Shakespeare’s Falstaff boasts that “I am not only witty in myself, but the cause that wit is in other men.” Donald Trump does not boast about being nuts, even though he is—but he does share the strange gift with Falstaff of being “the cause that craziness is in other men.” Trump makes them so crazy they go crazy in the ways they oppose him. The latest example is the psychotic decision of the Colorado Supreme Court to deny Donald Trump a position on the state’s 2024 ballot on the grounds that he staged an insurrection against the United States.
It should go without saying that the Colorado Supreme Court does not have the authority to do this. In the first place, Donald Trump has neither been charged nor convicted of insurrection. That is also the last place, and the middle place, and every place in between. You say Donald Trump is a threat to democracy? This finding is more a threat to democracy literally than anything Trump has ever done. Trump may even have been guilty of sending a mob to overturn the results of an election. Certainly I think he bears moral responsibility, and I think he should have been convicted by the Senate for doing so.
But let’s be honest. If my opinion had the force of law, Peter Beinart would be thrown in jail for being disgusting, and therefore it is right and proper that my opinion does not have the force of law, even though Peter Beinart is indeed disgusting. Nor do the opinions of Colorado Supreme Court justices actually have the force of law. You know what has the force of law? Law. You don’t get to change American history by robed diktat. Trump has not been found guilty of a crime that could trigger the enforcement imagined by the Colorado Supreme Court. Its action is the action of a totalitarian sensibility that says “our will be done.”
Even better, or worse, these four leftist hacks/shills/dopes on the Colorado Supreme Court who believe themselves to be protecting the country by doing something illegal, antinomian, and deserving of lobotomization are only going to help Trump get reelected. Therefore, reason holds they should be impeached themselves on the sensible grounds that they are too goddam stupid to be in the positions they hold.
The decision is stayed pending an appeal to the United States Supreme Court. If SCOTUS lets this stand, we will spend 2024 with Democrats going state by state literally trying to fix the election unambiguously using an argument at least half the country will consider not only illegitimate, but possibly worth fighting in literal terms. January 6th will look like a child’s birthday party in comparison. Let us assume, then, SCOTUS does therefore slap this down on the very reasonable grounds that WHAT ARE YOU PEOPLE CRAZY, and that this will be a footnote in American history.
The thing is, these people are crazy, and there are a whole lot of them. They are making up stuff out of whole cloth, with support from ludicrous pronouncements by conservative legal thinkers who have proved they can be just as drool-producing and IQ-point-dropping as the liberal-leftists who hate Trump.
They’re all bonkers. Yes, Trump made them so. And that is his demonic gift, because stunts like this are going to make him president again. And then he will pardon himself. And then he will go after them, because he’s nuts. This is all going to be just great. Thanks, people who are trying to save our democratic republic!
