Friends, remember the good old days, when we would use our rotary phones to dial each other up, and we almost never got indicted for doing so? Well, it's a brave new world out there, and one little phone call by Trump to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger may now serve as the pretext for the snuffing out not just of Donald Trump's 1st Amendment rights, but your rights and my rights and the whole architecture of American democracy too. If any political effort that the Dems dislike can be reframed as a "criminal conspiracy", as the Fulton County prosecutor alleges is the case, then we're all screwed -- Democrats included, sooner or later. Polticized prosecutions are the absolute negation of justice, and now you're seeing Republicans talking about repaying Democrats in kind. This won't end well!
My latest article addresses the pickle that Fulton County has placed us in:
Fulton County versus The United States: Why the Latest Trump Indictments Are An Assault on Everything We Hold Dear
The Fulton County DA's legal vendetta against Donald Trump is remarkably audacious in two respects.
One, it pulls 18 additional defendants into the leftist/establishment dragnet, some of them guilty of nothing more than publicly questioning the fairness of the 2020 election, or of asking for someone's phone number on Trump's behalf. Thus, the Georgia trial, if the prosecutor follows through on her intention to try all 19 defendants together, will be a judicial and media circus on a scale not seen since the O.J. Simpson murder trial. It will be, from the perspective of almost every Republican and conservative, a new low in American jurisprudence.
Two, the Georgia case is also uniquely atrocious in that it posits that all the defendants are part of a broad criminal “conspiracy” to mislead the American public, to subvert government officials and institutions, and to overturn the result of a free and fair election. Because this was allegedly an organized conspiracy to violate the law, RICO charges have been brought against the defendants, including Trump, meaning that they will be treated like mafia bosses and will face potentially tougher penalties and longer sentences. The substance of the crimes themselves – charges like “false statements and writings” and “solicitation of violation of oath by public officer” – will be accentuated by the prosecutor's decision to frame them as an organized criminal enterprise.
This begs the question, of course, of why the Democrats' exceedingly organized effort to challenge Florida's certified presidential election results in 2000, and thus overturn George W. Bush's victory over Al Gore, were not also a criminal conspiracy against truth, justice, and the American way. We might further inquire why the shadow campaign conducted on the Left in 2016 to convince members of the Electoral College not to honor their pledges to vote for Donald Trump was not also an anti-democratic conspiracy. We might then ask whether Stacey Abrams' refusal to accept the results of the 2018 gubernatorial election in Georgia, and countless Democrats' and progressives' declarations that she was, despite her certified loss, the legitimate Governor of Georgia, was not also an organized conspiracy to subvert the democratic will of the people of that state, as well as the legitimacy of the rightful governor, Brian Kemp. We might further demand to know whether Democrats' and progressives' aggressive peddling of false accusations of Trump-Russia collusion was not similarly an organized conspiracy to overturn (indirectly) the results of the 2016 election, by fraudulently soliciting the impeachment and removal of the duly-elected president.
We could ask any, or all, of these questions, in light of the Fulton County prosecutor's brazen attempt to criminalize the questioning of election results only when it is done from the political right, but we would be, presumably, wasting our time, since the concept of equal justice under the law does not compute for people who view the purpose of the law, in the first place, as the destruction of their political enemies.
Republicans and conservatives ought to ponder, however, just how sweeping the implications of the current prosecutions are, and how potentially chilling for any and all future efforts to oppose and/or criticize the establishment Left's reign of error.
If the criticism of the 2020 election was a vast criminal conspiracy, that means that anyone connected to it, or supportive of it, is also a criminal. I, for instance, who wrote articles questioning the fairness of the 2020 election, thus engaged in behavior not so different from that of some of the defendants soon to be tried in Fulton County. My, uhh, obscurity would not, legally speaking, mitigate the seriousness of my “crimes”.
