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Carol Moore's avatar

As I read through your (again) excellent essay, I started formulating what I might write here in a comment -- but every step of the way, you wrote it first. Yes, it is (past) time for a considerable re-working of some of our most important and powerful institutions. The United Nations is both historically and ideologically significant, and yet in its practice it has been virtually impotent when it matters most. One of the most bitter lessons I have learned over the past five years is one I have written about here before: that our democratic institutions are not as robust as we believed them to be, but rather, as you write, are dependent almost entirely on people being willing to adhere to certain principles (honesty, fairness, justice for all, the rule of Law); enforcing those principles has proven to be another matter entirely. We keep waiting on the sidelines, wondering when the slow grind of due process is going to actually produce real consequences for those that continue to break the law. Meanwhile, the far right is not waiting, and dictators like Putin are allowed to commit atrocities with impunity. I am getting old. These days, I find myself often thankful that I will likely not live another 20 years. I don't think I can bear watching.

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Nibbles McDaniel's avatar

Steven, thanks for another provocative post. The Ukraine war certainly brings the issue into sharp focus, and as you say the last 5 years in this country have been discouraging and alarming.

What I have found most corrosive is the certainty that if I, or probably any of your readers, committed *any* of the crimes that powerful politicians commit, we'd have long been fined and indicted and probably in jail. This realty occurs to me often, when I read about - take your pick - particularly from the dark period where TFG was in power. But still now, today, there are examples that really get under my skin.

How can we expect any ordinary citizens to obey laws if those in power can willfully violate them and, it appears, pay no price and even prosper? Talk about moral hazard....

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