Morality without God is an Illusion

Yeah that has occurred to me. Some of them were re-arrested for fresh offenses within days or weeks of their pardon. A couple were even shot dead in confrontations with police (the one I’m most familiar with was shot dead by a cop in Hobart, Indiana when he got mouthy at a traffic stop, doubtless because he thought he was immune now). I have no doubt that some of these could be pardoned more than once. The lawlessness is the point. These are informal mercenaries for the regime to harass and intimidate the populace.

They’re basically setting up their own informal Dirlewanger Brigade. Though at what they consider to be sufficient arm’s length to provide a veneer of plausible deniability if they end up facing a future Nuremberg style tribunal. Hopefully the jurists presiding over such a court will see through the pretences just as the “superior orders” defence was exposed as a sham in 1945.

Authoritarian regimes have always found certain categories of criminal to be useful. Lowlives who are prepared to do dirty work for the thugs at the top, but who are on the leash of kompromat, so to speak.

Though of course the use of kompromat isn’t new - Putin’s activities merely provided us with a convenient shorthand for the requisite skulduggery. Here’s an unusual piece of candour on the matter from a British (needless to say, Tory) politician:

Finding dirt on someone, then using that to make someone do your bidding, is as old as politics itself, but I suspect we’re about to see this weaponised to a truly ugly extent. The Orange Scrotum is a criminal himself, and has already demonstrated what is practically a fetish for rabble rousing.

Indeed, the ethical stench surrounding the Trumpanzees leads me to conclude, that the next few years could see the USA descend below even the turpitude of Ante Pavelic’s “Independent Croatia”. It might not be comparisons with Auschwitz that are invited, but Jasenovac in years to come.

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“Trumpanzees” fkn brilliant, I am borrowing that one… :rofl:

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