Ian Welsh predicts dire outcomes for the US as a result of the Trump indictment.
America and most nations let their elites slide on crimes that don’t harm other elites. This has allowed a whole lot of evil acts to occur unpunished and for elites to act knowing they will never be held responsible for their actions. This goes beyond political acts, notice how somehow almost none of the people who took advantage of Jeffrey Epstein’s smorgasboard of underaged teenaged girls has been charged with a crime.
…. almost every powerful politician and every CEO of an important company has done things which are criminal acts: violations of red-letter law.”
This change to political norms opens the hunting season on politicians and will lead to political instability. Politicians will be charged, based not on their guilt, but based on political experience.
This is a further step towards America becoming ungovernable, and potentially a step towards a break-up of the Union, since red-state elites will be persecuted by blue state elites and vice-versa. With no norm of what laws elites are immune to, no member of the elite will feel safe. Either one side or the other must win and set a new norm, or the country must divide.
Trump could instead have been charged for crimes he did before he was President, but the crimes he was doing then “were the acceptable sort of crimes that real-estate moguls commit and aren’t charged for and if they had gone after him then, they would have made many other important people vulnerable.”
This is the consequence of having a two-tier justice system where some crimes are only crimes when committed by little people and then weaponizing that.
What Trump should have been charged with, if elites were smart, was his actual crime against elites, where he broke a norm: trying to stage a coup. By charging him with something lesser, they have shattered a consensus norm and a great price will be paid for it.