Our representative democracy is utterly dependent on a general acceptance of the principle that we are government of laws and not a government of sophists. The rule of law implies checks on the rule of the mob by resort to constitutional and legal principle. When society ceases to have confidence that the game is being played straight, it abandons its commitment to fairness and splinters into factions seeking raw power.
When the director of the FBI speaks to the nation and identifies the crimes of Hillary Clinton up to the very threshold of indictment and then abandons the rule of law, our society inches closer to a government of sophists. When rankly partisan House Committee Democrats unilaterally find the attorney general in contempt on blatantly specious grounds, it becomes obvious that the game is not being played straight.
When the Obama administration in its time, or house Democrats in real time, cease to exercise their powers according to the established norms of law and justice but instead weaponize the rule of law, those who are not Democrats have no choice if they wish to survive but to splinter off and seek enough power to at least survive. The slide into anarchy advances inch by inch.
Society's understanding of fairness is necessarily drawn from what they are told about events by the press. When this intermediary abandons its moral obligation to honor its protection under the First Amendment, society eventually assumes a protective posture of cynicism. The rule of law depends on society having, not cynicism that we are governed by sophists but confidence that there is a real and dependable rule of law protecting them.
Every day as a society we are edging closer to what I felt while in Russia, a universal cynicism that everything was corrupt and that those who behaved honorably were not righteous individuals to be respected but fools who did not get the game.
Your cynicism is not misplaced but quite rational.
Ship of Fools.
