There is a delightful, almost quaint sort of antique charm in watching a man like Jack Smith prepare to speak. It is the charm of a telegraph operator frantically tapping out an SOS code on the deck of the Titanic while the band has already drowned and the steerage passengers are currently fighting over who gets to eat the rats. According to prepared statements obtained by the breathless stenographers at NBC News, the former Special Counsel intends to look the American public dead in its glassy, dopamine-fried eyes and warn them not to take the rule of law 'for granted.'

One almost has to admire the audacity of the premise. To warn someone not to take something for granted implies that the object in question is still currently in their possession. It suggests that the 'Rule of Law' is a sturdy, functioning heirloom sitting on the mantle, rather than a pile of ceramic shards that both political parties have been gluing together and smashing apart in a rhythmic cycle of performative outrage for the better part of three decades. Jack Smith is essentially walking into a house that has burned down to the foundation, sniffing the air, and sternly advising the homeowners to check the batteries in their smoke detectors.

Let us deconstruct this adorable warning. The implication is that the American citizenry—a collective organism with the attention span of a goldfish on methamphetamines—actually comprehends what the 'Rule of Law' is supposed to be. In the fantasy land that Smith and the institutionalists inhabit, the law is a blind goddess, weighing facts without bias. In the reality that the rest of us are forced to endure, the law is a weaponized inconvenience. To the Right, it is a Deep State conspiracy designed to persecute their chosen messiahs; to the Left, it is a fundraising mechanism and a safety blanket they clutch while waiting for a savior in a robe to fix societal rot they refuse to address legislatively. Smith warning these people to respect the sanctity of legal institutions is like warning a pack of hyenas to respect the table manners of the gazelle they are currently disemboweling.

The timing, of course, is the punchline. This testimony comes after the legal battles have largely devolved into a stalemate of delays, dismissals, and political maneuvering that renders the actual statutes irrelevant. The system Smith champions is designed for a world where shame exists, where hypocrisy has a cost, and where facts are immutable objects rather than malleable clay molded by cable news algorithms. That world is gone. It was sold for parts years ago. Smith is a hall monitor wandering the corridors of a school that was converted into a Spirit Halloween franchise in 2016, trying to hand out detention slips to plastic skeletons.

Furthermore, the arrogance of the warning is staggering. It assumes that the erosion of the rule of law is a passive act by the citizenry, a sin of omission, rather than a deliberate strategy by the ruling class he serves. Who, exactly, taught Americans that the law is optional? Was it the plumber in Ohio, or was it the parade of banking executives who nuked the global economy in 2008 and faced zero consequences? Was it the nurse in Arizona, or the politicians who trade stocks on insider information while writing the regulations for those very companies? The 'Rule of Law' has been treated as a suggestion by the powerful for generations. Now that the rot has trickled down to the baseboards, suddenly we need a lecture on civic virtue.

Smith’s prepared remarks will undoubtedly be somber. He will wear the appropriate expression of grave concern. The pundits will nod sagely, praising his integrity and his steely resolve. They will clip thirty seconds of his testimony for the evening news, sandwiched between a pharmaceutical ad for restless leg syndrome and a viral video of a cat playing a synthesizer. And the American public will absorb the warning with the same vacant stare they reserve for flight safety demonstrations. They know the plane is broken. They know the pilot is drunk. They know the parachute is just a backpack filled with dirty laundry. Warning them to respect the aerodynamics of the crash is not just futile; it is insulting.

To take the rule of law for granted, one must first believe that the law rules anything at all other than the poor. In the end, Smith’s testimony is not a warning; it is a eulogy delivered to an empty room. He is begging us to preserve a ghost. The tragedy isn’t that we are ignoring him. The tragedy is that he thinks there is anything left to save.