Pam Bondi Saves Humanity – A Commentary from a Parallel World

Some ironies of world affairs are so bizarre that they could not survive in fiction. Imagine: an arsonist is promoted to fire chief. A money launderer teaches an ethics course. Or - even more grotesque - Pam Bondi, the woman who most recently made a name for herself by dutifully rubber-stamping state arbitrariness, gives a speech at an international summit against human trafficking. Welcome to the “International Summit Against Human Trafficking” - with the Attorney General of the United States as a moral beacon. One can almost hear Kafka applauding. Bondi, who climbed the political ladder with a stiffened smile, has in recent months distinguished herself above all else as the legal enforcer of an agenda in which terms like "rule of law," "hearing," "evidence," or even "presumption of innocence" appeared at best as nostalgic footnotes. Under her supervision, people disappeared not just from their homes - but from every file. Children were assigned numbers instead of names. And legal grounds for detention? Those could now be calculated algorithmically. A critical tweet history was enough.

So now she gets to talk about human rights. One wonders whether she will draw upon the piles of files she most recently blacked out for “national security reasons.” Or whether she will instead pull from the full archives - from the judicial databases where the stories of countless innocent people have long since been stored. Naturally without access. In this system, data protection does not shield the victims - but the perpetrators in suits. But CPAC, the political Disneyland of the American right, has long had its own logic. There, it does not matter what someone has done - but who has done it. If Pam Bondi sends people to detention centers without charges, that is not a human rights violation, but “robust border security.” If she systematically blocks public information, it is called “national responsibility.” And if she - as the responsible official - delays the full release of the Epstein files, even as she claims to be reviewing them herself, this is now apparently called “measured transparency.”

In this world, Bondi is not an accomplice, but a hero. An icon of the new America, where moral bankruptcy is concealed beneath red blazers and disinformation campaigns are covered with patriotic banners. That she, of all people, speaks about human trafficking is not just cynical - it is the logical continuation of a system that sees empathy as weakness and prosecution as a question of political expediency. Perhaps in her speech she will also mention how many minors she sent to immigration detention. Perhaps the children's rooms with steel bars that she never laid eyes on. Or perhaps it will remain with the usual platitudes: “Human trafficking is evil,” “we must remain vigilant,” “America stands for freedom.” Then the hall will clap, applauding itself - and somewhere outside, another door will slam shut. One might laugh, if it weren’t so pitiful.

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