Trump’s administration is routinely ignoring court orders. It’s often refusing to let attorney’s see clients. It’s not respecting Miranda rights. It claims the right to enter homes without warrants and routinely searches without cause. It’s violating habeas corpus every day. ICE and the border patrol (the border patrol is often lumped in with ICE, but many of the worst abuses have been theirs) are brownshirts or Gestapo, whichever analogy you prefer.
The Supreme Court has let most of Trump’s crimes thru, and Trump has massively increased in his wealth in just one year of the Presidency. Trump routinely blackmails Americans, forcing them to do what he wants or he’ll use the power of the Presidency against them
The rule of law is broken in the US. Law is not just about following the letter, though that level is broken, it’s about intent. The fourth amendment is a dead letter in America. Let’s be clear, it’s been in danger for a long time. The exception to the 4th amendment allowing warrentless searches within 100 miles of the border, which pre-dates Trump, was obviously bullshit and meant that two-thirds of the American population is subject to warrantless searches.
The rule of law’s obvious break-down began with pardoning Nixon. When Iran-Contra happened, the people involved had mostly worked for Nixon. They were not indicted. When Bush lied the country into war with Iraq his administration was full of men who had been with Nixon and involved in Iran Contra.
Biden pardoned his own son, an act of sickening nepotism which in a functioning country would lead to him being removed from office before his term end.
On the non-governmental side the crimes of the rich are almost never prosecuted. There was vast fraud leading up to the financial crisis, and no one was indicted for it. After the financial crisis banks systematically used fake signatures on documents containing fake information to foreclose on homes they had not right to. This was not just allowed, but encouraged by government.
The rich and powerful are almost immune to the force of law, but all along the effective rights of ordinary citizens have been under assault. Most people accused of a crime don’t get a trial and they are told that if they insist on one, rather than taking a plea bargain, they will spend much more time in prison. Mandatory sentencing laws have removed most of judge’s discretion and power has moved towards prosecutors. Step by step Mirana rights have been weakened by the Supreme Court. Warrants are often served without knocking, in violent fashion, and we all know that cops lie routinely on the stand and under oath.
Many of the worst abuses started overseas. Detainees were tortured, they couldn’t see lawyers, they have no rights. Thomas Neuburger makes the case that there is now a black site in Minnesota. What starts overseas eventually comes home.
The US is an oligarchy. An oligarchy where there is no rule of law if someone powerful enough wants to break the law.
There is only one road back from this.Mass prosecutions, starting at the top, with Trump and Vance and the cabinet members and family members who engaged in corruption like Jared Kushner and going right down to every ICE brownshirt who violated citizens rights and every prosecutor who went along. Every violation of rights, every major corrupt action.
Of course this means first that the Supreme Court and other parts of the judiciary which aided and abetted by ignoring clear constitutional directives need to be impeached and removed and if possible then themselves tried for crimes. Clearly draconian laws like the one allowing warrantless searches within 100 miles of the border must be repealed.
I don’t pretend that this suggestion is easy or likely. I think the odds of it happening are tiny. But it’s what’s necessary if the Bill of Rights, the Constitution and common law protections for for ordinary people are to mean anything. And it MUST include the powerful. If it’s just a few ex ICE agents getting their knuckles rapped it will mean nothing.
Precedents have been set for over 50 years now that the powerful can get away with doing almost anything awful to ordinary people.
End those precedents with a new one that they can’t, or lose all of your actual rights.
All rights come only from power. If you cannot enforce your rights you have them only if those with more power than you want you to. Every right that you allow someone else to lose, because you aren’t in the group losing rights, you will eventually lose.
More than anything else except stopping American participation in genocide, if I were American this would be my priority. Not even the economy is as is important, because without functioning and fair rule of law nothing else can or will work. If America, internally, is 100% “the strong do as they will, and the weak suffer as they must” everyone in the US who isn’t an oligarch is cooked and even if the rich don’t realize it, so is America as a nation.
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