Excerpted & Edited From Mark's Article at SteynOnline:
In today's America even a reasonably sentient person should be able to get to the nub of the issue: When the dirty stinking rotten corrupt U.S. justice system is criminalizing political opposition, there's no point pretending this is a normal situation, right?
And yet at least three-quarters of the candidates in the last Republican debate insisted on doing just that: This is just a normal quadrennial election in the greatest country in the history of countries where we're renowned around the planet for our uniquely peaceful "peaceful transfer of power", etc, etc.
Sorry, I don't buy that - and evidently nor does the GOP base. Which is why Trump has a forty-point lead over his nearest rival, and Nikki Haley's alleged triumph in that debate has seen her numbers soar to - stand well back! - 6.1 per cent. The avowedly normal vice-president, senator and three governors nipping at her heels can barely muster ten per cent between them.
There don't seem to be a lot of takers for "pretending this is normal" in the context of the latest sentences on J6 "insurrectionists". Dominic Pezzola broke a window at the Capitol and was given ten years; the government had asked for twenty. Joseph Biggs moved a crowd-control barrier and was sentenced to seventeen years; the government had wanted him banged up for thirty-three.
The US Attorney wanted that for Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, but this time the judge decided to up it to two-thirds of the feds' demand: twenty-two years. For a guy who wasn't in DC on January 6th. Oh, well. Mr Tarrio is a Proud Boy. I'm not really a Proud Boys type, still I'm all about first principles - and a decade for breaking a window is not, even by lousy American standards, the verdict of a "justice" system.
So what about Florida gran'ma Connie Meggs? She spent twenty minutes wandering around in "the People's House" on J6, and, after two-and-a-half years under house arrest in the Sunshine State, has now been sentenced to fifteen months in gaol.
It's a sick, evil racket being applied to the government's political opposition. Why do you think they indict eighteen "co-conspirators"? Because in the craphole of American "justice", that's how you build your witness list. If Rudy Giuliani gets what that Proud Boy gets, he won't be out till he's 101. That tends to concentrate the mind.
Like I said: There's no point pretending this is normal, right? And yet a vast swathe of Conservative, Inc insists on doing just that. The GOP bigshots assure us that, if the knuckle-dragging rubes insist on nominating Trump, he will be wiped out in the general. There isn't actually a lot of evidence for that - right now, the RealClearPolitics poll of polls has Biden up a whopping ...0.4 per cent.
For purposes of comparison, at this point in the last cycle, ABC/Washington Post had the basement boy with a 15-point lead - 55-40. Four years later, The Wall Street Journal has Trump and Biden tied, CNN has Trump up one, Emerson Trump up two, Leger/New York Post Trump up three... These are not the polls of a surefire loser.
Don't get me wrong. If those numbers hold up on Election Day, Biden wins ...because of the usual 'malfunctions' in Maricopa County, Fulton County & the otherwise obscure half-dozen jurisdictions one hears about every other November late on Tuesday night.
But you'd have to have an awful lot of faith to believe that, if only you eschewed Trump and nominated Tim Scott or Nikki Haley, Maricopa's voting machines would decide to play nice...
So what's the point of pretending this is normal?
The house arrests, solitary confinements, lack of any meaningful "speedy trials", and eventual decade-long sentences for window-breaking suggest the one-party state is not yet done with you. Unless you're a billionaire, sticking with Trump will wipe out your savings and take your home - as the newly convicted Peter Navarro and many others can testify.
And yet the base sticks with Trump.
Which one are they backing? The Escalator Man of 2015 pledging to build the wall and stick it to China and end the endless unwon wars? Or the Trump of 2020, high on his own celebrity and waging such an inept re-election campaign that, at the height of the BLM riots, he was boasting about all the black men he's freeing from prison? Or post-presidential Trump, bragging at rallies and oblivious to the silence and then the boos that he's the guy who came up with those fabulous Covid vaccines?
How about none of the above? Maybe half the country - or, to be more precise, forty-six per cent of registered voters - thinks the real problem is that the system no longer provides for any meaningful course correction.
You can vote for an end to open borders, but you won't get it. You can vote to bring home the jobs that got shipped to China, but China owns all the politicians, all the "big guys" with the "ten per cent". You can vote against two-decade wars that end with the world's hyperpower losing to goatherds with fertiliser, but back at the Pentagon they just take a twenty-minute tea-break, throw a dart in the map, and start it all up somewhere else.
The Trump presidency was undone by Joe Biden's signing pen about ten minutes after inauguration. But that wasn't enough for the Uniparty. Like Oliver Cromwell, he has to be dug up and beheaded, over and over and over, and all his allies too, from Giuliani to that Florida grandmother - until you guys get the message.
Why pretend that's "normal" and meekly fall in line and move on to Nikki Haley? Even if you're going to lose, you might as well take a stand with Trump against the "normalization" of a system determined to criminalize you.
You can't have "normal" politics in a country where one side gets endlessly indicted and the other never is (notwithstanding the latest fake-o headlines about the not-so-Special Counsel promising to throw the book at Hunter on gun charges). America is dying before your eyes. Why pretend that's normal?