What's more, millions of Americans contributed financially to the Trump campaign, which was deeply involved in efforts to question the election results and to try to overturn them. Presumably, every one of these donors was a cog, however small, in crime boss Donald Trump's elaborate election-busting machine. It need not matter, moreover, whether support was given to the Trump campaign before or after the election, because Trump's and Republicans' (supposedly illegal) efforts to criticize the terms and fairness of the election began well before voting commenced. Furthermore, given the breadth and brazenness of this “conspiracy”, one could even argue that all 74 million Americans who voted for Trump share criminal responsibility for the damage that he, his campaign, and his administration did to American democracy.
That's right, dear reader: YOU were in on it all along! You too, when the Democrats bestir themselves to expand their dragnet still further, could be subject to prosecution and severe criminal penalties.
How can one criminalize voting, you ask, or political donations? Why, free speech is the first and most important right guaranteed by our Constitution. If the mere exercise of that right can be turned into a crime, then it stands to reason that anything can.
In short, the temerity and dangerousness of the Georgia prosecutions are difficult to overstate, and perhaps the most shocking thing about them is that their horrifying implications seem not to have occurred to a single figure on the Left – or, if they have, they seem not to be troubled by them. But then, why would a party that has embraced censorship of oppositional speech, and the persecution of dissidents in and by the private sector (with the helping hand of federal authorities), blanch at taking progressive authoritarianism to the next level: the criminalization of the democratic process itself?
That is how low we have sunk in this country, and that is how close we now are to losing, for all intents and purposes, the right and the ability to fight back against leftist tyranny.
Dr. Nicholas L. Waddy is an Associate Professor of History at SUNY Alfred and blogs at: www.waddyisright.com. He appears on the Newsmaker Show on WLEA 1480/106.9.
And here it is at Townhall:
***
In other news, my latest interview on the Newsmaker Show is awesome! What a shock. It covers Trump's legal woes, America's democracy woes, RFK, Jr's abortion woes, and series of other woes. Woe is YOU if you don't tune in...
RAY TO NICK
ReplyDeleteWe have to understand that the U.S. is not immune from having a dictatorship of the Left or Right. Somehow, a large percentage of the U.S. population believed that what is happening here now, could never happen because of the "checks and balances" system and so on. In any event, it took over 50 years, but the "infiltration" of The Left into the Democrat Party in 1968, has turned out to be a great success. The Boomer baby storks have come home to roost. The last free (if you want to call it that) election is coming up next year. "Long Live The New World Order"!
Dr. Waddy from Jack: Re: the broadcast: I'd like to comment on moon exploration and wait until I've read your article to blat about that. I wonder: how much have we made of the undersea world except, of course, submarine warfare? Otherwise it seems to be a place we only visit . Maybe the moon will be similar. It's a very harsh environment too. (Say, did you hear about the restaurant on the moon? It's not doing well; great food but no atmosphere!)Perhaps the possibility of it as a practical, rather than romantic, way station for more distant space travel differentiates it from the sea. ) Still, I'm doubtful of ideas of settling on other worlds. Why go to that effort? If we need more living space how about the sea or Antarctica?. As for blithe speculation about Earth like worlds for our settlement, ehh, what if others are already there?Will we learn from the hellish experiences of world exploration in the 15th - 19th centuries? Let's explore space with a measure of yes, wonderfully fascinated, respect not seen in the tragic past.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy from Jack: The totalitarian left's conviction of the law is characterized by its manifestation in the Critical Legal Studies school which disgraces so much of the western legal world: that is, the"law" has been simply the way by which elites protect their power, presumptions and "property". Their sanctified medieval procedures are powerful sham to keep those who would find them out busy at challenging windmills. "So be it" they say; "we will be the elite and our purpose will be whatever appears to us just at any moment. If it is destroying our enemies let us have at it! If it is to level the Himalayas it is, NOT withstanding, as unquestionably just as to condemn any insolent enough to contest it.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy from Jack: An interesting setting, Fulton County, Georgia. My impression is it's one of those presumptuous yankee outposts in the South. I've heard you need only venture a few miles outside Atlanta and the common sense real South resumes.Glad you mentioned that statewide powers in Georgia will have some say about this infamous sortee into totalitarianism.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy from Jack:It's very appropriate for you to assert that the lack of any prosecution of, especially, Stacy Abrams or Al Gore for their contemptuous dismissal of their unjust losses discredits current dem efforts to destroy DJT. It is of course, dross, dust to the antiamerican left. To them, any effort to counter their inevitable takeover is by definition beyond the pale and any means to punish and thwart that heresy is to be celebrated!
