Let’s pick up where we left off last week.

So you thought that only in a totalitarian state or in a banana republic would prosecutors trump up charges against their political opponents, thereby making a mockery of the rule of law?

Well, you might need to think again.

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After the April 4 release of a New York County, N.Y., grand-jury indictment, there was much talk that “no one is above the law.”

But is that so?

Well, no, at least in this sense: In New York County, many who not long ago would have been prosecuted for particular alleged crimes aren’t being prosecuted for them now.

This is happening not only in New York County and elsewhere in New York City, but also elsewhere in the United States.

After riots left parts of Minneapolis vandalized and torched, a United States senator came to the aid of alleged Minneapolis criminals.

Yes, the alleged criminals.

Upon starting a new job, the by-then former senator’s superior in effect opened America’s southern border. This, among other things, opened the border to drugs that are killing Americans from all walks of life.

If you feel like you’ve fallen down the rabbit hole, you’re not alone.

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In New York County, the kind of crime that has its most direct effect on the most people is rampant.

Who are the victims of a disproportionate share of such crime? Wealthy people on the Upper West Side or the Upper East Side who live in luxury homes overlooking Central Park, have private jets, and send their children to expensive private schools?

No, the disproportionate victims of such crime are poor people in poor neighborhoods.

They’re the ones who suffer the most from vandalism, theft, assault, mugging, homicide, and you name it, not to mention the outright fear of crime.

Yet whoever the victims are, one reason for the crime might be that, rather than prosecuting alleged criminals behind the crime, the New York County district attorney’s office just might be trying to reel in a particular fish.

Not a particular species of fish, but a particular fish.

If this fish were another fish, would the New York County district attorney’s office be trying to reel it in?

It doesn’t take a legal or political genius to surmise that the answer might be “no,” or that this prosecution might in effect be a distraction from the rampant crime.

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Nor does it take a legal or political genius to surmise that the New York County district attorney’s office just might be trying to reel in this particular fish, because he is a particular political opponent.

Any such prosecution would be more than wrong.

Way more than wrong.

It would be frightening.

If such a genie gets out of the bottle, no one should assume, much less believe, that such prosecution – or attempted prosecution – of political opponents will end there.

It should end though. It should never even begin.

What’s worse is that we’ve seen such movies before, and we know the plot line: Such misuse – nay, abuse – of government power can descend into a downward spiral, with each succeeding abuse being worse than the previous one.

Furthermore, this New York County indictment doesn’t even reveal all of the law that the defendant is alleged to have violated.

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And please remember this: What government does to the mighty and powerful today it can do to the rest of us tomorrow.

After all, out-of-control prosecutors tend not to stop with one fish.

Which may be one reason that the New York County defendant in the April 4 indictment predicts that, although he’s the target of this prosecution, supporters of his will be targets of other prosecutions.

If that comes to pass, then the defendant’s calling this yet another “witch hunt” will have way understated what is under way.

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The next time that United States officials scold officials of other countries for prosecuting political opponents, those officials – depending on the circumstances, of course – just might be well within their rights to hand the Americans a mirror and tell them to get off their high horse.

All of this is just one more reason that those who don’t wish America, or the West in general, well are laughing at America now.

Which makes these dangerous times all the more dangerous.

Dr. Randy Elf joins those who don’t aspire to live in a totalitarian state or a banana republic.

COPYRIGHT ç 2023 BY RANDY ELF