Imagine if Mitt Romney got caught stuffing ballot boxes in 2012. Well, not actually Mitt, but staff. Volunteers, actually.

You’d be pissed, right? That’s serious, land his ass in jail stuff.

Now imagine that election law only says that it is against the law to stuff ballot boxes. It doesn’t say what it means or even what kind of crime to categorize it as. Misdemeanor or felony?

'I’d want the law changed.' Click To Tweet

Here we become a little fuzzy on what the justice system should do to deal with him, but still, it’s outrageous.

Now imagine that what the law does say is that the boxes are first tallied by impartial state-run commissions, but the final count is actually done by the national party that has the state governor’s mansion. So in this scenario, the GOP has access to the majority of ballot boxes, time to mess with them, opportunity to do it, and will ultimately report the final results.

So the law we’re going to use to prosecute this outrage has nothing to say about the law, or how to punish a person who breaks that law, but a lot to say about giving means and opportunity to break the law. We’re still outraged at the Romney camp, but what are we actually supposed to do about it?

Then, what if I told you that the law was obviously written this way on purpose and that every campaign messes with the ballots some. It’s everywhere, known, and understood, if not discussed or admitted. And clearly the election commission knows that this would happen because they’ve written the law to orchestrate and turn a blind eye to such behavior. If they didn’t want manipulation of the ballot boxes (in my hypothetical scenario) then they wouldn’t let party officials have the ballot boxes unsupervised for quite a long time.

If you told me this story, I’d be pissed, but not really. Probably more pissed only if it affected the election. I’d be pissed at the system, the laws, and the officials who oversee this arrangement. I’d want the law changed. I might call Romney a cheater, but the blame and the penalty should be on Washington. And chances are good that given this scenario, Romney wouldn’t be convicted in court.

Now, given this hypothetical, what if the President of the United States, hearing that Romney may have stuffed the ballot boxes, launches a huge investigation and comes up pretty well empty? But he won’t let it go, so he pushes and pushes Mr. Romney, finds a sliver of a thing to hang onto and declares that this is a major offense and declares him guilty and throws him in jail for 20-to-life.

Would any of this makes sense? Would anyone at any point think these measures are justified because the hypothetical Romney is a cheater? You can be angry at the Romney camp for breaking the rules, but the rules actually encourage their own breaking. And if the president sought to condemn his election opponent anyway, regardless of the law, without a trial or jury, the people would call it supreme overreach and start impeachment hearings immediately.

It seems, however, that in the case of Tom Brady and the New England Patriots, all sensibility is thrown out the window. If we value the rules so much, and hate the cheating so much, then why do we support Goodell’s own ignoring of rules? Why don’t we care about the lack of rules enforcing the ideal of actually not cheating in this particular way? And it is hard for me to call something cheating when the rules themselves are inconsistent. And more to the point, why do so many expect a severe punishment when a proper, within the rules punishment doesn’t actually exist for this nonexistent cheat/crime?

If we care so much about rules, why have so many people supported the wanton manipulation of the rules by the NFL? This is particularly strange given no prior interest on the league’s part in maintaining this ball-inflation rule or considering it something to actually crack down on. Why not do what they did with the tuck rule and rewrite the rules in the offseason given the new insight?

In light of massive ball manipulation by quarterbacks around the league, and throughout its history, it is disingenuous to punish Brady for something historically permissible, without rules for punishing, expecting the good judgment of the Commissioner to actually be good, and to claim this because you love the rules and hate rule breakers! This punishment is an act of breaking rules!

In light of the court striking down the punishment and letting Brady play, we should acknowledge the public hypocrisy on Deflategate. Because this is actually how rules actually work, how the law works. Sometimes the just are punished and the unjust are set free. Because to the rule of law, the rules direct our actions, not the whim of the judge/jury/executioner. Especially when these three roles are filled by the same person.

You can think Brady is a cheater and even that he should be punished, but don’t claim it’s for rules purity. Because Roger Goodell is a cheater, too. Admit that you just don’t like Brady or you don’t like this kind of sportsmanship or you think he should be punished. But don’t say it’s about fairness. Because nothing about Deflategate has been fair. For anyone.

After all, what should have been on trial this past offseason is the rules themselves.