Democracy Actually Is On the Ballot.
It's not just "on the ballot" in how you're being spun and gaslit. So are truth and justice.
Two of the most overused yet poorly understood words in the American lexicon today are “democracy” and “insurrection.” Our eyes and ears have been bludgeoned over the past several days with those words in conjunction with the January 6, 2021, anniversary of the Capitol riot.
Let us consult the dictionary, which seems a lost art nowadays, especially by the media and its so-called fact-checkers. With rare exceptions, they seem asleep at their keyboards.
Merriam-Webster dictionary includes this: “a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections.”
So, it logically follows that any “attack on democracy” would be defined primarily as an attack on free and fair elections. You know, the people’s ability, their right, to freely and fairly vote for the candidate of their choice, consistent with the Constitution and public law. Any effort to thwart the “consent of the governed” could be construed as an “attack on democracy,” including Putin-style “ballot cleansing” by political and legal diktat.
By their actions, the same people who claim “our democracy” is threatened by Donald Trump and many of his supporters - “MAGA Republicans” - have no problem trying to restrict voters from our choices on the ballot. Most of these efforts are being laughed out of courts, but not everywhere. Four partisan “jurists” in Colorado and a lone appointed bureaucrat in Maine are trying to keep Trump off the GOP primary ballot in those states. Still, Democrats are also working to disqualify over 130 GOP Members of Congress and congressional candidates for signing on to challenges of electors and election results in several states - just as congressional Democrats did in 2001, 2005, and again in 2017. Somehow, they “aided and abetted” the January 6, 2021 “insurrection.” No indictments, no convictions, but “muh democracy!”
So much for due process. So much for the Constitution. So much for representative “democracy.”
That, and those people, are your real threat to democracy, including those using the justice system to pursue people who were on the Capitol grounds that day but never breached the Capitol building itself.
I need some Tylenol. My head hurts from constantly rolling my eyes at their propaganda, prevarications, and abuses of our legal system. I’d laugh if it weren’t for the seriousness of their attacks on fundamental precepts and foundations.
It is the same with the term “insurrection” that Joe Biden used 12 times in his Valley Forge campaign speech last week. Except insurrection is a term defined by law. It took Congress until 1948 to finally define it, long after the word famously found its way into the 14th Amendment (Clause 3) of the Constitution right after the Civil War (the fine of up to $10,000 was added in 1994). Now, that was an insurrection.
“Incites” is another popular word these days. I’m not a lawyer, but there’s a very interesting set of cases on whether “fighting words” constitute “free speech.” In most cases, they don’t. I’m sure my legal friends can expound on this, but the US Supreme Court, in Brandenburg v. Ohio, established the standard that holds today:
[T]he constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.
In other words, a speaker must intend to incite lawless behavior and possess the imminent means to achieve it. That doesn’t make it an insurrection. Telling a crowd to protest “peacefully and patriotically” doesn’t quite fit the bill, even though things Trump said that day were provocative. That day's rally was a mistake, Trump’s speech was a disaster on several levels, and the Capitol riot that ensued - much of which we still don’t know about and is being kept secret - was a crime.
But I’m sick and tired of J6 being used to drive political narratives, including the nearly four months the Capitol was surrounded by National Guard troops and concertina wire, fomented by phony reports of an “imminent” attack—zero evidence of that has ever been presented.
We have way more evidence of Joe Biden taking bribes and suspect payments from foreign nationals through his family’s influence-peddling schemes, including dozens of IRS whistleblowers.
We saw lots of incitement during the 500 or so BLM/George Floyd riots in 2020 in some 200 cities, resulting in the death of a police officer, injuries to dozens more, and some $2 billion in damage. Others say we saw it on January 6, 2021, at the US Capitol, which directly resulted in the death of one pro-Trump female protester, Ashli Babbitt, and minor injuries to dozens of police and protesters.
In neither set of instances - the Floyd riots or the Capitol riot - has a single person been indicted or convicted for inciting or participating in an insurrection. Yet here we were last Friday, a President of the United States inciting fear on federal property (Valley Forge, PA), including outright falsehoods and grotesque misinterpretations about democracy, insurrection, and much more. It was hypocritical, even embarrassing.
He lied openly. “Jill and I attended the funeral of police officers who died as a result of the events of that day.” No autopsy report has shown that Officer Brian Sicknick nor anyone else that day - other than Babbitt - died as a direct result of the Capitol riot. He attended no such funeral.
I’ve known and worked with many US Capitol Police. They deserve our respect, including the truth. They and their don’t deserve to be used by politicians to advance phony narratives.
If Biden will lie about something like this, everything he says is suspect. But you likely know this already from endless falsehoods we’ve been subject to in a never-ending loop. Yet these wannabe tyrants have no problem telling the media “what they’re getting wrong. This is from Semafor, a fairly new left-leaning news service.
What really spooks Biden and Democrats is polling data that shows a growing percentage of Americans questioning and ready to move on from the J6 narrative they’ve been fed for three years, especially harsh sentences hounded down to many who were in the Capitol that day but did not engage in riotous behavior. While Biden and Democrats keep pointing at the shiny object of J6, voters are more focused on Biden’s miserable economic, international, and immigration policies and are ready to move on from J6. Democrats have nothing else to campaign on but fear and loathing.
What we saw from Joe Biden in Valley Forge, from Colorado’s Supreme Court, and Maine’s highly partisan Secretary of State is nothing more than a desperate effort to fuel a dying narrative, no matter the real attack on representative democracy that it represents. And when the Supreme Court strikes down these absurd efforts to deny ballot access to Donald Trump and others, partisans will use it to undermine confidence in our courts and promote packing the court with more partisan “judges.” You know it’s coming.
Yes, democracy is on the ballot. So is truth and justice. Vote accordingly.
I have never seen a President so determined to further divide the country, and that includes Trump. I miss Ronald Reagan's efforts to unite the country as a "shining city on the Hill." But to your main point, the Democrats are engaging in projection - they would "save democracy" by destroying democracy.