Category: Politics

Political Nominalism

One form political nominalism takes is loyalty to a political label. 

In late November I heard a self-described "life-long Democrat" on Fox cogently explain why Kamala Harris lost the election and why her political career ought to be over. Despite the accuracy of his analysis, the fool remains a Dem! That makes no sense. When the thing labeled no longer exists, why cling to the label?

It is not as if the old Democratic Party can be brought back. The transmogrification unto wokery has proceeded too far. The young Turks have taken it over, the 'woke' squadristi mainly, AOC et al.,  and the members of the old guard (Pelosi, Schumer, et al.) are on their last legs. But there is no fool like an old fool, and a huge, but dwindling, number of useful idiots still vote Democrat out of misplaced loyalty to an empty label or else because of their delusional opposition to Trump. But they, like Pelosi & Co., will soon pass into the night, and the sooner the better, not that I wish them physically dead; I wish them politically dead. The physically dead can't make political mischief.

But wait a minute! Don't the dead vote in Dementocratic precincts?

 

Nancy Pelosi in 1996: A Pre-Trumper on Tariffs

You have probably seen this by now, but in case you haven't, here is Nancy Pelosi in 1996 talking sense! I didn't think she had it in her, given the inanities she has been spouting for the last quarter century. I don't see much if any difference between what she said then about  tariffs, trade imbalances, and trade reciprocity and what Trump is saying now.

Part of what enrages contemporary Dems about Trump is that he has (a) stolen their thunder, and (b) is actually doing things they only talked about doing, e. g,  curtailing waste, fraud, and abuse at the federal level, controlling the borders, and shrinking the size of the federal government.

Blinded by their mindless rage, they cannot assess policy proposals on their own merits, but only on whether or not they are supported by Trump. If Trump is for it, they are against it, no matter what it is, and vice versa.

Anti-Trump Dems cannot stand the man because he has transformed the fat-cat GOP into a people's party.  The Never-Trump Republicans cannot stand him because he gate-crashed their rich guy club and exposed the bow-tied Beltway/Bulwark boys and girls for the effete and epicene bunch they are.  Interestingly, Trump has won the sympathy, though not the full support, of the socialist outlet, The Militant. See here for a recent article in support of my assertion.

But he wins because he is loaded too, and more importantly, loves his country, its people, and has the biggest cojones of the toughest hombre on the world stage at present.  

Let Them Eat Woke

Alex Castellanos:

Democrats, your party has a product problem, not a marketing problem. Don’t look around. Look in the mirror. Your problem is staring back. You’ve lost the ability to govern your country. That’s why your party expired in 2024 with Kamala Harris. That election was not a changing of the guard, it was the end of an era. The organizing principles that have defined the Democratic Party since the 1930s are now exhausted and near the grave.

Right. The Dems persist in thinking that their problem is one of 'messaging.' In a sense, it is: they have no message and they have no messenger.  I heard Jen "Circle Back" Psakis last night describe Kamala Harris as "brilliant." Truth is, she's a lazy, inauthentic know-nothing, and the opposite of brilliant. Just listen to her speak. She thinks the Cloud is a physical object up in the sky!

And you voted for her? What were you thinking? Were you thinking? Or were you emoting?  I understand that you don't like Trump.  Do you live your whole life on the basis  of likes and dislikes? Do you make major life decisions on the basis of knee-jerk reactions? Perhaps you are spending too much time on Facebook. Thumbs up! Thumbs down! Don't be a knee-jerk jerk off.

Addendum

My claim that the Dems have no message is not quite right. They have a message, a nefarious one that they wisely do not broadcast plainly, knowing that it would not sell well among the majority if honestly presented.  Hence all the vacuous and obfuscatory nonsense spouted by Kamala and Tampon Tim, together with merely performative clownish gyrations, pantomimed page-turnings, and expressions of unhinged hilarity and 'joyousness.' They must think we are idiots. But the joke is on them since expressions of contempt do not win votes.

As for their message, it is garbage from the git-go. Leading the cavalcade of Unsinn: the claim that there is no biological difference between men and women, a falsehood that underpins the morally offensive policy that biological males must be permitted to compete in women's sporting events. 

