Conservatives on the Side of “Law & Order?” Only When it Favors Them!
Jan. 6, 2021 and Republican outrage over the FBI’s raid on Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago compound are transparent examples of how conservatives will turn against “law and order” whenever they feel their advantage, privilege and power is threatened. Laws are to keep you under control… not them!
Currently Republicans are flabbergasted, furious, incensed, outraged that the FBI would dare serve a search warrant upon their dear leader, Donald Trump, the ex-president, in order to see what he — or his aides — might have stolen from the White House upon his surly, pouty and un-American departure on the day he was supposed to be peacefully, personally and civilly handing the reins of American democracy over to the duly elected new president, Joe Biden. Yes, this was the same guy who over the previous month and a half had tried every trick in the book to cling to power… including many that were clearly illegal, including inciting an insurrection that violently attacked the United States Capitol with the entire Congress and vice-president therein. In that attack police were savagely beaten… with, appropriately enough for these conservative “patriots,” poles with the American flag attached to them.
Now the Blind Hand of Justice is going after their Trumpy… and Republicans are apoplectic. What babies. What hypocrites. What jerks. Remember “Lock Her Up!” Republicans had bloodlust to send the law, their law, after Hillary Clinton’s crimes, real or imagined. Speaking of imagination, imagine if the FBI had raided Barack Obama’s joint. You think these cretins wouldn’t be cheering and guffawing until they choked on their chewing tobacky? Imagine if it really was Antifa — which Republicans initially blamed for Jan. 6 — dressed up in Trump caps, t-shirts and capes, that actually attacked the Capitol, ya think conservatives wouldn’t be howling for the death penalty?
Get real.
We’ve said here before that the only thing conservatives consistently conserve is their own advantage, privilege and power. Nothing else is really important to them. Not any principle. Not the Constitution. Not the nation. Not the planet. Not their religion. Not even their own children’s and grand-children’s future. So, of course, there is no law that they will not ignore… if it suits their selfishness. This is true conservatism. And one of the truest conservatives in American history is none other than Donald Trump. Sorry, Never-Trumpers who claim that Trump is really not conservative because he does not believe in this or that tenet that you claim to hold dear. You are the conservative-lites. He’s the full enchilada… overstuffed at that.
Donald Trump is not being legally hounded for political reasons. He has beaucoup problems because he has broken laws. That, actually, is his brand. Trump has spent a lifetime breaking and flaunting laws that everyone else is expected to abide by. They are pesky gnats to him, for which he hires a gang of thuggish sycophants and lawyers to chase away. And he has a verrrry long record of getting away with it. There was a fine here, a slap on the wrist there, many tut-tuts, a lot of grumbling from those he shafted, a lot of settlements for pennies-on-the-dollar for those he owed money to, his companies have gone bankrupt again and again, but not him, officially. Many of his businesses were revealed to be utter shams, including his “charitable” foundation. He is an expert at externalizing loss. The shitstorms he stirs mainly end up dripping on those who trusted him, while he strides away, fatter and sassier… and ready for the next con job. As is clearly inferred by his Big Lie about the election, Donald Trump never loses… even while everyone else around him does.
His greatest con was convincing millions of Americans that a common grifter with zero love for and less understanding of the Constitution than the average seventh grader could and should be President of the United States. Sixty-two million Americans voted for him in 2016, without fully understanding how lousy a person he really is. In 2020, he won ten million more votes than that, after he had spent four years proving how horrible he is. In my mind, these two facts hold positions very near the top of Horrifying Facts About Your Own Nation.
Yet Trump has done us all a favor. He ripped the curtain off the convoluted mythology with which conservatives have largely duped the American public. They, conservatives, are the real Americans. They, conservatives, are the real Christians. They, conservatives, are the defenders of tradition. They, conservatives, are the defenders of democracy. They, conservatives, are the defenders of law and order. They, conservatives, are the defenders of freedom. None of these are true, and never have been. From witch trials to stealing Native American land and culture to slavery to opposing the American Revolution to starting a Civil War to segregation to corporate greed to oppression of women and every minority to ravaging the natural environment, American history is one long tale of conservatives doing their best to thwart true American ideals — liberty, equality, justice for all — and behaving like barbarians who Jesus, himself, might wish to crucify.
