The Democrats’ convenient case of political amnesia

Joe Scarborough just rediscovered the Constitution.

On MSNBC, the “Morning Joe” co-host warned last week of the grave dangers of Donald Trump using government power against political enemies. Nodding journalists agreed. Scarborough cautioned that Trump and his team would face a “wicked cycle” of retaliation and retribution after leaving office if they pursued politically motivated prosecutions.

One problem: Democrats already did exactly that.

After years of weaponizing the law against Trump and his staff, the left now pleads for “restraint.” With Letitia James, James Comey, and John Bolton all facing charges, the same people who cheered every politically driven indictment now claim to fear the abuse of justice. They are suffering from sudden, selective, highly political amnesia.

Faced with the blowback they earned, Democrats are pleading for a truce they don’t intend to honor.

The classic argument against weaponizing state power goes like this: Don’t use the system against your opponents, because one day your opponents will use it against you. It’s a reasonable principle — assuming both sides still share the same rules. But once one side has crossed the line, the warning loses its force. You can’t tell your enemy not to fight back while you’re still swinging.

For decades, liberals held conservatives in check by preaching against escalation. Republicans, as the self-styled party of small government, were inclined to agree. They saw the use of political power itself as dangerous, so the threat of mutual destruction kept them compliant. But that restraint vanished the moment Democrats arrested protesters, jailed administration officials, and prosecuted a president they impeached not once but twice.

Warnings against escalation work only while both sides respect the boundary. Once the first blow lands, the only way to restore order is to make the aggressor regret crossing the line. Like a street fight, it’s not easy to stop mid-swing. The longer it continues, the less likely anyone is to walk away peacefully.

Democrats justified their abuse of power with the same excuse they use for everything: Trump is different. He’s a “unique threat,” a proto-dictator, the embodiment of every dark impulse in Middle America. The system, they insisted, had to “make an example” of him to save democracy. Somewhere deep down, they knew they were opening Pandora’s box. They just didn’t think they’d ever have to live with the consequences.

Now they’re living with them.

Progressives can sense the danger but won’t admit it. Having normalized political prosecutions, they’re trying to erase the record. They pretend the last eight years never happened — that Trump wasn’t convicted on a stack of bogus charges, that administration officials weren’t arrested, that meme-makers and protesters weren’t jailed.

“Be careful about jailing your political opponents — they might jail you.”

That warning rings hollow when your political friends and allies have already gone to prison.

Democrats’ gamble seemed safe because they assumed Republicans would never retaliate. They counted on the party’s traditional cowardice. And for years, they were right. The GOP has rarely shown the will to wield power even when it wins elections.

But Donald Trump is not a typical Republican. He doesn’t forgive, he doesn’t forget, and he really doesn’t like to lose. If you give him the chance to settle the score, he will.

Even now, as the political pendulum swings against them, Democrats have learned nothing. They insist that every prosecution of Trump was legitimate and every case against their own is tyranny. Their warnings about “political retribution” sound empty because they are. The reckoning they unleashed was inevitable.

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They disturbed the equilibrium. Now the balance returns.

Deprived of moral credibility and electoral power, the left is turning to the only weapon it has left — violence. Having lost the White House, progressives no longer believe in the system they once claimed to defend. They spent years calling Trump “Hitler,” his voters “Nazis,” and his administration “fascist.” When you’ve already declared your opponents subhuman, how do you climb down from that?

You don’t. You take to the streets.

The rhetoric has reached its natural conclusion. If Trump is Hitler and the country re-elected Hitler, then democracy itself is illegitimate. By that logic, terrorism isn’t a crime — it’s justice. And that’s exactly where the left is headed.

The party that claimed to fear tyranny created the conditions for it. The people who warned of political persecution perfected the art. Now, faced with the blowback they earned, Democrats are pleading for a truce they don’t intend to honor.

They wanted a world without restraint. They got it.