Democracy Defenders are out in force this morning.
In case you missed it, someone named Quinta Jurecic who is a fellow at the Brookings Institution and a senior editor at Lawfare, which is a journal about the use of the law as a weapon of conflict, has a new article in The Atlantic in which she argues that prosecuting Donald Trump is like “chemo for democracy.” Sure it is harsh medicine, but it wouldn’t be necessary if Trump had not brought this challenge to Our Democracy in the first place. Trump and the 74 million Americans who voted for him are like a cancer and using the legal system to take him out before the next election is necessary to stop the disease from taking over. Otherwise, he might win the 2024 election and become the next president.
With four separate criminal cases moving forward against Donald Trump, the rule of law in America appears both commanding and startlingly fragile. Small scenes at courthouses from Florida to New York underline the ever-present threat of violence. In Fulton County, Georgia, officials set up bright-orange security barriers around the courthouse in advance of Trump’s indictment there. In Washington, D.C., fences and yellow tape surrounded the U.S. district court. Judge Tanya Chutkan, who will oversee the federal case against Trump for his efforts to overturn the election, has received increased protection from U.S. marshals—and perhaps not a moment too soon, as a Texas woman was recently arrested for calling in death threats against the judge. Trump, meanwhile, has been busy attacking Chutkan and other judges on social media, smearing the prosecutors bringing the cases against him as a “fraud squad” doing the bidding of President Joe Biden, and promising to turn the Justice Department against his foes should he win a second term.
It’s a grim picture. “The next 18 months could further undermine confidence in democracy and the rule of law,” The Washington Post warned in June. Some commentators, largely on the right, have cautioned that the investigations and prosecutions of Trump might widen cracks in the already-unstable foundations of the American public sphere. …
As the threats of violence and attacks on the justice system show, these concerns are not unfounded—far from it. But worrying about the dangers of prosecuting Trump is a bit like focusing on the risk that chemotherapy poses to a cancer patient’s health. The reasoning isn’t exactly wrong; it just begins the analysis in the wrong place. The chemotherapy might be ugly, but it isn’t the source of the problem. It’s the treatment for the underlying disease. …
Any effort to block Trump’s candidacy on these grounds would surely involve a prolonged legal battle—and raise uncomfortable questions about the wisdom, in a democracy, of ruling out by judicial fiat a serious contender for the presidency. It would make for harsh medicine.
Yet this harsh medicine wouldn’t be necessary if Trump hadn’t brought this challenge to American democracy in the first place. …
I’m not making this up.
The featured image above was used in the article.
It is Lady Justice blindfolded, holding a scale to represent the impartiality of a court’s decisions, although in this case an IV bag, which represents “chemo for democracy” is tilting it to one side.
Donald Trump himself could not have come up with a better illustration of the theme of his 2024 campaign – the arrogant, corrupt liberal establishment has weaponized the legal system to take out their political opponents and to criminalize politics. They literally see half the country as a cancer which must be taken out by any means necessary. They are willing to abuse the law to the rig the system.
Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, who are Jewish professors of government at Harvard and the authors of How Democracies Die and The Tyranny of the Minority, have a new article in The New York Times about Trump’s bootlicking Republican accomplices who are assassins of democracy.
During the first Republican debate of the 2024 presidential primary campaign last month, Donald Trump’s rivals were asked to raise their hands if they would support his candidacy, even if he were “convicted in a court of law.” Mr. Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election wasn’t just a potential criminal offense. It also violated the cardinal rule of democracy: Politicians must accept the results of elections, win or lose. …
Democracy’s assassins always have accomplices among mainstream politicians in the halls of power. The greatest threat to our democracy comes not from demagogues like Mr. Trump or even from extremist followers like those who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, but rather from the ordinary politicians, many of them inside the Capitol that day, who protect and enable him. …
Loyal democrats expel antidemocratic extremists from their ranks, refuse to endorse their candidacies, eschew all collaboration with them, and when necessary, join forces with ideological rivals to isolate and defeat them. And they do this even when extremists are popular among the party base. The result, history tells us, is a political firewall that can help a democracy survive periods of intense polarization and crisis. …
Finally, with remarkably few exceptions, Republican leaders say they will still support Mr. Trump even if he is convicted of plotting to overturn an election. Alternatives exist. The Republican National Committee could declare that the party will not nominate an individual who poses a threat to democracy or has been indicted on serious criminal charges. Or Republican leaders could jointly declare that, for the sake of democracy, they will endorse Mr. Biden if Mr. Trump is the Republican nominee. Such a move would, of course, destroy the party’s chances in 2024. …
If Republican leaders continue to endorse Mr. Trump, they will normalize him yet again, telling Americans that he is, at the end of the day, an acceptable choice. The 2024 race will become another ordinary red vs. blue election, much like 2016. And as in 2016, Mr. Trump could win. …
What is Democracy?
It is we win, we rule, you lose.
A free and fair election is an election in which liberal elites do not even have to bother with persuading voters and winning the election. They just ban or criminalize their opposition.
Democracy is the process by which liberal elites conspire against the will of voters. Look at Brazil where Bolsonaro has been banned from office or Pakistan where Imran Khan is banned from running for office or Germany which is considering banning AfD which is surging in the polls.
Note: We are several years into “The Collapse.”
Mike Huckabee has put on the skull mask. Huckwaffen is now drilling in the Ozarks in preparation to resist Democrat tyranny in the American Redoubt in the Ozarks. Okay, I couldn’t resist joking about the situation, but this is man who is one of the most important figures in Arkansas politics. His daughter is the sitting governor. This illustrates both the scale and severity of elite fragmentation.
