"Trump's never-ending 'stolen election' story damages America."
Yes, there were problems with last November’s election, but they have been litigated and audited for months. To continue questioning those reviews and challenging the outcome does lasting damage to our country. It’s long past time to stop.Trump’s attack on our constitutional procedures does not stand alone. The Democrats have waged their own damaging assault on several fronts. They floated the idea of adding two new states to the Union and more Justices to the Supreme Court. Both are efforts to fundamentally change the legislative and judicial branches by packing them with supporters.
Politicians wage attacks like these for tactical advantage. Alas, what is tactical advantage for them inflicts real structure damage on our democracy.
My reply follows.
On this one you are simply wrong. The reality may be simply too terrible to accept. The often paranoid theories of the worst and least credible people have finally proven true. Yes they may have cried wolf a thousand times but that makes it possible that the genuine criminals took advantage of that as a cover, recognizing that many had been conditioned not to react to the real theft. The very magnitude of the crime drives those complicit to go to extraordinary lengths to defend it. As Hillary said, "If we don't win we all hang." That then leads the innocent such as yourself, who are invested in maintaining the forms of civil society and constitutional government even as the substance has been eaten out, to bandwagon and give them cover.
The crucial moment may have been when the Democrats endorsed Occupy Wall Street and the Republicans did not challenge that. Occupy was not Free Speech but a dry run for ANTIFA. The point of no return was the refusal of Stacey Abrams to concede in Georgia. The Democrats were allowed to create a shadow government and then under the cover of COVID allowed Abrams to sponsor the mechanism for the theft of the 2020 election. The GOP should have used every tool available to force the Democrats to break with Seditionists and repudiate what was clearly a coup in progress months before the election. Unfortunately the antipathy to Trump among establishment leaders of the GOP enabled the Democrats to maneuver them into passivity.
The maintenance of the forms of institution and ritual are not meaningless. There is reason to cling to them even when barbarians occupy the seats of power. It is through the institutions and the rituals, through the Constitution and Congress and the Presidency and the courts, and schools and religions, that values are transmitted and justice is delivered. That leads to a free and prosperous society. The institutions and rituals are tools, not the goals in themselves, but they are valuable tools and to abandon them is the path of despair and defeat. However as they are but a means and not the end they must be supported by vigorous enforcement. The fact is that the institutions did not, were not permitted to, operate. The supporters of President Trump did not have their day in court. Millions believe as I do that the election was stolen and that becomes more certain over time, not less.
Between the election of the Constituent Assembly of 1918, that met for only 13 hours before the Bolsheviks dismissed, it and 1990 Russia was governed by a dictatorship cloaked in the forms of law. After all the Soviet Constitution of 1936 promulgated by Stalin was "the most democratic on earth." Did that make protests illegitimate? There is no need to go full Godwin and dwell on the forms cultivated by the constitutionally legal and elected, with the possibly unneeded use of fraud and thuggery, government of nazi Germany.
Is it possible to satisfy the concerns of most of the sane, as I hope that I am, people who dispute the legitimacy of the current regime in DC? Yes but it becomes increasingly difficult to do so and the response from those invested in preventing an accounting has already crossed over into violence. The Democrats have proclaimed that any disputing of their claims to power, including peaceful protest and lawful assembly or communications, is Sedition and may be suppressed with force. Demonstrators who entered the Capitol on January 6th, which was probably unwise, but who did so after the police opened the doors and entered peacefully staying between velvet ropes have been treated brutally in a manner that only we thought had existed in the past in dark backwoods corners of America.
