The reason conservatives can never win or successfully resist Clown World is because they believe that the law is something real, and something material. Whereas, as literally every single lawyer will tell you, what the law actually is not the black letter words passed by the politicians or the policies of the regulatory agencies, it is whatever the judge of the relevant matter says it is.
Justice Alexandre de Moraes of the Supreme Court of Brazil has ordered the operations of X (formerly Twitter) to be “immediately suspended” and threatened draconian fines against anyone trying to sidestep the ban. De Moraes demanded that X censor several accounts that “spread disinformation” by criticizing him, but the platform’s owner Elon Musk refused.
On Friday, the judge ordered the platform banned in Brazil, giving Google and Apple five days to remove X from their app stores. He also threatened a fine of around 50,000 Brazilian real (approximately $8,874) a day for anyone using a virtual private network (VPN) to get around the ban.
On Thursday, de Moraes froze the accounts of Starlink, a subsidiary of Musk’s SpaceX, saying this was needed to ensure the payment of fines levied against X for failing to appoint a legal representative. Musk objected to the “absolutely illegal action” taken without any due process, pointing out that X and SpaceX are “two completely different companies with different shareholders.”
According to X’s Global Government Affairs team, de Moraes “threatened our Brazilian legal representative with imprisonment. Even after she resigned, he froze all of her bank accounts.”
We view this sort of thing as bad. But in Switzerland, the government broke multiple laws to prevent the failure of Credit Suisse from financially harming any of its account holders. Everyone, with the exception of a few shareholders and creditors who ended up getting the short end of the stick, thought this was a very good thing. But whether these things are considered good or bad is irrelevant, the point is that what everyone believes is “the law” is nothing more than a collection of general suggestions that the three branches of government will ignore in a heartbeat whenever they feel that doing so is desirable.
Nothing can be repaired or restored by so-called legal means when the authorities harbor absolutely no respect for what passes for the law. Any policy or distinction that depends upon “legality”, such as immigration or limits on legal speech, doesn’t exist in a practical sense so long as one is government by a government of men, not laws.
Nancy Pelosi just told Bill Maher that she plans to grant citizenship to every illegal immigrant and give them free housing.
See how easy it is to deal with a problem of illegality? One stroke of the pen, one judge’s order, and the problem is magically solved!