Why We Are Winning

Roland Fryer, WSJ, The Economics of DEI and MEI. (Merit, Excellence, and Intelligence)

Victor Davis Hanson, Five Ukrainian Fables

James Piereson, New Criterion, Too Many Democrats

Kimberly Strassel, WSJ, Trump's School Choice

Paul Craig Roberts, Every Vote for a Democrat is an Attack on America.  HT: Tony Flood who writes, "Salient line (for me): 'And still, American citizens vote for Democrats. How can a population this stupid be made great again?' "

We are winning, but it will remain a nasty slugfest for the foreseeable future, as my man Hanson fully appreciates. We need to get tough with our political enemies, as they reveal, day by day, the full depth of their depravity.

Victor Davis Hanson, New Criterion, MAGA agonistes. Excerpt:

Trump has now inherited an almost bankrupt country. The ratio of debt to annual gdp has reached a record high of nearly 125 percent—exceeding the worst years of World War II. The nation remains sharply divided over the southern border, which for most of Biden’s term was nonexistent. Trump’s own base demands that he address an estimated twelve million additional unvetted illegal aliens, diversity, equity, and inclusion mandates and racial quotas, and an array of enemies abroad who are no longer deterred by or content with the global status quo. The eight-year Obama revolution in retrospect did not change American institutions and policies nearly as much as the more radical four-year Biden tenure. And so often, when drastic remedies are proposed, their implementation may appear to the inured public—at least initially—as a cure worse than the disease.

Take the example of illegal immigration. Since Trump left office in January 2021, two major and unexpected developments have followed during the Biden years. First, the border did not just become porous but virtually disappeared. Indeed, Biden in his first hours of governance stopped further construction of the Trump wall, restored catch-and-release policies, and allowed illegal immigrants to cross the border without first applying for refugee status.

Given the magnitude of what followed—as many as twelve million illegal aliens crossed the border during the Biden tenure—the remedy of deportation would now necessitate a massive, indeed unprecedented, effort. The public has been increasingly hectored by the Left to fear the supposedly authoritarian measures Trump had in mind when he called for “massive deportations.” Left unsaid was that such deportations would only be a response to the prior four years of lawless and equally “massive” importations of foreign nationals. And yet, while the twelve million illegal entrances over four years were an insidious process, the expulsion of most of those entrants will be seen as abrupt, dramatic, and harsh. In addition, it was much easier for felons and criminals to blend into the daily influx of thousands than it will be to find them now amid a population of 335 million.

In-Lieu-of-SOTU: Trump’s Congressional Address

Fabulous address by Trump to both houses of Congress last night. It kept me up beyond my monkish bedtime. So I got up 'late' this morning at two a.m.

How good was it? The boneheads of The Bulwark are going bonkers. 

Can I say anything bad about it? Well, our boy spoke of two genders instead of two sexes. And he needs to learn  that the correct phrase is 'rare earth minerals,' not 'rare earths.'

Roger Kimball:

Many commentators have said that Trump 2.0 has accomplished more in six weeks than other administrations accomplished in four, six or even eight years. It is true.

Tonight, the president provided a detailed inventory of his initiatives. Within hours of taking office, he designated illegal immigration a national emergency. Trump noted that Democrats kept saying that new legislation was needed to fix the border. But in fact, he said, “all we really needed was a new president.” Trump declared war on inflation and took steps to undermine the deep state and its racist DEI initiatives, thus restoring merit and race- and colorblind justice to their proper place in the economy of American values. He also took a page from the Book of Genesis, and articulated the non-woke, matter-of-fact truth that there are only two sexes: male and female. The crowd (but not the Democrats) cheered at that bit of common sense. 

The president presented a bracing tour d’horizon in his opening sally. He ordered federal workers back to work: “They will either show up for work, in person, or be removed from their job.” As I write, the Trump administration is ending “weaponized government,” restoring free speech, underwriting English as the official language of the United States and pursuing a policy of “drill, baby, drill” to exploit America’s energy resources.

 

A Coordinated Assault on All Fronts in a Fight to the Death

I don't pretend to understand Trump's battle plan, but it may be that this guy does:

The Trump Team fooled everybody, including me. As last week’s various lawsuits sprouted restraining orders like early buds emerging all over the willow trees in springtime, most commenters expected Trump to take a necessary pause for defensive retrenchment. Surely, we all thought, it would take Trump’s anti-bureaucrats some time to clear the judicial logjam. But all of us were wrong.

image 8.png
 

A brief pause to clear past the TROs wasn’t Trump’s strategy at all. No pauses! Instead, yesterday Trump tripled down, jamming the battle tank’s accelerator into overdrive and smashing ahead in a whole different direction. His new battlefield banner unfurled yesterday afternoon in the form of one executive order plus three separate press conferences, which together sent a just-relaxing Deep State enemy racing for the bunkers with its trousers still half off.

