One bloody American Civil War is enough. The cannons I photographed this week are at Fort Ward in Alexandria, Virginia, just a walk from my place. They inspire reflection. The best way to prevent Civil War II—-scary enough even as an unlikely possibility—is to punish President Trump and other psychopathic officials for treason and countless other crimes. Let’s deter corrupt authoritarians from threatening our precious freedoms.

After the Civil War, we tried leniency toward the South. It didn’t work, as shown by the Jim Crow laws, Ku Kluxery, lynchings, and other monstrosities that ensued. I’m all in favor of reconciliation toward ordinary people whom Trump conned into voting for him, and we certainly need to address their many legitimate grievances, economic and otherwise. But no mercy toward terrorist traitors now sullying the White House and various federal agencies!

Joe Biden should stay away from the Justice Department and let his presumably well-qualified future appointees and other patriotic professionals there do their jobs, guided not by vengeance but respect for facts and the law.

Not everyone would agree, alas. In the Washington Post, a respected ex-prosecutor named Randall D. Eliason is warning of a “dangerous precedent” in criminally investigating a now-outgoing president. But even Eliason concedes that former special counselor Robert S. Mueller made a “strong case” in regard to obstruction of justice. Please–no man above the law. The “no” should include not only the President and his White House sleazes but also their abettors elsewhere at agencies such as the Environment Protection Agency and the U.S. Postal Service.

Misfeasance and malfeasance have consequences, as shown by the hundreds of thousands of Americans killed by the Trump Virus. So federal prosecution to the max, please, where the law and the facts justify it. State and local prosecutions, too, if justified? Of course. The law is the law at any level of government.

Of course, the issue isn’t just enforcement of existing laws. We also need new ones to end the dangerous ambiguities that Trump and fellow crooks exploited to the max.