I have repeatedly said that mainstream politics has become sick and fevered. The liberal establishment is making reckless, extreme moves both at home and abroad. We are not living in normal times anymore. We are in a destabilization spiral where a political order is rapidly collapsing. The fact that these people are delusional enough to say shit like this openly ought to tell you that we are deep in some kind of crisis that is probably going to devolve into open conflict in the near future. I am not saying that because I think it is a good thing either. I am saying it because a collision now seems probable.
>the ability of American political institutions to hold the powerful to account
lolwut
What’s your prediction on how this open conflict is gonna play out?
I don’t have a clue.
It just sure seems to be escalating to there. I read all of this as essentially saying that elections are a thing of the past. Liberal elites are unwilling to transfer power to Trump and will take the system down with them to do it
“prosecuting Donald Trump is like “chemo for democracy.”
More like, arsenic for a headache.
.. or an mRNA vaccine for a form of common cold. We from the gubmint n we beez here to hep!
RW, ” What’s your prediction ” mine? We win, they lose…
Once heard a lawyer tell his daughter,
“You know why justice is blindfolded, they don’t want her to see the atrocities that go on in court”
When they say “our democracy” what they really mean is “our plutocracy.”
Quickly becoming tyranny.
@Brad Do you know anyone who has a subscription to the Atlantic? Or buys it regularly at the news stand? I doubt it. LOL.
The Atlantic has become a “vanity” publication
The sword in lady justices hand is a double edged sword, it cuts both ways.
“The sword in lady justices hand is a double edged sword, it cuts both ways.”
Yeh, try going into court without money.
You’ll find which way it cuts.
I rather have the truth on my side, but you are entitled to your opinion.
Lol wow, full on ministry of truth article, they have got to be trolling with shit like that.
Elon Musk continues to surprise me.
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/complicit-major-act-conflict-escalation-musk-denies-cnns-inflammatory-war-meddling
HW. What are your thoughts about Elons role in everything you’ve been noting about the last few years? Has he contributed to the radicalization or just reacted to it?
A guy like this being targeted so openly and aggressively for destruction by the regime is noteworthy. Only the great orange one himself has caught this much flak.
Elon is many of the things Trump isn’t. Charismatic, articulate, strategic and a troll in ways that make it clear he has a much better grasp of whats going on and in touch more with younger people than Trump ever has been.
HW, is Elon the antichrist?
I want to believe not all of our oligarchs are evil tyrants. Could he be one that bears a flag of decency into the coming conflicts against the orcs? Or is it too much to hope?
Why do they continuously insist on using the term “Democracy” in place of the term Communism. They are not fooling anybody anymore.
They are not fooling anybody anymore.
HA ! They have the majority totally fooled.
They’re not very effectively making the anti-Trump case because they’re basically arguing that they want election interference. What they should be arguing is that Trump did all these things so he has to face the legal system because of his own actions.
Hilary Clinton, Quinta Jurecic, Tanya Chutkan, Barbequetta Chikendra …
Dump’s next campaign slogan should be “Make witch-burning great again!” I’d actually think of voting for the clown if he did – especially if he campaigned from Epstein’s old jail cell in NYC.
Still like “Biden-Fetterman. It’s a no-brainer!” though.
In ‘Our Democracy’, some voters are more Equal than others.
“… The liberal establishment is making reckless, extreme moves both at home and abroad…”
I think it’s all part of “one” of their plans to turn us into Ukraine, where will kill each other off. They always have several psyops going on. They are slowly losing control. The internet has really hurt them bad, and they are losing control of it. People don’t believe their big blaring horn, the press, AT ALL
While many people here, and everywhere, believe that everyone is a foolish idiot and doesn’t know about the Jews, I suspect this is not true. I think many people know, and at the least they know there is some sort of shadow government that runs things. It only takes is a little more looking around to fix their gaze on the Jews as the focus of our destruction. If they lose the US, then they could be done for at a minimum, 250 years or so. Possibly forever. In all history they have been able to move and lack of communication has allowed them to blame others for their being kicked out of the country. They won’t be able to do this time. If they are all deported to Israel eventually, then they will be surrounded by people they have severely abused and the only people that can help them will despise them and hate them also. Talk about shitting where you eat, they have really screwed up. Their hatred has driven them into one hell of a mess. Even all the aliens they’ve recruited to, I don’t know, flood us out, maybe even attack us in some freak war, they have no love for them either and even in NYC they are pissed at the aliens. In fact, they are rabid about the whole thing. Everywhere else they’ve dumped people, the same.
If we can stave off a civil war, I think that the radicalization of the populous will continue to increase no matter what they do. They will still try to remain in control and this will only cause more conflict as they destroy the economy, morals and basically everything in the country.
This always happens to them. I have said and believe that a very large proportion of their population are psychopaths, and psychopaths have very poor risk judgement. If you read about them you will see this. This is why people are so astounded that they continue to push far beyond all reason. Psychopaths have very poor self control and feel they can always lie their way out of trouble. I believe they are at the precipice and if we can just not start a civil war and keep them from vaxing us all to death, they will be ruined. They have been thrown out over a 1,000 countries and principalities, that we have records for, and I suspect we will throw them out on their asses here too.
Do not despair. There are ways legislatively that we could ruin them and the left superfast. A couple years time we could have a totally different country. All it takes is something like 10% of the Representatives in the House refusing to compromise in any way to kick this off. I think it;’s not liong before a vast amount of people running for the House are fire eaters who will not stop at anything to boil off the afflictions they have brought down upon us. Vote for them. They don’t control all the voting.
“The result, history tells us, is a political firewall that can help a democracy survive periods of intense polarization and crisis. …”
The result,as anyone without a head injury can see,is that 30-50% of voters in your precious “democracy” don’t get a vote and never see policies that they would like enacted,even in a very watered down form.
Who on the losing side of that equation would willingly choose to go along with that?