And don't fool yourselves, muchachos: this is a fight to the death:

Some people will regard my title as hyperbole.It is not.Trump, I believe, understands he is in a fight to the death.The American establishment tried to discredit and ruin him, to imprison him, to assassinate him.They stole his 2020 reelection from him. They tried to steal his NY properties. It is not possible for Trump to have illusions about what he is up against.  He is up against evil.

Trump knows that the fight is not just about him. It is about America. For decades a corrupt American establishment has been running the government for their benefit at the expense of the American people. Trump says he intends to take government out of the corrupt establishment’s hands and put it back in the hands of the people.That is the last place the establishment wants it.For them the struggle Trump began in 2015 is existential. If Trump loses, America loses, and the establishment wins. Civil liberties will disappear, especially for “racist” white people and for people who think there are only two genders. Censorship and false narratives will prevail, and we will live in a belief system constructed for us by the establishment and the whore media for whom government is a profit center.

I don’t know how many of Trump’s appointees understand that they are in a fight to the death. How strong are they?If Trump doesn’t win, their careers are over. The establishment will see to that. If the Establishment proves to be stronger, will  Trump’s appointees change sides and abandon the fight?

I don’t know how many MAGA Americans understand the stakes. How many of them think that the fight ended with the election victory and now President Trump will put everything right? If this delusion prevails, the emergency extra-legal steps Trump must take if he is to prevail will lack support among his followers.The whore media will paint a picture of Trump as a tyrant.

Addendum (2/14)

Report Card on Trump's First '100' Days.  He promised to hit the ground running, and he did. His accomplishments so far have been astonishing. If his propensity for hubris doesn't do him in, he's headed for Mount Rushmore. His interregnum did him a world of good. His getting nixed* in 2020 redounded to his benefit. His cabinet choices were outstanding and all have been or will be confirmed. A truly diverse and inclusive bunch in the proper senses of these terms, and no 'equity' in sight. 'Equity' is unjust and can get you killed. Individual MERIT rules as it must and by right: fight, Fight, FIGHT! that it be restored. The obstructionist crapweasel Dementocrats haven't learned their lesson yet, but they will in the end. They had better, or they are done for. They way they are going, 2025 may be their last year.

As I have recently opined, however, we do need an opposition party to insure checks and balances all up and down the line. The Dems would do just fine if they could thoroughly reform themselves by purging the hard-Left scum and getting back to basic sanity and moral decency. But that's a big 'if.'

If you've been around a while, you know that the Dems weren't always full of Schiff and his ilk: this used to be the party of JFK, a resolute commie-fighter who stood tall against Nikita "Shoebanger" Krushchev, and was a lifelong member of the NRA. I shudder to think what would have happened in October of '62 had Clinton, Obama, or Biden been president.

_________

*An allusion to the outcome of the Kennedy-Nixon contest of 1960.

Could Kamala Explain the Difference between True and Magnetic North?

I doubt it. She thinks 'the cloud' in cyberspeak refers to a physical object in the sky. Remember that howler?

Why are the Dems so dumb? They lack both a message and messenger. The think they failed to 'get their message across.' But they had no message to get across, and no one to get it across.  Did you see the unedited Sixty Minutes video?  Kamala the Joyous  could not explain why she wanted to be president.  She is perhaps fit to be a kindergarten teacher, but not POTUS.  Is that not blindingly evident? And are you not an emotion-driven fool if you let your TDS impel you to embrace the Joyous One?  I'll leave Tampon Tim and his page-turner of a wife out of this rant.

Part of what make the Dems dumb is their inability to learn  from experience, as witness their continuing to play the race and Hitler cards. Do they have a death wish? And what does it say about the nearly half of the voters who cast their ballots for that intersectional dumbass?

Collateral observation. The voters are not the electorate. Two reasons. First, the voters include those who vote illegally; the electorate, used normatively, as I am using the term, does not. Second, the electorate include those who do not vote in a given election. The electorate comprise those who are legally entitled to vote. You are legally so entitled only if you are a citizen who has not disqualified himself by, say, committing a felony.  Bernie Sanders thinks that felons should have the right to vote. I make an invective-free case  against this foolish and indeed asinine view at Substack, sine ira et studio. 

