Did the FBI just re-elect Donald Trump?

Why is Donald Trump so powerful?

How did one of the two main parties dominate and be elected president?

Is it your hair? Your Life?

No, it’s their stories.

trump counts powerful stories which rings true for tens of millions of Americans.

The main one is that the United States has been ruined by corrupt coastal elites.

According to this narrative, there is an interconnected network of highly educated Americans who make up what Trumpians have come to call the regime:

Washington power players, liberal media, large foundations, elite universities, expert corporations.

These people are corrupt, condescending and immoral and they seek only their own advantage.

They are willing to take Trump because Trump is the person facing them.

They are not just looking for Trump; I’m out there to get you.

This narrative has a grain of truth.

The highly educated metropolitan elites have become a kind of introspective Brahmin class.

But Trump’s propaganda transforms what is a unfortunate social abyss in a poisonous conspiracy theory.

It simply assumes, against a great deal of evidence, that the main institutions of society are inherently corrupt, malevolent and partisan and act in bad faith.

It simply assumes that the proof of people’s virtue is that they are attacked by the regime.

Trump’s political career has been bolstered by contempt of the elite.

The more the elites despise him, the more Republicans love him.

The key criterion for leadership in the Republican Party today is having the righteous enemies.

The FBI gets into this situation.

There are many things we don’t know about the Mar-a-Lago mission.

But we know how the Republican Party reacted.

The right side of my Twitter feed was ecstatic. See! We are truly persecuted!

Sages with titles like “The regime wants its revenge” began to appear.

Ron DeSantis tweeted: “The MAL raid is another escalation in the use of weapons by federal agencies against political opponents of the regime.”

As usual, the tone was apocalyptic.

“This is the worst attack on this Republic in modern history,” exclaimed the host of Fox News, Mark Levin.

The Trump investigation was seen simply as a heinous plot by the regime.

At least for now, the research has rocked the Republican political landscape.

Several weeks ago, about half of Republican voters were ready to leave Trump behind, according to a New York Times / Siena College poll.

This week the whole party seemed to support him.

Republican strategists who advised Trump’s key potential opponents had reason to be shot down.

“It gave him a lifeline,” one of those strategists told Politico.

“Unbelievable … He put everyone back in Trump’s bandwagon. He just took the wind out of everyone’s sails “.

According to a Trafalgar Group / Convention of States Action poll, 83% of prospective Republican voters said FBI research made them more motivated to vote in the 2022 election.

Over 75 percent of prospective Republican voters believed Trump’s political enemies rather than the impartial justice system were behind the research, as did 48 percent of prospective general election voters in general.

In a normal society, when politicians are investigated or accused, it damages them politically.

But this no longer applies to the Republican Party.

The judicial system can conflict with the political system in an unprecedented way.

What if a prosecutor charges Trump and is convicted just as he is headed for the Republican nomination or perhaps even the presidency?

What if the legal system, at its discretion, decides that Trump should go to jail at the same time that the electoral system, at its discretion, decides he should go to the White House?

I assume Trump would have been arrested and imprisoned under those circumstances.

I also assume we would see a widespread political violence by outraged Trump voters who would conclude that the regime has stolen the country.

In my opinion, this is the most likely path for a complete democratic breakdown.

In theory, justice is blind and obviously no person can be above the law.

But as Damon Linker wrote in a Substack post:

“This is a policy, not a Kantian ethics graduate seminar.”

We live in a specific situation in the real world and we all have to take responsibility for the real effects of our actions.

The United States absolutely must punish those who commit crimes.

On the other hand, the United States absolutely must make sure that Trump does not get another term as president.

What do we do if the former makes the latter more likely?

I have no idea how to get out of it potential conflict between our legal and political reality.

We are experiencing a crisis of legitimacy, during which the distrust of the established power is so virulent that the actions of elite actors tend to fail, however well founded they may be.

My impression is that the FBI had legitimate reasons for doing what they did.

I guess you will find some malicious documents that they will do nothing to undermine Trump’s support.

I am also convinced that, at least for now, it has inadvertently improved Trump’s chances of re-election.

It inadvertently made life more difficult for Trump’s potential main rivals and energized his base.

We seem to be walking in some kind of storm and there is no honorable way to alter our course.

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