The Republican Party’s failures as a party are top of mind for many.  And appropriately so.  Because the Big Lie is not really political.  It is fundamental.  One party – my Republican party – has simply decided that if you voted against the Big Liar, your vote should not count.  Meaning you would have no vote at all.  All of which is, and should be, a dead red warning for us all.

It should also be a death knell for the Republican Party. Yet that has not occurred.  At least, not yet. Why?

I am sure there are many reasons.  One that makes sense to me was described by James Carville as “stupid wokeness.”  Meaning, among other things, the phenomenon in which Progressives seek to legislate away systemic racism and redistribute wealth (to, in part, address that racism) under the guise of fairness.  With at times startling results – the most recent being the social justice agenda of New York City’s District Attorney Alvin Bragg.  Who is no one to brag about.

DA Bragg has announced that to combat systemic racism in the criminal justice system, he is putting the millions of people who live in Manhattan at immediate risk of harm at every level. From the inability to protect their children to the inability to protect themselves.

Specifically, as to children, prostitution is now an administrative ticket without any meaningful consequences. Except one.  Because New York City is not Amsterdam in Holland or Berlin in Germany. There is no regulated red light district here. Instead, we have already drug addicts engaging in oral sex in the middle of the day, in the middle of public streets.  https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8690571/Woman-seen-performing-sex-act-man-New-York-City-street.html: https://dailycaller.com/2020/05/21/video-new-york-couples-sex-public/; https://abc7ny.com/new-york-city-washington-square-park-closing-early-violence/10746183/.   Which will only get worse now that public sex acts in broad daylight in well-traveled areas have, in effect, been legalized.

As to the rest of us, armed robbers now actually have been given a license to rob us.  In most cases, a robber who uses a loaded gun will now be charged with a misdemeanor unless s/he physically hurts someone (apparently having a gun put to your forehead is no longer a cognizable “harm”).  https://nypost.com/2022/01/04/manhattan-da-alvin-bragg-to-stop-seeking-prison-in-some-cases/. The same for convicted gang bangers armed with weapons.  Which, in effect, means they will no longer even be inconvenienced, since New York City has eliminated bail for misdemeanors.  https://www.vox.com/identities/2020/1/17/21068807/new-york-bail-reform-law-explained.

Who is being helped here?  Not the addicts performing sex acts, their johns, the children who are watching this happen in real time, or their parents – now tasked with explaining the unexplainable.  Not businesses – who are now even more wide open to armed “rip and run” attacks, or us (their customers), who must now rely on the sage judgment of the armed robber to not pull the trigger or, I suppose, use it as a pistol whip.

What then, is the justification for these government inflicted harms on the citizenry?  Progressive ideology, draped in empty platitudes.  As DA Bragg explains:

These policy changes not only will, in and of themselves, make us safer; they also will free up prosecutorial resources to focus on violent crime.

https://nypost.com/2022/01/04/manhattan-da-alvin-bragg-to-stop-seeking-prison-in-some-cases/.

Really? Or does it reflect a world view wholly disconnected from the reality that almost all of us – including people of color – are living?

There a few other problems with DA Bragg’s progressive pronouncement.  One is that it turns our system of government on its head.  Because the legislature – which is elected by the voters – decides what is illegal and how it should be punished.  District Attorneys are elected to enforce those laws – not write them off the books. Negating that foundational principle with the stroke of pen is, in that sense, “stealing” our vote.

Another is that this – yes, I will say it – open and notorious progressive stupidity creates more oxygen for the bacillus that is Trumpism to inhale.

There are things that can be done to improve our criminal justice system.  Gratuitously subjecting law abiding citizens to ugliness and violence are not among them.

Justice Potter Stewart of the United States Supreme Court once famously said “I know [obscenity] . . . when I see it.”

From where I sit, DA Bragg’s “reform” is obscene.