We as a country will have a wild few weeks now while Donald J. Trump is (a) receiving the formal nomination of a major political party for the presidency, and (b) also receiving his probation report and sentence. An odd intertwining of processes. It is a good time to try to put one’s thoughts together with some clarity. So … what do I think? First, I want to set aside the warnings we hear from the former president and his admirers, that “if it can happen to Trump, it can happen to you.” Yes, I know it can happen to me. I’m an ordinary non-billionaire non-celebrity. I'm a schmoe. It has always been the case that “it,” arrest, trial, conviction, sentence could happen to me. The fact that it is happening to Trump means he joins the club in which the rest of us are members, it doesn’t bring the club into existence! “They” don’t have to get through Trump to come after me, They could always have just come after me. When someone like Elon Musk says that, though, he may mean, “since it i...