I Don't Care If Donald Trump Breaks The Law

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Yes, you read that right. Loudmouth anarcho-commie roronoa79 said that.

I do not care if Donald Trump (or Biden, or anyone else, honestly) breaks the law, and if you ask me, neither should you.

I do care if Donald Trump (or anyone else) does something Morally Wrong. I care if his actions Hurt People.

We, as a society, fixate far, FAR too much on whether an action is Legal or Illegal. We act as if everyone obeying every Law is critical for society to function. It's an almost Hobbesian fixation on worship of authority, or at least deference to authority as the default. It's the belief that life will always become worse if people disregard the law. No. The fact that so many people fixate on the rectitude of the State's Violence-Enforced Rules contributes to society's moral rot. The State is a fundamentally immoral entity, which uses its power to convince society that it must be obeyed For Our Own Good.
I can already hear people saying that I am essentially advocate people "pick and choose what laws they follow". Why, yes! Yes I am! And, in all likelihood, so do all of you. Did you break the speed limit today? You're picking and choosing! Did you let your 20 year old have some wine at dinner? You're picking and choosing! Are you a business owner who sometimes stretches the truth or bends the rules to meet profit margins? You're picking and choosing!

I do not care if Donald Trump breaks the law by barring certain journalists from White House press meetings. I care that he did that, because journalists are being barred from asking difficult questions of a public figure who is himself deeply immoral. I do not care if Trump breaks the law by firing thousands of government employees on a whim. I care because he is destroying the livelihoods of thousands of people, and crippling public services on which millions of people depend.
I do not care if Elon Musk breaks the law by using the government to further his business interests. I care because this is yet another factor which widens the gulf separating the State from what is Good. I care because Mammon is holding the wheel and Nominal Christians are just fine with that.
I do not care if it was illegal for the Democratic Party to foist Harris on the public as a nominee with no primary process. I care because it was people with power reverting to 19th century levels of cronyism in order to keep the establishment's hold on the party.

If none of that is convincing, then consider how consistently Trump's supporters, especially his more moderate supporters, cite the law in defending him. "Trump is head of the executive branch, so it is within his constitutional powers to--". I do not care what some piece of paper says it is right or wrong for someone in Trump's position to do. That piece of paper does not adequately curtail the powers of the position which it itself created, so I really do not care.
The distance between the State and what is Right is vast, and in that distance lies Caesar's Law. There is only One Law I care about, and it is not written by ants in statehouses.

While emotionally I don't care whether anybody obeys the law or not, and only care if they offend my personal sense of justice, I don't think it would be wise to abolish the law. I think it would lead to even more suffering and instability than what we currently have. I can see how a relatively benign person wouldn't be a problem if they were exempt from prosecution, but some people out there aren't so benign. There's a risk that some set of bastards even worse than the legitimate government would take over and rule by a simple "might is right" principle, and do whatever they wanted to do. I don't think we'd like the result.

I don't favour Donald Trump breaking the law.... all he has to do is now hold the Democrats to the exact same standard and precedent they held him to with felony charges for "Election Interference". Just by these extremely flimsy and broad standards like what was defined as constituting "Election Interference" in the Alvin Chipmunk Bragg case, this is more than enough to put every major Democrat like Hillary Clinton and Adam Schiffy away for the rest of their lives, if Trump would be so good as to reciprocate.


How the Democrats always tried to eventually switcheroo to their anointed-one and designated heir Kamela (who couldn't win on her own merits) was also fully ridiculous. That was why they kept someone like Biden who was so utterly unfit in the game as the supposed nominee for so long, to make it safe for KH to where she would be unchallenged in any kind of primary, to where they could just try and run her through on a sugar-high and a four-month "Joy" campaign.

Why would we want Democrats to break all the laws in future, just because Trump has?

There are bad laws, but that's not what's going on here. Millions of people were killed in his first administration and even more are going to be killed this time, and almost no one is trying to stop it. The media is even hiding all the protests and other types of resistance that occur daily, by refusing to cover it. There are very good and necessary laws being broken, with tragic consequences.

Of course, I hate this social legalism too, but I like the constitution's spirit. I don't care about what happens so much as it is within that short framework. The Bill of Rights is objectively good.

While I think morality should take precedence over legality, I can't agree that legality is not important at all.

For one thing, while morality is subjective, legality is... OK, legality is also somewhat subjective, the law always needs to be interpreted, but less so.

But I also tend to think that it's good that we have laws and that we try to follow them. When we're sure that a particular law is bad, we might be justified in breaking it. If we're sure that breaking a law is harmless, we might not be morally erring by breaking it. But there's an extent to which we need humility.

Just as the law is not morally infallible, neither are our judgements. Everyone with a conscience and adequate memory can think of things we have done that we were sure were morally justified, but have later decided were not. Sometimes saying "a group of elected representatives spent a long time hashing out this law, with lots of compromises between different groups to reach the necessary consensus; there's a reasonable chance that my disagreement is flawed" is the healthy approach. This is particularly important when one holds an executive office which is supposed to have limited power. It's morally wrong to try and exercise power that you don't have legal authority to do.

Now, is legal authority sufficient? Obviously not. But I'd argue that, for the President, it is nearly always necessary. If the President breaks the law, that is immoral and should be criticised. If nothing else, it undermines the American public's democratic power; Congress is elected to make laws on the public's behalf, and if the President doesn't follow those laws then the President is effectively transferring power away from the people and to the White House.

"It's technically legal" is a very weak defence.

He can commit literal murder and still be president. Must be great.