{"id":84441,"date":"2023-08-26T05:00:46","date_gmt":"2023-08-26T09:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=84441"},"modified":"2023-08-25T21:37:38","modified_gmt":"2023-08-26T01:37:38","slug":"the-united-banana-republics-of-america-and-their-efforts-to-get-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2023\/08\/26\/the-united-banana-republics-of-america-and-their-efforts-to-get-trump\/","title":{"rendered":"The United Banana Republics of America and their efforts to “get” Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chris Bray<\/a> points out an interesting historical precedent for the US government’s determination to pin something<\/em> on former President Donald Trump:<\/p>\n

There’s a whole lot of this sentiment on social media this morning, and I agree with it entirely:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

But also read this<\/a>. It’s important, and it’ll take you three minutes. Click on that link and read. You’ll see the point with every paragraph.<\/p>\n

There are American precedents for the shameful acts of disgusting political lawfare being directed against Donald Trump (and his lawyers and political staff), and the most obvious and extremely telling<\/em> precedent is the behaviour of Federalists during the Adams administration. The Sedition Act<\/em> of 1798 made criticism of the federal government a crime, on a comparable construction of the idea of “disinformation” that’s now used as a repressive tool: the law forbade “any false, scandalous, and malicious writing” about the government, subjective terms that in practice opened the prison doors to mere disagreement and ordinary political criticism. Federalists arrested and prosecuted newspaper editors and a congressman. Representative Matthew Lyon was imprisoned for criticizing the Adams administration.<\/p>\n

But the effects<\/em> of the Sedition Act are extremely important. Here’s a description from archives.gov<\/a> \u2014 from a site run by the federal government:<\/p>\n