The American Rule of Law? Ha! What a Bad Joke!
Nha Trang, Vietnam, November 26th, 2024.
Salaroche

Accountability? Yeah right! That noun may apply strongly to you and me, but not to criminals placed at the top of the American political food-chain. Jack Smith, the independent Special Counselor appointed a couple of years ago to investigate some allegations against Donald Trump, just moved to drop two felony cases against him, thereby further discrediting the American Rule of Law’s reputation (see here).

From the outset, since the Biden Administration took charge on January 20th, 2021, the American Judiciary has been cowering under the weight of false, cowardly pretensions of impartiality. It took almost two years for AG Merrick Garland to appoint Jack Smith. Two years! And why did Merrick Garland abdicate his duties as Attorney General and decided not to prosecute the cases himself in the first place?

He did it out of fear of being accused of partisanship and out of fear of being accused of weaponizing the DOJ as an instrument of personal revenge, as in late 2020 then-Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnel had shamelessly denied Garland even a hearing for his nomination by Barack Obama for Justice of the Supreme Court (see here).

Then there was the glaring abuse of judicial discretion openly displayed by Aileen Cannon, Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida, who back on July 16th arbitrarily dismissed the charges against Trump for his mishandling of classified documents (see here).

Add that to the hesitancy and cowardly delay of Judge Juan Merchan, the acting justice of the New York State Supreme Court in New York County who presided over the “Hush Money” case, who to this day has failed to pronounce any sentence against Trump for the 34 felony counts he was found guilty of (see here).

Donald Trump was right every time he said that the whole judicial system was rigged, except that it was NOT rigged against him, but in his favor. In a way, this doesn’t come as a surprise. This situation has been a long time coming in America. The novelty of Trumpism is mostly in the name and in the political personality that embodies it, but NOT in the core authoritarian ideas that have finally given shape to it.

Authoritarianism has always been lurking in the back recesses of many Republican minds and in those of a lesser but influential number of Democratic souls. American authoritarianism is not based on any European or Asian models. It has its own historical, cultural, national roots and now that it will finally be in full control of the country it will have its own unique, nationalist American characteristics to it.

Unfortunately, given the exceptional position of nearly-unrivaled power the United States holds over the rest of the world in military, economic, and cultural terms, the consequences for such American veering to the extreme right may end up reshaping the structure of world alliances in very unforeseeable but quite possibly dark and dangerous ways.

The American rule of law, the American Judiciary as a whole, failed to put a stop to the ascendancy to the Presidency of a convicted felon who, among other crimes, had in several ways and occasions tried to overturn the free and fair elections of 2020.

The Constitution of the United States failed in that purpose too, as it proved itself impotent to counteract any such powerful anti-Democracy forces as was the threat presented to the nation by the Republican Party over the past 10 years.

Obviously, the clarity of the Framers’ wise vision couldn’t reach far enough into the future as to foresee the possibility that some 200 years later the patriotic integrity of a majority of Americans would degenerate to the point of electing an amoral, insurrectionist, sex-abuser, consummated-liar, narcissist, wannabe-despot sociopath as President of the United States. As a result, the Framers didn't include any guardrails against such contingency in their otherwise admirable document.

Now, it is just a matter of bracing for the incoming destructive storm and hope that the damage inflicted on our Democratic Republic over the next few years won’t be as wide and deep as it is outlined in the infamous Project 2025.

Salaroche