Quote (thesnipa @ Jun 11 2024 11:07am)
nothing scares me more than litigation/prosecution precedent (and we already crossed that Rubicon) than pardon precedent. prosecution is bad enough, possible to be beat but bad. but when even that becomes moot with post election pardons it just gets so disgusting so fast.
History has shown that the societies where ruling elites are above the law can be stable and prosperous while societies where the ruling elites weaponize the law against one each other devolve into tyranny, purges, civil wars, famine, pestilence and rampant jaywalking. We've had how many decades of politicians getting away with corruption, with kickbacks and graft and even selling out our country to foreign interests. I mean, if any place was going to collapse due to unaccountability the Willie Brown era of San Francisco would have imploded so hard it becomes a singularity and folds all california in upon itself.
I don't see why I should be worried about the precedent set by pardons whether or not there is true underlying guilt. People voted for the guy to have a plenary pardon power. Pardons have the power to lift politics out of the gutter and put an end to ugly times like Ford did. Doom doesn't come as a pendulum, it comes as a spiral as reciprocal escalation keeps growing unchecked until the rubber band snaps, and that's what happens when political parties escalating from impeaching to prosecuting to imprisoning to... what comes next? Assassinations? Executions of dissidents? You can't keep escalating indefinitely, once you spiral far enough there's only one place left to go.