Respect For The Law...Enforcers

     When tales of police peculation, arrant injustice, and unconscionable cruelty accumulate, the public’s attitudes toward the police become chilly. It’s an entirely natural reaction; decent men don’t think well of indecent men, and the worst sort of criminal is one who carries a badge. The unfortunate consequence is a diminution of public respect for the law itself, which comes to be seen as a cover for plunder and the exercise of brutality. That, too, is natural; it’s exceedingly difficult to distinguish the law from its enforcers and their methods, especially given the enormous degree of discretion and the near-total immunity from accountability the police and prosecutors’ offices have been allowed by the courts.

     We may therefore assume that the recent report from Department of Justice Inspector-General Michael Horowitz will occasion a great decline in respect for the FBI and the laws it purports to enforce. Indeed, the signs are all around us that this is already an accomplished fact.

     But what consequences will that decline in respect have for ordinary, non-badge-carrying Americans?

---

     The most serious crimes the FBI has historically investigated have been kidnappings, espionage, and sabotage. (Yes, they’ve stuck their snouts into a lot of other crimes that had an interstate aspect, usually to the detriment of the investigations involved.) Sabotage is generally rare in peacetime. Espionage today principally targets corporations, which are loath to invoke the attention of the FBI for several reasons, some of which are good. Kidnappings, however, are perennial. They touch individual American lives and families. The FBI’s investigations of such crimes are a great part of the reason for its historical admiration and prestige.

     But now we can see that the FBI has been corrupted. The upper reaches appear to be beyond salvage. No one can say how deeply into the rank and file the rot has penetrated. Moreover, the IG’s report, which lays out a minutely circumstantial case for that corruption, concludes by dismissing its own findings. Though thick with evidence of political corruption, its conclusion maintains that the corruption had no effect of importance.

     The incredulity among Americans who respect facts and can perform straightforward inferences has pinned every meter in the country. The self-protective character of the Horowitz report is too blatant to deny. Horowitz himself is now suspected of involvement...or perhaps of having been threatened should he dare to point an openly accusing finger at certain parties. For practical purposes, it wouldn’t matter either way.

     If we leave aside matters of reputation, what consequences are likely? Will President Trump act against the appointed officials plainly revealed to be politically-driven scum? Will state and local law enforcement departments fight any more determinedly to keep the FBI out of their investigations and operations? Will ordinary Americans be less willing to assist in FBI investigations?

     Perhaps someone should ask the advice of Steven Hatfill or Richard Jewell.

---

     Federal law is already a minefield. Its tangles can be used to trap just about anyone, as Harvey Silverglate has told us. Add the incredible U.S. Code provisions that criminalize “lying” to a federal investigator, and it becomes plain that no one in his right mind would want to come under the FBI’s scrutiny. On that subject we can consult Martha Stewart and Lewis Libby.

     When corrupt persons attain the presidency, the baleful power of the FBI becomes threatening to anyone the regime might view as hostile. So far, that power has targeted only persons of public prestige and persons who possess information damaging to the regime...but there’s no guarantee that it will remain that limited.

     The political weaponization of the FBI is a link in a chain. We were allowed to discover another link in the IRS’s differential treatment of conservative groups. During the Obama Interregnum election-integrity groups were targeted as well.

     But we mustn’t expect law enforcement itself to conform to the law! Hearken to Kurt Schlichter:

     The IG report sidestepped the most critical point, the one that is resulting in the American people losing their last remaining fragments of faith in our system, the fact that there are demonstrably two sets of rules, that there are two brands of justice in America.

     There is one for you, me, and everyone else not in the elite – the infuriated, angry Normals. And there is another one for the elite.

     With the issuance of the Horowitz Report, the Department of Justice has placed itself above the law. With that, American society – the first and only truly free society the world has known – has become a Society of Status, in which who you are and what friends you have looms infinitely higher than any other consideration.

     How can respect for the law be divorced from the blatant partisanry and corruption of the law’s enforcers – a corruption our elected officials appear willing to tolerate? Have we fallen into the abyss – the middle-class anarchy of which we’ve been warned – wherein private Americans will habitually refuse to engage law enforcers, and disdain to assist in the enforcement even of laws of which they approve?

     I fear for my country.