Never-Trump Republicans Like Larry Hogan Suffer from Bystander's Neglect

 

Roger Kimball, "Trump’s Trial Is a Symptom of a Larger Crisis in American Justice"

Naturally, the cataract of commentary on Thursday’s Stalinist guilty, guilty, guilty verdict against Donald Trump has divided itself into two distinct pools. One is gleeful. The other is alarmed. Rather than anatomize the differences between the two, I’d like to start by simply noting the size and fervor of the response. There are, I believe, two essential points to bear in mind.

The first is that the outpouring is only incidentally about Trump. You might find this a surprising statement since the news has been full of little besides Trump.

What I mean is that, although Trump is clearly the protagonist in this long-running drama, in the end, this story is about something other or more than the real-estate developer turned hyper-reality-show President. Trump himself has often put his finger on the key point when he insists that “they’re not after me, they’re after you. I’m just in the way.”

The astonished reaction to the cynically biased trial and the extraordinary verdict bear witness to this somber observation. “In Memory of Justice,” the title of Andrew McCarthy’s long column on the process and the verdict, encapsulates the point. McCarthy is no fan of Donald Trump—quite the contrary. But he understands that what just happened far transcends the fate of a single individual. Once upon a time, he writes, “Our system embodied the rule of law, the sturdy undercarriage of a free, prosperous, pluralistic society. Now, on its good days, it’s a clown show. On the bad days—there are far too many of those—it’s a political weapon.”

This weapon has two distinct functions. One is to harm enemies of the regime. Hence, the innumerable show trials starring Donald Trump as Defendant-in-Chief and his allies and supporters (here’s looking at you, Peter Navarro). The second is to protect friends and allies of the regime. Hence the kid-glove treatment thus far accorded to Hunter Biden, Hillary Clinton, deep-state apparatchiks from the DOJ, the FBI, and other coercive actors in the alphabet soup of state supervision.

The vast outpouring of commentary on this astonishing deployment of the law to achieve lawlessness is resolving itself into a hysterical (I do not mean “funny”) rictus of alarm reminiscent of a painting by Edvard Munch. The extremity of the rhetoric registers the seriousness of the situation. But it also, ironically, may act as a soporific, impeding any effective action. “We’ve said our piece and made our case. Now we can move on.” Unfortunately, we can’t.

And this is the second essential point to keep in mind. The diagnosis can be as eloquent and dire as you like. It is difficult at this stage of our societal devolution to think that the damage reports, however thorough, are much more than the “words, words, words” with which Hamlet replied to Polonius.

In fact, I worry that the response to this frontal and deadly assault on the rule of law will end up looking something like what the movie Team America showed when it introduced the feckless U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix to the North Korean dictator. Open up your military installations to my inspection, Blix demanded, or else. “Or else what?” Kim demanded. Or else “We will be very, very angry with you, and we will write you a letter telling you how angry we are.” Moments later, Blix is dropped into a tank and devoured by hungry piranhas.

It’s funny in the movie. It’s not so funny in real life. But here we are.

Hans Blix is unavailable, but we have Larry Hogan, Maryland’s governor and 2024 senatorial candidate for the emasculated, formerly Republican, party. Responding to the impending verdict in the Trump case, Hogan issued this emetic little tweet: “Regardless of the result [!], I urge all Americans to respect the verdict [!]and the legal process [!!]. At this dangerously divided moment in our history, all leaders—regardless of party—must not pour fuel on the fire with more toxic partisanship. We must reaffirm what has made this nation great: the rule of law.”

That ship has sailed, Guv. There is no rule of law in the United States. There is only rule of the regime party. Which is why Mark Steyn, responding to Hogan, described him as an “all too typical wanker Republican senate candidate.” Steyn continued:

I loathe the likes of Hogan far more than I loathe Alvin Bragg: The latter campaigned for office on a promise to get Trump, and delivered to his voters. The former, in pretending that there is anything “great” about this that should command our “respect,” is making evil and corruption respectable and bipartisan.

Quite right. The commentator Megan Kelly, who seems to have definitively boarded the Trump train, is right that Thursday’s verdict represents “a before and after moment for America. It is a line we can’t uncross.” She is also right that what the country needs now are real fighters, people like Steve Bannon, host of the War Room. Horace Walpole once observed that “No country was ever saved by good men because good men will not go to the length that may be necessary.” I think it is worth bearing that clarifying, if unsentimental, bit of practical wisdom in mind.

