I lived in Bristol for about 25 years and must have passed by the statue of Edward Colston 100s of times at least without ever considering the history behind it. Colston earned immense wealth from the slave trade, but charitable contributions made in the city meant his name lived on for centuries. The statue was unveiled in the city more than 150 years after Colston’s death, but it took until close to the turn of 21st century before it started to stoke significant controversy.
Despite that, in June 2020 the statue still stood. Well, until 7 June anyway, when some participants in protests in the city following the murder of George Floyd took an executive decision and dumped the statue into the docks.
How should we feel about such an act?
It’s vandalism of public property which is clearly a crime.
Yet wasn’t it also offensive to publicly commemorate someone who was largely responsible for the transportation of 84,000 Africans, including 12,000 children, to America and the Caribbean, of which 19,000 died during the journey?
I know there’s often the argument that we can’t and shouldn’t judge actions of the past by modern standards, but wasn’t that pure and simple mass murder back then just as it would be today? Can we really say we should judge mass murder that occurred three centuries ago differently to mass murder today?
Anyway, the upshot of that day’s events was that four of the protestors were charged with causing criminal damage. Following a trial, a jury of their peers found all four not guilty of criminal damage.
And so to the reaction of elected politicians in the UK, which is why we’re here.
I have little respect for many politicians across the spectrum from left to right, so clearly I’d never take a moment to share anything positive about an overly-privileged multi-millionaire Tory-boy MP who pushes for policies that I believe disregard the plight of those at the bottom of society.
Oh, hang on.
I’m not sure that William Rees-Mogg’s reaction to the acquittal of the Colston Four could be improved. As well as describing the jury system as one of the UK’s “greatest monuments” and “the great sublime protector of our liberties”, he also said, “Juries must be free to come to decisions that they choose to come to on the facts that are in front of them in relation to a specific case and what they hear from the prosecuting counsel, from the defence counsel and from the judge.”1
I’ve read reports that Rees-Mogg is worth upwards of £100 million. Often wealth seems to warp the realities of many, skewing their feeling of importance in a major way. His reaction to the verdict shows he recognises that, despite his privilege, in the context of the British parliamentary system, he’s just a single cog in that system. Like all MPs, his role is to ensure that the system works as best as possible to serve the people.
However, many MPs see themselves as more than a cog. They don’t seem to understand their role is to serve the people.
For example, the Tory MP Tom Hunt believed all people who committed criminal damage should be punished, saying “If the jury is a barrier to ensuring they are punished then that needs to be addressed.”
Most, if not all democratic systems, ensure that anyone accused of a crime is tried by a jury of their peers. A jury made up of other ordinary citizens who are asked to consider all the evidence and then make a decision.
Tom Hunt appears to believe that people he thinks are guilty should be punished, regardless of how a jury feels. Very much the same attitude found in leaders of autocratic countries.
Robert Jenrick, another Tory MP stated that “We undermine the rule of law, which underpins our democracy, if we accept vandalism and criminal damage are acceptable forms of political protest.” It’s an interesting statement as democracy is rule by the people and in this case, 11 of the 12 representatives of the people decided that the actions of the four defendants were an acceptable form of protest.
In a democracy, the people ultimately decide what is right and wrong, not politicians like Jenrick who are tasked with serving the people and representing their wishes.
But that’s not stopped the Conservative government from taking powers away from the people of the UK, including placing growing restrictions on people’s rights to protest.
The Civicus Monitor of civic freedoms has the UK rated as Obstructed, the only country is Western Europe rated at that level.2 This rating largely reflects the government’s moves to restrict protest through the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act and the Public Order Bill.
The government will of course say that the people support these moves3, but when it comes to getting the opinions of the public, it’s not difficult to manipulate people to answer in the desired way.4 Plus we’re always inclined to think about the short term rather than the long term. If someone else’s protests are negatively impacting us right now, we’re happy to sacrifice our own rights to peaceful protest today without thinking about the possibility that at some point in the future we’ll be negatively impacted by the loss of those rights.
This move by politicians to serve themselves rather than the people isn’t just a British disease either, it’s attacking the American system too.
I expect you missed the trial of Donald Trump in New York over hush-money payments to a pornstar. I don’t think much of the media paid any attention to it.
Lots of commentators claim that the case would never have been brought against anyone else. Really? We’ve already seen how there’s one law for them and one for us. Do you really believe this is a unique case for Trump?
Of course you and I would have been charged if we’d been caught.
