When the promise of justice suffices for proof of justice, injustice prevails. What follows is a long dry season of the soul, far from any tide of redemption or torrent of relief. Everything else is a matter of knowledge and preparation, as the ability to inhabit a role—the ability to look and sound insane—is the best defense against bad faith prosecution; as no other defense can save the accused from charges without evidence, or the charge that the accused’s politics is evidence of guilt; as no other defense can counter charges of mental illness with separate and sure displays of mental incompetence.
Against the awesome power of the State, whose lawyers outnumber the forces of any empire or enclave, with more prosecutors than there are soldiers in Rome or divisions of the Roman Catholic Church, the accused faces almost certain defeat.
Against the might of the State, right is irrelevant and innocence immaterial.
Against these odds, in an adversarial system in which truth is the first casualty of a criminal trial, the accused is insane not to act insane.
As the method calls for madness, the means lies in the Method: the exercises and techniques an actor uses to connect with the circumstances of a character.
As a variation on a theme in blank verse, if the law and the evidence are both against you, do as Carl Sandburg says, and pound on the table and yell like hell.
Yell with the signature roughness of fear, after the tab of blotter paper—the cursed host of indulgence—taps the tip of the tongue and takes a trip (or triptych) of three steps down the palate into the past.
Yell like a madman, and dress like one too, as the pounding softens to the beat, beat, beat of the tom-tom and the tremulous finger of the subconscious takes hold.
Let the finger modulate the voice to the point of blandness, so the arresting quality of androgyny may guide us through space and time, and deliver us to the Earth on the third day of creation.
Hurtling through the gray globe of nature, fire lights the sky and graces the land below.
The flame of liberty—the light of love—reveals the blessedness of faith and family, and of the bounty that is America the beautiful.
Man severs the bond and breaks the peace, for which the punishment is the hell of war and the death of domestic tranquility.
The symbols of our civil religion fall like so many false idols, as rioters tear down our institutions and try to kill our leaders.
A wicked beast—Orange Man—approaches the Capitol, bearing with him the swords of hatred and defeat.
The flashback ends in destruction.
This then is the method the accused must adopt, based on the principles of Method acting, so all who are unlearned or unbelievers may say the accused is mad.
The accused must play his part with conviction so as to avoid a criminal conviction, because the law is powerless when the legal system is perverse.
Acting offers the accused what reason lacks in spite of reasonable doubt: freedom.
Embrace the crazy.