Your speech is violence (b/c 'identity')

 I think this article on the legality of impeachment for protected free speech is best read in terms of the "your speech is violence, my violence is speech" narrative.

https://reason.com/volokh/2021/01/20/presidential-free-speech-and-the-congressional-impeachment-power/

The basic idea is that there is an implied moral standard to every government position. The president should be held, not to political speech standards, but to the highest possible moral standard.  That seems reasonable on its face. But, what tend to happen in practice is that one side says their narrative is honest and correct (think Russia collusion hoax, or Hillary emails). Thus the only real thing that adjudicates speech is establishment values.

As I continually say, the US is heading back in time toward an aristocratic based democracy.  But, this reversion (or evolution to a higher level of selection) is happening at the same time identity is being de facto criminalized and speech itself is being regulated outside the bounds of law.  This produces a rather lawless society that is eminently capricious in nature. In short, a dynamic similar to the era of kings, albeit, with modern violence standards.

An unfettered and unbalanced left is not a good thing. Trump's lack of a political machine and his hesitance to enforcement authoritarianism could not temper these tendencies. Now that the Republican party is out of power, its lack of fight and lack of coherence leaves space for a dangerous slide into uni-party dynamics. That those uni-party tendencies have so many religious and caste based dynamics is scary.

On the populist right, the sense I get is "we're all serfs now...".  On the left I get the sense "we're the noble ones now.... time to enforce....".

Here's a VERY good article by Glenn Greenwald on this

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-new-domestic-war-on-terror-is