Quick Thoughts on the Rule of Law

This quick hit post is coming to you LIVE from the British Library, where I both very recently took a shit and the picture you see in this post (neither in the same room nor at the same time).

In case you were educated in the American public school system or otherwise unaware or contemptuous of European history, the document featured in that photo is the Magna Carta. Plenty of smarter people than I can give you its history or context, but I’ll just share something quick and then tie it back to the shitshow that is America today.

When I was a young BFC freshly arrived in Washington, DC, I was a congressional intern, which meant in addition to opening mail and being an office peon, I gave Capitol tours to constituents. I gave a LOT of Capitol tours. One of the things in the Capitol Rotunda, the best part of the tour if you can’t take a group on the floor or up into the dome, is a replica of that aforementioned Magna Carta. It’s gold and ornate and was a gift from the British to celebrate our bicentennial and that’s cool and all, but what I remember beyond the dates and facts was the key principle: that King John signed the Magna Carta and enshrined into the legal tradition that NO MAN, not even a king, was above the law.

That is a foundational of our whole system, not since our (American) Revolution but since our British antecedents codified it in 1215.

And yet daily we see a President and other modern oligarchs regularly flouting the law. I mean, Trump literally is saying the same thing Nixon did that everyone knew was wrong then and still is now.

Emoluments, illegal self dealings, tearing down the East Wing, DOGE, wars, golf courses, there’s a whole list you can Google for yourself but that’s not even what’s most depressing for me anymore. It’s that if you’re rich or powerful enough, you don’t have to obey the law whether or not you’re president. How else can you explain the zero Epstein prosecutions or that Elon is getting away with election fraud or the way the crypto industry has spent literal hundreds of millions of dollars getting the regulations they want stopped or changed? Not to make it seem like I’m trying to redeem John Edwards, but there really are two Americas: an in group protected by the law but not bound by it, and another bound by the law but not protected by it. That’s not a BFC original, some context here, but its fucking salient and depressing.

If only American voters would hold people accountable for the inequitable approaches to justice and come back to a world where laws (and facts) operate evenly. But even without bread and circuses, we seem happy to infight and ostracize rather than to hold folks accountable. If you all have good ideas/solutions, I’m all ears, but for me, I’m likely going from the Library to the pub.