I will not be eating my hat
Americans still think the law will save them. Just like Sir Thomas More did.
What follows is a conversation I had yesterday with Fred Jonas, who’s a good American. It goes on a bit, but, if you’re patient enough to read it, you’ll notice a pattern: each time that Fred says that there are safeguards in the US to prevent the worst happening —corrupt judges and attacks against NATO allies—I try to persuade him that his focus is too much on the law and each time he seems to agree, and then he reverts to … relying heavily on the law.
I have no criticism of him. He does what I think a lot of us are doing right now: crossing our fingers. Because it’s pretty much all we can do to stave off our worst fears.
I don’t know if I’m right here. And I hope to Christ that I’m wrong. But Fred’s reaction—the reaction of what I call here a good American—falls back at each turn on what is legal and what is constitutional and what is right, and my asserting that—to my mind—the fact of electing a thug means the law is of little relevance (and equally that it is the law that has allowed the election of a thug in the first place) gets brushed aside.
There is a pervading sense among Americans that, if they can only get the law applied as it should be, everything will work out all right. And, ultimately, my argument is that, if the law being applied as it should be had been effective in preventing this coup d’état by Donald Trump, there would be no coup d’état, and it is the defective law that allowed the coup that is the law they want applied. Odetta and Harry Belafonte said it much more eloquently with their song A Hole In The Bucket.
I don’t want to end up disliking Americans for all of this. But there is an immigration question here. If the European far right is sceptical of immigrants from other countries fleeing a state of oppression and danger, why should Europe consider accepting Americans who say they are fleeing oppression and danger? What if they are simply feigning this oppression, in order to infiltrate our societies with their evil ambitions, and pose a threat to our airliners and skyscrapers? Don’t say that clean-looking white westerners can’t pose a threat to Europe: even as we speak, one of them is menacing at least two of our allies. And his.
So, sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. They may be overpaid and oversexed, but how keen would you be to have Americans over here? I write these words in a sort of playful jest, but the proposition would be to open Europe’s gates to fleeing Americans whose government is actually oppressing us as much as them, whilst closing the same gates to a flood of refugees from war zones that Europe and America helped turn into war zones. Maybe these fleeing Americans would build us an H-bomb, in return for our kindness? But how many straws would it take to break the back of Europe’s camel?
The conversation with Fred follows two separate threads, so it may seem disjointed in places. He’s in block quotes, I’m in italics.
I hear that Mr Maduro was “detained”. That’s the word the BBC has used on Radio 2. Well, is “detain” not a word we use when the police hold a suspect in custody, or arrest a culprit? Was this not a kidnapping?
Mr Maduro is no saint, and I don’t really care that Mr Trump is what he is, either. What he did was wrong. But there are some who think it was right because of who Mr Maduro is. Like it would be right to shoot dead a suspect of murder, but not of theft; of theft, but not jaywalking. Why is it so hard for people to tell what is right and what is wrong? What mitigation will they plead when those who believe that they themselves are wrong come to detain them?
“And when the last law was down and the devil turned on you, where would you hide then, Roper, the laws all lying flat?”
If it could be argued that invading Venezuela to kidnap and arrest Maduro was right, it would be just as right to invade Hungary to kidnap and arrest Orban, Russia to kidnap and arrest Putin, and N Korea to kidnap and arrest Kim.
It is easy to tell what is right and what is wrong: there are laws that are published and known.
Ah Niemoller’s poem.
The USA to kidnap and arrest Donald Trump?
I have typically and consistently argued that since we no longer have a functioning “Second Amendment,” because essentially all the “Arms” necessary for militias to match those used by the federal government, to prevent federal over-reach, are already illegal for civilian possession, then we should finish repealing the “Second Amendment.” But neither the Founding Fathers, anyone else, nor I saw the clown coming. I now think we should restore the “Second Amendment” for its stated purpose. Local and state militias, if we still had them, couldn’t get to the clown to kidnap and arrest him. But you are very definitely right that that’s a very prominent thing that needs to happen.
Benjamin Franklin saw him coming (https://endlesschain.substack.com/p/well-doctor-what-have-we-got-a-republic):
- Well, doctor, what have we got - a republic or a monarchy?
- A republic - if you can keep it.
The verbal exchange between Philadelphia socialite Elizabeth Willing Powel and Founding Father Benjamin Franklin as the latter left the signing of the US Constitution in 1789, along the lines of the inquiry made at childbirth: Is it a girl or a boy?
So, what did the good doctor mean with if you can keep it?
