Trump is indicted. Boris Johnson has quit the UK parliament in a huff mere hours before a damning report was to be released that would have likely resulted in a new election in his constituency anyway.
Now, it just so happens that both of these are right-wingers but the kind of behaviour they have demonstrated is not restricted to the right wing. Before you jump down my throat, I’m not “both-sidesing.” What we are seeing in these politicians behaviour is the attitude of an extremist. Extremists, no matter where they fall on the political spectrum, justify their behaviour by saying “but it was right, I needed to do that to preserve (whatever) so I was justified in breaking the law to do that” — an argument that flies in the face of the rule of law that modern democracies depend upon to survive.
The right may not have a monopoly on extremists within their ranks, but the left has a much stronger record than the right on holding those extremists accountable. They have to be held accountable by their own party to have their party not have its legitimacy severely damaged. If that fails they still have to be held accountable by the impartial force of law.
For all his denials, Nixon was, indeed, a crook. His pardon, the failing to hold him accountable for his criminal actions, began the GOP’s slide into illegitimacy. That is not to say the party wasn’t already the purveyor of repugnant and regressive policies, but they did so (mostly) within the law, and when they stepped beyond it and were exposed as having done so there were consequences appropriate to the offences involved. Pardoning Nixon changed all that. it legitimised old-fashioned “machine politics” by letting him get away with it. Trump, and the GOPs increasing flailing and resorting to “saying the quiet bit out loud” about their misogynistic and white-supremacist agenda were a direct result.
On both sides of the Atlantic we have something of a tradition of “handling things internally and quietly” — allowing establishment figures to quietly resign to avoid the public consequences of their actions. In many cases that decision was made for them, but they went along with it to preserve the system. But without public consequences, the next guy is emboldened, thinking thzt the worst that can happen to them is a slap on the wrist and a brief time in the political woldernedd before they are “rehabilitated” and brought back to the party’s bosom. This leads directly to a sense of entitlement, of “you can’t do this to ME, I’m too important!” Trump and BoJo, ranting on social media, inciting their supporters to reject the legitimacy of the evidence of misdeeds that resulted in them being pitched out on their ears are what results when the public accountability for their actions is not pursued with equal vigor that which a less prominent person would face.
We did this to ourselves.
We let powerful or prominent figures avoid the same kind of consequences that the “little people” would face for the same actions.
In doing so, we severely damaged the rule of law.