The Rule of Law and Trump's Wrecking Ball

You're Fired.

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

The apologists for capitalism are always whining on about the “Rule of Law”. We are hearing it a lot these days after the U.S. Justice Department reversed itself and recommend a shorter prison sentence for the Predator in Chief’s longtime friend Roger Stone. Four federal prosecutors resigned after hearing about the decision.

“We are witnessing a crisis in the rule of law in America,” said Chuck Schumer, the New York Democrat who is the Senate Minority Leader.

"The Rule of Law is gasping for breath, being suffocated by Trump and his personal henchman Bill Barr," says Harvard professor Laurence Tribe

It sounds good doesn’t it? “The rule of law.” Has a certain impressive ring to it.

But like any law or laws, whether they are good or not depends on who makes them and who enforces them; in other words, they have a class bias.  The definition of this term “Rule of Law”, according to the Oxford English Dictionary is:

"The authority and influence of law in society, especially when viewed as a constraint on individual and institutional behavior; (hence) the principle whereby all members of a society (including those in government) are considered equally subject to publicly disclosed legal codes and processes."

So it’s basically the same as when we hear people in power say that “no one is above the law”. We all know that is a load of bollocks and don’t need to have a college degree to understand it. If you have money you can get away with murder. We all know in our gut that there's one set of laws for the rich and one for the rest of us.The billionaires in the US Congress, and most of them are either billionaires or multi millionaires, are whining a lot these days about the “Rule of Law” with regard to Trump.

I have stated many times that the major problem with Trump from his class colleagues point of view is not that he is a rapist or racist or basically a gangster, it’s that in his position as president he is undermining the institutions of capitalism. He has undermined and discredited the capitalist mass media, the universities, the so-called electoral process where we get to vote every four years for candidates from one of the two capitalist parties that will decide what laws constitute this “Rule of Law”.

He’s “attacking the rule of law” they are whining now because his justice department, apparently with the support of his Attorney General has just done a favor for Trump’s long time thuggish friend by reducing his prison sentence.

He has been accused of influencing the decisions of the justice department for his own personal interest. “What! Me?” says Trump. He categorically denies such a slander. All he did was claim the government was treating his friend harshly and sent out a tweet saying the sentence Roger Stone received was “horrible and very unfair.” and that  “cannot allow this miscarriage of justice.”

He’s just an ordinary guy expressing his opinion. He never for one minute thought he might be influencing the US Justice Department.

But it’s very dangerous ground he’s treading on. It’s what his base likes about him because everything he’s doing, the crookery, the bribery, the lying, the wheeling and dealing, is the norm in the US body politic. What the hell is lobbying but bribery pure and simple!

Mary McCord a former head of the Justice Dept. under Obama is worried that the reputation of the department will be harmed by the Predator's interference saying, “The department has to seriously consider what impact a reversal that appears to be in response to the president’s displeasure will have on its credibility and reputation in the courts,”

Working people have faired well when we stick the rule of law where the sun doesn’t shine; we don’t make the laws. Unions were illegal, Slavery was legal; it was illegal for persons of different ethnic backgrounds to marry or have sexual relations.

What Trump is doing in a way is similar to what Julian Assange has done. Assange revealed the hypocrisy that exists within the capitalist state apparatus. He pulled the mask off their phony diplomacy and revealed it for what it is, a sham. Wikileaks organization through its leaks of thousands of cables and documents, in particular the famed Collateral Murder video showing the barbaric activity of the US military in Iraq, made a social fact of what we all really know is true.

The difference is that Assange and Wikileaks pulled the mask off the charade for the benefit of all of us. Trump mocks the game for his own personal gain.

The “Rule of Law” was not on the minds of the US Congress as they applauded the charlatan Gaido when he was a guest of theirs last week. There appears to be no reverence for the “Rule of Law”  when it comes to Bolivia. And what about the murderous Zionist regime that tortures and kills children? There are about 600,000 Jews living in settlements built since Israel's occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem in 1967. These settlements are considered illegal under international law. But the US government supports and encourages this. These illegal settlements and the illegal occupation could not occur without US government backing.  “The Rule of Law” doesn’t enter in to it.

Marx pointed out that the state (government) is the executive committee of the bourgeois as a whole. It is the governing body that defends and advances the interest of the capitalist class and the capitalist system. Trump is threatening the very institutions that are meant to maintain stability in an inherently corrupt and oppressive system and it seems inevitable that if their elections fail to remove him, he might be removed by other means.

The great Irish socialist James Connolly was not far off when he wrote: "Capitalism teaches the people the moral conceptions of cannibalism are the strong devouring the weak; its theory of the world of men and women is that of a glorified pig-trough where the biggest swine gets the most swill.” 

One thing we can thank Trump for is he is giving the world a glimpse of how capitalism really works.