On Sunday August 24, 2025 The Washington Post published "When the rule of law becomes rule of lawfare” by Megan McArdle. She’s ostensibly a non-progressive, which is to say, she leans left but isn’t bat guano insane. She admits to voting for Biden, but in this piece, she throws considerable shade at the left. 

The piece opens with about as perfect a definition of lawfare as I’ve seen in legacy media. Perfect, because she uses what is, in my humble opinion, the penultimate example of lawfare: that which was played out and executed by Big Tish.

[New York Attorney General Letitia] James planned to use her office to harass Trump before she had evidence that he had committed a crime under New York law — which we know because she said so on the campaign trail. In 2022, she delivered on that promise, bringing an aggressive suit against Trump for overstating the value of his assets on loan and insurance applications, using an unprecedented interpretation of a broad statute to litigate a “fraud” from which the victims suffered no harm.

Graphic: Lavrentiy Beria portrait 2. Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain.

This is the very definition of “lawfare.” It is the Laventriy Beria standard of “show me the man, I’ll show you the crime.”

While I suppose you could argue that this case would have proceeded the same way with any defendant, you could also argue, with equal plausibility, that the Washington Monument is made of marshmallow.

Exactly.

…It was depressing watching so many people on the left thrill to this abusive lawfare, and to the equally abusive criminal case brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. Thirty-four felonies! chanted people who had, five minutes ago, been holding forth on the importance of preserving civic norms and the rule of law. Those people need to acknowledge that this case was a mistake that damaged the very cause it was supposed to further and stand up for the impartial rule of law.

Ms. McArdle’s naiveté is showing. The “people” she refers to as having a need to “acknowledge” the lawfare will never, ever do it. The very people who accuse MAGA of being a cult indulge in a cult-like denunciation of all things Trump; all things Trump are all bad, all the time, forever and ever, amen. Their black-hearted psychology towards him resembles an almost biblical devotion.

At the end she throws in the obligatory orange-man-bad paragraph because, duh, orange-mad-bad, aaaand she probably doesn’t want her house burned down.

That doesn’t shift the blame for Trump’s behavior. Trump’s authoritarian instincts are his own, as is the responsibility for the havoc he is wreaking on American institutions. Rather, it’s a reminder that the only way to have the rule of law is to have the rule of law. There is no one weird trick where first we abuse the law to prosecute our political enemies and then, somehow, we have the rule of law again. And the ends can’t justify the means when the means don’t work.

I can only assume that because she is one of the rare lefties writing in legacy media who hasn’t succumbed completely to progressivism, she misunderstands the pathology of the modern progressive: by any means possible. She glances at it with “ends can’t justify the means” but she doesn’t seem to fully grasp the ethos.

Chris Plante, who hosts a morning radio show on Washington D.C.’s WMAL radio, is fond of saying that “if the Democrats didn’t have double standards, they’d have no standards at all.”  This is true, but to them it’s not “double.” When you have no fixed sense of right and wrong, when morals and ethics are dependent upon a perceived or even wholly invented oppressed and oppressor model; when they are fluid, constantly in motion depending upon who “triggers” you, they’re not “double” they’re righteous. They really believe they are righteous in all their pursuits, so what looks “double” to us is just them relentlessly being them. Like sharks swimming, they must be constantly in motion or they die.

Progressives must keep swimming, but we’re under no obligation to throw them a line to either save them or catch them. We can simply stand back and watch them wrestle with the world they have made. It’s good to see someone, anyone, who writes for the legacy media acknowledge that, even if it’s just a little bit.