The answer to why powerful people in some other parts of the world face consequences, while in America they rarely do, is that elite impunity is now an American national project. …this has been the priority for the wealthy and powerful, who have managed to convince a critical mass of Americans that they will be able to enjoy the same privileges. They won’t.

They’ve been able to do this by creating a culture of politics as a team sport. By assigning people a political identity, they guarantee the acceptance and compliance of the people in each identity group. It’s nationalism but instead of nations its political parties. Anything and everything is acceptable in the name of our team winning and their team losing. They’ve convinced people that they shouldn’t seek to hold their team’s leaders accountable, because that would weaken the team and aid the enemy. But people should seek to hold the other team’s leaders accountable, because that hurts their team and helps ours. To that end, manufacturing fake crimes to hold their enemies’ leaders accountable for is acceptable, because, again, that helps our team win and winning is the point.