ReplyDeleteSortie, rather.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy from Jack: Certainly the antiamerican left, of which the Fulton Co. DA appears to be an obsequious cadre, knows that the "precedents" it is setting in its unrelenting onslaught on DJT could someday be used against a (yeech) dem President .That is of course made doubly ironic by their contempt for legal precedents, excepting those encouraging the murder of unborn children. Anyway, their willingness to take that risk strongly suggests that they consider the destruction of DJT to be a terribly decisive goal. Some militaries, like the WWII Japanese navy or (yes) the preGrant Union army consistently pursued bringing about a single, all out final battle to win a war. Could the antiamericans think this could be the way to sink America back into feckless Rinoism, forever chastened?!
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy from Jack: Reelection of DJT is imperative in order to defeat this potentially catastrophic change in our national politics. All out , unrelenting effort to support him, despite all disadvantages with which he may be burdened ,must be! You are right in noting the appalling and increasing threat to our polity
ReplyDeletemost recently manifested in this Fulton Co. DA's totalitarian presumption.(eg. attempted criminalization of free speech).IT MUST BE MET, ALL OF IT!! Extraordinary legal defensive measures will probably be available to him but so also his is unprecedented hazard, both to his own well being and that of the America which claims him.Regardless of his personal legal status at any point in this rapidly becoming historic campaign, we must stick with him. We cannot allow this radical power play to succeed.
Dr. Waddy from Jack: If we, America, countenance this manifest treason, if we refrain from all legal measures to stop it, we stand to lose ALL.
ReplyDeleteRay, I couldn't agree more: dictatorship can and WILL happen here. It is always just a matter of time. Of course, it may take a while to take root in our free American soil, but then again it may not. As a professor, I am continually amazed by how little confidence our youngsters seem to repose in our institutions, and how little they seem to care about the values and norms that have sustained our freedoms and our prosperity for so long. They care about their abortions and their weed, sure, but give them those and I honestly think you could take virtually anything else away without them batting an eyelash.
ReplyDeleteInteresting thoughts on the Moon, Jack. I agree that we're a long way from making Moon cities and Moon commerce practical and profitable. Finding other habitable planets would be a massive fillip for humanity's long-term potential, to be sure, but one could argue that we'd be better off concentrating on more earthly challenges like, for instance, reproduction, which we seem to be losing the knack for...
Critical legal studies must be capable of great subtlety. After all, it posits itself as the friend of the "underserved" and the downtrodden -- but, in practice, it empowers the powers-that-be to do more or less as they please. I've never been able to understand how leftists can be so anti-elitist and elitist at the same time. They have a comfort level with cognitive dissonance that I will never share.
Jack, I hear Georgia's Governor DOES NOT have pardon power, which is a pity, but some seem to think that the President may be able to wipe the slate clean at the federal AND state levels. I guess, if SCOTUS concurs, then he does.
Good point, Jack: the Left is playing for keeps, which strongly implies that it believes that, if it wins in '24, it will be close to accumulating the tools and resources it needs to finish us conservatives off, as an effective political force. My sense is that the Left believes its own propaganda re: race, and thus it assumes that an America that is less and less white will be, perforce, an America that they will find easily controllable. When you look at our bluest, biggest cities, you'd have to concede that the Left has ample reasons for optimism on that score.
I should say "all lawful measures".
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy from Jack: I think radicals conveniently fill in the holes created by their cavalier use of logic with obfuscating emotion. Why it feels good too and that's . . . like. . . well. . . . !
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy from Jack: In office Slick Willy once indignantly held forth on the definitive evil of opposing one's government. That's a good example of purposeful leftist disingenuousness on elites. History proves that once they are in power elites, or rather THEIR elite, is just reet petit!
ReplyDelete