The term “cruel and unusual punishment” is usually applied to the death penalty and solitary confinement. Both are widely condemned by the left, as is incarceration for non-violent crimes. But the political left treats the sufferings of victims of crime as collateral damage, something that should have nothing whatsoever to do with justice. Likewise, the left turns a blind eye to those whom the government itself destroys.

The cavalier attitude towards victims of crimes is a quintessentially leftist position. It’s also partially the consequence of substituting the government as the aggrieved party in criminal cases, leaving the actual victim on the sidelines.

Unfortunately, this system makes it the government’s job to decide whether to prosecute a case. Often, the Department of Justice and attorneys-general across the country behave as though the law is irrelevant when deciding whether to pursue a case – to the point of being opaque, quixotic, and under the worst but common circumstance, political.

Honest people must admit there was sufficient evidence to bring to a grand jury to examine election fraud in the 2020 presidential election. But the Department of Justice, through AG Barr, protested that there was insufficient evidence to move forward. “Just stop talking about niggling details,” was their attitude! They seemed upset by the calls to investigate and the signed affidavits of election misconduct because the most important goal has been to stop Trump from exercising political power ever again.

Worse, we’re now stuck with an incoming administration that we know views everything in terms of political power. Inconsistencies in logical arguments don’t matter. That the law is applied differently to different people does not matter. The severity of damage to the victim can be ignored if it is inconvenient. Rigorous discovery of the facts of a case will not necessarily change the final decision to prosecute or not. In fact, the facts of a case can become irrelevant if the threat to powerful interests is great enough.

The most egregious example may be Hunter Biden escaping even being charged with financial crimes for which his two business partners are now serving hard time. No, wait! The worst would be Eric Swalwell remaining on the House intelligence committee after being compromised by a Chinese spy; that is beyond strange.

Actually, examples of twisted justice are becoming increasingly common as punishment for such crimes becomes less frequent and less severe. Treason used to be a terrible crime, but now it can be justified as being a point of view supporting the New World Order.

And what about the fate of the unrecognized special class called victims. We may define “being mugged” as an unexpected assault of one party on another with resultant damage to the party being assaulted. So, businesspeople who were burned out during government-sanctioned riots were mugged. Government agencies that shut businesses in response to Covid-19 engage directly in mugging but will never be held accountable for the losses they caused.

H-1B visas and other forms of open borders cause the impoverishment of American workers who will never recover, even over a working lifetime. Obtaining a seat in university or a position at a particular firm based upon skin color makes luck everything and personal efforts a waste of time. Most people think they should profit from their own efforts. When that does not happen because of unexpected institutional fingers on the scale, that too is a form of being mugged.

We’re seeing changes in cultural norms that were unexpected and uncalled for. No one’s had the chance to adjust to the change in terrain, so we fall flat on our faces with random injuries that change the course of our lives. (Who ever thought we could lose our life insurance policies by having the wrong political views, as in the recent case of Curt Schilling.)

We seek stability and get chaos. Sometimes chaos happens, but randomly as in a tornado. However, when arbitrary rules continuously yield chaos, we should be very angry.

The most egregious example of the government systematically mugging people is the disappearance of “one person, one vote.” That idea seems Victorian at this moment. But fair elections have been an American expectation (with exceptions) and now they are no longer so. How will our American culture adapt to these new circumstances where a large plurality of voters literally feels disenfranchised.

My knee-jerk reaction is to petition the government to remove all voting machines from the election process and support “paper ballots only” to see if we can regain the past’s purer expectations. They seem only to be an impediment to the task at hand. Otherwise, we will be mugged every year on the same Tuesday in November, our own dark version of the movie, Groundhog Day, very definitely cruel and unusual punishment.

IMAGE: Medieval torture. Public Domain.