And Yet…

I listened to the whole Supreme Court hearing on Trump’s ballot disqualifications.

I wasn’t as negative while listening to it, as I was after hearing media determinations that interpreted the hearings as leaning toward skepticism of the Colorado decision.

1. This disturbed me, because the Court seems myopically focused only on the violent attack on the capital – and very poorly at that, indeed.

2. The insurrection encompasses about 10 different illegal acts of which the attack was a show stage (which could have been worse, as horrific as it was) – the way that terrorism is a show aimed at achieving a political advantage – in this case to overthrow a government by stopping the commission of it’s prime function to keep a defeated candidate in power.

3. It matters not that some of the attackers might have actually believed that the election had been stolen; this – Trump and his co-conspirators depended on, while they achieved the goal of establishing and utilizing fake electors and phony slates of votes – to molest the vote count in an election they knew they had lost.

4. I find it suspicious and/or stupid – literally – that in a national union that suffers much wasted time and the enactment of deleterious laws (I suppose as well as some good ones), in which especially right-leaning states focus so often on the idea of “states rights” – that no one is bringing up the fact that the federal government is poised to assume the position of making it impossible for states to keep seditionists off their ballots; this is the crux of a major focus of my incredulity in this issue: that states would not be able to adhere to the reason and utility of such safeties, but would have to yield to a non-sequitur interpretation in a provision based on a picayune and exploited discrepancy between ‘office’ and ‘officer’ (I guess words matter when it serves an agenda) – in order to make sure that dangerous individuals are not elected – which means states won’t be allowed to choose the criteria by which someone is eligible for candidacy beyond the stated limitations of age, national origin and possible conviction status.

Criminals get off and are pardoned – especially in government; what if the pardoned former President Richard M. Nixon had chosen to once again become a candidate after he avoided impeachment by resigning and was pardoned by President Gerald Ford? Allowing for the state of affairs that would enable this is absolutely ridiculous on its face.

The fear is that state court disqualification of felonius candidates would lead to a plethora of backbiting reciprocity amidst an inability of the people to mitigate such corruption – so a surrender to the state of affairs allowing their candidacy is preferred. Insane.

This also suggests our court systems can’t mitigate such corruption – while the purpose of the legal system is, namely, recourse to an ability to investigate and articulate – in the detailed analysis of a suspected criminal situation – the claims of parties and the due process involved in arriving at a conclusion about its need for remedy and justice.

And what is the point of having courts, judges, lawyers and legislators if we attempt to avoid their use by ceding to the normalizing of a dangerous state of affairs. This is like saying it’s too difficult to weed out businesses run by organized crime – so once we know they are there, we should allow them to thrive and wait until after the fact of their major crimes to mitigate their effect on society; no where they are discovered, they should be shut down. Ostensibly this is what law enforcement and legal system does.

If we know that the business is owned and operated by criminals – do we not have the right to exclude them from the public trust (some of their numbers – notwithstanding the injury they cause prior, are going to run for office, eventually). Business, itself, incorporates public trust – certainly government must and does; it matters not that a group of citizens knowingly or ignorantly want a criminal candidate in the race for office; the state should have a say in his selection such that known criminals must be kept from candidacy – convicted yet or not, don’t they.

In this case – the evidence against Trump is monumental – before a conviction of conspiracy to sedition. We lived it. We saw it. And the behavior that led to it carried on throughout his administration – witnessed by his staff, the media, the intelligence community an the American people.

5. I find it extremely dangerous to leave the mediation of recourse to seditionists or other dangerous individuals elected to office solely to the legislature – especially in this day and age – which we often find is quite corruptly uni-minded in orientations quite deleterious to the function of government – and therefore a declaration of the allowance for long and contentious battles over impeachment & removal, while the legislature and the public will argue over what hasn’t been proven about an individual already in office – in this case with plans to further divide, transform and dismantle it to his and an extreme minority’s liking.

In the case where we have proof of individuals’ nefarious behavior – why not nip the weed in the bud? Well – especially because ‘it’s too difficult’ – enshrining incompetency out of a preference for ease – with little concern for the more obvious collateral.

In my view, the simplest solution to worrying about tit for tat disqualifications is ‘the less you do it, the less your opponent will too.’

6. Allowing the Colorado and State of Main’s court & state officer’s decisions, respectively, to be negated after (you’ll pardon the adjective for the sake of affect) the “perfect storm” example of what to point to in going forward to prevent seditionists from being elected – would mean that any and all types of seditionists will be on ballots in the future.

7. Again, in the same vein – I find it unwise to take away the right of a state to establish its criteria by which individuals can be considered eligible for candidacy – out of fear of what might happen – when we have other checks and balances to mitigate abuse; this indicates, as we are admitting to what I made reference to above – namely the single-mindedness of a faction in the legislature to work as a bulwark against the function of government, and meaning that we intend to mitigate this by relying on the impeachment of an insurrectionist with the same law-making body of the government standing against the motion, which we see so often maligned by intransigence, filibuster and conspiracy we thus leave it them – to a de facto refusal to cooperate across the aisle – as a default state of affairs – like those experienced among the presence of powerful populists; look at the Israel-Ukraine-Culture War-Border legislation impasse; look at the budget passage delays due the same. What Republicans would impeach Trump after his re-election, even once convicted? Indeed – there are people making murmurs now of allowing someone to run, but then expressing that he couldn’t hold Office because of his conviction. You don’t think this would spark violence?

Attempts to remove Trump post election and conviction would lead to civil war – not maybe; perhaps definitely – and if not civil war, random acts of violence. Consider the plethora of threats that election officials received today and they’re simply for doing their jobs.

This is the open gate to the success of conspiracy. Conspiracy in the legislature can be made most effective by electing a conspiratorial candidate. I can’t see a faster road to Fascism. Can you?

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8. The originalist point of view encouraged by MAGA politicians and SCOTUS justices should demand that we consider the minds of the Framers – and yet, in this particular case, with a discrepancy between the meaning of ‘office’ and ‘officer’ particular to the idiosyncrasies of conditions at hand in the aftermath of the Civil War, one would think that reason and virtue demand we expand the meaning therein made acute…to encompass the present dangers – especially as the Framers would have definitely not left such a narrow reading intact had they known of its potential present exploitation.

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9. Extremist conservatives and fools prone to obtuse fairness and fear are thus willing to hold to the natural blindspot of the Framers in order to make it so people like Trump can stay on the ballot for their own purposes and out of fear of what might happen in the future, plus a lack of ability to remedy it; and those beholden to a “fairness” dependent on nouns in either party seem to me akin to anyone who would fight a guerrilla war by standing out in the open, thinking that to hide is deceptive.

10. So, out of fear and an opinion saying that our government is incompetent – and I propose some embodying that fear are in actual trepidation due the threat of violence by the MAGA mob – we are poised to negate the Colorado decision. Then what is the purpose of having the Supreme Court of a state – or criteria for selecting virtuous candidates; oh – I guess we don’t have that and proven by the predilection for straining at gnats and swallowing elephants – we don’t want it.