bowl LI. The word petty is sprinkled all over that event by Saints fans on social media. I dislike this twist on petty. To be petty is to be small minded. Who the hell wants to be small minded? Team MAGA, that’s who.
I’ve cut back on my cable news consumption but sometimes it’s worth switching on MSNBC. I saw Miles Taylor on Nicolle Wallace’s show on Tuesday. Taylor first came to my attention when he wrote a 2018 op-ed piece for the NYT, I Am Part Of The Resistance Inside The Trump Administration. Writing as Anonymous, he warned the country about the unfitness of Donald Trump to even take the White House tour let alone serve as POTUS.
Taylor abandoned his anonymity long ago. He’s now one of the individuals targeted by an executive order. His crime? Exercising his free speech rights to criticize the autocratic ways of Trump 2.0. This executive order violates the spirit and letter of the rule of law for as my legal hero Robert Jackson said in 1940 when he was Attorney General:
“While the prosecutor at his best is one of the most beneficent forces in our society, when he acts from malice or other base motives, he is one of the worst.
A prosecutor can have citizens investigated and, if he is that kind of person, he can have this done to the tune of public statements and veiled or unveiled intimations….The prosecutor can order arrests, present cases to the grand jury in secret session, and on the basis of his one-sided presentation of the facts, can cause the citizen to be indicted and held for trial.”
That’s the sort of pettiness that Miles Taylor is facing. Team Trump is so consumed with hatred for the artist formerly known as Anonymous that people were fired for attending Taylor’s wedding. I am not making this up.
Miles Taylor is standing his ground and refusing to give in to Trumpist pressure. He’s called for an investigation into the executive order targeting him. He knows it’s likely to be squelched by the MAGA DOJ Killer Bees, but he’s determined to fight back. It’s how everyone should approach Team MAGA: bullies only understand force and pushback.
Repeat after me: Appeasement never works.
In other petty news, Team Trump has opened a new front in its battle against Harvard College. They’re going after Harvard Law Review for alleged discrimination against white boys. They even have a so-called whistleblower who now works for Stephen Miller. I have no idea if this will go anywhere but as with Miles Taylor, the harassment is the point. They’re trying to scare people into silence. That makes me want to:
Wherever you live, whatever you do, don’t let these petty tyrants silence you. Never give an inch and don’t stop fighting. It’s neither easy nor pretty but it’s the way to combat autocracy. Trump’s dictator project has been damaged by his economic fecklessness; people have begun to notice that the Kaiser has no clothes. He’s cloaked in chaos and pettiness. There’s nothing pettier than revenge and vengeance is what the second Trump administration is all about.
The world needs more Miles Taylors and fewer Stephen Millers. The former looks at the big picture whereas the latter is petty, petty, petty.
Allow me to be petty for a moment. The law firms that caved to Trumpist extortion are losing business to firms that refused to surrender. I expected this to happen: who wants to hire an attorney who won’t fight? In a word: nobody.
The last word goes to Tom Petty with the perfect song for our time: