What Does Colorado Mean?

The Supreme Court, or SCOTUS, as the current taste for acronyms would have it, has unsurprisingly decided that neither the state of Colorado nor any other state may ban any seeker of federal office from an election ballot.¹

I here reverse my comments on the case in a previous post and say this is a good and right decision.

No matter how he or his supporters spin it, this is emphatically NOT a win for Trump except in the most tangential sense. Nor does it in any way excuse Trump's participation in the January 6, 2021 insurrection, and it does not suggest that that event was not an insurrection.

What it is, is a win for the polity that is the United States of America, emphasis on United, and for the American people.

Why, in the first paragraph, did I say this decision was unsurprising? I say that based on the oral arguments² for the case. I'll admit I haven't plowed through all 140 pages of that document--please do, if you have the stamina--but the trend of the justices' questions strongly suggested they would be looking at the role, if any, that individual states can play in national elections. It occurred to me at the time that the overarching consideration the justices had was that all voters in all states have the opportunity to vote for candidates of their choice. Today's decision has assured continuation of the universal suffrage the United States is known for.

Given the downright wackiness of some decisions in recent years, this one was refreshingly commonsensical. The Court's reasoning is straightforward but wordy. Allow me to paraphrase: If any state is allowed unilaterally to remove a person from a ballot for federal office, the residents of that state who might have voted for the excised candidate are effectively disenfranchised and the election itself is invalidated as a national contest since not all eligible voters in all states could cast votes as they wished. The decision further clarifies the rather murky final part of Section 3 of Amendment XIV by determining that only Congress holds the power to remove a federal-office seeker from the federal ballot, and that the decision would be effective equally in all states. Finally, the decision avoids discussion of the events of Jan. 6, 2021, leaving open the possibility of future litigation of the matter.

While states are prohibited from removing valid candidates for federal office from ballots they may still disqualify candidates for state offices.

The decision is clear and well written. While passed unanimously the it has individual non-dissenting opinions by Justices Barrett, Kagan, Jackson and Sotomayor attached. Anyone interested in the Court's internal relationships might find them interesting.

---Diogenes, 4 March 2024

¹ https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/slipopinion/23

² https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcript/2023

These references are to the Supreme Court's website. Cases from this year's term have not yet been published in U. S. Reports, the publication of final record.

On cults and brainwashing

Among my guilty pleasures is the enjoyment of science fiction and fantasy literature. I have been an avid reader of such material at least since I was 12. At that age I was thrilled by the written depictions of imaginary planets and civilizations and the heroic actions taken by adventurers of the Buck Rogers ilk. I still admire such invention but I also enjoy finding subtexts that my adolescent self would probably have missed.

Recently in the midst of a story of the swashbuckling sort I was pleasantly surprised to find an excellent elucidation of cult behavior. I have no doubt it was inspired by the credulity of people who still against all reason believe Donald Trump to be an honest person and viable candidate for political office. 

In the book's context the cultists are a race of people who believe themselves to be inherently superior to all others, hence the reference to a "superiority obsession." I've not edited the selection below lest I be criticized for twisting the author's intention to fit my own purpose. But replace the phrase "superiority obsession" with any name or political idea and you have a handy, virtually universal explication of how cults work:

Like any cult, the doctrine seemed transparently foolish from the outside, the ideology crumbling at the first sign of critical thought. Their superiority obsession was clearly nonsensical, falling apart when contrasted with almost any information not sourced from their own insular community. But to those born and raised in a cult, or who had found something in it that filled a deep need, the incongruities didn't matter. They had been primed from the beginning to ignore the lies of outsiders, however compelling they might seem. But when they were forced to confront those problems, they did not rationally accept what the outsiders saw as logical, self-evident conclusions. They got angry and they got violent.¹

In previous posts I have cited George Orwell's concept of doublethink in an attempt to make sense of how educated and/or high-placed individuals could be taken in by Trump's lies. I am beginning to think I might have been engaging in some unconscious apologia, trying to explain to myself how seemingly intelligent people could have been taken in.

If so, I was deluding myself. Deverell's flat comment, "the incongruities didn't matter," hits the nail far more precisely. His final words about cultists getting mad and violent when challenged are true to the Trumpian and Republican form. 

The Trump disease disallows conversation in favor of bullying, badgering and intimidation, and debate in favor of deceit, inveigling and obfuscation. Trump is incapable of engaging in discourse; his language skills and behavior are stalled at a grade school level. When challenged he walks away or attacks. He calls his opponents names and uses foul language and obscene phrases to insult and belittle them.

It is beyond reason and belief that a sizeable body of Americans have come to find this behavior acceptable in a public figure. There is a word for it: brainwashing. Democrats and the media need to begin using it.