And the punishment would hurt us, whereas it’ll be a slap on the wrist for Trump like the $1,000 fines for the billionaire for ignoring a gagging order. Sure, he was fined that 10 times, but based on Trump’s own claims of his personal wealth, that’s the equivalent of someone earning the US median salary being fined less than one cent in total. And the Republicans claim the judge and the court was rigged against them. I’d be happy to be tried by a judge who saw one-cent fines as a harsh form of punishment.
The people making these ridiculous claims of unfair bias are the same people, like Tucker Carlson, who think that Biden and Trump should be free to carelessly mishandle classified documents that could affect national security without any fear of punishment.
For a moment, why don’t they actually stop and think for themselves, just for once? If you’ve read some of Trump’s books, you’ll know that he has a ruthless streak and doesn’t believe you should ever show weakness or enemies will turn on you. Always hit them 10 times harder than they hit you.
When it comes to revenge, he’s absolutely 100% of the go big or go home school of thought.
So out of the blue, a porn actress makes up a story that Trump slept with her and threatens to tell the press. According to everything Trump has ever said, he’d have crushed her like a bug. Surely there’d have been a stream of tweets attacking and denouncing her followed by a court case to sue her butt for lying and trying to blackmail him. Yet instead, he quietly paid her $130,000 to stay silent.
Whether you love Trump or hate Trump, based on what Trump has told us time and again you have to accept that the payment makes no sense if he didn’t sleep with the pornstar.
He then allowed his company’s accounts to misrepresent the payment he later made to his lawyer who had funded the original payment to the porn actress. That would be a misdemeanour for any other business owner. Should an ex-president be treated differently to any other business owner who commits a misdemeanour?
Moving on, Trump’s defence was clear that the payment was made to protect his family. That’s all very well, but he was running for President at the time and the payment also stopped the story reaching the voters. Of course it’s going to look to some people like it was to protect his election bid rather than the family and at that point it was a slam-dunk to his enemies for breaking election law and his misdemeanour is upped to a felony.
Trump spends a lot of time telling us how smart he is, so why didn’t see he was leaving himself so wide open to a felony charge? Regardless of what advice he might have been given about the chances of a successful conviction, it seems plain stupid to have left himself so open to attack from opponents.
The bottom line is that in 2016 Trump bottled it. Months before he had his lawyer pay the porn actress he told a rally that “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters.” It sounds crazy, but it’s probably true.
Trump didn’t need to do anything about the claim, but like we all do at times, he screwed up.
However, unlike you and me who know we just have to suck it up, he seems to believe that he deserves to be treated differently. And he’s not the only one who believes that, a large number of his powerful heffalump loving friends were also quick to claim how unfair it all was.
How unfair it was that everyone was talking about the Trumpster being tried for breaking election law rather than the fact he humped a pornstar. How cool is that, what a guy! The man is a babe magnet, why aren’t we all celebrating that?
He tells us in his book Think Big and Kick Ass In Business And Life that he’s dated top models and the most beautiful women in the world. Let me share just one sentence from that book, “I have been able to date (screw) them all because I have something that many men do not have.” (You’ll have to read the book yourself if you want to know just what that something is, though [SPOILER ALERT] apparently it’s not billions of dollars.5 I’ll be honest with you, that revelation surprised me.)
It really is quite a striking sentence for someone to write though, isn’t it. Now, whenever Mrs Forclift asks me if I could handle a little maintenance job around the house, I look at her with my best smouldering Antonio Banderas eyes and say, “my dear, I have been able to drive, open parenthesis, screw, close parenthesis, some of the top screws in the world, I’m sure I can handle this little job for you” and she looks at me and says, “if I’d known what a dick you are, I’d have listened to my dad.”
Anyway, I’ve got sidetracked again, back to his powerful heffalump loving friends.
I’m not listing all of them here, so my apologies to any sycophants I miss out, it doesn’t mean that you’re not important enough, although…well…yeah…I’ll leave a blank space for you to fill in.
The sucker-uppers reportedly included three potential prospects for Trump’s presidential running mate, namely JD Vance, Byron Donalds, Doug Burgum, House Speaker Mike Johnson, Senator Tommy Tuberville and ________________________.
In our divided and partisan world, it’s common to hear claims of political opponents being unpatriotic and traitors. It used to be possible to have a different point of view on how to achieve something and still be as patriotic as our opponents, but not today it seems. It also used to be possible to show respect to our opponents while strongly disagreeing with their argument, but again those days seem to have passed.
Outside the court, Senator Tuberville is reported to have attacked the jury, saying there were “supposedly American citizens in that courtroom”, though he later claimed he was not referring to the jury. Regardless, the people in that courtroom were doing their duty and serving the people of the state of New York.
