I’m not talking like the laws of physics, yes those exist in nature. I’m talking about manmade laws.
Laws are a social construct! They mean nothing unless someone enforces them!
In the book Lord of the Flies, when the kids are on a desert island with no adults, there’s some inertia initially where they still behave as if adults are watching. Until it dawns on them that nobody is there to enforce the rules and they can do whatever the fuck they want, then there’s chaos.
People still behave as if the law is just some natural force that exists regardless of enforcement. No matter how many times they see the law broken without consequences. No matter how many times cops ignore crimes or prosecutors drop cases they shouldn’t or judges make a bad ruling, some people still have this blind faith that when something illegal happens, it will be punished. Or some even seem to think people in power physically can’t break the law.
I had a fight with someone cause they were posting some shit about how ICE “can’t” enter houses without a warrant and I replied with the meme about how robbers can’t legally take your stuff without your consent. Sorry but ICE can and do do things the law says they “can’t”.
And sorry, but Trump can and probably will interfere with elections and stay in office for as long as he lives and invade other countries and commit full on genocide if nobody stops him.
And people act like it’s an inevitability that Trump and the other fascists will face nuremberg trials. Sorry but it’s not an inevitability. The nuremberg trials happened when other countries successfully invaded Germany and put an end to the regime. It’s not going to happen automatically. It’s only going to happen if there’s revolution or war. Maybe a newly elected government will prosecute these clowns, but I doubt it.
The law is made up. It doesn’t exist in nature. The only thing protecting your rights is a social contract. It is not inevitable that justice will be served. This isn’t just in the Untied States. All over the world, laws are enforced inconsistently. Nothing guarantees the law will work as it is supposed to.
Just because someone “can” break the law… doesn’t mean the law is useless. You’re right, that it comes down to enforcement. But enforcement requires that law to exist in the first place, otherwise there is nothing to enforce. It’s a self-sustaining loop.
If that loop is broken for some reason, that doesn’t mean the law is no longer important. In fact, it often means the law is more important than ever, because it is more obvious than ever, that it needs to be enforced. You are watching the consequences of not having that law, unfold right in front of you.
Simply saying, “Oh, well. I guess that law doesn’t matter anymore, since no one enforced it”, is that point in Lord of the Flies when everything starts to spiral out of control.
I guess my point is that more needs to be done to ensure enforcement. People are still acting like the law is being enforced when it isn’t. It’s never been enforced with 100% consistency, but when the leaders of a country start being able to openly ignore the law, a dictatorship is rising. I’d like people to show more awareness of what’s happening and stop pretending the law is protecting them
The current problem is that the ones in charge of enforcement are the ones ignoring the law.
But unfortunately, adding more enforcers doesn’t actually “solve” this problem. The only way to deal with this, is to remove the current officials from their positions and replace them with people who will enforce the law.
In a democracy, that means voting those officials out, and hoping that force isn’t required, beyond that. Because if it is, then a lot of people are potentially going to get hurt.
In the meantime it is important to remember that the law still does protect you…it just takes longer to fight it, than it does for them to break it. Keep in mind that the overwhelming majority of what Trump has been trying to do, eventually does get struck down in court. It’s unfortunate however, that before that happens they’ve already done a lot of damage to people’s lives.