By the way, it appears that magnetic north has shifted position.

Steve Bannon and Megyn Kelly on FAFO

Here.

Megyn Kelly, being relatively young, may be forgiven for referring to Elliot Ness as Elliot Nest (ouch!), but Steve Bannon, whose superannuation shows, and who ought to know better, either missed her mistake or let it pass, being the gentleman that he is.  

In all other particulars, however, the short video is delightfully on target.

As for the man himself, what Kennedy said about Nixon could also be said about Trump: "The man has no class."

But what is more important, both domestically and internationally, class or the ability to kick ass?* We conservative quill-drivers do some good, I suppose, but none of us are positioned to bring about decisive, world-shaking, change. While we sit at our ink wells and drive our quills, great men stand at the ramparts and drive history.

But we the people must keep an eye on them. It is not that power corrupts; it does not. It is that we who are all morally defective and susceptible to the blandishments of power, abuse it.  Power itself, however, is good. If it were not, why would all-power count among the omni-attributes of deity?

The Founders understood how easily fallen natures are suborned by the possession of power. So they designed a constitution-based republic with built-in safeguards to check and balance the executive's power lest it issue in tyranny.

Long live the Republic, the republic our political enemies aim to tear down.  They will not succeed. The right man came along at the right time, whether or not by divine design.

But one thing troubles me. Government by executive orders cannot be what the Founders had in mind. Given our current predicament, however, such orders are a necessary evil. If Congress did its job, they would not be necessary.

An executive order is an edict. 'Edict' and 'dictator' share the PIE root, deik-. And so, true to his word, Donald Trump was a dictator on Day One, reversing the pernicious edicts of his corrupt predecessor, Joseph Biden who on his first day, playing the dictator, viciously and stupidly reversed Trump's  wise  2017  border policies.  Biden ought to have been impeached and removed from office on the grounds of dereliction of duty and failure to uphold the Constitution he swore to uphold and protect.  But so divided have we become, that Biden's removal could not be brought about.

And so here we are. If in the unlikely event that the Dems take back the White House in 2028, the cycle of reversing and promulgating edicts will begin again.  A suboptimal outcome, that.

One more thing. We need an opposition party as part of the system of checks and balances. The Dems would do just fine if they could be restored to sanity, the Camelot sanity of the early 'sixties, say.  But that is a big 'if.' Kamalot would be a disaster. If the Dems persist in their subversive ways, however, serious thought will have to be given to the question whether their party should be outlawed. 

I'm serious. The CPUSA was never outlawed, as far as I know.** There was no need to, because of their relative lack of political clout. Outlawing them would only have given them attention and brought them supporters. But the transmogrification over the last decades of the Dems into a hard-Left subversive outfit with real chances of winning puts a different complexion on the matter.

Toleration is the touchstone of classical liberalism.  But toleration has limits: it negates itself when extended unto political suicide. 

____________

*To put it politely and allusively, 'kick donkey.'

**I'm not an historian, so correct me if I am wrong or omitting pertinent facts.

Scott Johnson on Richie Havens

Powerline:

Havens grew up in Brooklyn singing with a choir in church and with doo wop groups on street corners. He crossed the river to figure out how to make a go of it in Greenwich Village as a performer. He recorded two albums on Douglas Records before he signed a contract with Verve Forecast in 1967. He seemed to materialize out of nowhere that year with Mixed Bag, a beautiful album of folk covers and original compositions. The album was full of striking performances, but none more so than Havens’s interpretation of Bob Dylan’s “Just Like A Woman.” By the way, I may need to take a break from what is meant to be an occasional series until we celebrate Bob’s birthday next May with our traditional Bobfest.

By the way, did you catch Amy Klobuchar's oblique reference to Dylan at the Trump Inaugural? And what a speech our boy gave! He can turn on the gravitas when he wants to and needs to.  

MAGA, Majority Rule, and Consent of the Governed

Here:

In short, the political battle between the Left and Right is best understood as an existential fight over what America will be. The Left pushes for a metanoic transformation, while the Right tries to catalyze an epistrophic one.