Being part of a court case is a difficult and pressured role at the best of times, but much more so when Trump is the defendant. Yet Tommy Tuberville attacked people who were simply doing their duty to society and even suggested they’re not Americans.
When did it become normal and acceptable for a servant of the people to attack the people of the republic they’re meant to serve?6
Tuberville wasn’t a lone voice though. Many powerful figures from American society rolled up to condemn the legal process, both before and after Trump’s conviction.
They’re grown adults behaving like school children who haven’t got the self-confidence to stand up to the kid with the rich parents who everyone else is sucking up to. The rich kid’s parents pay for the best parties and who wants to be the loner left behind and missing out on all the fun?
All of them need to get a grip on themselves and try to find some self-respect. Whenever I think of any of them, I can’t shake the image of them lap-dancing provocatively in a leather pouch and platform boots for their heffalump crush.7
The thing is though, if they can’t even respect themselves, do you think they have any respect for the people they’re meant to serve?
And this lack of respect isn’t restricted to any single party or country. It seems to be at the heart of politics everywhere today.
What is the Democratic Party doing selecting such an old man with an apparently declining intellect as their nominee? Regardless of his fitness or otherwise for the role, he’s the past. Why aren’t they making a positive step forward and selecting someone who is young enough to hold their sheep together for 90 minutes without having to scratch around for excuses like suffering from a cold and jet lag?
Just because their party members don’t look like the same gang of pathetic sycophants, they’re still putting their party ahead of the public.
They may not stand on the same rung as the Republicans, but they’re climbing the same ladder of contempt for the American people.
The Importance Of Equal Justice
Obviously, there was a lot of pulling of hair and gnashing of teeth in the fall-out of Trump’s conviction. The gyrating leather pouch-wearing House Speaker Mike Johnson was just one voice whipping up the anger against the American legal system.
He’s reported to have said “And to maintain a republic … people have to believe that justice is fair that there’s equal justice under law. They don’t see that right now,” following the verdict.8
If it’s true that this court case was rigged and corrupt, it must be true then that all court cases in America could be rigged and corrupt. If it can be done once, surely we have to assume it can be done every time?
So are Johnson and the other acolytes going to put as much energy into defending every defendant in America who declares themself innocent?
He said it himself that there has to be equal justice, so do you feel confident that they’ll be doing all they can to highlight the injustices faced by every other innocent American being persecuted by the country’s corrupt legal system?
There are plenty of people who would argue that there’s never been equal justice under the law in the US.
Or do you think I’m naively misunderstanding and Johnson and his powerful buddies only really care about “equal” justice for some people? The rich and the powerful at the pinnacle of society.
Maybe a rigged and corrupt legal system is just one of life’s little challenges for those at the bottom of society’s pyramid. It’s just not “fair” when it impacts the privileged and the powerful above us.
But hey, if you are at the bottom, look on the bright side, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Of course, for those like the 20 people listed on the Death Penalty Information Center’s website9, what killed them was the legal system Johnson and his buddies are now railing against, despite real concerns over their guilt.
Since 1973, 197 people have been exonerated after being sentenced to death.10 Yet do we ever see Johnson and the rest of those powerful Republican figures railing against the legal system every time there’s a proven grievous failing of the system that affects a little person?
Talking of little people, do you remember we discussed a billionaire being fined for insider trading earlier and we worked out his fine was the equivalent of someone in the US on the average salary being fined about $30?
So now that Mike Johnson and his Republican colleagues have discovered a new passionate desire for equal justice no doubt they’ve been keeping a close eye on the prosecution of the billionaire’s pilots who were also charged in conjunction with the insider trading.
We don’t know how wealthy the pilots are, but I’ve read that private jet pilots may earn up to $300,000 per year. Not a bad salary by most people’s standards, but people tend to live within their means, so that doesn’t mean they’ve built up a lot of wealth. For the sake of this exercise, let’s say they’re each worth $5 million. That feels high to me but we need a figure.
So using that guesstimate of their wealth, to ensure equal treatment under the law, each pilot should be fined a maximum of $4,000, plus be sentenced to three years probation.
Obviously, anything more than that would lead to complete and utter outrage among the massed ranks of the Republican party and cries about how the people have to have equal justice.
So, one of the pilots, Bryan Waugh is due to be sentenced in October 2024, but he’s already agreed to pay $152,000 in restitution and also agreed not to appeal any prison term of less than 18 months.11 The agreement was publicised while Trump’s case was going on, so maybe Johnson missed it or perhaps he’s going to wait till the sentence is passed in October so he can build up as much outrage as possible about how unequal the treatment of the billionaire and one of his pilots is.
