Rule of Law has never applied to the rich and powerful.
Donald Trump has been vexing people across the political spectrum, especially liberals, in his first term as President for a multitude of reasons. Of course because of his heinous policies and general vileness, but also for a much stupider reason. In fact, most Democratic politicians and liberals more broadly care more about the stupider reason than they care about his actual material impacts on the most vulnerable people in our society.
That reason? He’s breaking the dang rules, The Law, and he’s not being punished for it. He just keeps doing it! The fuckwaffle cheeto bitcholini is committing crimes. Out in the open!
He signs illegal executive orders, he ignores court orders and subpoenas, he receives emoluments, and dozens more. Then he has the gall to taunt people calling out his criminal behavior? Why, if the holes in my brain were any larger I’d be as shocked and outraged by this erosion of our legal standards as the rest of you.
But, I know a secret that Trump intuitively understands.
Laws? They’re not real folks. Only power is.
I can hear the howls of disbelief now, “Laws are real, they are. They’re real, and they’re strong, and they’re our friend.”.
To that I’d say: bombing cambodia, Iran-Contra, the Iraq War, torture, rendition, drone assassination, warrantless domestic surveillance, foreclosure robosigning, affluenza, Jeffery Epstein, the Golden State Killer.
All technically crimes or criminals who committed or commissioned ostensibly illegal acts, and all done with a level of impunity directly proportional to the perpetrator’s proximity to power.
You don’t have to take my word for it either. There are centuries of Legal Philosophy that use a lot more words and intellectual navel gazing to come to roughly the same conclusion. They may spend an inordinate amount of time theorizing about the best ways to maintain the fiction that is the rule of law, but the honest ones understand that power is the fundamental factor in determining which laws apply to who and when or at all.
The reality of law and law enforcement on the other hand are inversely proportional to the power of the individual. Donald Trump is the most powerful man on the planet. He may let his cronies and accomplices get collared, but he may also pardon them.
This sort of raw exercise of power is horrifying to Democrats and liberals writ large because it does away with the usual pretenses. It doesn’t pretend to be a mandate received from the people or an expression of the public will or any of the other convenient fictions used by politicians seeking to excuse their own inaction or malfeasance. It doesn’t further the myth of democracy in America. A myth that must, but won’t die.
If it’s that easy for a President to break the law in service of their own ends then maybe Obama’s hands weren’t really tied when he was in office. Maybe he really could have just as flagrantly wielded executive orders and all the other powers of the imperial presidency and bully pulpit to do good things. Maybe Trump’s naked use of Presidential power is as much of an indictment of the Democrats as it is of Trump
Either I’m right, and laws aren’t real, and it actually is that easy, or Democrats are putting their own incompetence on display by showing they can’t impede Trump’s obvious criminality with the ease that the GOP killed nearly every item on Obama’s progressive wish list.
Trump’s flouting of the usual kayfabe is what’s really disturbing elected Democratic Party politicians. Sure, some of them may find it personally disgusting, but their real objection is his destruction of their cover. An explicit falsification of their claim that enacting the policies their constituents want is just too hard. That the obstacles are too great. That they themselves are not the obstacles.
While there are still plenty of good political reasons to follow through with Trump’s impeachment, history has shown there won’t be any consequences for him. After all, we have to look forward not back.
If the Democratic Party is actually interested in advancing left progressive policies (they’re not), then the next time they’re in power at all levels of federal government their responses to the people won’t be “we can’t”. Instead, they’ll say to the GOP and their own conservative elements “just try and stop me”.
I won’t hold my breath.
Jean Krill is is the co-editor and co-founder of Zero Balance. His writing navigates the many disparate visions of a radically better future.