The Republic Is Dead, Long Live The Republic

 

 

Poor man wanna be rich
Rich man wanna be king
And a king ain't satisfied
'till he rules everything
-- Bruce Springsteen, Badlands

Thus ends The Republic.

Hail! Mr. President.

It should never have come to this, 

But, hey, at least democracy was fun while it lasted.

I made a pithy comment. 

A couple of them actually, as is my wont. 

Well, maybe not so much pithy as bitterly sardonic observations on yesterday's Supreme Court Ruling. 

Here's one:

I'm not a lawyer, so I'm not sure how this works, but basically Biden is President For Life now, right? So, does Biden just "officially" cancel the election or do we have to break some windows and beat up cops first?

Sarcasm, right? 

Obviously a reference to January 6th, 2021 and the violent actions of the then president and his howling rabble. A reference to that president's impeachment and the legal troubles he finds himself in (for now). 

Right? Obviously. 

Meta, the platform behind Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, removed it. 

"It looks like you shared or sent something that could encourage violence and lead to risk of physical harm, or a direct threat to public safety."

I beg your pardon? I did what now? 

"This goes against our Community Guidelines on violence and incitement."

Community guidelines on violence and incitement, you say? 

I literally laughed out loud. 

Literally laughed loud enough to scare the dog out of a sound sleep. 

Hilarious. 

Absolutely fucking hilarious.

Meta removed a number of similar posts from my various timelines. And it just kept getting funnier to me. 

Funny ha ha, but also funny ironic. 

You see, Mark Zuckerberg has higher standards against incitement of violence and threats to the public safety than the Supreme Court. 

Mark Zuckerberg. That Mark Zuckerberg. That Facebook. That Meta. 

Hilarious.

And what's even funnier is that I've now faced more consequences for allegedly inciting violence against the Republic than Donald Trump has or ever will -- because he's now officially immune from the consequences of his own actions and I as a mere plebe of the Imperium am most assuredly not. 

Quod Erat Demonstrandum and Hail! Caesar. 

Somewhere right now, up there in Republican heaven, Richard Milhous Nixon is swearing bitterly and staring down in utter disbelief at those who called John Roberts a "moderate conservative."

And, yeah, while that's probably hyperbole, the truth of the matter is the Roberts Court would have let Tricky Dick get away with it. 

And the really ironic part here is that this Republican Supreme Court hasn't just sounded the death knell of The Republic by making the president Caesar, immune from the law and from the consequences of his own actions, but the Court has effectively killed itself. 

I mean, what's the point of a Legislative or Judicial Branch when the Executive has unlimited power and absolute immunity?

The checks and balances of the American government are now effectively null and void, because with absolute executive immunity comes absolute immunity from both the Court and from Congress. 

And that's exactly what this ruling does. 

But then again, what would you expect from a Court that has no enforceable ethical code of conduct and refuses to even consider one? 

The majority opinion, penned by Roberts himself alleges the founders of this country, the Framers of the Constitution, those men who'd just fought a bloody war of rebellion to free themselves from a monarch utterly immune from accountability and the law, actually envisioned an Executive who would likewise be immune from the law and accountability but is also somehow not a king. 

Ur?

Never mind, he's rollin'

The opinion uses words like “vigorous,” “energetic," "decisive," and "speedy execution” of the president's duty to "faithfully execute" the law -- something the president has been able to do for 248 years, through multiple wars and myriad national emergencies, somehow without having absolute immunity. 

But today in this new age, apparently the law cannot be executed vigorously, energetically, decisively, or in a speedy fashion if the president actually has to obey the law he's "faithfully" executing. 

Explain to me how the guy charged with enforcing the law should be immune from it. 

Explain it to me like I'm not a lawyer. Go ahead. 

Why does this only apply to Presidents? Why shouldn't attorney generals be likewise immune from the law, or the police, or Supreme Court Justices ... okay, those are bad examples but I think I've made my point here. 

The President must have “absolute immunity” for any “official act within his exclusive sphere of constitutional authority," reasons the Chief Justice.

Now, again, I'm not a lawyer, but I noticed that the Chief Justice and his conservative Trump-appointed coconspirators on the Court didn't bother to define "official acts." That seems a strange omission, doesn't it? If they didn't define official acts, who does? The president? And Republicans don't see this as problematic?

But of course they wouldn't, would they? 

But wait, there's more. 

The opinion also offers up something called “presumptive immunity.” 

Now, you'd think "absolute immunity" would cover it. If you have absolute immunity, how much more immunity do you need? That's pretty much what "absolute" means, isn't it?

Ha ha. No. 

According to John Roberts, the President also gets "presumptive immunity" for any action that falls outside his "official" duties, but within “the outer perimeter of his official responsibility.” 

So there's official official and then there's also some other sort of official that's less official but also still official. 

See? That's why I'm not a lawyer. 

Anyway, this presidenting gig sounds like good work if you can get it. 

As in the above decision regarding absolute immunity for official acts, the court doesn't provide any definition of "outer perimeter of official responsibility" or what non-official official duties might fall into it. 

