“I’ve lived a sheltered life and truly haven’t experienced life the way many have. I’ve learned that even though we live in a wonderful country things still need to improve. People of all colors should feel as safe as I do to walk down the street.”
Anna Morgan-Lloyd
If one goes down to your local county courthouse, one will see people who have “learned a lot” since their arrest and consequent conviction. Most of it is dead honest, too. Getting arrested, and facing prison will open a lot of people’s eyes as to the dangerous life they’ve been leading.
They do not usually take remedial courses in social studies. But the MAGAs do, or at least, some do.
According to HuffPo, many (most?) of the criminal defense attorneys in Washington are not at all Trump fans. They agreed to represent these clients, but likely know that if their client goes into a courtroom and starts talking MAGA to everyone, they are only hurting themselves. Thus, some are asking their clients to take remedial courses in social studies to, not just understand the United States, but just people generally.
This, on its own, has to “indict” a lot of the MAGA movement, but not necessarily some of the followers. In some cases, the people were just used as tools. They simply didn’t know better.
The remedial social studies program that Morgan-Lloyd is following was created by her D.C.-based lawyer, H. Heather Shaner. Defense attorneys in the nation’s Capitol aren’t exactly a core part of Trump’s political base, as many have made clear in court filings in which they’ve blamed Trump for leading their clients to the edge by convincing them that the 2020 election was stolen. Some private D.C. defense lawyers told HuffPost after Jan. 6 that they were refusing to take Capitol attack cases outright.
True. And we have reported on many. Go on:
Shaner said her clients had poor educations and knew very little about the country. Her two female clients took to the task with zeal, Shaner said, and got library cards for the first time in their lives.
“Both my women are like, ‘I never learned this in school. Why don’t I know about this?’” Shaner said. (A couple of the male clients weren’t quite as eager students, she said. “The men are very much like ‘Oh, I’ll get to it.’” But she said some of her male clients have been doing some self-education.)
Poor education.
Now is not the time to mock the MAGAs. We do plenty of that. But this would be a time to learn a little ourselves and understand that an education is a luxury, at least for people of high school age or over. There are still some people that simply cannot take the time to graduate from high school, they need to support themselves or a family. Some don’t have the inclination or drive to go to college. It is also true that one out of every four people has an I.Q. in the bottom 25%. It just “is.”
So, we’re just going to say that this is ingenious. Not every defendant will do it. And it won’t help the most serious offenders, at least not much. But we shouldn’t be surprised that people who have led a sheltered life could get caught up in something that they fundamentally don’t understand.
We say this is good.
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Peace, y’all
Jason
[email protected] and on Twitter @JasonMiciak