How America Lost Her Democracy

In late December of 1977, I was deported from Japan, having been injured in an accident aboard ship and treated for a hand injury in a Yokohama hospital.  Landing on a PanAm 747 at SFO, I was confronted with a passenger collapsed and unconscious lying a few feet from the exit of the jetway.  I looked around as deplaning passenger stepped around this slightly overweight mid 50's man, with concerned expression on all their faces, but with none offering assistance.  I stopped and began to examine him, discerning that his breathing had stopped, and so exclaimed his non-breathing status to the nearest departing passengers and requesting that relay info to the cockpit and gate.  My own right hand was bandaged, a fist ball of cotton bandages, as I was yet to receive a follow-up skin graft at the USPHS Seaman's Hospital in San Francisco.  I immediately attempted CPR, but my hand prevented me from performing its' proper administration.  Passengers continued passing by, watching my dilemma, but none stopping to assist.  At one point, he threw up into my face, but my futile and incompetent attempts yielded the expected result.  He died before competent medical personnel could arrive, roughly 20 minutes later.

I subsequently told myself that I should have stepped over or around his collapsed form so that perhaps a more competent form of aid could have been attempted or administered.

The Munich Speech No One Listened to: Putin on International Security (2007)

John McCain won't even look at Putin.  He holds Putin in complete contempt.  Too much time in the Hanoi Hilton, I suppose.  Not someone who should ever lead an American delegation, though.

from Wiki:

The 2007 Munich speech was given by Russian president Vladimir Putin in Germany on 10 February 2007 at the Munich Security Conference. The speech expressed significant points of future politics of Russia driven by Putin.[1][2][3][4] 

Synopsis

Putin criticized what he called the United States' monopolistic dominance in global relations, and its "almost uncontained hyper use of force in international relations". The speech came to be known, especially in Russia,[citation needed] as the Munich speech. He said the result of such dominance was that "no one feels safe! Because no one can feel that international law is like a stone wall that will protect them. Of course such a policy stimulates an arms race."[5] Putin quoted a 1990 speech by Manfred Wörner to support his position that NATO promised not to expand into new countries in Eastern Europe. He stated "[Worner] said at the time that: 'the fact that we are ready not to place a NATO army outside of German territory gives the Soviet Union a firm security guarantee.' Where are these guarantees?"[5][6]

Although NATO was still a year away from inviting Ukraine and Georgia to become NATO member-states in 2008, Putin emphasized how Russia perceived eastward expansion as a threat: "I think it is obvious that NATO expansion does not have any relation with the modernisation of the Alliance itself or with ensuring security in Europe. On the contrary, it represents a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust. And we have the right to ask: against whom is this expansion intended?" Putin also publicly opposed plans for the U.S. missile shield in Europe, and presented President George W. Bush with a counter proposal on 7 June 2007, which was declined.[7] Russia suspended its participation in the Adapted Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty on 11 December 2007, with the Kremlin commenting: "Seven years have passed and only four states have ratified this document, including the Russian Federation."[5] 

Reception

In response, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates dismisses Putin remarks as blunt spy talk. Senator Joe Lieberman stated that the speech was "provocative" and marked by "rhetoric that sounded more like the Cold War".[8] Former NATO secretary Jaap de Hoop Scheffer called it "disappointing and not helpful."[9] The months following the Munich speech[5] were marked by tension and a surge in rhetoric on both sides of the Atlantic. Both Russian and American officials, however, denied the idea of a new Cold War.[10]

The Polish Institute of International Affairs described Putin's quotation from Manfred Wörner's speech as lacking appropriate context, stating that Wörner's speech "only concerned non-deployment of NATO forces on East German territory after reunification."[6] 

Legacy

Before and after the launch of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the speech was revisited with some commentators arguing it to be a revealing moment of Putin's later intentions.[11][12][13][14] According to Andrew A. Michta, Western leaders failed in 2007 to recognize the speech "amounted to a declaration of war on the West."[15] Other commentators, like John Mearsheimer and Stephen F. Cohen, would cite it as Putin's most explicit warning that Russia perceived NATO's eastward expansion as a threat to its national security. 

Follow-ups

Putin later made other speeches that were called follow-ups to the Munich speech, including: 

The 2013 Valdai speech of Vladimir Putin in Sochi on 19 September 2013
The Crimean speech of Vladimir Putin to the Federal Assembly of Russia on 18 March 2014
The 2014 Valdai speech of Vladimir Putin in Sochi on 24 October 2014
The 2015 U. N. General Assembly speech of Vladimir Putin in New York on 28 September 2015 ("I'm urged to ask those who created this situation: do you at least realize now what you’ve done?")[16]