Álvaro Uribe, a figure once lauded as Colombia’s great conservative savior, now has the dubious distinction of being the country's first former president convicted in a criminal court. The charge sheet is rather sordid: witness tampering and procedural fraud. The simple bribery charge was, of course, dismissed—hardly surprising, for these affairs are always more about power games than petty cash. The entire production—ten hours of legal theatrics presided over by a judge perhaps more interested in making history than dispensing impartiality—ended with Uribe’s conviction on two counts. His supporters, particularly in Washington, are already shrieking about the politicization of justice, as if Colombia were not simply catching up with what little standards the elite of their country have so long evaded.

Permit me a moment of rare candor: I find the whole spectacle utterly predictable, if not painfully tedious. These so-called historic trials are nothing more than grim reminders that even among the global nouveaux riches—those political entrepreneurs of “developing” nations—there is no real class, only a desperate scramble for power, punctuated by endemic corruption. Mr. Uribe, whose rustic charisma so endeared him to the ranchers and the upwardly mobile alike, always fancied himself a patrician, but alas, one cannot simply don the cloak of nobility and expect the stench of one's origins to disappear. His entanglements with right-wing paramilitaries, his penchant for dispensing justice with the subtlety of machete work—these are hardly crimes in certain circles, but they are certainly the calling cards of social inferiority dressed up as Machiavellian genius.

It is almost touching, the way Senator Rubio leaps to Uribe’s defense, presumably out of a nostalgia for those iron-fisted defenders of "order" so beloved by the American security establishment. Yet it would be laughable if it weren’t so tragic: the notion that Uribe’s only crime was defending Colombia. One might as well canonize every street thug with a flag. The reality, as ever, is that men of lesser breeding, given too much power too quickly, inevitably stumble; the peasantry admires their bravado, but true heirs and true rulers know the value of discretion, of knowing when to leave the stage before the mob arrives with torches.

Of course, the left-wing government under Gustavo Petro—now animated with something resembling the zeal of peasants who have managed to seize the manor for a brief, chaotic moment—sees in Uribe’s downfall an act of cosmic justice. But let us not delude ourselves. This is not justice; this is merely the wheel of fortune grinding away, presenting the mob with a head to spike. The news of Uribe’s conviction will be treated as a great moral victory by those who have never known real power. The truly powerful, educated in the finest salons of Europe, understand that such spectacles only confirm what we have always known: that the masses will always turn against their would-be champions, and that only those with real breeding remain standing amid the ruins.

In sum: a fallen “giant” among small men. Columbia’s tragedy is hardly that a president has fallen; it is that he aspired to a station he never truly understood.