JackLecter
8d ago
It's been three months, but I'm binging your past comments- you're an extremely lucid and cogent writer, and we disagree on just enough to make that a very interesting exercise for me.
I'd identify as a "Rule of Law" proponent, but the bulk of my comments on the subject are to the effect that it would be awfully nice to have it. I think it possible- although I am not certain- that at some point in the past, we did; or at least, we had a much stronger norm to obey and enforce the written laws than we now have, in ways that could actually constrain behavior.
This has been visibly-cracking-at-best for as long as I've been paying attention (one of my first political memories was of hearing that Clinton had committed perjury and being confused as to why he wasn't being arrested), and at this point it's a complete joke. I am very interested in emphasizing that it's a complete joke! Getting common knowledge that it's a complete joke is, apart from being desirable-in-itself, absolutely necessary if we're ever going to build a version that's not a joke. I'm a proponent of "Rule of Law" in that I'd very much like to do that.
I think a key crux here is:
Is the current system an imperfect attempt to instantiate Rule of Law, which fails, which falls short, because perfection is beyond the reach of flawed humans?
Or is it a scam? Are its promised rights lies?
I can see, in the abstract, how there's kind of a muddy middle here where different people might draw the line between those categories differently. But I don't know how anyone can look at the facts in the OP and honestly maintain that this is an attempt to be evenhanded. The thumbs on the scale are too regular, too predictable, and too weighty for me to dismiss them as noise.
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