What Kind Of Trial Is This?

     Donald Trump's second impeachment trial, this time for inciting an attack on the United States Capitol, is so strange, so surreal, so dreadful on so many levels.

        While watching the trial one is glued to the videos being shown, some from Capitol security cameras, more graphic, more shocking, more horrifying than the footage that has already been seen by the public. There are  violent insurrectionists  breaking into the Capitol, smashing windows and doors, swarming the halls, shouting "Fight for Trump,"  waving flags bearing Trump's name and screaming for the death of Nancy Pelosi and Mike Pence.

​  One sees images of terrified members of Congress being herded by guards away from their chambers and running for safety.

​    There is film  of police officers being cursed at, attacked, mobbed, beaten. 

       There's a scene of an officer screaming while being crushed in a door by the rioters.
​      One is riveted by the arguments of the House managers prosecuting the case as they trace the trajectory of the tweets, TV appearances, rallies  and pronouncements by Trump, 

​...preaching to his followers that the election was stolen from him and that they've been robbed of their vote, telling  them to fight, provoking, encouraging, and calling for them  to coalesce into the rabid mob that laid siege to the the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 for the purpose of overthrowing the results of the 2020 Presidential election.
     One is sickened by accounts not only of the people who were killed during the insurrection, but of the injuries sustained by the police officers who were set upon by the mob: officers with gouged eyes, cracked ribs, smashed spinal discs, brain injuries; officers stabbed with metal stakes, attacked with bats, hit with wrenches. One officer lost three fingers. 
     But unreal as it feels to be watching the trial of a President of the United States accused of  inciting a deadly insurrection against our country, what makes the experience all he more incredible is that this trial isn't about finding Donald Trump innocent or guilty. For that purpose this trial doesn't matter at all because all but a handful of the Republican members of the  United States Senate decided before the trial even began that they were going to vote to acquit Trump no matter what the evidence.
      On the opening day of the trial Donald Trump's two poorly prepared defense attorneys, Bruce Castor and  David Schoen, spouted incoherent nonsense.

   But it wouldn't have mattered if they'd come  before the United States Senate whistling and tap dancing. As Senator Ted Cruz put it before the trial began, ​

..."The result of this trial is preordained. President Trump will be acquitted."   
      All the irrefutably damning evidence meticulously presented by the House managers against Donald Trump,  most of it consisting of Trump's own words, didn't matter. ​

     A number of Republican Senators made a point of publicly showing their distain for and disinterest in the trial proceedings.
​          Some of them ducked out during the testimony of the House managers.

      Some read the newspaper.

    Josh Hawley scribbled with his feet up on his desk.       

        Rand Paul sat maskless and doodled. 
        Rick Scott read a book.
​        Marco Rubio shuffled papers.   
       After the first day of the trial Lindsey Graham called Donald Trump to assure him that he would be acquitted. Said Graham, "I reinforced to the president the case is over. It's just a matter of getting the final verdict now."

        So tell me, what kind of Alice-In-Wonderland justice is it when a juror brags to the press about having called a defendant to assure him that he will be acquitted?  
         No kind of justice, of course. And no kind of trial. Just something dreadful and unreal .       

References:
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/02/lindsey-graham-trump-not-guilty

https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/11/politics/impeachment-sketches-day-three/index.html