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#

 

Just Another Slob

There is nothing special about Donald John Trump.

He is, and has been since January 20, 2021, a private United States citizen. He is an obscenely wealthy private citizen, but that is all he is--just another number in the approximately 340 million souls who make up this nation.

All of us--every individual in that batch of 340 million people who call themselves Americans--are governed by one set of laws.

I'll say that again because some people just don't seem to get it. Every person who claims citizenship in the United States is subject to one body of law.

And just one more time for the truly thick: No one, including Donald John Trump, is governed by any special body of law. We're all under the same laws and are all subject to the same punishments if we violate those laws, which are grounded in the Constitution of the United States of America. 

Trump is no different. He may be able to hire hundreds of expensive attorneys, but they all answer to the same law as the youngest and poorest public defender. 

When Trump is found guilty, as he will be, he will face the same punishment and will go to the same prison as the poorest defendants.

In Joan Osborne's eloquent phraseology, Trump is "just a slob like one of us."

Go back up a few lines and note again that the laws of this country are anchored in its Constitution. Then think back to Trump's several attempts to weaken or disable the Constitution during his presidency, and his last, most risky and egregiously illegal act: the insurrection of January 6, 2021, which he planned, orchestrated, and cheered while watching it unfold on television in the White House.

The goal of that insurrection was to overthrow the Constitution. Why does Trump want to do away with the Constitution? Very simple: so he can establish a separate set of laws that will apply only to him, which would probably outlaw democracy and make him president for life.

Think about that. I mean, really think about it for some period of time. 

Think what such a condition would mean to you, your job, your family, your church, your kids' schools, and everything else of importance to you. 

Read the Constitution, including the Amendments and imagine life without them. 

You may complain about politicians, but consider life without them, as attractive as that may seem. Not only no Congress, but very likely no state legislatures. Probably no councils in the larger cities.

Then think about the big one: You would have no voice.

You may be a white man who dreams of such a situation, imagining how you and your buddies would be empowered to do anything you want to anyone you don't like.

Think again, Bubba.

No rights for anybody. Period.

Think about it.

--- Diogenes, 13 August 2023

 

 

Quayle, Cruz, and . . . Barbie?

(When this post was originally published the wrong title appeared. We're republishing it just for the sake of having the right title on the right post. Our bad.)

We of a certain age remember an amusing dialogue between then-Vice President Dan Quayle, the Republican presidential candidate, and Murphy Brown, a fictional TV news personality played by Candice Bergen.

The story arc of the 1991-92 season of the show (titled "Murphy Brown") focused on Murphy's pregnancy and decision to raise her child as a single mother. On May 19, 1992, the day after Murphy's fictional childbearing episode was aired, Quayle gave a speech on the nation's social ills in San Francisco in which he said:

Bearing babies irresponsibly is simply wrong. Failing to support children one has fathered is wrong and we must be unequivocal about this. It doesn’t help matters when primetime TV has Murphy Brown, a character who supposedly epitomizes today’s intelligent, highly paid professional woman, mocking the importance of fathers by bearing a child alone and calling it just another lifestyle choice.¹

The show's producers didn't take that challenge lying down. The hapless Quayle became the target of merciless pranking from the outset of the next season. When Murphy laments to her colleagues about the vice president's criticism of her life choice one of them simply says, "Murphy, it's Dan Quayle."²

That line, with the veep's name pronounced laced with equal parts disdain, scorn and contempt, is in my opinion one of the best-delivered in television history.

Fast forward to 2023, and Republican politicians are again--or still--struggling to discern between fiction and the real world.

This time the fictional character is the much beloved all-American Barbie, who finally has her very own feature length live-action motion picture. And who should come along trying to spoil it? None but the despiser of everything good, pure and innocent, Senator Rafael Edward Cruz of Texas.

Here's Cruz claiming the movie about a doll's desire to find her way to the real world is anything but:

There's a scene in "Barbie," where there is this map of the world, and it's drawn like with crayon. I mean, it's really a very simple cartoon. And so they have this blockish thing that is called "Asia." And then they've drawn what are called the nine-dashes . . . .

This is Chinese communist propaganda in which the Chinese are asserting sovereignty over the entirety of the South China Sea.³

Excuse us? Did the junior senator from the state of Texas just say that a movie about a doll's daydream contains Chinese propaganda? 

Yes, in fact, he did. 

As a child of the 60s I can authoritatively say that anybody that paranoid has to be very, very seriously messed up. Nor is this the first time Cruz has taken on the fantasy world. Not long ago he tangled with Big Bird and came out second. 

The people of Texas actually elected this clown to office? Come on, Texans. The eyes of the rest of us are upon you.

I almost hate to say it, but Cruz isn't the only Republican wingnut who's seeing the ghost of Mao Zedong wearing a pink dress and pirouetting across movie screens this summer. But I won't get started.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

--- Diogenes: 27 July 2023

 

¹ https://publicapologycentral.com/apologia-archive/political-2/dan-quayle-murphy-brown/. Downloaded 27 July 2023.

² https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/TakeThat/LiveActionTV. Downloaded 27 July 2023.

³ https://www.businessinsider.com/ted-cruz-barbie-movie-chinese-communist-propaganda-2023-7. Downloaded 27 July 2023.

 

 

Infamy of Infamies

The phrase "a day that will live in infamy" was coined by President Franklin D. Roosevelt referring to the day of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor: December 7, 1941.

Since then the phrase has been used to describe the commission of an act so heinous and with such a calamitous impact on America and Americans that it is fitting to use the phrase as a means of tying such acts to the devastating Japanese attack that heavily crippled the U. S. Navy and cost the lives of 2,403 American military personnel and civilians.

Some infamous days:

• 11/22/1963: Assassination of President John F. Kennedy
• 4/19/1995:   Bombing of Oklahoma City federal building
• 9/11/2001:   Attack on World Trade Center and the Pentagon
•  1/6/2021:    Insurrection and attack on Congress and the Capitol
• Today, 6/24/2022:   Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade

Set against the violent nature of the other events, a ruling of the Supreme Court may seem tame, but make no mistake: this is a declaration of war on American women.

With this ruling the Supreme Court has told the majority of Americans¹ that their reproductive health will henceforth be at the mercy of state legislatures, which are predominantly male.²

The House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack has shown in great detail how former president Donald Trump plotted for months to stay in power. The committee's focus is his attempt to overthrow a valid election, but his machinations included loading the Supreme Court with conservative justices who he expected to support him in his bid to deny the will of the American people.

That ploy did not work, but it is those justices who are responsible for the overthrow of Wade, carrying forward the hateful work of the ultra-right even when Trump is absent. 

Like so many injuries and insults the American people and their Constitution have suffered since 2016, the responsibility for this outrage tracks directly to Donald Trump, whose tyrannical impulses have brought this nation close to dissolution.

I have returned to Vox Populi because the times require action, not silence. Every American who loves justice should take a moment to grieve over the grave injustice committed today by a court whose members should be but are not impartial.

Then pick up your phone, call your congressional representatives, and tell them in no uncertain terms that if they want your support they will begin posthaste to develop legislation that will secure and safeguard women's right to control their own bodies.

--Diogenes, 24 June 2022

¹ Several sources bear this out, including the U.S. Census: https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/SEX255220

² Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP). 2022. “Women in State Legislatures 2022.” New Brunswick, NJ: Center for American Women and Politics, Eagleton Institute of Politics, Rutgers University-New Brunswick. https://cawp.rutgers.edu/facts/levels-office/state-legislature/women-state-legislatures-2022 (Accessed June 24, 2022)

 

Done

In Ecclesiastes, King Solomon explores the human condition in depth and concludes that virtually everything undertaken by humans is a vanity. In biblical terms "vanity" does not mean the kind of self absorption Carly Simon sings about in "You're So Vain." Rather, it refers to actions or acquisitions taken solely for one's own pleasure or self aggrandizement; things that by definition are vain and without substance.

 

Social media is a vanity. Politics is a vanity. This blog is a vanity.

 

I established this blog in the vain belief that one person with no money or physical resources, no contacts, and no sponsorship, but with a deep belief in the rightness of American democracy and the Constitution, and some talent for writing, could reach an audience with an anti-tyranny, pro-democracy message, and perhaps have some positive effect on society, however small.

I was wrong.

We are become a nation of cowards and idiots governed by fools. We deny the truth of science in favor of the latest conspiracy theory on social media. We allow uncouth philistines to dictate taste, boorish louts to set public policy, and bigoted, feckless drones to promulgate biased pronouncements disguised as news.

Nearly half of this nation's population has been duped by Donald Trump and his minions. Congress has become an albatross around the president's neck. Unjust and divisive laws continue to flow from state legislatures and the administration and the courts have seemingly lost the will to fight.

I have lost all faith in the Democratic Party to work effectively against Trumpism and its associated evils. The party has fallen back on its long held passive-aggressive mode of governing and is unable to respond to the Republicans' new barbarity and aggressive intolerance.

The American people will deserve whatever they get in the next election cycle. If that is tyranny they will discover it is too late to avoid disaster. 

This blog is done, and I am done. I will never say never, but I can envision very few scenarios that would cause me once again to lift my voice.

I sign off with this truth: As long as Donald Trump is alive the American system of laws and the Constitution that underpins it are in danger of destruction.

Do with that what you will.

---Diogenes, 2 January 2022  

 

 

 

Mes Haines: Tucker Carlson

I am still out of action, but not so much that I can't denounce Tucker Carlson as an enemy of the Constitution and of the American people, and "Patriot Purge," his predictable, inane, and masturbatory Fox Nation mini-me series, as an egregious waste of bandwidth.

Carlson is a liar, a con artist, a fool, and a Trump dupe, and "Patriot Purge" is yellow journalism at its worst.

Tucker Carlson, you are anathema.

--- Diogenes, 6 November 2021

Hors De Combat

Diogenes is on the injured reserve list again. I suppose when you're as old as he is things are bound to fall off here and there.

He'll be back.

--- RLB, 1 November 2021

Mes Haines: Tyranny

What do George Washington, George Orwell and a fictional sex slave have in common?

They all speak eloquently about the evils of tyranny.

In September 1796, toward the end of his presidency, George Washington made a farewell address to the American people. Among many other thoughts he shared with them the importance of loyalty to the government:

"The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish government presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established government."

He goes on to warn of the dangers of extreme partisanship:

"However combinations or associations of the above description [divisive and partisan policies] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion."¹

Sound familiar? Today's Republicans are that "cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled" rabble who are openly "subvert[ing] the power of the people and . . . usurp[ing] for themselves the reins of government." Whether they will destroy it remains to be seen, but their actions so far suggest that to be their goal.

I'm not suggesting Washington or any of the Founders was prescient. It's simply that they and their families had lived under tyrants for generations, and they were well aware of the processes by which autocrats rise. The greed and lust for power that are hallmarks of the contemporary Republican Party looked the same in the 18th century as they do in the 21st.

In his dystopian novel 1984 ² George Orwell introduced most of us in the free world to the fearsome reality of totalitarianism.

Published in 1949, 1984 explores the nature of a dictatorship as seen through the eyes of Winston Smith, whose job is rewriting history for the Ministry of Truth. The government is founded on a Big Lie focused on three self-contradictory statements: 

• War is peace
  
• Freedom is slavery
  
• Ignorance is strength

Those statements are the core of doublethink, a tool used by The Party to indoctrinate citizens, who are expected simultaneously to accept two mutually contradictory beliefs as correct, often in contravention to their own memories or sense of reality.

That idea is at the heart of Trumpism. Infected Republicans claim to be protecting the Constitution and looking out for their constituents when they are in fact doing the exact opposite. Some of them probably believe it. Others are simply lying, trying to gain Trump's favor, which means absolutely nothing. He has neither loyalty nor fidelity toward his followers; they are nothing to him.

The goal of the Party, the governing authority in 1984, is to attain power--not to reach a goal, but for the sake of power itself. That is the same lust that drives Republican politicians to do anything, no matter how immoral, corrupt or nefarious, to win elections and to stay in office.

The year 1984 did not bring constitutional Armageddon, but if Trump and his followers are not stopped and stripped of power we may well see it forty years on, in 2024.

The Hulu series "The Handmaid's Tale"³ takes place in another dystopian society in which most women have become sterile. Fertile women are captured, called "handmaids," and held as sex slaves for child bearing by the ruling class men. Any children they bear are taken away to be raised by their masters' wives.

Gilead, as the society is called, has come about after a religious civil war in the United States won by ultra-conservative religious forces. It is a totalitarian theocratic state based on a twisted notion of Old Testament society in which men are men and women are chattel.

In Gilead women have no rights, female children are rounded up to be used as needed, and LGBT citizens are hanged as "gender traitors."

This plot may seem farfetched, but keep in mind the struggle American women had in gaining reproductive freedom and how bitterly that right is still contested. At this moment the cornerstone of that right, Roe v. Wade, is at risk of being struck down by a conservative Supreme Court.

This nation is nowhere close to gender equality. As long as women are paid less than men, as long as any police officer anywhere turns a blind eye to spousal abuse, as long as there are areas where men with names like Billy Bob refer to women as "little gals" we are not equal.

Throughout our lives we have enjoyed freedom, and we tend to believe it will last forever. But study just a bit of history, listen to the warnings. and consider the outrages of 2020. Freedom is not free; it takes work and sacrifice. 

If we don't cherish our freedom and our rights and work hard to protect them we will wake up one morning and find them gone.

--- Diogenes, 24 October 2021

 

¹ https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=15&page=transcript

² Everyone should read this book and be familiar with it. If you haven't thought about it since high school, find it online or in your local library, read it and pay attention.

³ Based on the novel of the same title by Margaret Atwood.