International law is different, but everyone knows the scenario where like, the ICJ tries and imprisons Putin is remote. Almost as remote as Trump being tried for treason tho....
I'm not sure "everyone knows" applies here. This is one of these situations where the language is intentionally confusing. Because most people when they hear about laws have certain assumptions about what those are and how they work.
In this case this assumption is completely disconnected from reality. So yes, neither Trump, nor Putin, nor Starmer, nor Macron, nor any US citizen, and likely no citizen, or government of no country with any sort of power (India, China) or with a patron country with power isn't subject to any "international law". I.e. doesn't exist, it's just a word salad to manipulate the masses.
Rich and powerful people go to jail all the time. SBF? Ghislaine Maxwell? Maybe that boundary is pushed but at least in theory in the "western/democratic" world you can't get away with breaking the law simply by having power (and yeah Trump and such - but in general). So sure, there is some erosion of rule of the law in the western world, but it's still a thing.
But you are right that people assume that. They also assume the rich pay no taxes. So they "assume" a bunch of nonsense. Some once told me assume makes an ass of you and me.
I think people think the US is supposed to follow this thing called international law, or at least they'll express some outrage when it doesn't.
The manipulation is that people believe in this thing called international law as something that anyone has to follow where in practice no country would ever let international law supersede its laws if it went against their interest and there is no mechanism to force this. You keep seeing news about this and that being against international law (be it Israel or the US or Russia, would be the typical use case) and people actually think this is a real thing, like there's some law book somewhere that applies universally to every country. Very few people have the real and correct understanding that these are just norms or treaties or agreements that countries decide to follow or not on a case by case basis as per their interest, i.e. not a law in any real sense of the word.
Well but I think those instances are like, "wow this dude actually went to jail? how badly did he fuck up?" or whatever. Like, a counter example is like, one person went to jail for the financial collapse of 2008--to the surprise of no one (though, a fair amount of justified outrage). Rich people also frequently pay no taxes, like famously Amazon.
But, I don't think people have a detailed understanding of these things. I do agree they're at best fuzzy about what international law is (I am also fuzzy on it). I just don't understand what's manipulative about it. Like, what are people induced into doing based on the premise that the US follows international law? I think anyone operating in that sphere (international shipping, piracy outfits, aid organizations, criminal syndicates) is probably savvy enough to know the US will just blow you up and lie about it for thirty years.
