The new aristocracy
The new aristocracy
When our Founding Fathers liberated us from British rule, one of the things they laid out was that this new nation would have no aristocracy. After all, aristocrats benefitted from birth, not merit, and while that’s one thing when it comes to private matters like business and property, it’s quite another when it impacts the government.
And, to be fair, we don’t quite have an aristocracy.
Quite.
The problem is, one has been forming over the last little bit and folks, we ain’t in it.
By now, I’ve pontificated aplenty on the subject of Hunter Biden and his many and varied sins and, perhaps more importantly, the lack of any actual punishment for those sins.
You’re also no doubt familiar with Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified material and, again more importantly, the lack of any actual ramifications for her infraction.
We’ve watched as countless public officials seemingly get away with anything while the rest of us would have been locked away for years.
That came back to me a few days ago with this:
The Biden Department of Justice declined to prosecute disgraced George Soros-backed U.S. attorney Rachael Rollins after its own inspector general recommended it do so, according to the watchdog’s report.
The Office of the Inspector General on Wednesday released a 155-page report that detailed Rollins's numerous ethical violations. Nestled in a footnote, the inspector general revealed that the Justice Department ignored its suggestion to prosecute Rollins on charges of lying to federal investigators. The inspector general found that Rollins gave several false statements to its investigators during a December 2022 interview, a federal offense that is punishable by up to five years in prison.
It is unclear why the Justice Department declined to bring charges against Rollins, who resigned just hours before the inspector general released its report. But it isn’t the first time the Massachusetts prosecutor safely navigated a controversy.
The Senate voted to confirm Rollins along party lines in 2021, thanks in large part to the efforts of her home-state allies, Democratic Sens. Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren. Republicans slammed Rollins for her record as a district attorney in Boston, which included her office’s policy of not prosecuting a litany of offenses, as reasons she was unfit for a promotion.
"Rollins’s record was clear at the time. She thought the rules didn't apply to her enforcement as a weapon against anyone who questioned her, and any criticism of her record was racist," Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) said Thursday. "My colleagues ignored those red flags and every Democrat voted in lockstep for her."
…
"We found that she willfully made the false denial to the [Office of the Inspector General] for the purpose of concealing her actions," the report states. "Ultimately, we found that Rollins violated Section 1001(a) by knowingly and willfully making materially false statements to the [Office of the Inspector General]."
That is just some of Rollins’s sins, but she won’t really be punished for them.
Now, she was forced to resign as US Attorney for the District of Massachusetts, but that’s small potatoes. She’ll land on her feet and end up with some law firm making at least six figures and probably mid-six figures.
See, because of her connections, Rollins is part of the new aristocracy—those protected from the ramifications of their actions because they are part of the right groups.
And that’s the problem.
We’re supposed to be a nation of laws, not a nation of men. What that means is that no one is supposed to be above the law.
And yet, here we are. We can all point to people who are, in fact, above the law.
“But Trump is being prosecuted,” someone might quip, but that all but proves my point.
Trump ran as an outsider. He was elected as an outsider, then spent his first term stepping on all the toes. The fact that he is facing prosecution while someone like Rollins, Hillary Clinton, and Hunter Biden aren’t facing it just shows that the aristocracy protects their own and will hammer anyone who might upset that apple cart.
Look, I want to be an idealist. I want to look at my government and at least feel like they’re not my enemy. I want to look at them and believe that while I might disagree with the people in power, we all ultimately want what’s best for our nation.
I haven’t been able to do that for a long time.
Sure, Trump was better than I expected him to be, but he was just one man and it turns out that the federal law enforcement system was out to keep him from doing anything, so it’s not like he got a fair shot.
And again, as many of you have said previously, the president isn’t the government anyway.
The truth is that Rollins not being prosecuted wouldn’t bother me so much if I thought for a minute that it was just about the difficulty in proving the false statements were made knowingly. In light of the lack of prosecution in so many other areas, though, that’s kind of impossible for me to buy here and now.
No, it’s the new aristocracy and we’re not in it.
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