What can be done? At a minimum the fact that there is a legitimate concern must be acknowledged. A full formal audit and public accounting of the election must be held. Invalid votes must be exposed and rejected. Where a state's Electors were improperly assigned their votes in the Electoral College must be invalidated. Reassignment of those votes to a competing slate is a separate issue. It may or may not be justified depending on the facts. If either canceling some EC votes or replacing them were to overturn the outcome of the election then the offices of President and Vice President would have to be declared vacant. At that point the XXth Amendment would take effect. My expectation is that would make the Speaker the Acting President until a new election could be held. Here is section 3 of the XXth Amendment:
Between the election of the Constituent Assembly of 1918, that met for only 13 hours before the Bolsheviks dismissed, it and 1990 Russia was governed by a dictatorship cloaked in the forms of law. After all the Soviet Constitution of 1936 promulgated by Stalin was "the most democratic on earth." Did that make protests illegitimate? There is no need to go full Godwin and dwell on the forms cultivated by the constitutionally legal and elected, with the possibly unneeded use of fraud and thuggery, government of nazi Germany.
Is it possible to satisfy the concerns of most of the sane, as I hope that I am, people who dispute the legitimacy of the current regime in DC? Yes but it becomes increasingly difficult to do so and the response from those invested in preventing an accounting has already crossed over into violence. The Democrats have proclaimed that any disputing of their claims to power, including peaceful protest and lawful assembly or communications, is Sedition and may be suppressed with force. Demonstrators who entered the Capitol on January 6th, which was probably unwise, but who did so after the police opened the doors and entered peacefully staying between velvet ropes have been treated brutally in a manner that only we thought had existed in the past in dark backwoods corners of America.
What can be done? At a minimum the fact that there is a legitimate concern must be acknowledged. A full formal audit and public accounting of the election must be held. Invalid votes must be exposed and rejected. Where a state's Electors were improperly assigned their votes in the Electoral College must be invalidated. Reassignment of those votes to a competing slate is a separate issue. It may or may not be justified depending on the facts. If either canceling some EC votes or replacing them were to overturn the outcome of the election then the offices of President and Vice President would have to be declared vacant. At that point the XXth Amendment would take effect. My expectation is that would make the Speaker the Acting President until a new election could be held. Here is section 3 of the XXth Amendment:
ππππ‘πππ 3. πΌπ, ππ‘ π‘βπ π‘πππ πππ₯ππ πππ π‘βπ πππππππππ ππ π‘βπ π‘πππ ππ π‘βπ ππππ πππππ‘, π‘βπ ππππ πππππ‘-πππππ‘ π βπππ βππ£π ππππ, π‘βπ ππππ ππππ πππππ‘-πππππ‘ π βπππ ππππππ ππππ πππππ‘. πΌπ π ππππ πππππ‘ π βπππ πππ‘ βππ£π ππππ πβππ ππ ππππππ π‘βπ π‘πππ πππ₯ππ πππ π‘βπ πππππππππ ππ βππ π‘πππ, ππ ππ π‘βπ ππππ πππππ‘-πππππ‘ π βπππ βππ£π ππππππ π‘π ππ’πππππ¦, π‘βππ π‘βπ ππππ ππππ πππππ‘-πππππ‘ π βπππ πππ‘ ππ ππππ πππππ‘ π’ππ‘ππ π ππππ πππππ‘ π βπππ βππ£π ππ’πππππππ; πππ π‘βπ πΆππππππ π πππ¦ ππ¦ πππ€ ππππ£πππ πππ π‘βπ πππ π π€βπππππ ππππ‘βππ π ππππ πππππ‘-πππππ‘ πππ π ππππ ππππ πππππ‘-πππππ‘ π βπππ βππ£π ππ’πππππππ, πππππππππ π€βπ π βπππ π‘βππ πππ‘ ππ ππππ πππππ‘, ππ π‘βπ ππππππ ππ π€βππβ πππ π€βπ ππ π‘π πππ‘ π βπππ ππ π πππππ‘ππ, πππ π π’πβ ππππ ππ π βπππ πππ‘ πππππππππππ¦ π’ππ‘ππ π ππππ πππππ‘ ππ ππππ ππππ πππππ‘ π βπππ βππ£π ππ’πππππππ.
There are real issues arising from the 2020 election regarding Voter ID and Early or Mail in voting, as well as Harvesting, that Congress should address.
Looking back, and at the risk of flogging a horse, I want to add something.
