[August]

Very interesting article:

Has Biden crossed the Rubicon?

Politically motivated gangsterism will only backfire, though at what price?
by Gary Anderson

August 14, 2022, 11:14 PM
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Rome’s republic collapsed when its politicians started using the law to eliminate opponents, a custom that began with the Marius–Sulla civil war. The guy in power used the judiciary authority of the Roman Senate to eliminate his adversaries. The intended victim would raise legions and fleets in self-defense; this took money. The contender who could raise the most troops or who was the better tactician got to be in charge. Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon because he knew that his opponents in the Senate had decided to have him executed if he returned to Rome without the protection of his legions. He had violated several Roman Republic laws during his invasion of Gaul, but there would be no fair public trial. The concept of Roman justice was dead. From that point on, might made right.

By creating a separation of powers, our American Founding Fathers attempted to prevent a recurrence of the Roman tragedy. For nearly two and a half centuries, it has worked, but the raid on Mar-a-Lago last week signifies a very dangerous potential precedent. Trump may have mishandled government documents, but the reaction of the administration’s goons was clearly disproportionately strong. For the first time in the nation’s history, one political party is trying to use the law to prevent a potential presidential candidate from another party from running again. This is a very slippery slope. Biden is certainly no Caesar and Trump is no Pompey, but we are definitely headed in the wrong direction.

The Jan. 6 hearings, the New York State civil investigations into Trump’s business affairs, and the search for misappropriated White House documents are all clear attempts to convict Trump of some manner of felony in order to eliminate him as a political threat in the 2024 elections.

The Democrats have already impeached the former president twice and failed to convict him. Now they have invaded his private residence with a horde of heavily armed paramilitary agents under the pretext of searching for official documents. Roughly half of the American population views this for what it is: politically motivated gangsterism.

It is instructive that even though former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s misuse of private servers to conduct potentially classified government business was not seriously pursued by the Obama–Biden administration, mishandling of government documents has now become a political weapon against Trump. None of this justifies the attacks on government agents that some on the far right are calling for, but it is convincing many conservatives that the Democrats are practicing the politics of targeted political terror and using the instruments of governmental agencies to carry them out. Despite this, the editorial board of the Washington Post and several of its liberal house columnists defend this selective treatment of mishandling classified information because they loathe Trump personally. Democracy may or may not die in darkness; but, as in Germany in 1933, it definitely dies in government-sanctioned elimination of political rivals.
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https://spectator.org/has-biden-crossed-the-rubicon/