Two related stories today. The first is the terrible news that Putin opponent Navalny died in prison - he was killed by Vladimir Putin.
"Aleksei A. Navalny died in prison, the Russian authorities said. The anticorruption campaigner rose to become the most prominent critic of President Vladimir V. Putin."
To state the obvious, Putin's Russia is a deeply corrupt police state with no real Rule of Law, only Rule of Fascist Tyrant.
The second story hits closer to home - threats of violence against judges and prosecutors in America.
"US Marshals Service Director Ronald Davis sounded the alarm on a dramatic increase in the number of threats aimed at federal judges and prosecutors, telling lawmakers that the development "constitutes a substantial risk to our democracy."
Our Putin wannabe Former Guy, Donald Trump, is already damaging the Rule of Law in America. How? Authoritarian/autocratic/fascist threats and violence against the legal system that has the temerity to hold this lifelong criminal to account. And this is while he is out of office!
What happens if he is re-elected? Welcome to Putin's America. Can anyone doubt that if the Former Guy lucks into the presidency that he will imprison the judges and prosecutors who charged him with his crimes? How about the witnesses that testified against him, from Michael Cohen and Mark Meadows to Cassidy Hutchinson?
Not only will the Rule of Law disappear in America, but it is already under serious, sustained, threat of violence. The "Republican Party" has disappeared. It has been replaced by the MAGA Cult, by extremist White Supremacist Christian Nationalism, by Oligarchic deregulation of polluting and corrupt BigBidness.
My deepest hope is that the very few real Republicans left in the "Republican Party" realize their political party long ago disappeared and had been taken over by Steve Bannon revolutionaries, Evangelical Paul Pressler evangelical "prophets", and polluting Oligarchs and addictive pill pushers.
Summary - Trump and his extremists are destroying the Rule of Law in America. Please understand that.