Or maybe he’s bemoaning that as much as the Electoral College was formed because the Founding Fathers thought average Americans weren’t smart and broad-thinking enough to choose a president, none of the Founding Fathers thought we would get this dumb.
But, don’t you see, it doesn’t matter what the constitution says. It doesn’t even matter what the law says. The law is replete with loopholes, and all Mr Trump needs to do is invent a reason that fits a loophole. Because, when push comes to shove, you always need to allow the president to preside.
Take Wayne Couzens, a London policeman who abducted, raped, murdered and burned the remains of Sarah Everard. Now, you can have all the rules you want preventing policemen from raping female office workers—the rules are there, they exist, they make it a criminal offence, even if the culprit is a policeman—so it’s not prohibiting the acts that should preoccupy you; it is how you decide who can be a policeman that should be your prime concern.
If you elect a thug as president, he will act like a thug as president, as surely as when Mr Andrews told Bruce Ismay in Titanic that that unsinkable ship would sink. Because it’s made of iron. And iron sinks.
It’s not the constitution that needs changing (well, yes, it does, but that’s not the point). The point is preventing thugs from becoming presidents. And you can’t stop that happening because your democratic principles allow a thug to stand for the presidency; and your self-imposed exceptionalism lets him then do what he wants.
If Donald Trump were to drop dead this instant, your troubles would not be ended. Not one bit of it. No more than if Vladimir Putin dropped dead this instant, would Russia’s problems be resolved. Because they are products of what your country and Russia have become. Ruled by thuggery, by consent of the people.
Thuggery of the people, for a part of the people, by that part of the people.
You raise interesting points. As for Couzens, the rules don’t stop anyone from doing the wrong thing. But they allow for punishment. Was he punished?
As for the clown, suppose he somehow lives until November, ‘28. There’s a Constitutional Amendment that says explicitly that no one can be president more than twice. I realize our Supreme Court has a way of “interpreting” things so that it can say that what was very clearly said was not what was meant. Maybe they’ll try that. If the clown doesn’t live, or doesn’t run, he and the states can limit and distort who can vote, so that the system can be rigged to allow JD, or the clown’s son, or someone else to win.
Couzens is in prison for the rest of his born days. We do not have capital punishment in the UK. But Miss Everard is still dead. His conviction did not revive her. She is the split milk of the proverb. Except that many, many, many people cried buckets of tears over the spilling of her.
In the film “if...”, the rebelliousness of a group of schoolboys at an English public school takes a turn for the worse when they acquire firearms and start shooting. It is clear that, at that moment, the rules that kept the school as a wholesome unit, and even the society complete within which it existed, had broken down to the extent that extraordinary measures were required. Like the police going in to get Salvador Ramon when he killed 19 people at Uvalde’s Robb Elementary School. There comes a point when you need to realise that the game of soccer that you thought you were playing has become rugby, because Webb Ellis picked up the ball. And either you learn the new rules fast, or you lose.
So, you’re absolutely right. Every time you re-learn the rules of this game, they will change.
PS: Miss Everard is dead because Couzens viciously killed her. If she had been a young child, ran away while playing, ran into the street, and got hit by a car, she’d still be dead today and forever more.
I disapprove of capital punishment, too. It doesn’t undo crimes committed, and it has repeatedly shown not to deter anyone. It serves no purpose but to be a vehicle for some people’s anger. But if the “state” can kill people because someone is angry, why can’t Couzens kill Everard, if he has his reasons?
Everything you say is correct. We can’t have victims back.
So we have a dilemma in this country. On the one hand, we have too many people running around with guns. On the other hand, we don’t have guns, and training (”A well regulate militia, being necessary to the security of a free State...”), for the right people to be expert with the right arms at the right time. As I said, I was always comfortably opposed to the “Second Amendment” until the clown came around, and he showed us why we need it.
Good point, Mr Vincent. So, Benjamin is not rolling in his grave screaming “holy shit!”?
Let me first say that this is an enjoyable banter, albeit about a very serious subject. It looks as if I’m trying to be right, and I’m not. I wish I were wrong.
Most democracies, and the US in particular, have operated for at least the last 100 years on the basis that the alternatives are too horrific to contemplate. It is the shock and horror of the two World Wars that to some degree tempered the worst excesses to which US presidents were capable of going, because they hesitated to test the absolute nature of the absolute power that lay in their hands. So, they on the whole followed the rules, or at least followed the nation’s sentiment (9/11 for example).
As long as Nixon would resign sooner than aggravate the turmoil he’d created, and as long as Gore would acquiesce when Bush claimed victory over the chads, it seemed that there was always a valve that could relieve the build-up of pressure that portended absolutism. Ironically Gore’s acquiescence only emboldened the right.