Brainwashing allows for no deviation--it is Trump's way or the highway, and no one who has drunk the Trump Kool-Aid is going to choose the highway.

As I was writing this, a three-judge federal appeals panel ruled that Trump has no immunity from prosecution for his insurrection-related actions of Jan. 6, 2021. This will almost certainly not be the final word from the courts as the case lurches forward, but each decision against Trump is a chink in his wall of perceived impregnability.

Today, 8 February, a date which may or may not be added to the infamous dates in the Supreme Court annals, the justices are hearing arguments in the so-called Fourteenth Amendment case. As I am sure you know, the states of Colorado and Maine have ruled that Donald Trump's name will not appear on their ballots in the November general election. The Colorado case is the one before the Court.

The case is being played up in the media by pundits and "experts" as excessively complicated. Having a simple mind, however, I have determined that the argument for the case can be reduced to a simple statement.

The writer of Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment went to some lengths to name the kinds of people who might be banned from elections due to participation in an insurrection. No list of anything is truly exhaustive, and the list of banned persons has to be understood for what it is: a set of examples of the types of people who could be banned from holding office; not a complete list of all such persons.

In fact, Section 3 can be reduced to a simple declarative sentence by removing the flowery language and lists of examples. Here is its core language:

No person shall . . . hold any office . . . under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath . . . to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.²

There it is: simple, straightforward and unambiguous.

If the justices of the Supreme Court can dredge up some of their misplaced honor and recall their sworn duty to the constitution and the American people, Colorado, and by extension the rest of us, will prevail.

--- Diogenes, 8 February 2024

¹ Deverell, Travis, aka Shirtaloon, He Who Fights with Monsters, Book 9, pp. 620-622. 2023, Aethon Books, www.aethonbooks.com.

² The full text of the Constitution and amendments is at https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs.

Words, words, words

The verbiage used by the media recently in announcing Trump's first place finish in the Iowa caucuses called to mind a humorous piece I read many years ago in a popular publication.

The writer posited a contest among sports journalists as to which of them could use the most colorful and nonrepetitive language to describe the progress of a football game and its outcome. I'm sorry I don't recall where it was published, because it was a hoot. I do remember descriptions of play-by-play announcers thumbing through thesauruses on air, with hilarious mispronunciations, and newspaper writers badgering their colleagues in the newsroom for just one more synonym or non-English term for "won:" "Come on, what is it in Russian? Wonsky?"

Sports journalists and their political counterparts may not seem at first blush to have much in common, but consider this: Both groups cover intensely played contests, and game theory tells us that the strategy used in sports contests is closely related to the strategy of political campaigns. So is the vocabulary used to describe them.

A quick scan of news feeds following the Iowa caucuses--some filed scandalously soon after the meetings were called to order--finds landslide, commanding, resounding, decisive, record smashing, stunning--need I continue?

Can you say hyperbole, Donny Boy?

Let's keep this in perspective. We're not talking about an actual election, but a contest for sufficient electoral points to be declared the Republican candidate for president. Here are the facts:

1. Only registered Republicans could participate in the caucuses;

2. There are approximately 752,200¹ registered Republicans in the state of Iowa;

3. Only about 110,298, or 15% of registered Republicans, participated in the caucuses;

4. Trump garnered about 51% of votes cast, or slightly more than 56,252;

5. About 7.5% of Iowan Republicans voted for Trump; 92.5% did not;

6. Eighty-five percent of Iowa Republicans, almost 642,000, chose not to vote for anyone;

7. And all those powerful words up top? Just so much fluff. Percentages do count, and we have to acknowledge that Iowa's vote at the Republican convention will likely go to Trump, but

8. Getting votes from only seven and a half percent of your base does not a landslide make.

The New Hampshire primary coming up on Tuesday should be interesting. There are about 267,905² registered Republicans in the state, and more than 340,000 independents, who are allowed to vote Republican or Democrat in the primary. That's a sizeable X factor that could well decide which way the state turns this year.

Will the flinty, winter-hardened Granite Staters come out in strength and kick Donny Trump's well-padded ass back to Mar-a-Lago, showing him to be the loser we all know he is?

We can only hope.

--- Diogenes, 21 January 2024

¹ The Des Moines Register, 1/17/2024: "Iowa Caucuses drew 15% of state's registered Republicans. Why the lower turnout?" https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/elections/presidential/caucus/2024/01/16/iowa-caucus-turnout-registered-republicans-15-percent-cold-weather-snow-donald-trump-expectations/72067396007/

² WMUR-TV, Manchester, NH; "Most New Hampshire voters are registered as undeclared, latest data shows," 1/15/24. https://www.wmur.com/article/new-hampshire-undeclared-republican-democrat-voter/46398747#