The bottom line of this tremendous piece is this: “Don’t people understand — much as they may hate this fellow — that this is exactly what coup leaders in every banana republic, do? Seek to imprison their political opponents? Especially while the political opponents are on the campaign trail?”

From Outspoken with Dr Naomi Wolf. I am in a deep blue small town in a deep blue state, here on the West Coast.

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The natives are jubilant today.

“Happy Indictment Day!” shouted the neighbor of my host, as my host and I sat out on a balcony. The neighbor was emerging from a car, three stories below us. The building must have contained thirty apartments. The man was certain that everyone who was in earshot of his joyous shout, agreed with his sentiments.

He witnessed my silence. “Don’t you agree?” he goaded me, a near-stranger, still shouting. “Don’t you?”

Finally I responded, “I am not sure that this sets a great precedent. Every sitting President in the future will try to indict his or her political opponent.” He cut off the discussion — a reaction, from the Left, to which I am getting accustomed — and headed inside. …

Don’t people understand — much as they may hate this fellow — that this is exactly what coup leaders in every banana republic, do? Seek to imprison their political opponents? …

Another reason for my discomfort and misery is that I have a guilty conscience, because of what I experienced two decades ago and what I know — things that not that many people have experienced or know, and things that seem to be generally forgotten. These memories bear directly on current events.

The indictment of President Trump is for the crime of “election denialism”, among other alleged crimes. It’s a thought crime. …

It seems that people around President Trump tried to pause the certification process until the votes could be fully verified. It seemed that his lawyers tried a legal theory to delay certification.

Hasn’t a version of all of that happened before in our nation’s history?

Is that not what is supposed to happen when there are charges of problems with the vote? Is that not what we are tasked with doing? Calling a halt and stopping the process until every vote is recounted and verified?

I am having relentless flashbacks to where I was and what I was doing in late 2000, when I was a consultant for Vice President Gore’s campaign for the Presidency.

As I’ve written elsewhere … I was advising from a distance, and looped in, intermittently, to discussions within the campaign that were both public and private, about exactly the same issues that are now apparently criminal offenses even to entertain, let alone to mention in actual words. …

The Gore campaign denied the claimed outcome of the election. The Bush campaign denied the claimed outcome of the election.

Both campaigns, both candidates, denied it up and down; they denied it on podiums, in front of crowds, on television interviews. …

The Bush team astutely denied the claimed election results by inventing the phrase “hanging chad,” and then by popularizing it, to suggest that there was massive ambiguity in the casting of the vote, due to the reality of some unreadable, imperfectly punched paper ballots. The Gore team, for their part, denied the claimed outcome by seeking at one point to count only those counties in Florida that were most supportive of Vice President Gore. Both candidates denied the claimed outcome of the election, all the way up to the Supreme Court.

Both stopped the process until every vote could be checked and rechecked.

Every conversation, public and private, for both campaigns, for both candidates, from the 35 days from the close of Election Day to Dec 12, 2000, the date of the Supreme Court’s decision in Bush v Gore, was about denying the claimed results of the election. …

Why did the two sides fight so hard in 2000? Why did they battle for 35 days after the polls closed? Why go all the way to the highest court in the land? …

Because that is how our system is supposed to work. …

Think for a moment, I beg you, about what President Trump’s indictment, for the thought crime of resisting — just as both Vice President Gore and George Bush Jr did 20 years ago — the pat, early declarations of CNN and Fox and The New York Times about who won the Presidential race, will do to the future of our nation.

In every future election, if both candidates, and all of their staffers, advisors and lawyers, do not immediately yield to the declarations of the official outlets — if they both don’t cave right away to early calls by CNN or The Washington Post or MSNBC regarding what the Powers That Be have decided for us in relation to whom our Dear Leader is to be — then they will face possible prison terms. …

This kangaroo court, this 1930s-era show trial, is not about President Trump, though he is a convenient outsider to use as the much-hated exemplar for what The Powers That Be have decided needs to be done.

It is, as President Trump often reminds us, not about him; it is about us.

It is about setting a precedent that ends the right of the American people to ask any questions, in the future, about their election results. …

What do you think about Trump’s indictment? Share your thoughts and prayers below.

(Excerpt from Outspoken with Dr Naomi Wolf. Photo Credit: Jeff Swensen/Getty Images)