King Charles I of England stormed parliament on 4 January 1642 in order to usurp it. It was a foolish move that cost the country a civil war and the king his head. It was not the first provocation by his majesty, but it would be his last. What Benjamin Franklin saw as a weakness in the US’s structural plumbing was time and again successfully plastered over, so its leaks never turned to a torrent. It is a great shame that Franklin’s warning was never taken seriously. Odd, for a man whose wisdom is proclaimed from the rooftops in other quarters.
The party that is usurping your parliament and constitution at this moment will not ever acquiesce in their reform, I can assure you, for it is precisely their defects that have enabled this coup d’état. So, the question will rather be whether you, on the other hand, will acquiesce in his destruction of them.
I completely agree with you, and that’s the problem we have about our “Second Amendment.” It was explicitly to enable militias, and our Federalist Paper #29 explicitly says there are two purposes of militias. The first is to check the federal government if it over-reaches. But to do that, militias would have to be armed as the federal government is armed. That was true during the Civil War, but it’s not true any more. And the arms militias would need are illegal for civilian possession. So, to the extent that the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, and the Founding Fathers were right to foresee that the public, through militias, might need to be enabled to combat the federal government’s possible bellicosity, militias, which we no longer have in their original form anyway, are no longer the slightest match for the federal government and it’s military. The clown can do whatever he wants, and no one will stop him. It would, in some theory, have been interesting to see what would have happened if the military brass had revolted against Hegseth and the clown. But I think they’re so accustomed to following orders that they quit instead of revolting. At this point, we need a revolt, or another Revolution. The clown and his functionaries are working hard to corrupt the voting system -- and they’ll have to hurry to get a new Constitutional Amendment -- because he wants to run and win again. Although he can barely function now, and it’s unclear who’s really making decisions. That might be made clear, and he might propose that person as his successor.
Fred, you’re right, of course you’re right, but you will never win these arguments on the basis of legal sophistry. For various reasons: first, the courts can no longer be relied upon; second, Congress has been emasculated; third, it’s three years to the next presidential election, if there is even going to be one. Fourth, your mid-terms are a fantasy. Because it doesn’t matter any more who is in the Senate or the House. They are impotent.
Please don’t tell me you have pinned all your hopes on the outcome of the mid-terms? They will come, and go, and nothing will change.
The time for legal briefs is gone. Let’s face it, Britain didn’t raise a court action when Germany invaded Poland, did it?
Almost every court, except the Supreme Court, is honest, dedicated to the law, and reliable. Jumping ahead to fourth, keep in mind, if you’ve been following it, that Republicans have already been losing lots of elections of various kinds. I don’t want to disappoint you, but I very much pin my hopes on the midterms.
It wasn’t just Britain that didn’t initially oppose Germany. You’ve seen, as well as I have, the famous photograph of Hitler with Roosevelt, Stalin, and Chamberlain. But the Allies woke up, and despite all the losses, defeated Germany.
Every electrical device will generally work without let or hindrance for 5 years. Maybe 10. Yet the statutory guarantee is only two years. So, in truth, all you can expect of your shaver is that it will function for two years.
However, you expect it to go for ten years because you know that Remington is a good make and they don’t make shavers that conk out after two years, because if they did that regularly, no one would buy them. So, it’s less Remington that you trust than the market forces that nonetheless end up giving you a—statutorily enforced—guarantee of only two years. And, tell me, when did market forces ever offer a guarantee they didn’t have to by law?
That is the kind of guarantee that has pervaded US politics (and everyone else’s to be sure): what you effectively now have is a government that is not only allowing its shavers to conk out after two years, but is even arguing about what a year is.
Okay, enough analogy. Your courts are ruled over by judges and every last one of them is elected. If your president can turn out to be such a scoundrel and still be freely elected, why should your judiciary end up being any different?
Like your armed forces. Mr Bradley who killed those seafarers with the second strike. Why did he do that? Well, he does as he’s told. Doing as you’re told is what Trump is all about. So, the courts will gradually learn to do as they’re told. By electing Trump, Americans have removed the ability to ask “why?”
No one can ask “why?” any more in your country. So the point will come when it’s pointless to ask a judge “why?”
Some judges are elected, and some are appointed. The clown has had adverse rulings from judges he himself appointed. This past week, or the week before, he had an adverse ruling from the Supreme Court, which is commonly in his pocket.
Yes, Bradley was following orders. He didn’t have to. The order was illegal. Some generals have quit.
