Atop the entrance to the United States Supreme Court is engraved a solemn promise for every American to see: “Equal Justice Under Law.”
Unconscionably, it is a promise that historically was broken with respect to many Americans, whose unjust treatment is rightly recorded and recounted as a reminder that, where the rights of some citizens are infringed, the rights of all citizens are endangered. Concomitantly, wherever some citizens are considered above the law, justice for all citizens is imperiled. Consequently, the ongoing effort to fulfill the promise of equal justice under law is essential to preserving and promoting social cohesion. In the effort’s absence, citizens lose trust in the authority of government institutions. In a nation founded on the “consent of the governed,” people may begin to rethink their consent to abide the decision makers and their decision-making.
It is this lack of institutional trust that the swamp’s political and media elites have ignored in their less-than-objective and largely inaccurate denunciations (and rationalizations) concerning the rise of President Trump. No, it wasn’t all the “-isms” the elites suggest have inspired the “deplorable” movement. These smears only served to reinforce the seminal objection of large swaths of the citizenry spurred to vote for Trump: namely, people believe the swamp does what the swamp wants, whenever it wants, because the swamp can with an impunity born of political position and power.
For Trump voters especially (though this should be true for all Americans), swamp supremacy has been a galling inversion of the constitutional prescription that citizens are the sovereigns and their government is the servant. In other words, it is a betrayal of the promise of equal justice under law.
Given the disgraceful abundance of evidence, it makes diabolical sense why the swamp ignores this primary motivation of “deplorable” voters: bluntly, for going on a decade, the swamp’s political and media elites have committed and are even now covering for their own abuses and potentially criminal activities, such as: “Fast and Furious,” Benghazi, IRS (and possibly FBI) political targeting; Hillary Clinton’s classified emails on an unsecured server; unmasking American citizens; leaks of classified information; NSA and FISA abuses, Uranium One, etc.
Compounding the this crisis of confidence among citizens in the promise of equal justice under law is the fact a special counsel, in what is tantamount to an unconstitutional general warrant, was appointed outside of Department of Justice guidelines to investigate possible “collusion” between the Trump campaign and Russia. The investigation is based upon a bogus dossier concocted by a former foreign agent who, paid by the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign, actually colluded with Kremlin-connected Russians to affect the outcome of a U.S. election because he was “desperate” to stop Trump.
Further, the congressional committees investigating and uncovering abuses and potential crimes in this debacle of justice have met with stonewalling from executive branch agencies over which they have oversight. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) has even been threatened by the media’s swamp denizens with calls to have the special counsel charge him with obstruction of justice for conducting his constitutional duty of congressional oversight. Yet, while these congressional investigations continue to reveal Obama-era abuses and potential crimes, Congress has no power to prosecute them. And rightly so.
That constitutional duty falls to the president and thus, now, to the Trump White House. Whether this administration is pursuing investigations into any of these matters is a subject of much conjecture, in which one gleans citizens’ creeping fear the swamp will again evade accountability for is misdeeds and malfeasance. This fear is not unfounded, for the swamp is adept at papering over rather than prosecuting is miscreants and criminals. The swamp’s rationalization for this unequal justice under law is that to air its “dirty laundry” would erode public confidence in its institutions—i.e., the swamp.
Elected to drain that swamp, it would be a final, biting irony if the Trump Administration succumbs to this canard rather than to exhibit confidence in the public’s ability to handle the truth; and heed the public’s demand for and need to uphold equal justice under law—a demand and need succinctly articulated by the esteemed jurisprudential scholar, Judge Smails: “Well, we’re waiting!”
Who sane can blame the public for its lack of trust in the swamp? After all, thanks in large part to President Trump, the public is already well aware of and enraged by the ways the swamp thinks itself above the law and has conducted itself in a manner “so illegal!”
Wonder if the president knows someone who will do something about it any time soon?