It is understandable to feel frustrated when justice fails (and I wholeheartedly agree that justice failed all of us many times in relation to Trump), but I think it's a mistake to confuse those specific failures with a total collapse of the rule of law. The rule of law in the United States does not guarantee a perfect or utopian society; what it does provide is a crucial framework for accountability and transparency that simply does not exist in an authoritarian nation like China.

This difference is clear when we look at how the systems handle tragedy and power. In the U.S., the killing of Renée Good by an ICE agent led to a public release of video, intense scrutiny from an independent press, public condemnation by local officials, and a family using legal tools to seek justice. In China, that event would be immediately erased from the public consciousness, and those who dared to talk about it would face arrest. When the U.S. military bombs a school, human rights groups and journalists _can_ investigate, and members of Congress _can_ publicly demand answers (even if half of them are reluctant to question anything Trump does...). In China, military operations are complete state secrets. Furthermore, while it boils my blood to see Trump evade prison due to complex legal and constitutional questions, the fact that he was indicted and convicted by a jury of ordinary citizens proves that a functional legal apparatus exists outside of his direct control, something not utterly impossible under a dictatorship like China.

Day to day, the rule of law very much exists in the US. Doesn't mean we can just sleep on it, but compared to China, I take comfort in the level of institutional reliability that still exists in America (and I'm not even American).