Read this next sentence over and over again until you realize I really mean it.
It does not matter if Trump is guilty.
Have you got that? Do you believe I sincerely think that?
If so, you're probably wondering why. And I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt, and assume you're not a moron enough to think the answer is "because he's my guy".
I don't have a guy.
For the moment, just accept that I don't think it matters if Trump is guilty. In order to explain why, I will demonstrate that you agree with me. You think you don't, but you do, and I'll show you why.
So, after writing a series of books about a wizard school for kids, and making so much money that you would never have to work a day in your life again, you decided that you didn't actually want to be idle.
Commendable.
So you invented "Robert Gailbraith", and you started writing more novels. Novels about a private detective who is hired to solve crimes.
This is well explored genre, and there's quite a few people who enjoy this sort of thing... enough that these type of novels have some colloquial names.
They're called "mystery" stories, but they are also often called "whodunnits".
Cormoran Strike (ludicrous name, by the way) is hired to investigate crimes, in order to find out who it was that dunnit. He is not hired to investigate a person to see "whutHeDun".
There's two reasons you write it that way.
A "whutHeDun" would be a boring story. There's no way for the reader to wonder who did the thing, or how the thing went down. Nothing to puzzle over. They can wonder, I suppose, what crime the target will eventually be charged with, but with that as the major question, how would you tantalize the reader with clues?
Surely, as an experienced writer, you can see that such a story would not work.
But there's another reason. A "whutHeDun" isn't heroic. When your main character selects a crime to investigate, it's easy to make the readers root for him, simply by writing the crime as some awful thing that needs to be solved, so the perpetrator won't do it again.
But if Cormoran Strike were to investigate a man instead of a crime, his actions would not be so admirable. If he don't have a heinous crime to instigate his investigation, then why is investigating this man and not that one?
Clearly, the man is being targeted not because he is guilty of a heinous crime, but for some other reason.
This wouldn't work even if you wrote so that every "he" in your series of "whutHeDuns" turned out to be a goat rapist or something equally vile and disgusting, because not only would your readers' sense of immersion be damaged by how everybody he investigated turned out vile, but also because he wasn't motivated by something he couldn't have known or been sure of.
And if, instead, they were guilty of tax evasion, or failing to pay their television license fee (apparently that's a thing in Brit-land?), or cheating on their wife/husband... well, it would be hard to see ol' Cormoran as a heroic character at all, now wouldn't it?
No, he would basically be a professional character assassin, wouldn't he? Hired to dig up dirt on somebody that his rich clients wanted to stick it to.
Cormoran Strike, sticky divorce investigator! Thrilling tales of how he catches cheating wives so rich dudes don't have pay alimony!
Would you write a story like that?
I think you wouldn't. It wouldn't be fun to write, and it would be very difficult to sympathize with the protagonist.
He wouldn't be heroic.
Well, that's the real justice system for you. It has to be heroic. It has to stand for justice, not just law, especially not if that law is selectively applied.
In a free society, we investigate crimes to see who can be charged with them. We do not investigate men to see what they can be charged with.
Because the law is intended to be a shield to protect the people, not a sword to attack them.
You already believe this.
You already have left-wing beliefs that is unjust to selectively target unpopular people with the justice system, even if some crime can be found they are actually guilty of. You understand how if the police arrested only black men, this would be wrong even if only the guilty were convicted.
You also understand that sleazy divorce PIs who dig up dirt on preselected targets are not heroes, even if dirt can be found. That's why Cormoran Strike investigates disappearances and murders and such instead.
So you already agree with me.
You even agree with me if you are so lost to knee-jerk tribalism that you don't care about targeted investigations and malicious prosecution, and you just want to see Donald Trump go to jail, principles be damned.
Because, remember, my original thesis was "it does not matter if Donald Trump is guilty".
If you believe in the principle of blind and equal justice, then it doesn't matter if he is guilty, because target prosecutions are wrong.
And if you don't care about principle, and you just want to get him at any cost, then it still doesn't matter if he's guilty, because then you want to get him even if he's innocent.
In no world does it actually matter if he is guilty of the things he is accused of doing, which I doubt you could even explain to me off the top of your head.
What matters a great deal is whether the most powerful, most nuclear-armed nation in the known universe is ruled by laws and principles or by men and agendas.
Why?
Because one day you, Joanne Rowling, might visit the United States of America, and suddenly find yourself in handcuffs.
Because someone decided "let's get that transphobe", and assigned a team of federal prosecutors and forensic accountants to go over your entire business empire with a fine-tooth comb.
Ah-hah! They would cry, this billionaire has falsified her business records! This is wrong, whatever the context! We must prosecute her at once!
And we would all know that the real reason would be your refusal to agree that a man in a dress is a woman.
Just as the real reason here is that Donald Trump is a threat to the regime.
You may not like it, because you don't like Donald Trump. You may refuse to admit it, because you don't like Donald Trump. But you know I am right about this.
Donald Trump is a political prisoner in the same way that a man in a dress is still a man.
Because wanting things doesn't change facts.
Originally Posted by BPTactical
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