As I said in an earlier post (I don’t have the link), every dictatorship looks invincible … until it isn’t.
That doesn’t mean the Felon/Musk/Putin triumvirate will fall any time soon or even before I’m dead. And much injustice will take place before the tyrant topples. Along with their own corruption, the Felon seems determined to prevent anyone protecting anyone from predators like himself — gutting the CFPB, for instance. Protecting rich tax cheats. Gutting what little gun control rules exist. Punishing environmental NGOs for existing (the religious right loathes environmentalists). Shutting down the office that guards against foreign disinformation. After all, the foreign disinformation is often coming from inside the house.
But as always the resistance continues. Harvard’s pushing back against the Felon’s attempt to push it around. Judges are drawing lines in the sand. The Felon’s toppled a lot of dominos but some of them are toppling against him. As Chris Geidner says at LawDork (second link in this paragraph) “It is nowhere near the end, we do not yet even know how it will end, and there will be many more disturbing developments before it does, but Thursday was a day for seeing why standing up matters — and can make a difference.”
Or as Fred Clark puts it: “Seriously, just look around. Does it look like the meek are inheriting the earth? Does it look like those who hunger and thirst for justice are being filled? Does it look like the merciful are being shown mercy? Jesus was meek and merciful and hungry for justice and look where that got him. They killed him. We killed him. Power won. That’s what this everyday Saturday shows us — power always wins. “If you want a picture of the future,” George Orwell wrote, “imagine a boot stomping on a human face — forever.”
“But in fact,” St. Paul says, everything changes on Sunday. Come Sunday power loses. Come Sunday, love wins, the meek shall inherit, the merciful will receive mercy and no one will ever go hungry for justice again. Come Sunday, everything changes. If there ever is a Sunday. And but so, this is why we hope for Sunday and why we live for the hope of Sunday. Even though we can’t know for sure that Sunday will ever come and even if Saturday is all we ever get to see.”
I’m willing to work to bring about Sunday, but the work won’t end then. I anticipate a strong pushback against any attempt to hold the Felon’s lackeys accountable. FOTUS Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt is a fascist propagandist; AG Pam Bondi is conducting herself more like the Felon’s mob mouthpiece than a lawyer who serves the American people. Yet I guarantee when this is over there will be employers willing to hire them (even outside the right wing world) and mainstream media outlets running Bondi’s insight on what the next Democratic president is doing wrong.
Case in point, John Yoo served in W’s attorney general’s office arguing that the president has absolute power to contravene any laws or court decisions, including locking innocent people up at Gitmo without due process. He’s currently a University of California law professor and gets periodically quoted by the news media (under a Democratic administration he seems to forget his belief the president has absolute power. Go figure).
Because Democrats are the mommy party we’re supposed to be nice, not vindictive; because we’re the party that advocates for tolerance we’re supposed to be forgiving. So Bondi thinks exiling alleged criminals to El Salvador is her boss keeping America safe (not, of course, the innocent people who get shipped there) and takes Tesla vandalism more seriously than school shootings; surely we’re not going to criminalize a difference of opinion, are we?
No, I wouldn’t want her criminalized unless she’s done something criminal; I wouldn’t want her stripped of due process even if we had strong suspicions she was crooked. Everyone deserves protection under the law. However I see no reason to treat her like she was just one more AG, no different from all the other lawyers who’ve held the gig. If anyone wants to shun her, not hire her, send her to Coventry — as I’ve said before, the intolerant are not entitled to toleration.
It’s one thing if a Felon supporter realizes they’ve screwed up. If they’re willing to work against him, I’m willing to work with them (more discussion here), however much I’m muttering “You should have listened to us!” If they want to offer excuses (“I’m willing to be judged … by perfect people.” was one accused sexual harasser’s huffy defense) or make vague muttering about how mistakes were made … nope. Remember, everyone in the FOTUS administration is there by choice. Sure, he’d have found someone to fill their jobs but that’s never an excuse. As the old line goes “Everyone’s entitled to a lawyer. It doesn’t have to be you.”
