President Trump made headlines recently for suggesting that Alcatraz, the infamous prison in San Francisco Bay, should be reopened to house the worst criminal offenders in America. It is a notion that boggles the minds of liberals – as everything Trump says and does tends to – but it would be a magnificent, if mostly symbolic, achievement, and one entirely in harmony with many of the central themes in the MAGA movement.
Alcatraz was, in its heyday, a legendary and forbidding prison fortress. Most famously, it housed Al Capone, perhaps the greatest criminal mastermind in American history. Its isolation made it incredibly secure – and mysterious. Its fame and the lore associated with it inspired multiple Hollywood films, including “Escape from Alcatraz,” widely regarded as one of Clint Eastwood’s best acting performances.
Its closure in 1963, on the orders of Attorney General Robert Kennedy, came mostly due to the high cost of running an island prison, but also reflected the ethos of the ’60s and ’70s, which often assumed that “criminals” were victims of society and of the justice system itself. Alcatraz, in the days of Kennedy and Dirty Harry, was a symbol of cold, inflexible, cruel and even corrupt “justice,” and its closure represented a turn towards greater leniency and compassion in the treatment of federal inmates. It wasn’t long before federal prisons became colloquially known as “Club Fed.” In other words, they became sources of mirth rather than fear.
Trump and the MAGA movement, however, are unabashedly nostalgic for the days when America was great, and Alcatraz, a symbol of full-throated American justice, fortified with puritanical harshness, is exactly the sort of prison that Trumpers should want to revive. America was, after all, infinitely safer in the days when the FBI’s Most Wanted were, when captured, alternately electrocuted or packed off to prisons whose very names conjured dread amongst criminals and ordinary citizens alike. In those days, it was assumed that the punishments meted out to those who violated federal law would always be swift, severe and unquestionably just. Alcatraz was a powerful symbol of a justice system that enjoyed the confidence and support of almost all Americans, rightly or wrongly.
Before the ’60s, no journalist would have dared to blame judges, prosecutors and policemen for society’s ills, or to spin fairy tales about the nobility of the men who landed behind bars. America was an innocent place, in many ways, and Alcatraz was the towering penitential edifice that sealed and protected that innocence, and kept a long, straight, clean line between good citizens, like you and me, and the criminal maniacs who belong in cages, or, better yet, dungeons prudently located across the briny deep.
By all accounts, bringing Alcatraz back to life as a federal prison would be immensely costly and difficult. It would be worth those costs and difficulties, however, because America would be reaffirming its commitment to law and order, its respect for legitimate authority and its collective belief in personal responsibility. We would be (re)incarnating these principles, moreover, in stark, physical form and, more importantly, in a name – ALCATRAZ – that would once again reverberate in the hearts of evildoers.
Trump has been successful as a politician and as a leader because he understands that America’s identity is as much a conglomeration of symbols as it is a list of lofty ideals. We cannot be a sovereign nation unless our border is secure and no one is brazenly strolling across it – thus, “the Wall.” We cannot be an economic powerhouse unless our factories are humming with activity and producing big, beautiful, awe-inspiring machines that the world wants to buy. We cannot be a vibrant, forward-looking society unless our cities are sprouting tall, cutting-edge buildings that are the envy of foreigners. And we cannot be a nation where justice and peace are secure unless our worst malefactors are locked away in dark fortresses, never to be seen or heard from again (at least, that is what the criminals must believe).
It is imperative, therefore, that Alcatraz be reopened as a federal prison, and that, on the doorstep of America’s most liberal city, we affirm our collective disdain for those violent, anti-social elements that ought to terrify and disgust any decent, patriotic American.
Let’s hope that Trump can get it done.
