because you can find a 1% overlap in the Venn diagram of illegality
Illegality cannot accurately be charted on a Venn diagram.
There are statutes with definitions of crime. When you choose an interpretation you have to stick with it. If you don't, that's lawfare. That's your whim ruling, not the law.
then wonder why they're being treated differently.
Oh I know why they're treated differently, and it is intolerable. I don't ask you for an explanation for different treatment, I asked you to explain why your interpretations don't apply to others and you have consistently failed.
If I was doing 71 in a 70 zone, I'm speeding, but I probably won't get pulled over. If I'm doing 138, I'll be lucky if I don't get arrested. And if I don't, they'll dish out a ticket for every violation they can find; seat belt, window tints, failure to signal, etc...
And then you'll come along claiming this is lawfare because both were speeding without a seat belt but only one got a ticket.
It's actually a good analogy, because this is a perfect example of low level lawfare.
Building codes, zoning rules, county bylaws are another.
and if Trump was fined 500 million dollars for speeding, it would still be lawfare.
You find unequal application to be acceptable to go after troublemakers (in your view). Your view is unethical, and where the examples above are a pervasive but low density injustice, when used to control the federal government it becomes civil-war-triggering.
To the Jim Crow southern sheriff being black was enough proof of being a troublemaker. That was the context they needed to pull over a black guy. People who believe in the fallacy you just expressed tie themselves in endless loops "oh discretion is good, but not for the wrong reasons..." bla bla bla, you're wrong; and it shows in the injustice your theory manifests.
the enforcement of the law will always require human discretion.
Discretion exists to the degree of imperfection in the law. The greatest discretion is absolute dictatorship.
If men could be trusted to choose justice on their own discretion, we wouldn't need laws.
That, by definition
You asserting that something has never been perfect is not a definition.
There has always been rape and murder, but human society does not by definition require it and we should do our very best to eliminate it from our society.
This is where your arguments fall completely off the intellectual cliff.
Oh, no I don't think that's whats happening here.
No regard for how one situation was different from another
Just enough regard to distinguish the relevant from the irrelevant.
no regard for what those laws were written to protect against in the first place.
You mean like noting that all classification authority flows from POTUS and if he isn't authorized then no one is?
It's not a serious point of view, it's the weaponization of every technicality you can find to advance your political agenda, which is to burn it all to the ground because it isn't working for you the way you think you're entitled to.
Confession by projection, every word.
We're talking about this only because of its political implications
The law is being twisted because of the political implications. The letter of the law is the proof of the twisting.
so to pretend that "worse" is irrelevant to this conversation is fundamentally dishonest and frankly stupid.
It's irrelevant to the law, and when you think your idea of worse justifies unequal and novel (without precedent) application of law that just so happens to pile onto one political candidate you all but admit that the law is nothing more than a conduit for your political goals.
Politics is war by other means. When law is a weapon in politics, that is a good definition of "lawfare" and mutually exclusive with "rule of law".
Worse does in fact matter In every sense because determining what's worse and treating it as if it was worse is the entire point of why we have laws and why we have a political system in the first place. It's why you are purporting to be so upset about what's going on right now.
The voting booth is where you may decide that Donald J Trump is worse than others. Trying to squeeze a bill of attainder out of laws which under the constitution may not apply to only one man is seditious abuse of the law and the constitution.
Unequal application of laws is unconstitutional, and laws that are twisted to apply to one man (and his agents) is the most unequal form of unequal application.
You and those like you taking a big smelly dump on the social contract and rule of law is worse than Donald Trump asking whether Biden is corrupt and buying big macs for another four years.