The other pilot, Patrick O’Connor, was due to be sentenced on 29 May 2024 and while I can’t find details of what happened, we know he’d already agreed to pay $180,000.12 Again it doesn’t seem very much like equal treatment when compared to the way the billionaire was sentenced.
And again, there doesn’t seem to have been any huge wave of outrage from Johnson and the Republicans about the way that a billionaire was treated so much more leniently (relatively) than a couple of little people.
Ooh, er…am I seeing a pattern…no, I’m sure I can’t be…still, it does feel a bit like the Republicans only care about billionaires…no, really, I’m just being silly, aren’t I?
No, I’m absolutely positive that as soon as Mike Johnson and the Republicans realise that such unequal justice has been applied, they’ll be on the case. And I’m sure it won’t just be individual cases like this that they’ll be keen to get their teeth into.
No, undoubtedly the party of law and order are bound to want to correct what’s probably the biggest case of unequal justice affecting Americans right now.
We’ve seen before that black Americans make up 13% of the general population, but 37% of prisoners in American prisons are black. The number of black prisoners is almost three times greater than it should be.
Obviously, Mike Johnson is too intelligent a person to believe that black skin makes a person more criminalistic than if they had white skin. Wherever we go, people are people and it’s clearly absurd to imagine that skin pigmentation can influence whether someone commits a crime or not.
We also saw a map of the US that showed how, of the areas studied, they were overwhelmingly biased towards white people, which must go at least some way to explaining how the justice system is imprisoning white and black criminals in unequal proportions.
But no longer do black Americans subject to the American legal system need to worry about such unfairness.
Now that Mike Johnson and his band of Republican sidekicks are on their crusade to ensure equal justice for every American, it can only be a matter of time before they address this injustice too.
Surely they now have to speak out as strongly about the injustice of this situation as they’ve spoken out about the injustice suffered by Donald Trump. If they don’t, I don’t think it would be unreasonable for you to feel that it can only mean that they either believe black people do commit more crimes or they just don’t care about poor black people being treated in an unequal way.
If that was how you felt, you might then conclude that all of those Republicans are racist, though clearly that’s not my belief.
Of course, if they’re not racist, it can only mean they don’t give two ducks about equal justice for any poor Americans, doesn’t it?
Is The American Legal System Corrupt?
Why did it take so long to bring Trump’s case to court? Why did it fall into the year when he’s seeking election for a second term as President?
There are claims from Trump and his supporters that it was deliberate and intended to damage him in that election campaign.
That’s not an unreasonable claim at all, is it? The offence (no longer alleged unless there’s a successful appeal) occurred almost eight years earlier. Why couldn’t it have been tried much sooner after Trump left The White House?
Could the decision as to when to hold the trial have been influenced by an aim to affect the election campaign?
That’s an easy point of view to argue for, particularly when you consider the process was driven by elected officials in a state that has voted for Democrats in national elections since 1988.
There really are a variety of things that look mighty weird about the US from the outside, but some of the legal foibles seem quite absurd. Do you recall one of the actions listed in the My Little Autocrat’s Playbook is for autocratic leaders to take over the selection and appointing of judges?
Politicians shouldn’t appoint judges.
We shouldn’t even want politicians we vote for appointing judges. Sure they may share our beliefs today, but what about tomorrow? We all start everything with good intentions, but they can quickly fade. Ever done a dry January? The first day is easy and the first week is manageable enough, but it gets harder. By the 23rd we’re counting the couple of glasses of Chardonnay with breakfast as two servings towards our daily fruit and veg quota – “STOP JUDGING ME, IT’S JUST GRAPE JUICE!” Most politicians are no more reliable at keeping to their pledges.
If they can control who becomes a judge, they can at the very least shape the way that legal decisions are made, just by choosing those who they know exhibit bias to one side of the political spectrum. Should they manage to pick outright corrupt judges, they can potentially dictate the way laws are interpreted.
That’s why it’s sensible for democracies to place the power of selecting judges in the control of an independent body. We know we all suffer the effects of bias so this system isn’t going to be perfect, but depoliticising appointments increases the chances of more neutral choices. In addition, by stressing the non-political nature of judges, it helps to ensure that they also continually strive to separate their personal political beliefs from their professional actions and try to interpret law as objectively as possible.
Contrast that with Russia, where the President, Vladimir Putin currently, appoints judges. Would you fancy your chances of getting a fair trial in Russia if you’d done something to upset Putin?
And also contrast that with China where judges are appointed by people’s congresses. That actually sounds quite democratic, except the Chinese Communist Party controls the people’s congresses, so in effect, President Xi gets to decide who becomes a judge. Again, think you can count on a fair trial in China if you get caught telling Winnie-the-Pooh gags in public?
