Fire Sale at the End of History

Donald Trump is above the law. Defeating him means that we have to admit this to ourselves.

America may not have come to terms with it yet, but you’ve just witnessed the most spectacular and consequential episode of Mythbusters in history, and Adam and Jamie weren’t even there to guide us through it.

To explain:

One of the most important things that the United States is going to have to straighten out and clarify going forward is: Why couldn’t Donald Trump be prosecuted for any of his alleged crimes?

This is separate to the question of whether he is guilty of crimes. If you look back at the past few years and the myriad investigations against the former and future president you’ll notice that the question of his guilt was rarely even brought up. The question in all cases was, from the beginning, “Is this person, by definition, subject to the legal system?”

There were four criminal cases involving Donald Trump. Very bravely and timidly, two of them dared to move ahead at all. The Georgia case into the conspiracy to rig the 2020 election got as far as an arrest and a notorious mugshot, but they lost their nerve about bringing it to court. They kicked that can down the road until it was too late.

Only New York, Trump’s home turf, had the New York sized cajónes to bring one of his cases to trial, at which he was convicted on all counts. However, they too chickened out before sentencing and so here we are.

The trial had no right to be this boring

Everybody involved at all levels in the criminal processing of Donald Trump, from the Attorney General down to the guy who held Trump’s head to stop it bumping against the patrol car, spent the last four years trembling and sweating like Cold War generals standing at a doomsday nuke panel. Because of that, this entire drawn out and expensive farce ended literally as quickly as a CNN presenter could say “Fox has called it for Pennsylvania.”

All those cases will now go away, and the amount of vengeance that everyone involved can expect depends entirely on how thoroughly they go away and how low to the ground they can get during their apology.

Again, why?

There is apparently a rule of law in America. It’s supposed to be pretty sacred as it’s one of the most fundamental things separating a liberal democracy like the USA from the monarchy it was established to escape from. For this reason, even Trump’s most staunch defenders (especially his defenders) absolutely cannot admit that the reason Trump cannot be prosecuted is because there is not, and in fact cannot be, a rule of law.

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