Trump, Carter, and proper sentencing guidelines

Today was a national day of mourning for Jimmy Carter, who was president of our fair country in my very young days.  I remember him not being a good president, a man perhaps in a bit over his head, a man whose inability to fix the problems he inherited led to the Reagan Revolution.  His later years showed a man of character, a man who chose not to pursue the almighty dollar after his presidency, a man who taught Sunday school and modeled the idea of a humble faith and service to God.  

Compare our mourning with a spectacle that will soon take place: Tomorrow will also be a national day of mourning, as our soon-to-be president will be sentenced for 34 felonies in a court of law.  There should be many more than these for which he is convicted, but a friendly Supreme Court as well as a system which favors convicts over righteousness has ensured that he will never face justice for some of the greater evils which he has done.  

By all accounts, his felonies for falsifying business records in order to cover up payments to a porn star (wow) will not land him any jail time or any real consequences for his actions, but that it will be entered into the record that yes, he is a felon, gives me at least the slightest bit of satisfaction.  Short of prison time, though, I've been wondering what the good judge might well make Convict Trump endure.  Some suggestions:

-An ankle monitoring bracelet.  Let him forever be tracked.

-House arrest not in some golf club but in shared duplex with three other convicts, all sharing a bathroom.  

-40 hours of community service.  Put him in a borrowed jumpsuit picking up trash along the side of the road with armed prison guards standing by with shotguns in their hands while the cameras roll.  I'd watch every moment.  

-Twice-monthly check-ins with an overworked parole officer.  Said parole officer continually hounds him about his activities and questions him about the company he keeps.  

-Mandatory attendance at an old-fashioned 'Scared Straight' meeting in which he is yelled at and threatened by real convicts.  

How on earth we have devolved in my lifetime from the election of a decent man like Jimmy Carter to the coronation of a horrible pagan criminal like Donald Trump will haunt me for the rest of my life.  

On Sports Fandom

 It's hard to be a sports fan these days.  If your team tries to be decent members of society, they often end up being hot garbage on the field.  Instead, we are glad when our team picks up the all-star free agent who is free because he threw his pregnant girlfriend down a flight of steps six months ago and we hope that at least for the rest of the season he can keep from being a complete dirtbag, at least in public.  Rooting for decent people is nice...but winning is everything.  

The World Cup began this week.  It's being held in November and December instead of it's traditional summer place, because it's being held in Qatar, a place that most of us couldn't place on a map until three weeks ago.  And it's held as the frost settles on our cars each morning because in Qatar if it was held in summer players would literally die on the field because of the heat.  

Thing is, lots of people have died to build the stadiums in Qatar.  And the survivors, mostly people from India and Bangledesh imported to provide the brute labor needed to build such things, have been repeatedly documented to be living in squalid living conditions and often cheated out of their negotiated wages.  They're basically slaves, living as slaves in a nation that currently has the highest GDP in the world becuase of its oil revenues.  

Of course, now the matches have started.  We've watched England put a half-dozen past Iran, Saudi Arabia upset tournament faves Argentina, and our household team the USA underwhelm again.  We don't really care about those other stories now, as long as we get our sports.  

And maybe that's how it's supposed to be.  We live in a world of trouble and misery and maybe these kinds of games keep us from thinking about things too much.  I'll watch, but it's just not as much fun as it ought to be.