Do you know how a judge is “appointed” in Belgium? They choose to pursue that path: the judiciary. They choose it after qualifying. Then they study a postgraduate to become a judge. And, if they pass their exams, they become a junior judge, in a small court. And as they progress, each time passing more and more stringent examinations, they proceed up the judicial ladder.
They are not elected. They are not appointed. And they are certainly not appointed by a president of a certain political colour. For life. We have an independent judiciary, and they let it be felt, by slapping down government when it needs slapping down. It’s not perfect, but it’s much freer from political influence than yours. That is one thing that I think Franklin might have wanted to see structured more rigidly.
Your judiciary is elected. And appointed. So, who does the appointing? It wouldn’t be politicians, now, would it?
The lack of an independent judiciary is, I will concede, something that has never been that much of an issue in the US. Because, despite the routes by which judges get to the bench, the overarching sentiment is indeed that which you voice: honest.
Can you explain how the courts that previously did Trump’s bidding are now standing up to him? Maybe legal sophistry will win the day after all. If so, I will be glad. But do not content yourself with simply observing that the SCOTUS is being more difficult with the president. Ask yourself why that is.
If some generals have quit the army, does that make the opposition to illegal orders more stalwart? Or does it make acquiescence in illegal orders within the ranks easier to achieve? I dunno. Having the counterview in the ranks means that there is at least a chance of debate. But does having it outside the ranks just increase the chance of conflict?
You raise a number of issues. Judges here get some training -- not as rigorous as in Belgium -- but only after they’re elected or appointed. Of course, you could say the same thing about parents: there’s no training, and some are terrible parents.
If Franklin, and the other Founding Fathers, wanted more than there is, they would have arranged it.
Yes, of course the judges who are appointed are appointed by politicians. But that doesn’t at all guarantee the politicians who appointed them, or the political party of which those politicians are members, of “favorable” decisions from the judges. Many of the judges who have ruled against the clown were appointed by him or by some other Republican.
To the extent that parts of the judiciary are not independent, that is their personal choice. They might agree with the clown, or with his party. Or they might be afraid of “doxxing.” Not all of them are honest, but it seems to me that many or most of them are.
I am unaware that some courts or judges previously did the clown’s bidding, but now don’t. You might be right. I will tell you, though, that after the clown lost the 2020 election, he brought actions to just over 60 courts. He lost every one of them. And not one of 50 governors, some who almost assuredly voted for him, and wanted him to win, said that voting in their states was faulty or unreliable.
The SCOTUS has almost unwaveringly given the clown whatever he wants. On the rare occasion they haven’t, I don’t know why they have diverged. Maybe they’re afraid of “doxxing,” or maybe they’re aware of the growing movement to create SCOTUS ethics requirements and term limits.
It’s an interesting question about the effect of some generals’ resigning: whether that works to or against the clown’s wishes. Those generals can’t do anything while Hegseth is in charge, unless they refuse to follow illegal orders. Which they should, but it would lead to their being fired.
Almost every court, except the Supreme Court, is honest, dedicated to the law, and reliable. Jumping ahead to fourth, keep in mind, if you’ve been following it, that Republicans have already been losing lots of elections of various kinds. I don’t want to disappoint you, but I very much pin my hopes on the midterms.
It wasn’t just Britain that didn’t initially oppose Germany. You’ve seen, as well as I have, the famous photograph of Hitler with Roosevelt, Stalin, and Chamberlain. But the Allies woke up, and despite all the losses, defeated Germany.
You have a dilemma in your country. And because your country is your country, we also have a dilemma. Today, NATO will have started preparing to go to war with you.
Good. We deserve it.
Why would NATO go to war with us? Is Venezuela part of NATO?
The USA will invade Greenland and pose the question for Europe of whether we want to be colonies of the US or fight for our freedom. It is not just your dilemma. Trump is as much a danger to the world as was Adolf Hitler. Today is a date that will live in infamy.
It’s a personal view. I have a hat. I’ll eat it if he doesn’t snatch Greenland.
I was wondering if that’s what you meant.
I doubt it. But if the clown is still that stupid and out of control, fight for your freedom. The clown is shedding support in this country like crazy. The US armed forces won’t agree to attack Europe, or Greenland.
You are right that today will live in infamy.
Get ready to eat your hat.
Excellent compilation. Thanks for going to a lot of trouble.
You described this as "enjoyable banter." I completely agree. You're very knowledgeable, and it's been a pleasure exploring these questions, many of the answers to which are unknown, yet, with you.
Keep the hat at the ready. I have several, too. It remains to be seen who has to eat one.