THE AMERICAN POSEIDON ADVENTURE

I’m sharing this article from The Atlantic because it helps explain the core motivation behind the Trump administration. Trump promised to be our “retribution,” and his entire playbook is rooted in getting even; taking advantage whenever possible, especially when the “other” is weaker. By hook or by crook, he has lied his way to the top of the heap, positioning himself atop the most powerful office in the world checked only by the American voter.

Trump’s vision of life is profoundly skewed. He relishes the struggles of others, particularly when he can exploit them to make himself look strong. Everything is framed around his superiority and everyone else’s inferiority. Hence the self-proclaimed “stable genius.”

In this worldview, success exists only in contrast to someone else’s failure. That approach does not lead, it suppresses. It does not build, it demolishes. It does not stabilize, it breeds fragility.

Attorney General Bondi is an opportunist cut from the same cloth, as are many members of the cabinet. Her characterization of justice as “wrath” perfectly echoes Trump’s belief that all of life is merely a deal. There must always be a winner and a loser. As the article makes clear, modern justice evolved to move us beyond such primitive thinking. Yet, to our dismay, remnants of that Neanderthal past still persist.

RESIST!!! & EDUCATE!!!

What Role Does ‘Wrath’ Play in American Justice?

Attorney General Pam Bondi transgresses basic principles of criminal law.

By Paul Rosenzweig

JANUARY 3, 2026, 6:52 PM ET

Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, have been forcibly taken from Venezuela and are being moved to the United States to face criminal drug-trafficking charges. Regardless of the international-law implications of this military action, the Trump administration’s description of what awaits Maduro and Flores has also transgressed basic principles of American domestic criminal law, as well as the underlying philosophical justification for punishment.

Attorney General Pam Bondi has promised that Maduro and Flores “will soon face the full wrath of American justice on American soil in American courts.” Justice in the American system is supposed to be blind and impartial. By contrast, Bondi’s vow of wrathful punishment is profoundly illiberal, suggesting a lust for criminal vengeance.

When federal prosecutors speak of criminal allegations, moreover, they ritualistically note that a defendant such as Maduro is innocent until proven guilty. By making a presumption of guilt and of the state’s inerrancy, the attorney general is repudiating the rule of law, which is grounded in the state’s obligation to prove its case.

For millennia, punishment was considered morally defensible purely on retributive grounds. That vengeful justification yielded during the Enlightenment, during a broader societal conversion to an age of reason. Broadly speaking, the justification for criminal punishment turned away from wrath, toward utilitarian concepts of effectiveness and social benefit. In this view, penal laws and policies were justified if they arguably benefited the majority of the population. Punishment became a social good rather than a basis for personal retribution.

As a logical result, instead of vengeance, criminal-law theorists focused on the practical benefits: The deterrence rationale holds that punishment benefits society by discouraging both the individual offender and others in society from committing future crimes. Rehabilitation helps the individual and society alike by reforming the offender and allowing him or her to reintegrate into the communal order. And incapacitation, in turn, focuses on the social benefit of protecting society by removing a dangerous criminal from the community. All of these arguments justifying criminal punishment focus on the “social utility” of the act, rather than its retributive nature.

The prosecution of Maduro and his wife can be readily justified on post-Enlightenment grounds: Although rehabilitation seems like a stretch in the Venezuelan dictator’s case, punishment would incapacitate him and deter others. In reaching back to a retributive justification, however, Trump and Bondi reject these rational arguments.

Many commentators have described Donald Trump’s approach to the law as a throwback to an earlier age—perhaps the allegedly halcyon era of the pre-Civil Rights Act 1950s. Others, such as The Atlantic’s Adam Serwer, see the conservative legal project as the restoration of the pre-Civil War legal system. By invoking the “wrath” of justice against Maduro, Trump and Bondi reach even further back into the past, summoning a far older, illiberal, retributive concept that modernity long ago abandoned.