Weegee (Arthur Fellig): Audience Reaction (c. 1940 - c. 1950)

" … get over the idea that they'd never get another decent shave …"

Our incumbent fulfills his responsibilities under our Constitution by not fulfilling his duties under our Constitution, and has steadfastly done so since the first few seconds after solemnly swearing to, you know, fulfill his responsibilities under our Constitution, thereby joining the ever-popular cast of Zeno's favorites, right next to the barber who famously shaved everyone in town who didn't shave themselves. Who shaves that barber, Zeno wondered? He quickly realized that he'd asked a Fundamentally Unanswerable Question, commonly referred to as a FUQ. Those who routinely hand out FUQs by either speech or action tend to gum up the operation of whatever system they find themselves embedded within. The critical judgment ordinarily necessary to avoid introducing errors into systems tends to become muddled when confronting one of Zeno's insidious paradoxes. What might otherwise seem straightforward becomes essentially unresolvable.

After the conventionally unanswerable questions get asked, only to remain annoyingly unanswered, litigation understandably follows. FUQs reliably baffle our jurists, too, for our jurisprudence was based upon logical constructs, and Fundamentally Unanswerable Questions FUQ up that presumption. Unanswerable questions tend to spawn brother and sister FUQs, which typically cause quite a commotion, fully justifying appeals up through the various layers of the courts. This further delays resolution until the average person might swear that the original infringer—in this case, our incumbent—seems to be getting away with flagrantly breaking the law he swore to uphold. He responds by committing even more similar infractions until the bill of particulars stretches to the horizon and beyond.

Impeachment seems too kind of a punishment for anyone impishly spawning this kind of chaos. Historically, those who acted paradoxically were banished. There might no longer be a special place like Elba, where a ruined dictator who dealt in murderous subjugation as the means for encouraging liberté, égalité, fraternité might be benignly housed. The Rasputins of history were each damnably difficult to kill, and did damage that in some ways could never be erased. They didn't just break the rules, they FUQed them, making fools out of those charged with maintaining them. They didn't just scoff at laws, they neutered them.

What does one do who commits a serious felony to enforce a misdemeanor violation? The enforcer, the arresting officer, commits a more serious crime enforcing the statute in question than did the perpetrator. Does a Greater Criminal Theory of justice take over under such circumstances, holding the lowliest violator not criminal because the officer of the law chose to be relatively more lawless? Can the courts convict the prosecutor along with the perpetrator, or must that conviction occur following a separate deliberation? Who has standing to charge the offending court officer who overstepped their charge? What if the incumbent, who has been protected from prosecution, ordered the court officer to break the law to enforce it? The result certainly seems thoroughly FUQed up!

Historically, these conditions have encouraged the creation of what are known as kangaroo courts, which perform parodies of jurisprudence to clear otherwise clogged dockets. In our time, our incumbent quietly eliminated habeas corpus, sidestepping even the appearance of fairness, charging and then disappearing —a definite escalation of an already paradoxical process, paradox layered upon paradox ad infinitum. The result seems similar to someone who chronically insists upon playing with his food: A mess producing little nourishment. The courts seem understandably stunned in response to an incumbent who administers by steadfastly refusing actually to administer anything. In these sorts of crimes, we're all victims, for the very premise upon which this republic was founded gets threatened by essentially unseriousness. The courts could command that the barber cease insisting that only he could shave those who do not shave themselves. Congress could impeach and exile, even jail, if they could somehow get over the idea that they'd never get another decent shave if their barber went out of his Doing For business.

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