{"id":163934,"date":"2025-09-28T01:52:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-28T09:52:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=163934"},"modified":"2025-09-28T04:02:38","modified_gmt":"2025-09-28T12:02:38","slug":"the-james-comey-indictment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=163934","title":{"rendered":"The James Comey Indictment"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since 1968, 142 Republican presidential administration officials have been indicted vs three Democrats. Grok: “This disparity (142 vs. 3) has fueled claims of systemic bias, as rated “Half True” by PolitiFact<\/a>\u2014accurate on the raw numbers but potentially explained by more scandals in Republican eras rather than grand jury prejudice.”<\/p>\n

What type of people have the time and the inclination to sit on grand juries? It would not surprise me if they were disproportionately left-wing activists. <\/p>\n

So far the indictment against James Comey seems muddled and unimpressive. I agree with Mark Halperin that if this indictment is based more on Trump’s vendetta than on justice, that is a bad things for many reasons, including that it encourages those who work for Trump to engage in similarly petty behavior. I agree with Dan Turrentine that people in the political middle hate this sort of thing. They hated the lawfare against Trump and they hate Trump engaging in petty vendettas. <\/p>\n

Giuliano da Empoli, author of the novel \u2018The Wizard of the Kremlin\u2019, writes in the FT<\/a>: <\/p>\n

In the US, lawyers are rivalled only by politicians as the most hated professional group. Is it any wonder, then, that the lawyers\u2019 party was overwhelmed? That a platform entirely conceived by lawyers, centred on the defence of democratic procedures and respect for minority rights, whose main argument consisted in the lawsuits against the Republican candidate, was swept away by the recriminations of Trump supporters: inflation, illegal immigration, class contempt?<\/p>\n

Populist leaders and tech bros do not have the same vision of the future in mind…What they have in common, however, is both an enemy and a strategy: kill all the lawyers. Together, political predators and digital conquistadors have decided to wipe out the old elites and their rules. If they succeed in achieving this goal, it will not only be the parties of lawyers and technocrats that will be swept away, but also liberal democracy as we have known it until today.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

ChatGPT comments: Da Empoli\u2019s piece is provocative because it draws together two forces that are usually analyzed separately \u2014 populist politics and tech disruption \u2014 and argues they are converging against liberal democratic norms. A few key angles of analysis:<\/p>\n

1. The \u201clawyers\u2019 party\u201d critique<\/p>\n

He\u2019s suggesting liberal democracy is identified with lawyers and technocrats \u2014 professionals of rules, procedures, and process. In the U.S. especially, Democrats have leaned heavily on lawfare against Trump (lawsuits, prosecutions, constitutional arguments). But for a public angry about inflation, immigration, and class contempt, that looks like form over substance. So when he says \u201cthe lawyers\u2019 party was overwhelmed,\u201d it\u2019s a blunt recognition that appeals to legality don\u2019t mobilize the electorate as powerfully as populist appeals to lived problems.<\/p>\n

2. The Shakespearean \u201ckill all the lawyers\u201d thread<\/p>\n

He\u2019s borrowing the old line as shorthand for revolt against the rules-bound class that mediates power. Historically, lawyers were the interface between rulers and ruled. Today, liberal democrats and EU technocrats play the same role. To populists and tech moguls alike, they\u2019re obstacles: they slow things down, constrain what\u2019s possible, and speak in a language alien to ordinary people. That makes them a shared enemy, even if populists want state power and tech bros want market or platform power.<\/p>\n

3. Populists and tech moguls as strange bedfellows<\/p>\n

On the surface, they\u2019re opposites: Trump or Milei conjure the past; Musk or Altman claim the future. But both thrive on transgression, disruption, and spectacle. Both disdain institutional limits and \u201cexperts.\u201d Both depend on virality rather than slow deliberation. Both define themselves against the Davos class \u2014 the technocrats in suits, the cautious managers of order. Da Empoli is arguing this structural affinity explains why tech titans have begun openly allying with populists.<\/p>\n

4. The offensive vs. defensive power imbalance<\/p>\n

His analogy to military history is sharp: online, offense (disinformation, outrage campaigns, norm-breaking) is cheap, while defense (fact-checking, due process, procedural democracy) is costly and slow. This asymmetry destabilizes democracies \u2014 the same way the advent of the longbow or machine gun overturned old rules of warfare. Populists and tech moguls exploit this dynamic, while defenders of the liberal order are stuck with slower, weaker tools.<\/p>\n

5. Regime change, not just politics<\/p>\n

He pushes further than most commentators by framing this as \u201cregime change.\u201d Populists and tech bros aren\u2019t just competing for office or market share; they\u2019re undermining the legitimacy of liberal-democratic rules themselves \u2014 voting, minority rights, checks and balances. That\u2019s why he warns that if they succeed, it\u2019s not just Democrats or Eurocrats who lose, but liberal democracy itself.<\/p>\n

6. Limits of his argument<\/p>\n

He overstates unity: tech moguls don\u2019t all lean right-populist (e.g. Altman publicly supports regulation; Bezos often tilts centrist).<\/p>\n

The \u201clawyers\u2019 party\u201d framing risks caricature: many lawyers are central to both populist and anti-populist movements.<\/p>\n

He leaves underdeveloped the fact that tech moguls and populists ultimately diverge on globalization, immigration, and markets. Their coalition may be tactical, not durable.<\/p>\n

7. Why it resonates now<\/p>\n

Western publics increasingly see rules as scams, not safeguards. In that environment, disruptive figures \u2014 whether populist politicians or tech visionaries \u2014 can frame liberal-democratic norms as elite tricks. Da Empoli is essentially warning that when the guardians of rules are despised, those rules may not survive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since 1968, 142 Republican presidential administration officials have been indicted vs three Democrats. Grok: “This disparity (142 vs. 3) has fueled claims of systemic bias, as rated “Half True” by PolitiFact\u2014accurate on the raw numbers but potentially explained by more … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21791],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-163934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-america"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t