XPost: talk.politics.misc, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, alt.journalism.newspapers XPost: talk.politics.guns

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.

https://hotair.com/jazz-shaw/2024/03/04/the-tears-at-wapo-over- the-scotus-decision-are-bitter-indeed-n3784048

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