Timeout
The modern world is all about near constant engagement with media and outside stimulation. I read more and more about the growing crisis about youthful mental agitation which pre-dated COVID, but was clearly ratcheted up by the Pandemic. The growing amount of mental disruption and distress is particularly acute in young people who get a disproportionate amount of their interactions through social media. It used to be that difficult interactions among youngsters took the form of hitting or hair-pulling. When I was a kid, the punishment was usually something like making a perpetrating offender sit in the corner, perhaps with a dunce cap. I’ve never actually seen a dunce cap, but it was always easy to imagine it as a way of saying that the child was being stupid and needed to be both the recipient of corporal punishment (presumably the discomfort of sitting in the corner), stimulation punishment (idling the twitching nerves of the child by making him/her sit still for any period of time) and psychological punishment by labeling the child as a dunce for allowing himself to lose control and color outside the lines of the schoolhouse norms.
In the same way that the dunce cap became discredited as perhaps too image scarring for young children, negative labeling also being deemed too harsh, banishment to the corner itself became a bit too severe. Instead, we invented the timeout as the kinder and gentler form of punishment that took the form of a more enlightened version of the corner sit. A timeout was a way to force children to think hard about what they had done and how they could do better in their social interactions. It removed the solitary confinement of the corner, but did separate the child and give them a quiet moment for reflection. Needless to say, not being forced to stare into a corner allows the offender to sit and make faces to the crowd or just the universe at large if they choose, but does impose on them a mandate of silence. I wonder whether anyone has ever challenged this punishment as an impingement on free speech? Does a child even have the right to free speech? I think it is a fair question given that the lines for unalienability of rights is being challenged on many stages, not the least of which is that of fetal life. If an unborn fetus that has a heartbeat has rights, shouldn’t a child who is in development as a fully-formed individual have the rights of a citizen, perhaps not ones that are age-dependent, like voting, but general ones like that of free speech?
We have all been watching the Trump trial in Manhattan and it is like a circus in that there is a center ring formed at this point by the witnesses being called by the prosecution and available for cross-examination by the defense team. There is at least one side ring in this circus and it is the gag order sideshow. In this case that gag order has had several chapters to it. The first is that Trump’s social media and podium remarks sparked the judge to restrict him on his comments about court officers (other than the judge himself and the DA), families of court officers (Trump feels the need to delve into the political affiliation of family members), witnesses and both selected and prospective jurors. The view is that these comments by Trump have and can lead to threats and violent actions that can adversely affect the proceedings and the fairness of the judicial process. The last few years we have seen very serious repercussions come from the rabid end of the Trump base from these sorts of unfettered comments by Trump. Almost all judicial scholars and observers have noted that the claims that this sort of gag order, even on a past president and current candidate for the presidency, does not constitute protected free speech and that the First Amendment protections do have limits that fit easily within the confines of the gag order. Needless to say, the judge has been very measured in his establishment and adjustment to the gag order. Once Trump blatantly breached the order and tried testing the limits of the order at every available angle, the judge imposed the statutory maximum penalty of $1,000, which everyone agrees is a pittance to Trump that does not deter his actions.
The first gag order breach hearing ended with the judge finding Trump in contempt on nine out of the ten accusations by the prosecutor. The judge gave a saber rattle to incarceration if he didn’t stop. Then Trump misinterpreted the gag order and made bold statements outside the courtroom about the gag order preventing his from testifying. That was met with the judge having to politely explain that Trump had misunderstood the gag order and its limitations, reminding him that it was his constitutional right to be allowed to testify on his own behalf. Naturally, the subtext of all of that was that there is virtually no way that Trump and especially the Defense Team overall want Trump to go on the stand to testify since it opens him up to cross-examination and potential perjury and further contempt proceedings. Then this morning the judge held another contempt hearing regarding four additional Trump comments or social media posts. He found that one comment made toward the jury selection process was in contempt and he let slide the two about Michael Cohen (seeming to put Cohen into a special witness category since Cohen himself is speaking out more than is prudent) and one about David Pecker that was very mild and more positive than negative, calling him a “nice guy”. The judge inflicted another $1,000 fine for the once count of contempt, but went further by seriously ratcheting up the warning about stopping with the commentary or risking inevitable incarceration of some kind.
This incarceration warning then sent the cable news pundits off considering how such an incarceration order might be inflicted. There are very few people that expect that Trump will just get shipped out to Rikers Island and dumped into either the general population or even solitary confinement. But one suggestion made was that there is a side isolation room available to the court in which Trump could be placed (presumably without his smartphone), forced to sit in a virtual penalty box during the courtroom day and kept from the entry and exit podium he regularly frequents. When I hear this I immediately thought that what the judge would be doing would be to give Trump a timeout, just like one might do with any other unruly child.
There is something very appropriate with Trump being put into timeout that very much appeals to me. I think it is high time that our legal and political system treat people in commensurate ways to their behavior. Trump has broken almost every political, judicial and professional norm that exists. He has been accused many times of acting like and, indeed, being a child who knows no limitations. The idea of giving him a child’s punishment seems very consistent. Since we don’t spank bad boys anymore or take them to the woodshed, I think some quiet time of reflection or a timeout, while seeming like mild punishment for an adult, is actually very impactful on this petulant man-child who has served as our president and wants to serve in that capacity again. Now if only COngress could issue presidential timeouts to a sitting president we would have all the bases covered.