Yet, in the US federal judges are selected by the President. How on earth is that going to lead to neutral and unbiased judges? In fairness to the members of the Constitutional Convention of 1877 that wrote this power into the American constitution, there weren’t any formal political parties at that time.
Is it unreasonable to imagine that they envisaged that all future Presidents of the US would be independently-minded people focused solely on the service of the people rather than seeking long-term advantages for the development and propagation of a single political party’s ideology?
The United States of America were very different back then. The US Constitution came into effect in 1878 and at the end of that year, the union only consisted of 11 states. So today, the overwhelming majority of US states are tied to a constitution that they had no input into.
Might it be time for a rethink about some aspects of the constitution taking on board the beliefs and opinions of all the states?
Surely, with Republicans outraged by the “political” trial of Trump in New York and the Democrats outraged by the conservative bias of the Supreme Court, they’d all be in full agreement that for the good of the people of the United States of America, the time has come to remove all political influence from the selection and appointment of judges?
Isn’t that the only sensible course of action open to them?
Talking Of The Supreme Court
As the US Supreme Court just got a mention and we’re considering the question of who politicians really serve, let’s expand the question to the justices too as they’re also public servants.
In late 2023, the justices adopted a code of conduct in response to ongoing questioning over their actions that could lead to questions over impartiality. That code of conduct has been subject to much negative comment as it tends to outline what the justices should do, rather than outlining what they shall and must do.
Adopting the code was in response to numerous media claims about potentially unethical behaviour on the part of the judges. The most prominent name in these claims was probably Clarence Thomas who appears to have received various benefits from a number of wealthy people, often failing to report what were basically gifts and very substantial gifts too.13
Obviously, despite how it may appear to some, there’s no suggestion of anything shady or improper on the part of those giving those gifts and there’s no evidence that they influenced Thomas’ behaviour. However, even if there was no intent on the part of the gift-givers, our knowledge of the nature of reciprocity shows very clearly that Thomas could have been influenced, even if he believed he wasn’t.
The fact any justice would happily accept gifts, whether properly declared or not, should give cause for concern to everyone. In my opinion, the very fact that Thomas is unable to see how accepting such large gifts could undermine his impartiality clearly demonstrates his lack of impartiality.
When Clarence Thomas makes any decision on cases brought before the Supreme Court, who do you think he’s serving? The American people or the heffalumps at the top of society?
Turning our focus to all the justices, where do you think the duty of the US Supreme Court’s justices should lie? Should they always prioritise doing what they believe the US Constitution says, even if it appears to contrast with the views of the majority of American citizens?
In 2022, the court decided to remove almost 50 years of all American women having the right to choose an abortion.
I’ve looked at a number of different polls conducted since then and every poll that I’ve seen has shown that the majority of Americans believe that all women should have the right to an abortion in all or most cases.
Ignore your own feelings on the issue, assuming that the polls are accurate, is it right that the Supreme Court can pass laws that the people they’re meant to serve don’t agree with? Is it right that five individuals have the power to pass laws that the majority of the population disagree with? Let us note that four of those individuals were men and so would never personally need access to abortion.
Doesn’t the US Supreme Court serve the American people? Shouldn’t their actions bear in mind the wishes of the majority of the people, regardless of their own personal feelings on a subject?
- https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-59893024 ↩︎
- Frustratingly, Civicus doesn’t seem to offer any explanation of the rating system, but we can at least compare nations relatively to others – https://monitor.civicus.org ↩︎
- https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/public-order-bill-overarching-documents/public-order-bill-factsheet ↩︎
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GSKwf4AIlI ↩︎
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lj-9lSEBBm0 ↩︎
- Yes, if you feel so inclined, you can argue that as the Senator of Alabama, Tuberville doesn’t serve the people of New York, but it’s that divisive attitude that’s breaking American society ↩︎
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOQIMOcEVc4 ↩︎
- https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/speaker-johnson-urges-supreme-court-to-overturn-dangerous-trump-guilty-verdict-5660528 ↩︎
- https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/policy-issues/innocence/executed-but-possibly-innocent ↩︎
- https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/policy-issues/innocence ↩︎
- https://fortune.com/europe/2024/05/15/british-billionaire-joe-lewis-pilot-pleads-guilty-tax-evasion-insider-trading/ ↩︎
- https://fortune.com/europe/2024/02/26/joe-lewis-pilot-pleads-guilty-insider-trading/ ↩︎
- https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2023/09/22/clarence-thomas-here-are-all-the-ethics-scandals-involving-the-supreme-court-justice-amid-koch-network-revelations/?sh=3b7ea8bb5df7 ↩︎