At least in part, Trump was elected — excluding Russian shenanigans — because he was understood to be someone who would break up the standing order. It had become obvious to many of us that our federal representatives in particular had become entrenched and pot-bound because they were treating their representation as entitlements and careers for themselves. Trump is fulfilling his mission of disruption very well. But the results are more rubble than rebuild. As a disruptor, he is far from idealistic or even focused.
Our doddering and diseased oldest legislators seem determined to die in office. Beyond that, the culture from which these power mongers derived — white Euro males — is no longer the major stream of American society. Not only could these men and man-identified women not recognize the legitimacy of other ways of thinking, they have demonized and resisted alternatives as hostile to their interests. They can’t recognize female interests, dark people, different religious systems, nor non-conventional sexuality. Oddly, they often indulge in unlawful sexual behavior while condemning it, which means they are claiming the titillation of power-privilege. One can be too old for sex but never too old for oppression.
I see three contexts of structural constraints that were supposed to protect against corruption. The most obvious is the “rule of law” since so many of these people are lawyers. Originally, the rule of law was meant to be a protection again tyrants who simply enforced their own opinions and interests — the way Trump is doing.
There are weak points with the rule of law despite it being meant to write down the people’s best understanding of justice. One is interpretations, which are meant to be both logical and based on precedent. Laws may have originally responded to quite different realities and opinions because the circumstances were different. As an obvious contrast, laws that are relevant and even necessary in a time of war may not be justifiable in peace, but after the war those who had enjoyed extraordinary power or profit due to military need may be reluctant to give it up. Recently he sexual revolution and availability of drugs has knocked many laws on their ears.
Another is enforcement of the rule in court, which has two dimensions. First, acts that defy the law must be defined and identified, which can lead to many tedious hair-splitting sessions with ambiguous outcomes. If the identification of specific law-breakers is in the hands of biased people (police, prosecutors) it might not be fairly applied. When the public sees that prejudice and exemptions are in operation, the society as a whole is damaged and disrupted which defeats the purpose of law. If cops shoot Blacks, Blacks demonstrate contempt. If ICE abuses kids, churches provide sanctuaries. Sarah Chayes describes this vividly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=13&v=QoiVyzlit5I
Actual punishments must be considered and proportional. Not like Duterte of the Philippines who imposes the punishment at the moment of supposed detection, shooting all suspected drug dealers in the moment they are observed. No doubt innocents are killed. I just learned a new euphemism: “overincarceration,” the American practice of jailing people even when the offence is poverty.
We are currently seeing many rather abstract laws (collusion, misprision, perjury) that are intended to guide the three strands of the US Government, but no punishments arrive. The culprits simply stonewall. The same with the predatory sexualization of power in Hollywood which has been common knowledge for decades — everyone waved it on, helped to suppress knowledge partly by representing it as sophistication, partly as provided by the ambitious victims, and partly by reviving the shady historical reputation of “theatre” as next to prostitution.
Lately the executive branch has openly hired regulators of industries who are from the ranks of the offenders and have been sympathetic to excusing or hiding them. This includes the President. By the time we are through the case will probably include outright treason, the highest international crime that laws are meant to prevent.
Laws — even detected, identified, and brought before judges— can be fiddled and rendered inapplicable by redefining boundaries, qualifications, and regulations. Those who are willing to play a “long game” can accomplish this so gradually that the corruption is undetected.
This is particularly true of the second context of corruption sources, which is using money as the one denominator of the universal. We monetize everything: human lives and mutilations, disasters, artistic success, higher education. This worked better within one monetary system based in one country with a great majority of people in the “middle class” as defined by income. Now that “money” slides from one country to another, often virtualized on the internet, morphing from one kind of profit to another, the whole capital system is full of entry points for criminal strategy.
The law is evaded by “laundering” and — again — secrecy. The greatest crimes are enabled by secrecy and yet secrecy is what protects us as private individuals governing our own lives. But ambiguously. Families are private, if not secret, but that can hide the worst abuses and atrocities of humans, esp. when families are as loosely defined and “blended” as they are today. No amount of marriage law can contain intimate abuse. No removal of children or elders to “care” is really better.
The idea of checks and balances has been counted on specifically to reinforce the rule of law. Separation of the duties of the legislators by division of them into 1) two “houses”; 2) the separate duties of the executive manager called “President”; and 3) the impartial Supreme Court review was supposed to prevent monopolies and collusions. Those of us who have lived on the Blackfeet Reservation where there still are no such divisions in tribal law are aware of the abuses and bullying made possible. Those who have been protected by it (usually big important families) approve of the system and recently voted down a new constitution that would have meant separation of powers.
Trump believes he is the boss of all three divisions, vetting judges and bribing or punishing legislators.
What I find daunting is that most people I’ve tried to talk to about these problems are unaware of the concepts per se. Evidently they are not taught or no one takes them seriously enough to think about them. At a town council meeting I was pulled into a shouting match with a council member who is convinced that anything outside written law is not, cannot be, forbidden. I tried to explain “tort law” which is more commonly known as suing, but he resented the very idea. I ran into this when I was answering the phone for the Portland nuisance department. “There’s no law against it!” was a common refrain, even though the practice might obviously be a dumb and dangerous idea that no one thought even needed to be written down.
Regulations promulgated by the executive branch at the sub-law level, neither voted on nor published, are another way of evading accountability, by claiming that they are executive functions, rather than legislative. Trump uses this all the time. His “carnival of lawyers”, funky as they seem, have this concept firmly in hand. Under-the-radar rules, pop-up enforcements in airports, minor proclamations enshrined by ceremonies, all undercut and confuse law.
Demographics (the pressure of too many people, aging, multiple cultures) are affecting these safeguards. Media provides too much information to sort or digest, so we simply lack enough time or means to investigate and challenge all these dangers and corruptions. When I reflect on all the injustices and diversions of resources I’ve see in so many of the diverse settings I’ve known, they seem everywhere. Trump’s defence is “so what? Everyone does it.” He has a point. A sadly sharp one.
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