Conservatives abhor “equality,” the quintessential American ideal, and the fulcrum upon which the other two, freedom and justice, rest. Indeed, they crave the opposite, inequality; they want a rigged system, that favors them. Someone like Donald Trump — or worse, possibly coming soon — is the inevitable end result of allowing this caustic, toxic ideology to simmer in American culture for so long, and the abject failure of the media, education and the more liberal parties to recognize it, call it out and shame it back into the dark, dank crevices of culture where it deserves to spend eternity.
Donald Trump, the true conservative, has unleashed the mob and encouraged its true colors to shine. And what do you know, those colors almost perfectly match his. To the mob’s delight, Trump has advised them, time and again, to stop being afraid to be uncivil. Fight like hell! Knock the hell out of them! The press is the enemy of the state. Liberals are radical socialists who want to take away your country. They are terrible. Wokeness! Who wants to be awake to the plights and injustices of all those “others?” Who cares about their feelings or welfare? Your own advantage, privilege and power are all that counts. Laws are for us, conservatives, to impose on them, not for them to hold us to. “Law and Order” is for us to keep them in line, not vice-versa. How dare liberals try to steal elections; they are for us to steal. America does not belong to them, it belongs to us, conservatives. Believe in the lies that back all of this up.
The hanging question — upon which the future of our democracy depends — is whether a critical mass of Americans will realize the seriousness of what they are viewing as this curtain is drawn back and this dark, tangled mess of conservative disregard for American (and Christian) values is displayed in all of its malevolent colors.
No one should be above the law. That’s one of the bedrock principles our nation is built upon. But Donald Trump doesn’t agree with that…. never has, never will. When he improbably stepped into the White House, he expected that everyone in his circle, as always, would swear fealty to him, not the Constitution or the nation itself. He fully believed that his new sycophants should include the entire Republican Party, the United States Justice Department, as well as all the generals and admirals and other leaders of our country’s military. This is not hyperbole. Trump, himself, made his expectations very clear. When this or that official pushed back and said, “Sir, we serve the Constitution, not any one person,” he looked at them with utter disbelief, then often uttered his most famous line, “You’re fired!” Alas, the bigger problem is some 72 million Americans agree with Trump that laws, traditions, institutions, democracy itself are there to serve their own advantage, privilege and power. Imagine, again, such a country.
As Republicans are now busy erasing history, wildly gerrymandering to suppress votes, scurrying to write laws that will allow them to “legally” steal upcoming elections, while rewarding law-breakers, including electing them to public office, Trump, himself, is hand-picking candidates, but also facing multiple legal problems. He is being investigated for stealing documents and other materials from the White House. He is being investigated for his long history of lying about his finances (he’s ultra-rich when he’s seeking loans, and ultra-in debt when the tax man cometh). He is being investigated for intentionally interfering with the conduct of a state (Georgia) election. He is being investigated for actively attempting to thwart American democracy. Everyone is innocent until proven guilty in America (at least for now… just wait until conservatives rewrite that if they ever consummate supreme power). Yet everyone knows Trump is guilty of all of these. Of course he is… he’s friggin’ Donald Trump, America’s greatest conman. What bugs liberals is that he always gets away with it… what thrills and inspires conservatives is that he bugs liberals because… he always gets away with it.
Breaking the law, just to bug liberals, is totally consistent with what conservatives actually conserve: their own advantage, privilege and power. Taking a jack-hammer to one of America’s bedrock principles? That, too, is fair game for conservatives who never really, in their heart of hearts, believed in that principle in the first place. The very clear picture that Trump and his mob have given us is that this segment of the American population, which would set a single person as above the law, is a clear and present danger to our Constitution and our democracy. These are AINOs… Americans in Name Only! They may have been born on this soil, but they have no real love for the actual nation upon it.
For the sake of America itself…
Lock Him Up!
And throw the book at him… finally!
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No Hate.
No Violence.
All Life is Sacred.
The Universe is Magnificent & Beautiful.
Love is the Way.
Copyright 2022, Rusty Reid