Metanoia is a forward-looking change — a recognition that one’s past way of life was flawed in some fundamental way. Regret precipitates a self-rejection that drives the transformation, which is a deliberate turning away from one’s previous identity. In contrast, epistrophe is a backward-looking change — a realization that at some point one betrayed the true self and embraced a false mode of being. Epistrophic transformation, then, is a return to one’s essential identity — a return to a previous (and more authentic) way of life.

Under the second Trump administration, America will be transformed — and it will be an epistrophic transformation. The citizens of the country have unmistakably rejected the Left’s claim that our traditional identity was morally untenable.

Very good over all, but is the last quoted sentence true? 

The concept democracy includes at least four sub-concepts: majority rule, universal franchise, equality before the law, and consent of the governed.  Consider the first and the fourth.  They are in tension with each other. Trump won both the Electoral College and the popular vote, but he won the latter only by about 2%.  So almost half of the voters did not give their consent to be governed by Trump and his entourage and to be subjected to his and their agenda. 

As a citizen and a patriot, I am very happy with the outcome: I want to see our political enemies soundly defeated and demoralized.  As a philosopher, however, one who values truth above all else, and along with it, the ancillary virtues of  precision in thought and speech,  I must point out that that it is false that the citizens have unmistakably rejected the depredatory Left's signature allegation.

The false claim is being thoughtlessly repeated by too many media pundits on our side. Widely bruited as it is, it may have the negative effect of causing complacency. We are in a war with the Left and it won't be over soon, if ever. The National Sanitation Project, as I have been calling it, may take a generation or more. All of our institutions need the political equivalent of fumigation.  That includes, of course, the RCC which, though not part of the state apparatus, is an institution that affects the course of the ship of state.

Encouraging Trends

  • The acquittal of Daniel Perry. He should never have been charged with a crime. Although there are instances of toxic masculinity,  there was nothing toxic about Perry's manly behavior. He ought to count as a hero in the mind of anyone who can think straight. 
  • The decline of race-delusional BLM bullshit.
  • The death of DEI. 
  • The de facto presidency of Donald J. Trump over a month before his inauguration.
  • The decline of gas prices. I paid $3.099/gal for unleaded regular at Costco, Mesa, AZ two days ago. What did you pay?
  • The resignation of Christopher Wray.
  • And the list goes on. Morning in America!

An Appeal to Democrat Voters

Righteously pissed off by the depredations of our political enemies and their long train of  outrageous lies,  abuses, and slanders, my tendency is to urge a girding of the loins for a long battle in which we give them a taste of their own 'medicine.'  But there is a complementary approach that may work with the less vicious and self-enstupidated among them.  After all, the majority of Dems are useful idiots who are, all things considered, not all that bad as people and somewhat open to a honeyed appeal. All avenues toward the betterment of our constitutional republic and the world as a whole must be explored. Hear Steve Cortes:

In the aftermath of any big victory in life, there is a natural human tendency to gloat a bit…or maybe a lot. But in the wake of the amazing Trump and America First electoral success of November 5th, those of us in the patriotic populist movement should, instead, make a humble, thoughtful, and heartfelt appeal to our fellow citizens who voted for the Democrats, but are persuadable.

Millions of them, no doubt, voted blue with the best of patriotic intentions. Many of them simply pursued the comfortable path of well-worn political behavior patterns. Others were surely misled by the constant barrage of propaganda from legacy media platforms. Still others live busy and complicated lives – especially in stressful times like these, created by Biden and Harris – and do not follow politics closely, for understandable reasons.

For all of these voters, here are the three most compelling reasons to at least consider joining our America First cause — and to vote Republican into the future.

The Coalition of the Sane and the Reasonable

I have been using the title phrase for some time now to refer to Trump-supporting conservatives. But what makes us sane and reasonable? Victor Davis Hanson compiles a list in The Trump Counterrevolution is a Return to Sanity.

In an earlier post I referred to the take-back of our country as a National Sanitation Project, opining  that it might take a generation or two.  But what does sanity have to do with sanitation? The words are in fact connected etymologically, sharing as they do a common root in the Latin sanus,  meaning healthy or sane or sound, as in the Latin saying mens sana in corpore sano, "a sound mind in a sound body." We Trumpians are of sound mind, and some of us inhabit sound bodies.

We need to return the nation to health by draining swamps, enforcing laws, erecting barriers both territorial and  moral, and by fumigating institutions. Leftists want to tear down our institutions; we of sound mind want to fumigate them, removing therefrom the termites who presently infest them. 

