Earlier today, Karen wrote about the rending of garments and gnashing of teeth at various liberal media outlets in response to the Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling that Colorado will not be able to remove Donald Trump’s name from the ballot this year. From that, we can infer that all other such efforts have been effectively shut down cold. CNN, MSNBC, and the alphabet networks were engaged in a pity party the likes of which we rarely see. But the print media didn’t want to miss out on that party either. It took almost no time at all for the Washington Post to rush out their own bit of critical analysis from one of their regular firebrands, Philip Bump. It’s not difficult to imagine Mr. Bump sitting at his desk with an old R.E.M favorite blasting in his earbuds at max volume. Because with Donald Trump still on the ballot, it is indeed the end of the world as we know it. And Phillip Bump most assuredly does not feel fine.
Before even touching on the Supreme Court decision and what it might portend, Bump dives into a lengthy, ten-paragraph liberal retelling of history regarding the 2020 election and, more importantly, the events of January 6, 2021. We’ve heard it repeatedly. In this version of events, the election went swimmingly. There were no issues with the tens of millions of mail-in ballots that clogged a system that was totally unprepared to deal with them. Nobody took advantage of that and there were no more than “the usual few dozen votes had been cast illegally.” (The people of Bridgeport, Connecticut will be relieved to learn this.) Everything was just fine and anyone who argues differently is clearly a Putin stooge.
Then there was January 6. In the world imagined by Bump and his colleagues, Trump wasn’t just giving another political address to his ardent followers, railing against perceived irregularities in the system and the corrupt stench of the swamp. He was issuing a battle cry. No mention is made of Trump saying that he knew that many people planned to go and “peacefully protest” at the Capitol Building. Instead, “he directed an angry crowd toward Capitol Hill.” In Bump’s world, there were no sketchy FBI agents and informants embedded in the crowd, possibly leading the charge. It was all murderous MAGA maniacs. Law enforcement officers were literally being murdered inside the building. (The only person who died in the riot was Ashli Babbitt.) The MAGA insurrectionists came within inches of dismantling the Senate permanently. No mention is made of the Capitol Hill Police being caught on camera peacefully leading the so-called Q-Anon Shaman around the building and opening doors for him. All of that is just some sort of right-wing fantasy. In short, “There is no real question about the intent of the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.”
Finally, Bump gets down to the Supreme Court decision. So what went so wrong and is there any way to set the situation to rights? In reverse order, no… it’s a lost cause. And the reason doesn’t have so much to do with this specific court decision, but rather the failure of vision on the part of the nation’s Founding Fathers. They didn’t give the legislative branch enough power to put a leash on their co-equal partners in the judicial branch to block the election of an out-of-control monster from the executive branch.
The superficial agreement on the decision erodes in the details, which isn’t uncommon. The result, though, is that the institution of the Supreme Court has decided that the institution of Congress is the only element of the American system that can apply the 14th Amendment to a candidate. And Congress, very obviously, won’t do so for Trump.
One would assume that a democratic system predicated on checks and balances would have some process in place to enforce punitive measures when democracy itself was threatened or undermined, but it does not. It has decisions from motivated actors, enough of whom agree politically or ideologically with Trump that his specific actions are waved away. Instead of a defense of democracy, we are repeatedly asked to believe that anything short of Trump retaining power doesn’t count as a substantive challenge to democracy and, therefore, that his participation in the democratic process should be defended.
Had he retained power after Jan. 20, 2021? Then, perhaps, his efforts to do so would have been considered a legitimate threat. And by then, the system that we would assume might hold him to account would already be destroyed.
There you have it. If the system wasn’t destroyed at its inception, it most assuredly is now. The idea that Donald Trump’s “participation in the Democratic process” isn’t a sign of the end times means that you simply aren’t bright enough to understand what’s going on. The “legitimate threat” was ignored and now the Devil is not just knocking at our door, but huffing and puffing and blowing it down.
What Bump never gets around to addressing is how the evil conspirators on the Right managed to convince the three, liberal, Democrat-appointed justices to go along with the unanimous decision. Were they blackmailed? Were they undercover MAGA justices who stayed below the radar for their entire careers until being appointed? Or did they see the idea of a single state or group of states keeping a leading presidential candidate off of the ballot as undemocratic and unconstitutional? Bump goe so far as to describe the idea of this misuse of the 14th Amendment as “an understandably controversial position to hold.” But he goes no further. It should be obvious to one and all that such a brazen move should be justifiable today. Why? Because, “If the two months that followed the 2020 election weren’t an effort to subvert a democratic election and if the riot at the Capitol wasn’t “an act or instance of revolting against civil authority or an established government” (as Merriam-Webster defines it), then what was it?”
This is what we’re dealing with today. It’s a collision of reality with a retelling of history that’s convenient to liberals who are so terrified of losing power and seeing Trump return that they can justify literally anything in their quest. I am counting the days until we see calls from the left – likely from the Washington Post – to simply cancel the 2024 elections and allow Joe Biden to remain in office. Why? To save Democracy, of course.
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