The Story of Therapy Dog Tails 572
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PRESENT DAY 73: Self-Evident and the Trump Supreme Court
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.
The Founders used the phrase “self-evident” in the opening of America’s opening salvo, the Declaration of Independence. It’s actually in the second paragraph but close enough. They’re talking about “truths.” Truth is essential to the formation and functioning of any democratic government. This means, of course, that lies run contrary to the formation of America and to the function of our government. Every time Trump lies, he undermines the foundations of the United States and he knows that. His purpose is to undermine the country and if his more than 30,000 lies in four years doesn’t demonstrate that to you, then you are willfully blind to a self-evident fact: Trump lies deliberately and with the intention of undermining American institutions. Most politicians lie primarily for personal gain or to stay out of jail. Santos and Menendez are typical recent examples. Trump certainly lies for these reasons as well but his lies often go way beyond personal gain. He knows that the ultimate personal gain would be to install himself permanently in charge of both the mightiest military history has ever seen and the largest economy in the world where corruption would then rule through violence as it does now in places like Russia, North Korea and Saudi Arabia, Trump’s models. The corruption part Trump has down. He’s just got to get rid of the institutions standing in his way, starting with the Constitution. After nine years of watching Trump in action, his intentions by now certainly are self-evident. Self-evident, too, is the idea that a person with the sort of complete power that Trump yearns for and that kings once had and that dictators now have runs contrary to the rights of the people for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Look no further than Putin, MBS and Netanyahu, who murder at will, for proof that the existence of a dictator is incompatible with “life” and thus “liberty,” since a person poisoned by Putin or dismembered by MBS or massacred by Netanyahu no longer has liberty available to them. The pursuit of happiness, likewise, is out of the question if you're dead. Hence a constitution written with the purpose of distributing power not just among the people who do the electing but across three branches of government to ensure that dictatorial power is unattainable for any one person. That they described the existence of these rights as “self-evident” was in keeping with the fact that the founders were secular humanists. Christianity may have been their professed religion but when it came to governance, they were secular humanists first, Christians and white men second, third and fourth. (See chapter 569 for further elaboration on this point: Chapter 569 .) They didn’t simply say that God or Jehovah gave us these rights, which would have been the Christian thing to do. They said that we are endowed by an undefined “Creator” with these “unalienable” rights. These rights are inherent to our being, wherever it is that they came from. They weren’t interested in demonstrating where they came from for the obvious, self-evident reason. No one knows. No one knows how the world began. It’s self-evident that no one knows where we come from or how the universe came into existence or if a spiritual realm exists. We may have ideas and beliefs about these things, Christian or otherwise, and we may insist that our particular beliefs are the “truth,” but the Founders knew that that’s all they are: beliefs but they also knew that our right to believe anything we want to believe about this or anything else falls into the category of “pursuit of happiness,” which is why they left “happiness” as undefined as “Creator.” We can define these terms in any way we want and that is the essence of American freedom. Whatever makes us happy. If believing the Bible or believing in the Bible makes us happy, we have a right to believe or believe in it. Same for the Koran, the Torah or Invisible Man (either one). That we have these rights, among others, is self-evident in the way that the existence of the Earth is self-evident. We walk on it. We’re buried in it. We know it’s there. We don’t need anyone to prove to us that the Earth is there. It’s self-evidently there. That we have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is as obvious as that the Earth exists, the sky is blue and dogs bark. So what else is self-evident? I’ll offer up a few items that I’d say certainly fall into the category of self-evident because it’s an important concept and one that is often overlooked in that oft quoted passage above. It should be self-evident that the person who runs for the “office” of the presidency and then holds the “office” of the presidency is an officer of the government. This should be a no-brainer but apparently the Trump “Supreme” Court wrestled with this one in their attempt to shield Trump from prosecution and keep him on the ballot across the country. The 14th amendment states among other things:
Section 3.