Confused? 

It gets better, because Roberts goes on to say that this presumptive immunity for acts taken in the outer perimeter of officialdom might actually be absolute immunity after all, but “we need not decide that question today.” 

So, we've determined there are official acts that get absolute immunity and there are less official acts that get presumptive immunity, but those less official acts might actually be official acts and entitled to absolute immunity instead of presumptive immunity but we don't have to actually spell out what any of those acts actually are today because something something gazpacho and the lower courts will just figure it out. Probably.

I'll pause for a minute so you can wipe at the blood which is no doubt running from you ear about now. 

Unofficial acts, says Roberts, are not entitled to immunity, presumptive or absolute. 

Oh, well, that's good. 

We can hold the President accountable for unofficial acts. 

Unofficial acts.

Unofficial. 

The president can be held accountable for unofficial acts.

Heh heh. Riiiight. 

When the president does it, that means it is not illegal!
-- Richard Nixon, 1977

Guess what? Turns out, Nixon was right. 

If absolute immunity is only for official acts, then immunity is always going to be absolute because you can bet that when the president does it, whatever it is, it's always -- always -- going to be "official."

Bet on it. 

You know why? Because the same court who made this decision, will make that one too. 

And thus, the president can't be indicted and he can't be impeached. 

There is no longer any Constitutional or governmental method of restraining a president. 

And there is now no accountability to the American people whatsoever, not even voting if a president choses to "officially" ignore an unfavorable election and order his VP to change the results. That is exactly what the Supreme Court just said. This is quite literally the crux of this entire argument. That's what started all of this, a president who refused to accept the results of the election and who attempted to nullify those results through violence in order to seize power. Those are now official acts and immune from the law. 

Up above I said I'd made a number of comments on social media that were later removed. 

Here's another one:

When they line us up in front of that ditch they made us dig in the field outside the concentration camp gates, just before one of Supreme General Mike Flynn's Hauptsturmführers gives the order to fire, I'll be the guy who smacks you in the back of the head and snarls "I FUCKING TOLD YOU SO."

The post got several hundred responses.

-- You won't get the chance, I won't be there. I'm going for their throats with my bare teeth when they show up to "detain me for reeducation". They're going to have to shoot in the street in front of my own house in front of everybody.

-- I won't get there. I will take a few with me first.

-- Before that happens, I'm going to take out as many of those single helix mutant pieces of shit neckbeards as possible. You're welcome to join me. I will not go quietly.

-- Im not going down without taking a few of them with me.. jfs

-- I’ll be the girl who turns around and storms the bad guys. They may kill me, but I’ll go down fighting.

There were many, many more in the same spirit, I was in the process of recording them when Threads took the post down and I lost access to the feed. 

We'll go down fighting! 

Yeah. Great. Cool. I admire your spirit. War is fun. You're gonna love it. But the thing is, we wouldn't have to die fighting -- if you all showed the same grit at the ballot box. 

Now, I'm not saying that those who shouted defiance up above didn't themselves vote. They follow me, they likely did. 

But a lot of Americans didn't. 

And they won't this time either -- despite their promise to go down fighting. 

It should never have come to this and where does that leave us? 

If the president does it, it's official. And if it's official then the president can't be impeached and he can't be indicted and he can't be convicted and he can't be held accountable to the people. He is, de facto, Caesar. 

Or Vladimir Putin. Pick you poison. 

That is literally Trump's entire argument. 

Everything he did in office is official. He can't be impeached for it, he can't be prosecuted for it, and he fully intends to do it again, until he really is Caesar, or Putin. 

And the Court said, Okay. 

I'm not a lawyer, don't take my word for it. Instead listen to what Justice Sotomayor said:

The Court effectively creates a law-free zone around the President, upsetting the status quo that has existed since the Founding. … When he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune.

Let the President violate the law, let him exploit the trappings of his office for personal gain, let him use his official power for evil ends. Because if he knew that he may one day face liability for breaking the law, he might not be as bold and fearless as we would like him to be.

That is the majority’s message today. 

Even if these nightmare scenarios never play out, and I pray they never do, the damage has been done. The relationship between the President and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably. In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law.

We probably could have avoided a lot of trouble and been much further ahead if we'd just paid our taxes, drank our tea, and knuckled under to King George III. 

If nothing else, at least we'd have universal healthcare today. 

So, where does that leave us? 

Beyond guillotines and the Second Amendment, I mean.  

November. 

That's where it leaves us. 

We have one chance to fix this without bloody war and revolution, and even that is a dicey proposition. 

I lied up above. War isn't fun. Killing people is terrible. It's dirty and it's ugly and it's fucking horrifying and if you survive you'll never ever get the smell of death out of your brain. Ever. We're out of options. You don't get the luxury of sitting this one out or throwing away your vote because you don't like the choices. And bluntly, if you don't have what it takes to show up and vote, you probably don't have what it takes to pick up a gun and fight tyranny on the battlefield either. 

It should never have come to this. 

You want want a better nation, you're going to have to be better citizens. 

With fear for our democracy, I dissent.
-- Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor