After Abolition, whites in the south devised a clever way to keep many Blacks enslaved. They enacted new laws, like the vagrancy law. Since white plantation owners were not going to pay wages to Blacks whose labor they had previously exploited for free, many "freed" Blacks found themselves unemployed. The vagrancy laws made unemployment a crime, so Blacks who didn't have jobs could be arrested for vagrancy, brought to trial, convicted, and sentenced to hard labor on the very same plantations from which they'd supposedly been freed. Of course there were some unemployed whites also, but they were able to vote for these laws with a happy heart, as they knew the laws would only be applied to Blacks, not to whites like themselves, and that such laws would prevent Blacks from competing with whites for paying jobs.

So here's my new conspiracy theory. I wonder if people who are voting for a man who has taken away the right of US citizens to due process, are doing so with a happy heart because they know that the law (NDAA) will never be applied to them, that it is intended to be applied only to those of lower socioeconomic status, members of other political parties, and social dissidents. Thus, they can vote for something they would never want applied to them, because they know it is not intended to be applied to them.

I'm calling this a conspiracy theory because I have no supporting evidence for this and it could be sheer lunacy. But I'm posting it because it would explain things that I otherwise find inexplicable. Nobody sane would vote away their own civil and human rights, or vote for anyone who would do away with their own civil and human rights. But if they somehow knew that it was only the civil and human rights of others, of people like me, that would be removed?

Well, then they might.