We flew for four and a half hours across the land, stuffed into a full Delta airliner four rows apart, no view of the land. No earbuds, no room to reach them in my shoulder bag under the seat, I watched “2001: A Space Odyssey” without sound. I could pay more attention to the camera angles (mostly no angle, straight-on symmetry) and “special effects” without the goofy music and dull dialogue. Check. The movie is just as pretentious, sluggish and enigmatic isolated as pure visual.

   Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about a Theory of Man (as the science of homo sapiens would’ve been called in former times, before we cleaned up our language of gender and race). It’s remarkable to me that the most singular thing about the human creature, our web of connections through symbols of words, laws, rituals, faith, etc., is so little remarked on or understood. In “2001,” the idea that these things evolved is assumed in “The Dawn of Man” scenes, but these “things” of language are misplaced as “tools and weapons” (In a sense, symbols are our “tools and weapons,” but that is only a metaphor for a mystery.) The apes in these scenes discover using bones to kill prey for food, then to kill one another. A bone-as-tool becomes the spaceship a million years later, in 2001 Anno Domini. What caused the earlier evolutionary leap, and what will help us to the next stage? It’s a mystery, represented by the featureless black monolith. (The next stage, of course, is in Christ, the New Man, as we say unconsciously with “the Year of Our Lord” 2001.)

    Arriving in Portland, then brought to Salem in a car with windows hot to the touch (registered as a record-breaking 110 F outside on I-5), we eventually re-fueled on Chinese takeout and settled on couches to watch CNN and MSNBC for big news on a big thin-screen TV. The big news came right from my hometown, the familiar Fulton County courthouse where I went to settle Mother’s estate in 2017. The news was, in a sense, about us – as citizens of Georgia, we are the aggrieved party in The State of Georgia v. Donald Trump et al. 

    The grand jury indicted the former President and 18 others on racketeering charges. This is clever, to call what Trump tried to do openly and with the apparent agreement of his millions of supporters, a criminal conspiracy. All he did was to claim voter fraud, and use that claim to perform a kind of theater of pseudo victory. So? He’s an entertainer, a brand. But the purpose was to overturn the election of Joe Biden. To call this a “criminal conspiracy” is clever, and unique. What mobster was ever a former President, or ever acted so brazenly and publicly? (Well, maybe in a sense the populi always have a kind of amused moral laxity about knowing that famous gangsters were supplying them with bootleg gin, or like in Providence, that Raymond Patriarca was keeping Federal Hill safe using killer henchmen. Trump voters know he is “bad,” but they are amused and hope he might bring a more convenient order to their lives.) What is truly unique about this alleged criminal enterprise is that its purpose was to overthrow the outcome of a Presidential election. It’s not an exaggeration to call this an attempted coup, or the overthrow of American democracy.

    Back to that most human thing, our web of connections through language (the meaning of evidence, of logic, of facts and laws), the DA, Fani Willis, began by reminding us that all of the accused are presumed innocent. A grand jury looks only at “probable cause,” and needs only a majority of 23 (the equivalent of a unanimous jury of 12) and looks at only the prosecutor’s side of the story. A trial will be closer to “truth” as a contest, with rules and rights favoring the defendants. Proof must be “beyond a reasonable doubt.” Trump doesn’t have to take the stand. But can he stand that silently, missing his campaign rallies?

   The breakdown in language, in meaning, is a sign, like the 110-degree F on the car windows. Something is terribly amiss. Was this an attempted “coup,” an attempt against American democracy? Was this a “criminal conspiracy” and is Trump the Godfather of thugs? I don’t think we all agree on the meaning of these words. I don’t think we all agree, even, that the Fulton County Courthouse, with all its rules of evidence and procedure, is the proper place to resolve our differences on this. Within families, our solution is “Let’s not talk about politics.” Or religion. Or the news. We certainly won’t talk about politics when we visit relatives nearby, with a brother’s ex joining us. And here, with my Democratic in-laws, all the talk is in agreement that the Republican Party is sick and doomed.