Professor Lipson was my teacher, my mentor, is my I dare say friend, and over 40 years ago I was a spectacular disappointment when he I think took a turn as my advisor in the hope of getting some useful work out of me. His opinions matter. A belief in the benefits and even the necessity of building institutions, political, legal, and academic, and accepting the legitimacy of their procedures, including accepting an undesired result, is a rational and moral position. Good scholarship in the Social Sciences makes one aware of the grim consequences that follow when those institutions collapse and with startling speed societies revert to the Hobbesian war of all against all.
As the Declaration says "all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer" because the alternatives are both unknown and as the evidence of history and theory shows are usually worse. If the consequences of the election a year ago were, unpleasant as it may seem, simply the consequence of Donald Trump's abrasive personality alienating key groups of people combined with some clever or even unethical but still legal maneuvering by his opponents then the answer to his supporters may be, as the Lincoln Project Bush/McCain loyalists seem to say, "Suck it up. There was a lot at stake and you blew it. Now we have to try to put the pieces back together and it is going to be harder than it would have been if Trump had never existed."
Is that true? The evidence is obscured but that is because there has been a sustained campaign to suppress the evidence. That in itself makes it harder to accept the prematurely proclaimed results. Certainly it is reasonable to believe that the reason that Trump gained the support of the Republican base and probably the majority of the citizenry was that the Establishment in the GOP had become corrupted and demonstrably failed to defend the institutions and see that they functioned as tools to deliver the benefits of law liberty and prosperity I described above. Was there a spontaneous move reacting to traditional political operations or rather a sophisticated conspiracy that resorted to Sedition and even foreign support along with organized criminal activity, from mob violence to illegal election law changes, to coerce an illegitimate result?
To simply propose the second half of the above choice would seem bizarre or even paranoid but the first alternative, given what we all saw, is also incredible. We cannot simply dismiss one and declare that the other must be true. We need a proper accounting, no matter how inconvenient that may be. Efforts to suppress challenges are themselves evidence that the results should be challenged. Every effort to deny that accounting moves the weight of evidence to the side of declaring that that Mr Trump is correct.
Professor Lipson was my teacher, my mentor, is my I dare say friend, and over 40 years ago I was a spectacular disappointment when he I think took a turn as my advisor in the hope of getting some useful work out of me. His opinions matter. A belief in the benefits and even the necessity of building institutions, political, legal, and academic, and accepting the legitimacy of their procedures, including accepting an undesired result, is a rational and moral position. Good scholarship in the Social Sciences makes one aware of the grim consequences that follow when those institutions collapse and with startling speed societies revert to the Hobbesian war of all against all.
As the Declaration says "all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer" because the alternatives are both unknown and as the evidence of history and theory shows are usually worse. If the consequences of the election a year ago were, unpleasant as it may seem, simply the consequence of Donald Trump's abrasive personality alienating key groups of people combined with some clever or even unethical but still legal maneuvering by his opponents then the answer to his supporters may be, as the Lincoln Project Bush/McCain loyalists seem to say, "Suck it up. There was a lot at stake and you blew it. Now we have to try to put the pieces back together and it is going to be harder than it would have been if Trump had never existed."
Is that true? The evidence is obscured but that is because there has been a sustained campaign to suppress the evidence. That in itself makes it harder to accept the prematurely proclaimed results. Certainly it is reasonable to believe that the reason that Trump gained the support of the Republican base and probably the majority of the citizenry was that the Establishment in the GOP had become corrupted and demonstrably failed to defend the institutions and see that they functioned as tools to deliver the benefits of law liberty and prosperity I described above. Was there a spontaneous move reacting to traditional political operations or rather a sophisticated conspiracy that resorted to Sedition and even foreign support along with organized criminal activity, from mob violence to illegal election law changes, to coerce an illegitimate result?
To simply propose the second half of the above choice would seem bizarre or even paranoid but the first alternative, given what we all saw, is also incredible. We cannot simply dismiss one and declare that the other must be true. We need a proper accounting, no matter how inconvenient that may be. Efforts to suppress challenges are themselves evidence that the results should be challenged. Every effort to deny that accounting moves the weight of evidence to the side of declaring that that Mr Trump is correct.
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