An important essay was published over the Independence Day weekend.  Writing at Townhall.com, Kurt Schlichter laid out in stark terms the entirely foreseeable consequences of the behavior of the Democrat-progressive-media cabal.  It is a must-read, especially for the American left (who will, of course, be oblivious to anything not coming from the New York Times bubble).

I will limit my excerpts and urge you to read the whole thing.  His basic case is powerful:

Think about it. If you are out driving at 3 a.m., do you stop at a stop sign when there’s no one coming? Of course you do. You don’t need a cop to be there to make you stop. You do it voluntarily because this is America and America is a country where obeying the law is the right thing to do because the law was justly made and is justly applied. Or it used to be.

The law mattered. It applied equally to everyone. We demanded that it did, all of us – politicians, the media, and regular citizens. Oh, there were mistakes and miscarriages of justice but they weren’t common and they weren’t celebrated – they were universally reviled. And, more importantly, they weren’t part and parcel of the ideology of one particular party. There was once a time where you could imagine a Democrat scandal where the media actually called for the head of the Democrat instead of deploying to cover it up.

People assumed that the law mattered, that the same rules applied to everyone. That duly enacted laws would be enforced equally until repealed. That the Constitution set the foundation and that its guarantees would be honored even if we disliked the result in a particular case. But that’s not our country today.

There is no need to remind readers of AT of the degree to which Hillary Clinton (and many others) has succeeded in behaving with no regard to the law and getting away with it.  Schlichter gets to the heart:

Hillary Clinton is manifestly guilty of multiple felonies. Her fans deny it half-heartedly, but mostly out of habit – in the end, it’s fine with them if she’s a felon. They don’t care. It’s just some law. What’s the big deal? It doesn’t matter that anyone else would be in jail right now for doing a fraction of what she did. But the law is not important. Justice is not important.

My colleague Rick Moran points out:

I very much doubt a black, Hispanic, or woman would claim that the law used to apply equally to all and there are many historical incidents to back that up.  Schlichter is living a fantasy if he believes that.

It is true that in practice, that was often the case.  But it is also true that the ideology of equal justice before the law was almost universally accepted, and so deviations from that ideal were shocking and resulted in strong political reactions.  That is, in fact, how the Civil Rights Revolution was enacted.  When television brought home to the American public the nature of abuses, a series of judicial and political moves resulted in the promises being kept – eventually.

But today, with even greater media scrutiny, Hillary’s transgressions are shrugged away – just as her husband’s perjury was shrugged away in his impeachment trial.  The media and political establishment no longer embrace the rule of law.

What these ruling elites do not understand, and what Schlichter explains to them, is that this situation of mass obedience to the law and elite flouting of the law is in jeopardy.  Respect for the law is eroding from the top of our power structure.  That erosion will be far swifter than is realized by the wealthy and powerful whose position and power depends on respect for law.

This is a grim future facing us.