So, a New York DA has charged Trump. There’s some posturing by DeSantis, but Trump will almost certainly go to New York and surrender. This is a watershed moment, no former President has ever been charged with a crime.
- This is a political act. Many President have committed crimes and have not been charged.
- It will lead to red state DAs indicting Democratic politicians with crimes to stop them from running or to damage them.
- This is a worldwide trend. Lula in Brazil and Rahul Gandhi in India are other examples.
Viewed from a wider context, there has been a catch-22. America and most nations let their elites slide on crimes that don’t harm other elites. This has allowed a whole lot of evil acts to occur unpunished and for elites to act knowing they will never be held responsible for their actions. This goes beyond political acts, notice how somehow almost none of the people who took advantage of Jeffrey Epstein’s smorgasboard of underaged teenaged girls has been charged with a crime.
My judgment is that almost every powerful politician and every CEO of an important company has done things which are criminal acts: violations of red-letter law.
But when you change a norm like this, it becomes open season and causes political instability. Politicians may be guilty, but they will be charged not based on whether they are guilty but based on political expedience.
This is a further step towards America becoming ungovernable, and potentially a step towards a break-up of the Union, since red-state elites will be persecuted by blue state elites and vice-versa. With no norm of what laws elites are immune to, no member of the elite will feel safe. Either one side or the other must win and set a new norm, or the country must divide.
Globally, as I noted below, this is an extension of a new norm of not running against one’s opponents but simply getting rid of them politically.
This has nothing to do with my sympathies, to forestall obvious comments. I despise Trump and if he had been charged with crimes he had committed long before becoming President, this would be all null and void. But the type of crimes he committed as real-estate Mogul were the acceptable sort of crimes that real-estate moguls commit and aren’t charged for and if they had gone after him then, they would have made many other important people vulnerable.
This is the consequence of having a two-tier justice system where some crimes are only crimes when committed by little people and then weaponizing that.
What Trump should have been charged with, if elites were smart, was his actual crime against elites, where he broke a norm: trying to stage a coup. By charging him with something lesser, they have shattered a consensus norm and a great price will be paid for it.
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