The old debate over Trump’s self-rewarding power (including self-pardon) has come alive lately because of his increased activities of “corruption,” as the May 20 New York Times editorial declares, “There Has Never Been Presidential Corruption Like This.” Indeed, reconsidering what Trump can and cannot do as the sitting president has become necessary again:
First, what he can do: He can start a war against any country he wants; he can privatize any public money he desires; he can (probably) shoot anybody on Fifth Avenue; he can sell pardons to anybody he chooses; he can destroy and rebuild federal buildings at will: he can put his face on Mount Rushmore or dollar bills if he wants. He can do anything his heart desires, and he has the legal and constitutional right to do so. Since no crime exists until an act is charged, judged and convicted, and it has not happened (and cannot happen, per SCOTUS) to Trump, he is free to do anything political that he wishes. After all, his power is political and whatever he does as politician is political and he was duly elected to do political things.
Now, what he cannot do: He cannot pardon himself, which is logically (not politically) impossible. He can pardon even Pontius Pilot or Hitler, if he wants to, but he just cannot pardon himself as he cannot do what is logically impossible. He cannot be dead and alive, be in America and in Russia or be himself and somebody else — at the same time.
Of all the impossible things, there is nothing more impossible than logical impossibility. Trump cannot pardon himself because it is logically impossible for him to be the judge and the defendant at the same time. (Imagine a comedy where Steve Martin is the judge and the defendant, rushing back and forth in the two roles between the bench and the witness stand). Trump can “forgive” himself of all the sins he has committed, but “pardon” applies only to a specific situation predetermined and preordained by logic: The act of “pardon” logically requires two separate people, the “pardoner” and “pardonee.”
The very logic of our “social” life requires that everything that exists in society—your name, your property, your freedom, your person—presupposes the existence of society. As you cannot clap without both hands, or tango without a partner, your “self” is defined by the presence of society, without which nothing means anything. After his plane crashed, Tom Hanks lived on a deserted island, but not as a “social” being, his humanization of a volleyball notwithstanding.
No accused individual can declare himself legally innocent or morally sinless. It is for the society to decide, often in the delayed verdict of history, which is an ever-present jury of society held up by the structure of logic. No logic in the world recognizes you as both the accuser and the accused. As long as we live as human beings (not as animals in the jungle), we exist only as our society exists, in which things make sense only because our existence is framed by common logic: When it rains, we assume it’s wet outside; when persons are accused by law, we assume there will be society’s judgment upon their acts. Imagine living in a world where rain is not wet or the accused judge themselves.
With the exceptions of children and the insane (who are dismissed or institutionalized), our common logic assumes that one cannot be the standard of oneself. Your “self” exists only at the mercy, and definition, of your society. There is no such thing as a “self-made man” because the very concept “self,” as in “self-made man,” is logically impossible: All your reputation comes from other people; all your money is printed by the government; all the gold you own is daily priced at the marketplace. They are all public processes taking place in society’s ongoing logic.
Trump, like everyone else and everything else in society, is created by society. If he becomes president, it’s because “others” choose him; if he is a married man, it’s because a woman made his “marriage” possible. As a solitary “self,” he is nothing but a lump of flesh, blood and bones. It’s the logic, and structure, of society that makes the human being that he is, adding humanity to his animal flesh, blood and bones.
In the world of logic that humanizes and socializes all of us, the very concept of the word “pardon” means there are two persons who make sense of the word: Person A and Person B. There, Person A “pardons” Person B, not “Person A pardons Person A.” Person A cannot pardon himself because the very logic of “pardon” disallows self-pardon in the same way no one can marry oneself or cannibalize oneself to death or shadow-box oneself to a heavy-weight championship. Donald Trump cannot be defendant in a case where he is also the law, the jury, the judge and the executioner.
But, under the peculiar circumstances in which Trump’s political power encounters no resistance, our very logical world can be suspended, at least temporarily, as happened many times in human history: Trump, with his power, can make any application of commonsense unnecessary and common logic impossible in America: Under his dictatorship, he can file lawsuits against his own government which he controls and force a judgment with his own dictatorial power — and nobody laughs or cringes.
In such America, Trump can pardon his own crimes — and like a medieval alchemist-magician–by turning pure illogic into absolute logic.
Such interesting times!
Jon Huer, retired professor and columnist for the Recorder,lives in Greenfield and writes for posterity.