It's hard to fathom the injustice I see reported in the papers daily in regard to the rule of law in the United States. Snatching a foreign leader from his capitol while killing several of his countrypeople extends the disregard of the rule of law from our city streets to the streets of Venezuela. It seems as if the country we thought we built on the rock of a written constitution was actually a sand castle too easily washed away by the tides of crime.
Thomas Edsall writes in the New York Times, Instead of comparing what is happening under Trump with the situations in Hungary, Turkey and Russia, Goldstone argued that conditions in the United States are,'ironically, more like what happened in Venezuela, where after a century of reasonably prosperous democratic government, decades of elite self-serving neglect of popular welfare led to the election of Hugo Chávez with a mandate to get rid of the old elites and create a populist dictatorship.
To wit, a history of progress in the United States:
- Write a constitution ensuring rule of law and freedom of speech and religion.
- Proclaim the emancipation of all slaves; outlaw slavery
- Give women the right to vote
- Establish Social Security
- Establish Medicare
- Declare voting rights for all
- Legalize abortion
- Legalize gay marriage
- Elect the first black President of the United States
2016: Begin to take it apart.
2020: A brief period of sanity and attention to the common good
2024: See Project 2025
Followed by a history of regress:
- Christian nationalism
- Gerrymandering
- Disband the regulatory agencies
- Create a new police force from ICE to implement deportation
- Discredit the CDC
- Reduce access to healthcare
- Eliminate the Department of Education
- Attempt to limit the social safety net
- Opposition is, by definition, bad
They had the worst policy. How we have to even run against these people—I won’t say cancel the election, they should cancel the election, because the fake news will say, ‘He wants the elections canceled. He’s a dictator.’ They always call me a dictator. Nobody is worse than Obama. And the people that surrounded Biden. DJT
As Heather Cox Richardson puts it: Why even have elections? When voters choose Democrats, there’s something wrong with them, so why let them have a say? Their choice is bad by definition. Anything that they do, or have done, must be erased.
And now we have Venezuela. A shot heard ‘round the world.
Yesterday, Little Stevie Miller tells Jake Tapper:We live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power,” he said. “These are the iron laws of the world that have existed since the beginning of time.
Here are the lead headlines in the New York Times this morning:
- Russia Sends Naval Vessel to Escort Oil Tanker U.S. Is Pursuing
- Cuba’s Long-Suffering Economy Is Now in ‘Free Fall’
- Israel Tells Doctors Without Borders to End Its Work in Gaza
- WaPo publishes a little later than the NYT:
- Europe draws red line on Greenland after a year of trying to pacify Trump
- U.S. seizes Russian-flagged tanker that fled Venezuela blockade
And so far no one’s even mentioned China and Taiwan.
To paraphrase Theoden King from the movie version of The Lord of the Rings, What can one do against such wickedness?
What can one do when your sand castle is over run and just washes into the sea as if it had never been?
Was the Constitution just another fairy tale? An exercise in world building? And is that what is happening now? After all, it is not a metaphor that the first societies to attempt a rule of law are now literally awash in sand. Hammurabi is long dead. And so are John Adams and James Madison. Don’t they matter at all anymore?
Is it a bad sign that it is raining in Wisconsin in January? Or did I forget to mention that climate change is no longer something our leaders worry about. As a matter of fact, it is actually a forbidden subject.
I ask, because I am feeling a bit overwhelmed. Before last weekend, it seemed a hard enough row to hoe even if we prevail in the Midterms. Even if we elect another sane and sensible person to take the helm. By the time that happens, we may have to simply rebuild from scratch.
But since Venezuela, it now appears that we may have loosed the four horsemen, not only on ourselves but on the citizens of the world at large. And for this there is no apology we can make to them that will cut it. At this point, even further marches against this madman seem futile, but I didn’t buy that little red four-wheeled walker for nothing. Two things remain that I can do. Type and march. And I plan to. No matter what.