The ravages of Trump Derangement Syndrome make “progressives” say and do some pretty outrageous things, but, of all the fruits of TDS, undoubtedly the most bitter and potentially dangerous is lawfare: the manipulation and weaponization of the justice system to punish Democrats' opponents, distort public opinion, and even make the free expression of dissent punishable by incarceration.
Everyone is by now familiar with the most egregious form of lawfare: the elaborate campaign of persecution mounted against President Trump over the last two years. Note that, before Trump declared that he was running for reelection in the fall of 2022, he had been charged with precisely zero felonies in his entire life. Once he became, for the third straight time, a serious threat to the Democrats' and the Deep State's grip on power, the felony charges suddenly flowed like wine. We're up to 88, and already the dastardly Dems have achieved 34 felony convictions in the state of New York, based on, by all accounts, the weakest single case against Trump. No matter – in an election year, convictions were what the powers-that-be required, and convictions they obtained.
Slightly less familiar to many voters, but equally outrageous, has been the legal campaign against the man who is now almost as hated on the Left as DJT, and is in many ways as potent a threat to their dominance: Elon Musk. Musk is facing nonsense lawsuits in multiple jurisdictions. In fact, the campaign of persecution against Musk is even transnational: the European Union has repeatedly threatened to ban X/Twitter, and Brazil's high court recently pulled the plug on the social media platform in order to coerce Musk into censoring its internal enemies. Many observers expect that, in the long-term, legal pressures will seriously undermine Musk's business model, and, sooner or later, the Deep State may even succeed in throwing him behind bars.
Lawfare isn't just about nailing the Left's critics and adversaries to the wall, however, although that is a big part of it. It's also about reminding even the establishment's friends and allies that their continued good fortune is contingent on their allegiance and their obedience to the Left. Witness the Department of Justice's antitrust case against Google, part of a broad expansion of antitrust action pursued by the Biden-Harris Administration on what appear to be ideological and partisan grounds.
Now, arguably few companies in the world today more closely resemble a monopoly than Google, which is far more than a search engine. It's also YouTube, Android, etc etc. One might conclude, therefore, that the DOJ's case against Google is a sign that the government's lawyers are, in fact, impartial and public-spirited. Well, one might conclude that, if one was terminally naive, but the fact is that Google has not been, and never will be, broken up, or even seriously inconvenienced by the aforementioned lawsuit. There is ample reason to believe that, in reality, this lawsuit is a feint by the DOJ, a stunt, the purpose of which is to remind Google – whose motto was once “Don't be evil” – that evil, in the form of algorithms and other forms of digital sleight-of-hand that disadvantage and deplatform conservatives, and that advantage and amplify leftists, is not only expected but required of the social media giant. In other words, Google, which has been almost slavishly obedient to leftist narratives and almost uniformly hostile to conservative and Republican voices, is placed on notice by the DOJ's antics that its dominant position in the digital marketplace can and will be taken away, should its loyalty to the Left flag even for a moment.
How far will the Deep State go to send this message, and how widely will the impact be felt? Consider the similar antitrust case against Visa, which is accused of having a monopoly position in the debit card industry. Given the multiplicity of options that Americans now have to pay bills in electronic form, the weakness of the government's case against Visa is palpable, leading one to question whether it can possibly be motivated by legal considerations of any sort, or might instead be part of a wider campaign to shake down and intimidate corporate America. Note that the Deep State may be particularly keen to flex its muscles and underline its dominance over major companies in the financial sector, because the next major push to consolidate the Left's and the establishment's dominion may well come in the sphere of debanking, i.e. denying to conservatives and other dissidents the ability to use a wide variety of financial services and thus to function in the modern economy. Just ask Nigel Farage in the U.K. how far the political/corporate/financial establishment will go to silence one of its critics!
In the end, the threat that lawfare, in all its forms, poses to freedom, pluralism, and democracy is arguably more serious than media bias, wokeness in education, a broken border, and election fraud combined. That's because, if the campaign of lawfare succeeds, opposition movements won't just be handicapped or marginalized in America – they'll be legally prohibited, for all intents and purposes. Any attempt to criticize the Deep State, or mobilize against it, will be crushed by the forces of “law and order” before it can even find its footing or voice its grievances.
To preserve our constitutional system, our rights, and our democracy, therefore, the Democrats and their Deep State allies simply cannot be permitted to win in 2024. If they do, lawfare may become the law of the land and a permanent fixture in American politics. And that, quite possibly, would mean...GAME OVER.
Dr. Nicholas L. Waddy is an Associate Professor of History at SUNY Alfred and blogs at: www.waddyisright.com. He appears on the Newsmaker Show on WLEA 1480/106.9.
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