Post-Election Thoughts

 I feel I need to write a bit more about my previous post.

It's just... complicated. As is almost anything important, I suppose.

If it were anyone other than the sitting president, I think a case could clearly be made for subversion of authority if not outright sedition. But... he is the president. Even aside from whether a president is capable of sedition (I hinted at that problem before, when I asked who he was asking people to rise up against) there's a few problems with our current situation. Namely the difference between absolute immunity and quality immunity from legal action for our elected officals. You remember me saying that we can only choose the consequences? There are some valid reasons to push for immunity. We don't want our leaders having to worry about getting sued for every little thing, or have political battles become even more about who can pay for litigation rather than who can convince the most Americans to vote for their cause. At the same time, nobody should be above the law. 

Nobody. 

For that reason alone, I lean against absolute immunity, but I'll admit it opens the doors to at least some abuse. Both have consequences (i.e. the risk of massive litigation against a sitting president, vs the risk that a sitting president will act as though he or she is above the law).

I think you can mitigate against the former... restrict what qualifies so that it doesn't interfere with what's required to do the job. Exactly where that line is drawn is the sort of thing that gets hashed out over the years.

I don't know exactly where we are, legally speaking, in how this is interpreted and what it means for legal action against Trump, that's the sort of thing you need lawyers for. (is it a capital crime? Doesn't the government have to bring suit for capital crime? I can't see our current justice system doing that. And, again, it opens the doors for future politicians to abuse the option. Sort of like how even though Richard Nixon seemed appropriate for impeachment, Republicans then used the same process against Bill Clinton in a move that was widely seen as inappropriate for the crime... which then increased some of the cynicism and willingness to overlook the character of a candidate, but I digress.)

We do have impeachment... but that's already been tried. And failed. And there's no reason to believe we'll have anything other more ugly partisan division if we tried it again.

Which means part of the reason people are reluctant to address this is because it's hard to say what or how we can do pretty much anything.

Oh, if all the states can get together and file some stupid electoral lawsuit I suppose the same can be done in reverse. And I'm sure there's libel laws and other types of things that can be done to make things painful. (Though, again as I noted in a previous post, opening that door could be a bad idea. I'm not sure I'd want to deal with the consequences of going that route. Btw... another very real problem with what Trump and his supporters are doing right now is that the result they're pushing for would throw out millions of legitimate votes. Again, not a lawyer, but I am pretty sure that's why various judges have said they didn't have standing. Trying to say that ignoring the wishes of millions of legitimate voters is required to make up for whatever fraud they think happened destroys the very notion of a social contract, or democracy. Some lone idiot deciding to vote by mail-in ballot and go in person, or to vote for their dead grandfather as well as themselves - that's not enough to ignore the votes of millions.)

Anyways.... so what do we do?

I'm not exactly a fan of the idea, but in a weird way ignoring it sometimes works in our favor. That is, some of Trump's own supporters don't pay attention and/or dismiss his attempts to stir up trouble as political theater, which means they're not exactly rising up on his behalf. If enough of them ignore it, then maybe we can get through to Biden's presidency without things getting ugly. (I have no idea how many people are just grumbling, but not planning to do anything... and how many seriously intend to cause trouble.)

Not drawing attention, not provoking, not making a fuss... sometimes seems like a safe way to survive until Trump is finally removed from power.

But there will be consequences to that, just as there's consequences for going in the other direction. One of which is that Trump and his supporters keep upping the ante. They keep coming up with these insane ideas that I definitely wouldn't have predicted, and then somehow get enough people on board to go through with them. It is, quite frankly, nuts.

I am exceedingly concerned about what I see going on right now because it's not just Trump. It's not just one person taking a sledgehammer to our democracy. It's all the people standing around enabling him. Guarding him. Taking a turn with the sledgehammer themselves. I have absolutely no idea if anyone is being blackmailed, or if it's fear of getting on Trump's bad side, or what...

Though it's exactly that sort of behavior that makes me think Libertarians aren't worthy of the name. (How much liberty do you think you're going to have from someone who bullies anyone who stands up to him, punishes anyone who disagrees with him, and will go to such lengths to win? If you try, you'll probably end up like a few of those Russian oligarchs Putin dealt with.)

Something needs to be done, but I see few people with the capability and fortitude to do anything about it. Biden is probably handling it best by biding his time, keeping calm, and continuing to work on transitioning.

Maybe whatever we do has to be done once Biden takes office (and I'm not entirely sure yet what 'it' will be. I might ponder that and write more some other time) but something has to be done. We need to make sure that we never, ever, ever get this close to subverting the will of the people again.