Now is the window of not just opportunity, but necessity, Donald Trump must be subjected to an avalanche of prosecution to keep him from poisoning the political waters in 2024. From 2019 an outstanding article:
There is a reason that “Equal Justice Under Law” is carved into the physical architecture of the Supreme Court above its primary west entrance. Far, far too often, America has not been a society where we are all actually subject to law equally. And yet the notion that politicians and billionaires are supposed to be the same under the law as the poor and the oppressed is a powerful principle. This aspiration is necessary for the development of a sense of community and has served as a powerful impetus for America becoming generally less unfair over time.
When the idea of equality under the law is breached serially and nearly irrevocably, that sense of commonality fractures. We won’t be able to address our many challenges ― for instance, a Green New Deal ― as an actually *united* United States unless we can create a sense that the rule of law applies to all equally.
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Refarding Obama:
In 2009, then president-elect Obama expressed “a belief that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards” in previewing his administration’s free pass to George W. Bush alumni. That view was at odds with a commitment to justice, since, by its very nature, justice is always retrospective ― crimes are committed, criminals are charged, juries or judges weigh the evidence and proceed to punish (or not) accordingly.
The view was also a political calamity ― Obama’s governance strategy of burying the broadly accepted failures of the Bush presidency created a path for Bush’s enablers in Congress to secure historic victories in the 2010 midterms. And the Obama administration’s failure to prosecute bankers and other elites responsible for economic cataclysm added fuel to the fire of resentment that led so many Americans to the tea party, and ultimately, Trumpism.
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Democrats and their candidates should resolve now to end the cycle of injustice that allows the powerful to shield themselves from the consequences of their actions. It should be a litmus test for any aspiring Trump opponent to commit to governing under the principle of “equal justice for all” and to empowering prosecutors to go where the evidence takes them.
The end of Trumpism will not be when Trump is defeated at the polls or even when he is impeached. It will be when America comes together as a nation and acts to ensure that elites like Trump who transgress against our shared laws suffer consequences proportionate to their actions.
Prosecute Donald Trump To The Full Extent Of The Law
There is a reason that “Equal Justice Under Law” is carved into the physical architecture of the Supreme Court above its primary west entrance. Far, far too often, America has not been a society where we are all actually subject to law equally. And yet the notion that politicians and billionaires are supposed to be the same under the law as the poor and the oppressed is a powerful principle. This aspiration is necessary for the development of a sense of community and has served as a powerful impetus for America becoming generally less unfair over time.
When the idea of equality under the law is breached serially and nearly irrevocably, that sense of commonality fractures. We won’t be able to address our many challenges ― for instance, a Green New Deal ― as an actually *united* United States unless we can create a sense that the rule of law applies to all equally.
—————
Refarding Obama:
In 2009, then president-elect Obama expressed “a belief that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards” in previewing his administration’s free pass to George W. Bush alumni. That view was at odds with a commitment to justice, since, by its very nature, justice is always retrospective ― crimes are committed, criminals are charged, juries or judges weigh the evidence and proceed to punish (or not) accordingly.
The view was also a political calamity ― Obama’s governance strategy of burying the broadly accepted failures of the Bush presidency created a path for Bush’s enablers in Congress to secure historic victories in the 2010 midterms. And the Obama administration’s failure to prosecute bankers and other elites responsible for economic cataclysm added fuel to the fire of resentment that led so many Americans to the tea party, and ultimately, Trumpism.
—————
Democrats and their candidates should resolve now to end the cycle of injustice that allows the powerful to shield themselves from the consequences of their actions. It should be a litmus test for any aspiring Trump opponent to commit to governing under the principle of “equal justice for all” and to empowering prosecutors to go where the evidence takes them.
The end of Trumpism will not be when Trump is defeated at the polls or even when he is impeached. It will be when America comes together as a nation and acts to ensure that elites like Trump who transgress against our shared laws suffer consequences proportionate to their actions.