The looming threat

Our former president's mug shot.  

No matter what they say about Trump, things could be worse.  The man was totally incompetant and not able to change the nature of our political system, but he came close to doing so.  He normalized being openly hateful of vulnerable minorities, and unleashed a movement of malcontents which will likely survive his potential incarceration. 

So why do I say that there is a looming threat?

Several things have happened as a result of this man's time in office.  First, this man has said that if he regains the office of president, he will attempt to consolidate political power in the executive branch.  This is dangerous, as our system was designed to work (or, not work, as of late) with the powers of each branch of government being checked and balanced by the other two.  Second, this man has only anger to propel him.  He has never forgiven the public, nor the honest officials that some may have elected, for not putting him in office for a second term.  What revenge would he try to take at the expense of his perceived enemies?  Most elected leaders in his party are afraid of his cult, and are following his mob to stay in office.

But what happens if this man is not nominated to be his party's presidential nominee?  Will the followers of his cult believe that the elections weren't rigged?  On 01/06/21, we saw the violence that his cult was capable of.  Could it happen again?  What if the man were convicted in one of the courts? Even worse would be the chaos that might happen if the election were close.  For years, Americans have been self-selecting into like-minded communities.  People live in communication bubbles where they select news from sources that reinforce their views, and find it hard to imagine how others could have different views when "the truth" should be self apparent.  If you lived in Rural America, watched Fox "News" on a regular basis, and have been trained by your church to see the world in binary terms, would you be able to challenge the orthodoxy that you've been fed for years?  Wouldn't you want to defend your country from "criminals" from the left?

Years ago, Senator John McClain held a campaign rally where one of his loyal GOP constituents started labeling then Senator Barack Obama as a communist traitor.  Senator McClain interrupted this woman, saying that Senator Obama was a good man with whom he had political differences.  Could anyone see this happening today, where radicals from the far right are calling for President Biden's impeachment? The leaders of one political party have enough "sober" people to govern, while the other's leaders are afraid of the mob who elected our former president.

In 2016, our former president ran for office with the campaign slogan:  

Make America Great Again

Did any of his constituents ever ask: 

When did America stop being great?  

Why is America not great anymore?  

What needs to be done to make America great again?

I never heard any of these questions answered to my satisfaction.  Instead, MAGA anger comes from people who have lost their place in society.  They see our former president as someone who would (at least) give lip service to their feelings, if not restore their former positions in the larger society.

The next year, the former president held a campaign rally in Charlottesville, where he effectively said that there were good people in the neo-Nazi movement :

“You had some very bad people in that group,

 but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides.”

Once a person implies that there some good neo-Nazis, where does permission to act on one's hatred end?  I can still remember chants of:

"Jews will not replace us!"

As if any self respecting Jew would want for his/her children to grow up with skills so limited that they could not earn a good living.  What successful person of any ethnic group would want for their child to become a bagger at the local Piggly Wiggly?  Many of the MAGAloons are poorly educated, resistant to change, and follow bombastic leaders without bothering to ask: "Does what they are saying make sense?"  They gravitate to "strongmen" who say things that validate their feelings, and not to people who understand the nuances of objective truths.

So, what is the looming threat?

In short, the threat is that our ex-president has unleashed a monster that can not be sent back to its cave before it causes a lot of destruction.  As I started writing this, Jacksonville, FL is dealing with the aftermath of a white nationalist killing 3 black people at a local supermarket.  What will it take to stop this?  I don't know.  But if the ex-president again comes anywhere near the levers of power, god help us.

A potential constitutional crisis

 

Most people know that I lean a little bit left of today's center.  By historical standards, I would have been a "Goldwater Republican."  That is, I don't want the government legislating or enforcing morality, I don't want government needlessly interfering with business, and I want to limit the functions of government to those things it can do well.  Sadly, the GOP has shifted to being a radical right wing party, one that looks to use government as a tool to quietly(?) reverse civil rights gains we've had over the last 60 years, one that looks to subsidize big business and billionaires at the expense of the working person, one that would use morality as an excuse to mistreat people whose looks and bahaviors differ from the fundamentalist White Christian Males who have historically had power in this country.

Our founding fathers understood that our nation was imperfect from the beginning.  The Preabmble to The Declaration of Independance opens with:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of  Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

They knew that men are imperfect, and that governments derive their power from the people.  It continues with:

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes.

But here lies the problem with the January 6th insurrection.  The majority of the people were happy with our system of government.  They were not happy with the actions of a government that no longer seemed to care about their needs.  And they were ripe to become part of a cult which would enable a despot to overthrow the government while leaving a shadow of its structure intact.

The heart of the Washington, DC indictment of Donald Trump says that he was trying to overturn the electoral college election of Joseph Biden by interfering with the counting of the votes from the 50 states (plus DC).  Assuming that Trump is convicted, he could be considered to have engaged in an insurrection against the United States, as some conservatives are now posing.  Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the constitution reads:

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, 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. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

Since there is no chance that the Democrats in either house will vote to remove this disability, what would happen if lunatics in the GOP make Trump its 2024 presidential nomines?  I pose that we could have a constitutional crisis if the following events occur:

1. Trump wins the GOP nomination.
2. Trump is convicted on January 6th issues (and maybe, Georgia RICO as well)
3. Trump wins the Electoral College.
4. Trump is ruled ineligible to serve as president during 2024 (case on rapid appeal to SCOTUS.  SCOTUS says Trump ineligible.)
5. Electoral college vote in chaos.

Since Trump would be ineligible to serve as president and the electoral college hasn't voted, what happens next?  Some states' EC election laws would commit electors to vote for Trump/President & Mate/Vice President.  Other states' laws might allow electors to vote for VP as President, but who gets VP vote?  Even more confusing, we could have issues of "Faithless Electors."  Could the election go to the house?  Could we see a President of one party and a Vice President of the other?  28 years ago, Jeff Greenfield wrote a book about this problem, albeit in an era where we couldn't dream of a criminal being elected as president.  Now, the electoral college risk is much worse, and people need to understand it.

Right now, we must start thinking of amending the us constitution to deal with the issue of what happens if a President/Vice President slate is elected by the 50 states (plus DC), and one member of the pair becomes ineligible to serve or unable to serve before the electoral college elects a President/Vice President slate, or before it takes office.  As part of this amendment, we also need to fix the anomaly of what would happen if the presidential election goes to the House of Representatives, and the vice presidential election goes to the Senate.  Currently, if this were to happen, we could see a President elected from one party, and a Vice President from the other.  Maybe we need to make sure that both legislative houses agree on both the president and vice president as a pair before the president is considered selected.