The erudite and insightful Roger Kimball, who is well known to the readers at American Thinker, discusses in his essay the disappearance of the American respect for and application of the rule of law:

Instead of proper rule of law we are living with that Orwellian alternative, Our Rule of Law — an arbitrary enforcement of the laws and use of the coercive power of the state. 

Mr. Kimball opens with a recall of the Hemingway novel The Sun Also Rises, which describes what is playing out now: the exchange "'How did you go bankrupt?' Bill asked.  'Two ways,' Mike said.  'Gradually, then suddenly.'"  Mr. Kimball alludes to the loss of the American Rule of Law, and you get the point: we are lost, gradually, now suddenly.  Have we lost the Rule of Law forever?

Mr. Kimball points out that the Hunter laptop scandal was revealed by the laptop from hell.  Miranda Devine broke the story, but it languished because of media cover-up and cancelation. 

Kimball reveals the important breakthroughs, the bribes, and the explosive revelations of Hunter and other Biden family receipt of payments from foreign actors.  That has led to House discovery of many different payments.  That's the fodder for treason prosecutions.  It dribbled out, then suddenly the reality arrived for anyone who cared, and the House started a serious exposé that showed payments to Biden's family and the sitting president of the United States.

Explosive information from IRS informers made no dent.  Records of clear-cut Hunter efforts, with Joe sitting beside him, to demand bribe and payoff money from the Chicoms are ignored and diminished by government officials and media if they are acknowledged at all.

The tax fraud deal by Hunter was a scandal, but who's worried or fretting?  After all, Hunter is untouchable in spite of his failure to report millions in income, and he got a misdemeanor slap on the wrist for tax charges.  Same for a fraudulent application for a sidearm.  There are credible and evidence-supported allegations of Hunter's and Joe's legal violations, all the way to consorting with enemies.  We also have good evidence of Deep State efforts to protect Hunter and Joe.  Where's that going?

Preferential treatment?  Not according to A.G. Merrick Garland, who declared any critic of the Justice Department as betraying "democracy." 

The two-tier deployment of justice in this country is patent for all to see, but what are you going to believe, your lying eyes or the pronunciamentos of this gray-on-gray bureaucrat from hell? 

The end, as Hemingway's character observed, came gradually at first. We've moved on now to the "suddenly" part.

Is it so hard to see, the decline in the respect for law and even-handed application and enforcement of the law?  No, not at all.  Any halfway informed person knows we are entering a new legal environment — the world of tyranny and despots who use the law as a means for control and elimination of political opposition.  We may be lost...forever?

John Dale Dunn, M.D., J.D. is a retired emergency physician and inactive attorney in Brownwood Texas.

Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.