Heard back from a friend of mine whose advice I regard pretty highly. He's in Canada now.
I asked, back in November just after the election, what kind of "learnings" can we absorb from this election, and what does it mean about 'operating' in a democracy? And I sent him a little song-and-dance presentation, said, tell me what you think.
He said, as long as the most powerful man in the country can impose his will over the courts, there isn't rule of law anymore:
"As for your attached materials, my fundamental problem is that I do not believe that the United States federal government operates under the rule of law, if you define the rule of law as the opposite of the rule of man. The key definitional distinction is whether, when the most powerful man breaks the law, it is the man or the law that bends. In the case of America today, it is very clear. In light of that, I do not see a peaceful path to the transfer of power. Many current Trump officials are criminals, and the peaceful transfer of power is a personal threat to them. If that, in turn, is the case, then this thing gets pear-shaped pretty fast. In other words, I do not see how elections matter anymore if one side has been extremely clear that they will not accept any election result that they do not win, and now they have ample legal and kinetic power to enforce that. "
I've been thinking about that a lot today especially since the Wisconsin Supreme Court election results got announced.
I don't know that he's wrong because of one election result.
I recall, in fact, that Musk's million-dollar giveaway still happened, just under very slightly different wording, and he still hasn't been punished for either that or his previous pay-to-vote scheme back in the 2024 campaign season.
And Trump announced two days ago that he thinks he can run for a third term; given the Trump administration's open defiance of the courts, it is entirely possible that he'll just ignore the law and do it.
Maybe it's just more complex than all that, I don't know.
And between my friend and Tim Snyder now both leaving the country it's sort of got me thinking about a lot.
Starting off with the most weak and pathetic appeal to authority I've ever seen. It's just such a weird way to couch things.
What a bunch of flowery, pretentious nonsense.
It's also just wrong, definitionally, but for the sake of argument I'm going to ignore that and just accept those terms.
*gag* We've heard of punchable faces and punchable voices...this is a great example of punchable prose.
Also, by that definition, there can never be rule of law, or at least incredibly rarely. It's always overseen by man, so man can always bend or break it. No matter the system, the most powerful man cannot be held to account, almost by definition.
One of the only prominent cases I can think of is the famous A Man for All Seasons speech. And he was declared a traitor and executed for trying to uphold the law.
Not saying it's good, but the "most powerful man" gets final say. Just how it works.
It also just shows the constant warped liberal viewing of reality. Obama and Biden did things they should have been held to account for too. Not only were they not held to account, because they were the most powerful men (not Biden, he was a puppet, of course), but they had the courts and media on their side, so no one but "fringe weirdos" (and RACISTS, if you went against Obama) cared.
People are outraged because they've been told to be outrated. People are outraged because, well, Orange Man Bad.
It's also why war crimes aren't real, just a fancy humiliation ritual against the losers.