America's Semiotic Moment: The Indictment of Mr. Trump and Associated Persons by the Fulton County Georgia Prosecutor

 

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The Romans have been part of the narrative of the United States since its break with England: the styling of a constitutional system after the Republic; the self-conscious adoption of neo-Roman architecture that provided a sense of gravitas for a new nation; . . . Roman language resonated in the political language, as well: Joseph Addison's play Cato: A Tragedy inspired Patrick Henry's 'Give me liberty or give me death" and was a favorite of George Washington. . . the anti-federalists invoked Brutus and Cato in defense of liberty. . . The recollections of Rome were never unequivocal. From the beginning Rome was as much a model as a warning." (Dean Hammer, Rome and America: Communities of Strangers, Spectacles of Belonging  (Cambridge University Press, 2023); p. 3).

Waging of political warfare in the criminal courts had a long history. The quaestiones perpetuae were born in politics. From their inception the interests of justice were tempered  with a generous mixture of politics. The two generations prior  to the Ciceronian age established that pattern. It persevered to the end of the Republic. . . Political trials could appear under numerous guises. Sometimes issues of significant public import might serve as a vehicle. Politicians would not hesitate to capitalize on what seemed the tide of public opinion. The issues themselves could be employed as a facade  behind which to work out presonal and factional rivalries. (Erich S. Gruen, The Last Generation of the Roman Republic (University of California Press, 1974), p. 260; 276).

What is a semiotic moment?  It is, generally, that moment in  time in which the essence of an era may, in future, find its crystallization. Individuals and collectives experience these moments; sometimes they redirect the way either understands themselves and their movement in a dynamic temporal flow. Sometimes these moments become detached from their place in time and assume a greater reality as standing for something else--Martin Luther King's 1963 "I Have a Dream" Speech in Washington may be an example, as might the signing and text of the Boston "Tea Party" of 1773. That moment lasts an instant in time, but its significance projects forward for a long time. And its meaning is then extended backwards as an interpretive lens through which th past may be better understood later.   These semiotic moments hang like temporal pearls connected by the temporal flow of a civilization. They are each objects which acquire a meaning beyond the confines of their occurrence, the signification of which serves as a basis for transforming them from an event into an interpretation and principle that then defines the way a society understands itself.

That semiosis of significance--of the way in which an event or series of events is distinguished, and then invested with a significance, the meaning of which becomes an important element of the way a society understands itself (cognition) from the interpretation of its experience of itself (its phenomenological self-reference)--what it does expresses what is is and reaffirms the premises under which what it does "makes sense" or "is natural" or can be "valued." Thus, it is not about what happened (the object or semiotic 'firstness'), but rather about attaching significance (a semiotic sign or signific; 'secondness') the meaning of which is to be supplied from outside of the object (occurrence) itself by a collective with the authority to impose meaning (interpretation; 'thirdness') as a judgement  about the relation between object, signification, and the premises around which the universe of meaning in understood (as a function of the meaning maker's central position in that universe).  The semiotic triad is more like a wheel than a triangle; and it does go round and round, like the semiotics of the "Wheel of Fortune" Tarot card (invoking the medieval Rota Fortunae; "Fortunam insanam esse et caecam et brutam perhibent philosophi" [Philosophers say that Fortune is insane and blind and stupid]; Pacuvius, Scaenicae Romanorum Poesis Fragmenta (O. Ribbeck (ed) Vol. 1 (1897)).

The indictment of Mr. Trump and his companions by the Fulton County Georgia prosecutor has all of the elements of a great American semiotic moment. 

The indictment describes the group as "a criminal organization whose members and associates engaged in various related criminal activities including, but not limited to, false statements and writings, impersonating a public officer, forgery, filing false documents, influencing witnesses, computer theft, computer trespass, computer invasion of privacy, conspiracy to defraud the state, acts involving theft, and perjury." The 98-page indictment lays out a scheme that began with Trump's loss in the 2020 presidential election, including in the state of Georgia, and says that those charged "refused to accept that Trump lost, and they knowingly and willfully joined a conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the election in favor of Trump." "That conspiracy contained a common plan and purpose to commit two or more acts of racketeering activity in Fulton County, Georgia, elsewhere in the state of Georgia, and in other states," the filing states. ("Georgia indicts Trump, 18 allies on RICO charges in election interference case. Here are the details" CBS News 15 August 2023).

The indictment presents a semiotic moment precisely because the body politic has already begun to transform the judicial proceedings into an exercise in the scope and content of American meaning making that will shape the course and self-understanding of the Republic. To that end the semiosis: (1) what happened (the facts) assumes a triggering but secondary role (the facts such as they are as data points are semiotic objects to be recognized, extracted and "worked on") ; (2) it is not what happened, then, that is important or central, but how it is signified that matters (in this case the signification--its recognition within the universe of American political-legal cognition is manifested by the prosecutor in the first instance through the indictment); but that is not meaning; (3) its meaning (as distinct from its signification in indictment) will play out in the space reserved by the American collective for such purposes (at least in the current era), the theatre of authentication that are the courts ('thirdness') where collective meaning is attached to signified objects. It is that meaning that matters--for Mr. Trump and his associates certainly, but also for the Republic. 

All of this is up in the air at the moment (discussed the last timer this came up in "“Using Law Against Itself: Bush v. Gore Applied in the Courts,”Rutgers Law Review" 23003).  But the spectre of the past and the epistemological constitution of the nation embedded in the political-normative models with which it shares "genetic material" may provide the glimmerings of a clues about what might be expected, whatever the outcome of this specific event. People like to be part of history; even more so to claim a role in driving it for the collective. That continues to be a characteristic of the Republic, like its predecessors, the course of which in the current moment may have some collective decisive effect.  Beyond that is interest, desire, power, narrative, and spectacle. 

The text of the indictment may be accessed here.