“Citizens are often slow to realize that their democracy is being dismantled even as it happens before their eyes.”
― Steven Levitsky
Donald Trump’s first day back in office presages the end of the rule of law in America. He has come full circle, pardoning 1,500 insurrectionists, rioters, traitors all who, four years ago, were incited by him to attempt to stop the peaceful transfer of power from the loser to the legitimate winner of the 2020 presidential election and overthrow the government he headed.
January 6, 2021 was the worst day in the history of the United States, a day that will forever live in infamy. Until January 20, 2025, that is, when a blanket amnesty absolved a bunch of lawless extremists who forced their way into the U.S. Capitol intent on harming the Vice President and members of Congress, and attacked law enforcement officers, injuring 140 and causing the deaths of five of them. At least 174 of these convicted lawbreakers carried deadly weapons with them into the Capitol. All who were found guilty after either pleading guilty or receiving their Constitutional right to a fair trial conducted in accordance with due process of law are now free to foment whatever further mayhem and illegality Trump demands.
A precedent has been established that anything goes in the former beacon of democracy and citadel of justice and the rule of law. No conduct, no matter how reprehensible or evil, is off-limits in Trump’s America.
Because the presidential pardon power is unrestricted, it relies on the exerciser’s self-discipline and respect for law to be applied judiciously. Presidents have, from time-to-time, gone beyond this self-restraint and exceeded what should have been norms and good judgment: President Clinton when he pardoned corrupt financier Marc Rich. President Biden when he pardoned his son and members of his family. Trump in his first term when he pardoned cronies charged with or convicted of crimes carried out to advance his interests. And now Trump 2.0, when on his first day back in the White House, he went beyond the pale and abused this authority with reckless abandon and total contempt for the foundational principles that underlie the American system.
Those bedrock principles are gone now. He has shown us that he will not be constrained by anything and that anything goes. He said he would be a dictator on day one and he was. He will also be a dictator every day he continues to occupy the office that George Washington and Abraham Lincoln so revered and respected. It won’t be long before America as we knew it for more than two centuries will only be a memory.
The mainstream media (what’s left of it) is already covering this as merely one of the barrage of executive orders turning the nation inside out that Trump signed on his first day back in the Oval Office. They have thus far failed to give it the star billing it deserves. The questions are (1) whether the American public will even realize what Trump has done? and (2) whether they care enough to be deeply troubled by it?
Another disturbing problem with Trump’s blanket amnesty for this particular cohort of convicted criminals: The possibility that some of them will seek violent retribution against the investigators, prosecutors and judges who handled their cases. These are not people who forgive and forget.
When my father’s ship transporting him from Nazi-occupied Europe and a terrible near-term future crossed the bar into New York harbor in 1938, he stood on deck weeping tears of joy, relief and gratitude when he saw the Statue of Liberty. I’m glad he is not alive today to see what this land of freedom and liberty he so venerated is becoming.
Dick Hermann
January 24, 2025
― Steven Levitsky
Donald Trump’s first day back in office presages the end of the rule of law in America. He has come full circle, pardoning 1,500 insurrectionists, rioters, traitors all who, four years ago, were incited by him to attempt to stop the peaceful transfer of power from the loser to the legitimate winner of the 2020 presidential election and overthrow the government he headed.
January 6, 2021 was the worst day in the history of the United States, a day that will forever live in infamy. Until January 20, 2025, that is, when a blanket amnesty absolved a bunch of lawless extremists who forced their way into the U.S. Capitol intent on harming the Vice President and members of Congress, and attacked law enforcement officers, injuring 140 and causing the deaths of five of them. At least 174 of these convicted lawbreakers carried deadly weapons with them into the Capitol. All who were found guilty after either pleading guilty or receiving their Constitutional right to a fair trial conducted in accordance with due process of law are now free to foment whatever further mayhem and illegality Trump demands.
A precedent has been established that anything goes in the former beacon of democracy and citadel of justice and the rule of law. No conduct, no matter how reprehensible or evil, is off-limits in Trump’s America.
Because the presidential pardon power is unrestricted, it relies on the exerciser’s self-discipline and respect for law to be applied judiciously. Presidents have, from time-to-time, gone beyond this self-restraint and exceeded what should have been norms and good judgment: President Clinton when he pardoned corrupt financier Marc Rich. President Biden when he pardoned his son and members of his family. Trump in his first term when he pardoned cronies charged with or convicted of crimes carried out to advance his interests. And now Trump 2.0, when on his first day back in the White House, he went beyond the pale and abused this authority with reckless abandon and total contempt for the foundational principles that underlie the American system.
Those bedrock principles are gone now. He has shown us that he will not be constrained by anything and that anything goes. He said he would be a dictator on day one and he was. He will also be a dictator every day he continues to occupy the office that George Washington and Abraham Lincoln so revered and respected. It won’t be long before America as we knew it for more than two centuries will only be a memory.
The mainstream media (what’s left of it) is already covering this as merely one of the barrage of executive orders turning the nation inside out that Trump signed on his first day back in the Oval Office. They have thus far failed to give it the star billing it deserves. The questions are (1) whether the American public will even realize what Trump has done? and (2) whether they care enough to be deeply troubled by it?
Another disturbing problem with Trump’s blanket amnesty for this particular cohort of convicted criminals: The possibility that some of them will seek violent retribution against the investigators, prosecutors and judges who handled their cases. These are not people who forgive and forget.
When my father’s ship transporting him from Nazi-occupied Europe and a terrible near-term future crossed the bar into New York harbor in 1938, he stood on deck weeping tears of joy, relief and gratitude when he saw the Statue of Liberty. I’m glad he is not alive today to see what this land of freedom and liberty he so venerated is becoming.
Dick Hermann
January 24, 2025
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