Batman's thoughts raced.
"We took away their power to turn a blind eye to certain deals." That single sentence revealed far too much.
Batman understood perfectly well how this country operated. In the United States, the guiding principle of all law enforcement agencies was to maintain order, not uphold justice.
That could essentially be translated as saying that American law enforcement agencies protected the interests of those who benefited from the country, because social order was their most important interest.
Naturally, the people they protected granted them power, but that power was not meant to be used to arrest them. The Federal Bureau of Investigation therefore had an absolute whitelist of people it could arrest. Above that line, no one could be touched.
But where there was a line, there was bound to be some room for flexibility. And where there was flexibility, someone would inevitably use it to gain greater power.
The way to gain that kind of power was not by choosing whom to arrest, but by choosing whom not to arrest—by turning a blind eye to matters hovering at the edge of the bottom line.
But to do that, they had to be capable of arresting the other party and choose not to.
It was like a senior colleague who had both the ability and evidence to report you for slacking off at work, yet chose to do nothing. Naturally, you would owe him one.
But if it was a newcomer, or someone the boss did not like and would never believe anyway, then if he chose not to report you, you would only take it for granted.
Therefore, the most important factor in ensuring that one could gain power from that room for flexibility was the prestige of being capable of arresting anyone.
Americans had grown