Happy Ending

 

I confess: I’m a sucker for happy endings. The kind in the fairy tales or Dickens’ novel or courtroom dramas where the bad guys get their just desserts and the good people win. Well, not exactly win. They have been victimized by the bad people and suffered extraordinary loss and undeserved sorrow and that will never leave them. But still, it is maddening when the perpetrators are not called to justice. Without that sense of apology, how can one even take a step toward forgiveness? Without just consequences for their actions, how can the victims move toward any sense of closure?

 

 This on my mind after I stumbled into a powerful film in my movie-theater-in-the-sky (ie, flight to Sydney). Titled Argentina 1985, it’s about the time when Argentina recovered democracy from years of dictatorship, years marked by ongoing kidnappings, disappearances, torture and murder by the ruling military junta. Now ten of them are on trial in a civil case to be called to account. The film moves between the ongoing death threats for those daring to reveal the truth, heartbreaking testimonies from the people (mostly women) and the prosecuting attorney’s zealous team of young people working day and night to gather the evidence. Near the end of the film, there is a speech by the prosecutor in the courtroom giving his final summary and those five minutes of the film rank amongst the most powerful and memorable in my entire history of film-viewing. 

 

I am—we all are— waiting for that moment with the Teflon President, have been waiting for seven years, to see him held to account. While his crimes and misdemeanors have not been as extreme as the Argentine junta, some have come close— deporting and caging immigrant children and the January 6^th insurrection, for starters— and all clearly transgress not only law after law, but any standard of decent human behavior. And of course, not just him. The 147 Republican Congresspeople who broke their oath to uphold the Constitution and confirm the lie of the election steal should all be wearing orange jump suits. Or at least barred forever from any public office. 

 

If Argentina can do it, why not the U.S.? Where is our happy ending?