You need to get with the program and do your bit. Don't be  slacker, a defeatist, an ingrate. But if you are on the wrong side of this struggle, understand that we consider you enemies.

A threat? No, a warning. Are you wise enough to heed a warning? I can't resist yet another reference to 'Biblical Bob':

Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There’s a battle outside and it is ragin’
It’ll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’

The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is rapidly fadin’
And the first one now will later be last
For the times they are a-changin’

Elections Have Consequences

Conservatives are hobbled by their virtues, one of which is civility: we are loathe to "give as good as we get." But now that our side has power, we must not hesitate to use it against our political enemies. The destructive swine will squeal but we should show them no mercy.  There must be no compromise with those out to overturn our very system of government and who lie brazenly about their intentions.

Roger Kimball puts the point very well:

“Elections,” Barack Obama told a group of cowering Republican lawmakers early in 2009, “have consequences.” He then drove the point home by reminding them, “I won.”

In truth, Democrats tend to understand this law of the political universe more clearly than do Republicans.

The usual rule is this: when Democrats win elections, they wield power. When Republicans win elections, they seek, or at least agree to, compromise.

In Suicide of the West, the political philosopher James Burnham quotes the nineteenth-century French writer Louis Veuillot, who summed up the essence of this political dialectic in one elegant sentence. Quand je suis le plus faible, je vous demande la liberté parce que tel est votre principe; mais quand je suis le plus fort, je vous l’ôte, parce que tel est le mien. “When I am the weaker, I ask you for my freedom, because that is your principle; but when I am the stronger, I take away your freedom, because that is my principle.”

For examples of the latter, I invite you to ponder the behavior of Joe Biden’s Department of Justice, especially the behavior of the despicable Merrick Garland, the Attorney General, these last three and a half years.

Had the Democrats won the 2024 election, we would have seen many more examples of this principle in action. Assuming the Dems had kept the Senate, we would have seen them dispense with the filibuster, thus turning that chamber into what outgoing West Virginian Senator Joe Manchin called “the House on steroids.” They would have packed the Supreme Court, adding a few new “progressive” members to the bench to counter the power of Justices like Clarence Thomas. They likely would have imposed term- or age-limits on the Justices as well.

Elsewhere, I endeavored to provide a brief inventory of the “consequences” of a Harris victory. Donald Trump would have been bankrupted and jailed. It is likely that the same thing would have happened to Elon Musk. Just as John Kerry promised, the First Amendment would have been gutted if not discarded altogether in order to further the censorship and surveillance regime of the woke, progressive elite. A virtual ban on fracking and the mining of coal would have been enacted, further depressing America’s prosperity. The trans insanity of the last decade would have been extended, destroying women’s sports and disfiguring, mentally as well as physically, many thousands of confused teenagers.

The country just dodged that fusillade. What now?

Read the rest and do your bit. We can beat the bums into the dirt if we work together. It's a noble fight and it's just beginning.  Beat back better!

Should Trump Use the DOJ Against his Enemies?

Would it be 'revenge' or would it be a wholly justifiable upholding of the rule of law?  Would success be 'revenge' enough, as Trump has suggested? His enemies accused him of violating 'norms' when they themselves violated the norms that matter, those rooted in the rule of law and the Constitution. Doing so, they engaged once again in their trademark psychological projection.  The 'norms' Trump violated were merely those of conventional civility. 

Here:

Over the last four years, regime lawyers and government officials have repeatedly ignored the constitution, stretched the meaning of federal and state statutes, and shredded legal norms. They have investigated, prosecuted, and persecuted their political opponents. They did this to suppress those who challenged their rule and to send a message to would-be challengers. 

With Donald Trump’s election and pending inauguration (assuming no shenanigans between now and then), unpleasant things will have to be done to hold these people to account. The regime’s aggressive lawlessness will require a response. 

The response must balance the immediate need for accountability with the ultimate need for reconciliation. On the one hand, we must hold responsible those whose criminal conduct subverted our constitutional order. On the other, we must prepare to reconcile with the millions of Americans who erred grievously in supporting the regime’s lawlessness — at least with those people who are humble enough to acknowledge their error. 

Equal justice under the law, an essential feature of the rule of law, means enforcing the law in an even-handed manner. Violators must be held responsible for their actions. This is not “retribution,” any more than arresting a thief or murderer constitutes retribution. All citizens are expected to obey the law. No one is above the law.