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 Trump clearly violated his oath and clearly engaged in insurrection by attempting in various ways including the use of violence on J6 to overturn the 2020 election, his “Supreme” Court attempted to claim that while he may have been president, that didn’t necessarily mean he was an “officer” of the government. If he wasn’t an “officer,” then the 14th amendment might not apply to him. But, of course, it’s self-evident that the person holding the office of the presidency is an officer of the government. It was self-evident to the Colorado Supreme Court and they acted accordingly. They acted in accordance with the U.S. Constitution only to be told by the highest court in the land that they could not act in accordance with the U.S. Constitution because it meant that their patron and benefactor Trump would be impeded in his attempt to regain the power he attempted to corrupt. By “their” I mean, of course, the Trump 6 - Clarence Thomas, John Roberts, Sam Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, the last three directly indebted to the guy who gave them their jobs. So it should also be self-evident that under states rights, a ruling by a state’s Supreme Court that is in accordance with the U.S. Constitution cannot be overruled. In the case of the Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling that Trump violated the 14th amendment and therefore is prohibited from holding office, the Trump “Supreme” Court overruled the U.S. Constitution, the document they are sworn to uphold, in order to keep Trump on the Colorado ballot. The six justices who voted to overturn the Colorado decision, the Trump 6, violated their oaths of office. (Or maybe they will argue that they aren’t really “justices.”). With the Trump 3 not recusing as ethics dictated but instead ruling in Trump’s favor, the U.S. “Supreme” Court violated the Constitution by telling the Colorado Supreme Court, a legitimate supreme court, not to follow the Constitution. It’s self-evident, of course, that Trump incited an insurrection against Congress on Jan. 6, 2021. It’s self evident because we all watched Trump do it on the Earth that we had no doubt was there. We all watched as Trump told his armed mob to go to the Capitol, illegal in itself on that day without a permit, and “fight like hell or you won’t have a country.” Trump ought to have been arrested and jailed that very day for this obvious violation of his oath, violation of the law and violation of the Constitution, specifically the 14th amendment. To the Colorado Supreme Court Trump’s violation of the 14th amendment was, indeed, self-evident as it should have been even without all of the other evidence uncovered by an impeachment trial and by a Congressional investigation that found that not only had Trump planned the Jan. 6 insurrection, he had planned and put into effect various other unconstitutional and illegal schemes for overturning our legitimate 2020 presidential election. And thus it should also be self-evident that having taken an oath to uphold the laws of the country, a violation of those laws cannot be an official act. This same Trump “Supreme” Court has claimed that a president cannot be prosecuted for any “official acts,” apparently conceding that the president is, indeed, an officer of the government. They went further by trying to cover up the use of evidence of criminal behavior in criminal proceedings. That was necessarily farfetched given how preposterous the entire discussion is. Again, the person charged with upholding the law cannot in any official capacity violate that very law. A criminal act is a violation of the oath and the office and cannot be an official act. This is self-evident so they needed to throw in something to inhibit the collection of evidence that would prove the “official” act to be criminal. If you can’t prove that it was criminal, then the president is innocent until proven criminal and thus a crime becomes an official act until proven otherwise, which can’t be done if the collection of evidence is not allowed. Disingenuous is an interesting word. It makes dishonesty sound almost intellectual or rational. To say that it was disingenuous of the Trump “Supreme” Court to claim that Trump isn’t an “officer” of the government is to cover up the actual dishonesty of that claim. It wasn’t disingenuous. They were simply lying. They knew full well that a person holding an office is an officer. They knew it as well as Bill Clinton knew the meaning of “is.” To say that a criminal act may be an official act isn’t disingenuous. It’s just a lie. The Trump “Supreme” Court is lying to us and they’re doing that with a very specific agenda, not surprisingly the same agenda of the guy who installed the Trump 3 and of the conservative groups who installed the rest of the Trump 6.
IMAGE INSERTED: The Trump 3:
Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett
They’re looking to overturn the Constitution since elections give power to people they think should not have power. It’s really as simple as that though they’re using convoluted and opaque legal arguments to de-simplify it. Once using frivolous arguments to try to refute self-evident facts was just something Trump did in order to delay justice. Now Trump has his own Supreme Court using this same “disingenuous” tactic to re-install Trump, their patron and benefactor, into the presidency, at which point they will confirm his absolute power with rulings that will assuredly make these absurdities seem quaint. What’s self-evident right now is that Trump is not running for the presidency. He’s running to do away with the presidency. He’s not a candidate for president because you can't be a candidate for an office you intend to get rid of. Trump is an imposter posing as a presidential candidate. He’s also posing as something else he self-evidently is not: a true American. He’s American in name only. Beneath that birth certificate resides an anti-American bent on destroying the country of his birth. This isn’t heated rhetoric. These are self-evident facts.
IMAGE INSERTED: The Trump 6:
Top: Alito, Roberts, Thomas, Barrett
Bottom: Gorsuch, Kavanaugh