The growing disinterest in the rule of law

Believe it or not, in 1994 it was California of all places that enacted the three strikes and you're out law for repeat felony offenders. The same year the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act passed with key provisions being the hiring of 100,000 more police officers, expansion of the death penalty.

In the 30 plus years since these laws were put into place, we've seen a slow erosion from the top down of elected officials willing to enforce federal state and local laws. In other words, we've moved from a period where crime was not tolerated to an era where crime is ignored and the citizenry has been forced to accept certain crimes as normal. Even worse is that this new normality is not concentrated in shop lifting or blatant vagrancy or open drug use. It's literally everywhere and it's being driven by a whole host of people who are just deciding out of whole cloth that sure it's a crime on paper but have no interest in enforcing the law unless it is for political expediency. For example, say whatever you want about marijuana, but the current marketplace exists not because congress acted. It exists because the Federal Govt under the Obama administration essentially said do what you want, we aren't going to enforce the law. We have large American cities saying frick federal immigration laws, come here, we'll roll out the red carpet for you. We have elected officials loudly and openly encouraging people to break the laws and demonizing the very people empowered to enforce the law. The most shocking thing of all though is a corrupt judiciary protecting the criminal class. They literally have no shame in putting violent criminals right back on the streets.