Up until now, Democrats have loved felons. The advent of Soros district attorneys and the criminal justice "reform" movement has turned felons into Democrat heroes. Just ask George Floyd.

But they've done a 180 now, screaming from every mountaintop that President Trump is a 'felon,' which is highly questionable given that the case they hit him with stands a good chance of being thrown out on appeal.

But they're happy enough about it, given that they achieved their political aim, which was to be able to call Trump a 'felon' and peel off a few GOP votes from him ahead of Election Day. That might be all they want from this ridiculous and patently illegal political prosecution. "Felon!" "Felon!" "Felon!" Out they shout it, as if they hadn't been lionizing real felons for the past decade or more as their role models.

The 'felon' appellation is an interesting one because President Trump is in good company.

Crummy dictatorships the world over have been felon-izing their political opponents, in what's a perfected art.

Start with Alexei Navalny, who recently died in a Russian Gulag in the country's far north for ... making fun of Russia's dictator, Vladimir Putin, and exposing his corruption. Navalny was convicted of "fraud," same as Trump was, and later, "extremism."  His real crime was challenging the establishment and becoming popular with the people as a result. Trump is in his company and God forbid he suffer the same fate, which is entirely possible if he's jailed. By the wildest of coincidences, the Russians actually adopted the New York technique of claiming "the cameras were off" when high profile Jeffrey Epstein turned up dead in prison, calling it a suicide.

Trump also joins Lech Walesa of Poland for the 'felon' title. Walesa was arrested and jailed in Poland in 1981, shortly after dicator Wojciech Jaruzelski declared martial law on the entire country based on his protests for free trade unions. Dictators declare national emergencies based on "threats to democracy" and it doesn't take long for them to just round their political opponents up.

Trump also joins Vaclav Havel of the Czech Republic, back when it was Czechoslovakia for the title of "felon." Havel had been banned, blacklisted and gagged for years for speaking and writing about the ruling communists' corruption of language, and finally, was imprisoned four times by the communist Soviet puppet regime for challenging the regime. Sound like anyone you know in the states? Certainly the dynamic of harassment and then imprisonment suggests a parallel.

There are also a lot of figures in Cuba President Trump joins with as a "felon," all good company. Oswaldo Paya was thrown into hard-labor prison to cut sugar cane for speaking out in support of Prague Spring of 1968. After that, they circled him, throwing his associates in prison in the "Black Spring" of 2012, and tailing him wherever he went, until finally,  Cuban agents rammed his car into a tree, killing him and calling it "an accident." Huber Matos a longtime guerrilla comrade of Fidel Castro's who was imprisoned for two decades for "treason and sedition" for calling on Castro to live up to his promise of "democracy." Dr. Oscar Biscet was imprisoned for 25 years for organizing a petition drive to call for democracy in that hellhole, with additional time for talking to someone at the U.S. embassy. Cuban punk rocker Gorky was imprisoned for "dangerousness." Two Cuban rap artists, Maykel Castillo “El Osorbo” and Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, were thrown into prison for five- and nine-year terms recently for composing a popular song that very obliquely challenged the government called "Patria y Vida." The regime called it “contempt, public disorder, and defamation of institutions and organizations, heroes and martyrs,” and gave Castillo extra time for draping a Cuban flag around his back during a song. The general gist of this is clear as regards President Trump. They like to get them on technicalities and throw out long prison sentences as punishment.

Closer to home, Trump joins Martin Luther King, Jr., who was another "felon" who drew draconian sentences for challenging the establishment on civil rights for black people. They got him 29 times, sometimes for protesting, but also on technicalities such as driving 30 miles an hour in a 25 mph zone in Alabama, and driving in Georgia without a valid license which had been held up only because Georgia officials hadn't bothered to issue him the one he applied for, while his valid Alabama license was ignored. He got "probation" for that except his lawyer didn't tell him, so then for organizing a sit-in in Georgia he got four months' hard labor as a probation violator. Sound draconian? Sound a little over the top? Sounds a lot like the kinds of treatment President Trump has garnered at the hands of Democrats, who also did this to King.

And let's not forget Dinesh D'Souza, the popular conservative filmmaker who effectively lampooned President Obama in various projects. He was imprisoned with a long term on a minor campaign donation to a schoolmate violation, in a civil offense that has rarely or never been prosecuted as a crime, just a civil offense meriting a fine. But since D'Souza was "special," he got a prison sentence. Let's just say the Democrats have had practice.

And speaking of D'Souza and several of the others listed, does anyone notice that they all like to target artists? Trump is an effective performing artist with a long history of television acting, so there's a pattern here among the world's dictators -- to put the artists first as these hacks' cast 'felons.'

Trump once again is in good company.

The other thing we notice is that some of the worst court cases where the dissident is imprisoned in a draconian way on a seemingly unrelated technicality are the American ones -- that of D'Souza and King. There's been a lot of practice on this front to achieve that ever-coveted 'felon' label for dissidents who challenge the establishment. Democrats in this regard are honing to an old tradition.

There are also arguable comparisons to Nelson Mandela of South Africa, Mohandas Gandhi of India, Daw Aung Sang Suu Kyi of Burma, that poor guy they stuck on an amusement park island off Singapore for ridicule purposes, the seven dissidents who ran against Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua who ended up in prison on tax, fraud and dangerousness-type charges for having the temerity to run for president against him, Nicolas Sarkozy of France who was jailed on some technicality they normally don't jail people for, and Luiz Inacio "Lula" da Silva of Brazil who was also imprisoned on graft charges that all of them are doing, by his political opponents. Venezuela has imprisoned presidential candidates on technicalities, too, if not driven them into exile.

Two others are also worth comparisons -- Maria Corina Machado of Venezuela, who challenged the regime and was disqualified from running for president, as well as Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil who got the same treatment.  Both are just upstream of prison terms as "felons," which will also likely happen, same as it's happened to Trump.

Felon? They are all felons, too. Maybe Democrats should pull back from that term, given the kinds of political leaders this name has been hung on in just the recent past.

Lastly, let's not forget whose feast day this was when this happened -- St. Joan of Arc of France, whose "crime" was standing up for France and leading it to victory, taking instructions from a Heavenly source as she heard it. She was convicted in a rigged kangaroo courtroom of "heresy" and wearing men's clothes (to prevent being raped for being around soldiers). They burned her at the stake 593 years ago, the same day Trump's rigged kangaroo trial ended.

Trump is not the same as St. Joan of Arc, but as Democrats bellow 'felon,' from their kangaroo court, we can only recall that Trump, once again, is in good company.

Image: Picryl, via Wikimedia Commons // public domain