Matthew J. Parker: Pardon Me

The assault was an ambush. The young, blonde inmate crept up behind a smaller, older man who had been walking into his cell. The blond picked up his pace and kicked his quarry in the back with such force that the latter catapulted into the iron door, bounced back, and collapsed. His screams were loud and prolonged and only quieted when they got him strapped to a stretcher 20 or so minutes later. He was of course moved from that pod, but I ran into him on a court run, his arm broken in two places. Surprisingly, nobody snitched on blondie, not even his victim. 

This occurred in the Madison Street Jail in downtown Phoenix. It was the mid-1990s, although I can’t pinpoint an exact date because I’ve been locked up in that jail numerous times, including while awaiting four of my five separate prison sentences served between 1987 and 2000. On this one, however, I was in Maximum security – a designation I’ve earned for life in Maricopa County because of three (or more) prison priors, and this despite the nonviolent and drug-related nature of my crimes. Max had its advantages; it was both quieter and less crowded, the law stipulating two men per cell, making the total 30 per pod. Gone were bodies strewn all over the dayroom floor like sea lions lounging on Pier 39. 

The disadvantage was that your cellmates were much more violent.

The reason for the assault was absurd – an imagined slight over a game of cutthroat pinochle we had played earlier that day. The older inmate was a savvy competitor who kept count of both trump and aces, which caused the blond, a mere whelp at the game, to imagine he’d been cheated, but it was really because he’d gotten schooled and lost money, both of which hurt his feelings. 

This is fairly typical jailhouse violence, where most are newly locked up and stressed over their cases. County assaults are often unpredictable, vicious, underhanded, and based on bruised egos; while in prison it’s more controlled, not as race based as most suppose because gang leaders work together to oversee the gambling, extortion, and flow of narcotics. Violence, racial or otherwise, interrupts this flow. Most assaults in prison involve gang beatings of victims for a handful of offenses, most stemming from debt, and often go unreported. But there is also a level of absurdity, as well. In 1993 I witnessed a white inmate beaten senseless by a squad of supremacists for openly displaying a photo of his African American wife, and I got into serious trouble rooting for Serena Williams over an obvious Aryan – I think it was Martina Hingis – in 2001.    

The hallmark of both jail and prison violence, however, is that it’s almost always unfair; perpetrated by bullies. 

Nor is it any surprise that white supremacists are, almost to a follower, Trump supporters. So worshipful of our current president are they that they’ve for the most part given up their all-out hatred of feds, to the point where many are indeed also members of law enforcement. 

How they’ve forgotten the homegrown militia lessons of Timothy McVeigh and Terry McNichol’s, the two men responsible for the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. These boys were proud to murder 168 Americans, including six Secret Service Agents, eight Deputy U.S. Marshals, six members of the U.S. military, and nineteen children. And although weekend warriors, the common thread is that their hatred of feds is tied to Christianity and goes back to both before and after the Civil War. McVeigh and McNichols, however, were more homed in on Waco, where their heroes the Branch Davidians had killed four ATF Agents.  

Although too late for McVeigh, Trump can pardon McNichols, and still his minions would grovel mawkishly at his bone spurs, including the greater part of his Republican proud boys (and girls) in both the House and Senate – the very hallowed halls in which some of those he so blithely pardoned proudly urinated and defecated after violently pulverizing their way through a small army of heroically steadfast police officers.     

Nor is it only Trump and his cadre of elected oppressors. Seventy-seven plus million American citizens tacitly supported these pardons when they voted for Trump. But whatever their reasoning, the pardoning puts the lie to the ridiculously populist belief that one can vote in a chronic perjurer, bully, and grifter and the body politic will be none the worse for wear; that indeed such incredible self-serving megalomania is fresh-faced and healthy and moreover may even lower the price of groceries and gasoline. 

But, of course, even that’s not enough to soothe so many hurt feelings. Both Enrique Tarrio and Stewart Rhodes, the crème de la crème of J6ers, want revenge at what they claim was the biased treatment they received at the hands of law enforcement. You know, like the millions upon millions of mostly nonviolent offenders (me included) who have been maliciously prosecuted for decades under the dubious rationalizations of the War on Drugs. 

Further, Trump and even Tarrio can still vote in Florida when 900,000 other convicted felons cannot, and this because they’re unable to pay the ridiculously excessive fines Florida prosecutors attached to their prison sentences, and which the Supreme Court, in a telling ruling of exactly how equal justice under the law works in this country, upheld as constitutional even after a majority of citizens had elected to give felons back their right to vote. 

Trump, meanwhile, like blondie above, needs more balm for his aching ego. He pulled the security details from two former members of his cabinet, John Bolton and Mike Pompeo, both of whom have been threatened by Iran. I guess he’s hoping Iran succeeds and assassinates these men. I mean, what other possible motive could there be? 

And I’d like to believe that Trump has inflicted maximum damage, but I’m guessing this is not the case. Aside from the carnage he’ll perpetrate on immigrants and the LBGTQ community, he’s also implicitly pardoning wildfires and oil companies and the worst polluters of the planet. Drill baby drill is, after all, bushwhacking at its very worst, a violent kick to the backbone of our planet. 

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Matthew J. Parker teaches writing at UC Berkeley.

Copyright 2025 Matthew J. Parker