The revolution underway is significantly dependent on decentralization, and the spreading of responsibility for each minor catastrophe so thinly across politicians, bureaucrats, officers, and so on that no individual person can be held to hold a requisite level of personal responsibility to enact punishment upon them. In such times the ‘long arm of the law’ is stunted, and as it flails about for purchase on the multitudes now queued for justice it appears the responsible remain either just out of reach, or turn to jelly upon being grasped.
This makes a mockery of our system that invites more to join them in the queue – assured that they will either never face punishment, or that so much time will pass before then that the people will have moved on to their umpteenth crises since, and that they will be allowed to slink into the shadows after paying a pittance. This trend must be broken, and it will only be broken by holding some specific person, or people accountable to the fullest effect of law, preferably on charges such as high crimes against the state, and leading to the just administration of capital punishment in a public forum.
Jefferson’s comments on watering the tree of liberty were not entirely metaphor, nor merely meant as applicable to war and rebellion – there will be blood; it is up to us whether that blood is extracted through official, sanctioned state action in the administration of justice, or by the mobs of tribalism, and the squadrons of civil war. To be clear, if you have not the stomach to see such official actions as capital punishment carried out on your behalf you are admitting you lack the seriousness personally of your convictions on liberty generally. Serious people know that blood is inseparable from liberty – indeed, it is inseparable from any form of human existence east of Eden. Blood is a fact of life, and it is, rightly, sometimes an achievement of justice.
We must inculcate the deadly seriousness of law and order into ourselves, and our polity once again. We are now fundamentally unserious people in an unserious nation. Unserious people are not taken seriously by internal, or external forces. Eventually unserious people do not get to eat at will. They do not get to sleep at will. They do not get to move at will. Will itself is a serious force that is outside the capacity of the unserious to exercise. Ultimately, our lack of will will create a void that will be filled by serious men of will, and, when it is, your sons, your daughters, and your wives will be left to the serious to dispose of at will. Our current path makes sheep of men, and would-be sheepdogs are trampled by the herd. The future will belong to the first to willfully make of themselves a wolf, and wolves are not put off by blood.
It is merely fortuitous circumstance that the apparent treason of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs has just come to light as I write this. This principle should be applied to General Milley for the several instances of treason for which he now appears guilty: first in subverting the will of the duly elected President in refusing orders to deploy forces to quell the Black Lives Matter insurrection that killed dozens, second for intervening with Nancy Pelosi to remove nuclear launch authority from the President, and then for providing aid and comfort to an enemy state in China. These are high crimes against the state indeed. We should not seek to grasp for more than we can hold here: Milley alone is adequate. We should grasp for what we can reach, and hold on with all we have until justice has been done: a speedy trial, and speedy, public justice. Should Milley prove gelatinous such that we lose our grip we should move to the next target immediately, and with full effect, until we finally set a precedent of accountability.
To conclude, and to summarize, we should take a lesson from the tyrant of the dinosaurs. The hulking creature of CGI stardom in the Jurassic Park series teaches us something important about having short arms: have a strong bite. Posterity beckons you through the ages: find your fangs, and teach the body politik that even if the law lacks the reach to enact upon all criminals just deserts, by God it still has the teeth to bring about deterrence through the thorough, and completeness of such administration upon one man.