John Chuckman
EXPANSION OF A COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN RUSSIA TODAY
"Trump says 2020 election may end up before US Supreme Court, so it’s important to fill empty seat"
It is neither necessary nor desirable for unelected judges to determine who is elected President. The Court provides only a dire-emergency fallback, but here is a President deliberately working to create a dire emergency.
This angry, uncooperative, and totally selfish man is doing everything that he can to discredit the upcoming election and toss it into the Court.
He actually told supporters, more than once, to vote twice in the election, publicly advocating a criminal act.
He constantly questions the legitimacy of mail-in ballots, which in fact are used all the time in American elections, as by absentee voters. He and his wife use absentee mail-in ballots for Florida elections.
By threatening to throw the election into the Court, Trump is attacking the operation of Constitutional government. And please note that he does so at a time of serious civil unrest in the country, only adding to the burden of America’s many harsh divisions.
What on earth is the logic of saying that the Court will need its ninth member, appointed by himself in a rushed last-minute appointment, to avoid a four-to-four tie vote in deciding the election?
The logic is that a newly-appointed ninth Justice, beholden to him for an immensely prestigious, lifetime position, should decide whether he stays in office. Very ethical. Very democratic. Very faithful to the rule of law. But entirely possible under America’s feeble political system.
Trump has done many destructive things while in office, but in some sense, this behavior around election ballots and the Supreme Court is the very worst of them. He is literally subverting the American Constitution, doing so publicly with no shame or ethical consideration, and, please, note, virtually no opposition from the members of his party.
But it is consistent with his past - his theft of oil in Syria, his theft of gold in Venezuela, his theft of land in Palestine, his support for some of the world’s bloodiest tyrants, and his public assassinations. All things he has actually bragged about doing.
Remember, too, this is the only recent President who has refused to release his personal tax records for scrutiny, and there are many grave questions about his past business and tax-paying practices by some well-informed observers. A man who has his lawyer pay to silence women about their affairs and then lies about doing so. A man who bills the government outrageous sums, again and again, when officials or Secret Service details stay at one of his hotels, something they are pressed to do.
Talk about law and order in the nation’s streets – as he darkly does every day in coded racist messages to his political base – how about some law and order in the White House?
Given all the problems and terrible conflicts underway in America – the threat of economic and financial collapse; conflicts over racism, social justice, police brutality, extreme inequality; and the problems of the world’s worst response to a pandemic, poor healthcare for tens of millions, money’s total domination of politics, and the withering, putrefying effects of monstrosities like the Pentagon and CIA – it would not be possible to name a more unfit man to lead the country. Just a political nightmare.
Mussolini bragging about making the trains run on time.
