"A Nation of Laws"

An Object Lesson in Power and its Exercise

Well…they finally did it.

They stopped dithering and did what they were always going to do anyway: they indicted the Orange One. Not for anything dramatic or egregious, mind you, but simply for…well, misappropriating some worthless pieces of paper or something equally unbefitting a showman of Trump’s garish and flamboyant stature.

I think that’s what hurts the most.

I would have much preferred something like “high crimes and misdemeanors”—you know, something flashy and exciting. Instead, they chose to indict Literal Hitler for hoarding a few banker’s boxes full of some junk that nobody cares about.

Hell, if hoarding boxes of crap is a crime these days, then consider my old man a terrorist on par with the late, lamented Ted Kaczynski.

But it’s about the secrets, don’t you see? Trump is trafficking in classified material, state secrets that put our men and women and intersexuals at risk. Please. I’m sick to death of this Regime and its grubby, dirty little secrets; it’s high time anyway that we had our own “Storming of the Stasi Headquarters” moment, and found out just what nasty and sordid little crimes our benign government has been keeping from us…aside from the obvious ones, naturally.

That would be the democratic thing to do.

Of course, we know that’s not what any of this is about. It’s a flex, as the kids like to say; a demonstration of pure, untrammeled power by the Regime. It’s really a message directed at every one of us, you know; at me, at you…at whoever would challenge that shadowy cabal of Baby Boomer geriatrics and their administrative state toadies that runs the American Kleptocracy.

I guess I’m supposed to feel an icy chill run down my spine at the very thought of them condescending to send a strongly worded message to little old me…but I don’t. I don’t think anyone really fears them all that much anymore; even Trump, the object of all this sound and fury, took some time to visit a restaurant and glad-hand after his arraignment, in a kind of symbolic shrug of disinterest.

No one cares because the Regime is hemorrhaging legitimacy, and every one of these desperate moves to stanch the unstoppable flow somehow only manages to wrench the wound open again, and make everything that much worse for them.

Case in point: since I was a child, I’ve heard one refrain, dinned into my head with relentless ferocity so that it might never be dislodged. It goes something like this: “America is a nation of laws!” (somehow, there’s always an exclamation point). Or maybe: “In America, no one is above the law!”

But of course that’s nonsense, and it always has been. There have always been those who are above the law; every country, in every period of history, has had a ruling caste whom no law can ensnare. That is just the way of things, and America is no different.

Naturally, those who are above the law remain so for an indefinite period of time; and then, just like that, circumstances change, and they are no longer above the law, but are very much beneath it. Just ask the French aristocracy after all that nastiness in 1789, or Tsar Nicholas and his partisans after 1917, or…well, you get the picture.

We all know who is above the law in America, and who is beneath it. The BLM stormtroopers are above the law; the J6ers are beneath it. Common thugs of every stripe are above the law; those who would defend the weak against them, as did Daniel Penny, are beneath it. And, of course, the repulsive reptile “elites” like the Bidens, the Bushes, the Clintons and Obamas, are decidedly above the law; Trump, God bless him, is beneath it.

For those who are above the law, though, it’s often best not to get too cocky. Sometimes you can be above the law and then beneath the law in short order. Just ask poor Andrew Cuomo. Sure, his Covid policies were a disaster; but he did nothing that the other Democratic Gauleiters didn’t happily do as well.

He just had the misfortune to be the public face of those policies—the very ugly, very white, and very male face of those policies. Newsom’s too good looking, and he has presidential aspirations; the others were females. Nasty and overbearing females, but that doesn’t signify—they’re untouchable, obviously.

Pity poor Cuomo, he drew the short end of the stick. And so he found himself suddenly and comprehensively beneath the law, which must have been a very disorienting and disconcerting experience for one of his ilk.

We might also cite the case of the hapless Jeffrey Epstein…but then we’d be verging into conspiracy theory territory, which is just gauche. Even a piece of far-right trash like me won’t go there.

But what about that other mantra, the one about America being a nation of laws?

It certainly is that. The United States has so many laws you can’t even get a straight answer about how many there are. Thousands? Tens of thousands? Millions? Doesn’t matter anyway—laws are so passé; these days it’s all about “rules,” passed and enforced by the unelected bureaucracy. That’s right—rules, like something out of a Kindergarten classroom.

If that doesn’t assure you we’re all imprisoned in the Longhouse—albeit, a Longhouse with the most comprehensive surveillance and law enforcement apparatus in human history—I don’t know what will. Laws are for free citizens and men; rules are for children, which is of course how the Regime views us.

How much freedom can you really have in a country that’s saddled with so many laws and rules and regulations? Not much, and that’s clearly the point. In order to survive in America, in order to merely exist, you end up breaking some law or rule or regulation at one point or another, unwittingly and purely by happenstance.

Hell, I’ve probably broken half-a-dozen laws today, and didn’t even know it. I’m pretty sure I’m breaking some law right now, as I write; and I’m absolutely certain you’re breaking a law, just by reading this. But repeat to yourself: “Ignorance of the law is no defense,” you goddamned criminal.

It’s almost as if our default nature in America, from birth, is that of “criminal.” Thenceforward, we can remove that stigma only through the accrual of “good behavior” points, allotted to us by the benevolent state through our performance of good works (social justice warfare) or by demonstrating satisfactorily that we are right-thinking (but not Right-thinking) bien pensants (mainly through the espousal of Wokery and an uncoerced commitment to the “Current Thing”).

In simpler terms, we de facto retain our freedom only through the forbearance and leniency of the state. Somewhere, at some point in our lives, and all unbeknownst to us, we have broken a law and committed a crime; so long as we behave ourselves, it is forgotten and bygones are permitted to be bygones. Step out of line, though…well, that crime can always be dredged back up, as the Orange One has discovered to his great cost.

It’s like a kind of blackmail that’s forever looming over your head. Nothing to get too bent out of shape over, most of the time; but read the wrong books, espouse the wrong ideas, and run afoul of the Regime, and you’ll learn—as did Ricky Vaughn, Rob Rundo, Daniel Penny, Kyle Rittenhouse, and, hell, maybe even Donald Trump (although he seems to be having a blast, as usual)—that the threat implicit in that tired refrain of “America is a nation of laws!” suddenly grows a pretty vicious set of teeth.

We’re a nation of laws, all right…but whose laws?

That’s the lesson the Right needs to learn. There is no such thing as “rule of law,” or “a nation of laws.” There is only power, and the law is its instrument. The Left knows this only too well, and applies the maxim of the friend-enemy distinction—formulated by that decidedly non-Leftist German jurist, Carl Schmitt—with unsparing exactitude.

In other words, the Left uses the law to punish its enemies, and reward its friends. The Right has been less innovative in this regard; in its notions of law and order, of fair play, and of equality before the law, which are manly notions, it looks to what is noblest and highest in mankind.

The Right, concerned with high principles and wishing to set an example for others to follow, has too often disdained to reward its friends and punish its enemies. The Left, naturally, has no such compunctions, and it is time the Right follows suit.

There is no equality before the law. That is utopian, Enlightenment nonsense. There is only power, and whether one is its subject or its object. It’s time for the Right to stop being the object of power, and start taking the reins as its subject.

So let us hope that Donald Trump—and more importantly the Right in general in all Western nations—learns a very important lesson from this demonstration of Regime power. When we are returned to power, and the Regime is swept away, we must remember to exempt our friends from the law, and subject our enemies relentlessly to it.

We are, after all, a nation of laws…