Good Germans

the road to hell is paved with self-hypnosis

Donald Trump can’t become the President of the United States again, because the Constitution forbids it. And it’s automatic, so there’s no use arguing. To prevent authoritarianism, secure the sanctity of American elections, and protect Our Democracy™, you are to receive a ballot that only allows you to elect a Democrat to the presidency.

You may have seen this headline in the New York Times:

Here’s the prize in that box of Cracker Jacks, a discussion of the section of the post-Civil War 14th Amendment that forbids anyone who “shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion” from holding elected office again:

“Section 3’s disqualification rule may and must be followed — applied, honored, obeyed, enforced, carried out — by anyone whose job it is to figure out whether someone is legally qualified to office,” the authors wrote. That includes election administrators, the article said.

Professor Calabresi said those administrators must act. “Trump is ineligible to be on the ballot, and each of the 50 state secretaries of state has an obligation to print ballots without his name on them,” he said, adding that they may be sued for refusing to do so.

The states have an obligation to print ballots without the likely Republican nominee on them, because of the Constitution. Know that the New York Times is not twisting or stretching this paper — this is what it says, at length and very explicitly. You can read the abstract and download the whole paper here, or just click on the PDF file below:

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The “conservative” law professors, Michael Paulsen and William Baude, omit one critical topic from their 126-page paper. They do mean to prevent the American people from electing Donald Trump to the presidency, even if the American electorate chooses to do so, and they’re extremely explicit about it (citations omitted):

Importantly, it is also wrong to shrink from applying Section Three on grounds of “democracy,” whether on the premise that Section Three should be ignored or narrowly construed because it limits who voters may choose, or on the premise that only the voters should enforce Section Three. It is true, as we have said, that limiting democratic choice is not something to be done lightly, but it is something the Constitution does, and for serious reasons. The Constitution cannot be overruled or disregarded by ordinary election results. (And we note that there is particular irony in invoking democracy to shrink from applying Section Three to the insurrectionists of 2020-2021, who refused to abide by election results and instead sought to overthrow them.)

It is, of course, also ironic to end democratic choice and implement de facto single-party rule in the name of punishing someone for questioning the results of an election, but the one detail they leave out is how it will work. Americans receive a ballot that says “Joe Biden,” or “Gavin Newsom,” with a box next to it that they can mark or not mark; 75 or 80 million Americans who wish to vote for Donald Trump can’t, having only a single major-party candidate they’re permitted to select, the one from the party already in power¹; Biden is re-elected, or Newsom is elected, in what amounts to a version of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein-era presidential referendums; and then….? Tens of millions of disfranchised Americans shrug, accept single-party rule, and have nothing more to say about it? A single-party-rule federal government remains legitimate, and retains its authority? “I will obey the government I am not allowed a role in choosing.”

Once again, the people protecting us from Trump’s authoritarianism are hurtling into authoritarian rule downhill and without brakes. We must prevent authoritarianism; for example, prosecutors from the party of the current President of the United States must arrest the leader of the political opposition to prevent him from winning the presidency. We must prevent authoritarianism; for example, the opposition leader must be excluded from ballots, and voters must only be allowed to vote on ballots that only list the presidential candidate from the party that now holds the presidency.

There is no question that authoritarianism is descending on the United States of America, quickly. There is also no question where it’s coming from, as you quickly learn from the current social media musings of the most wonderfully progressive people. Trump must be silenced NOW! Why is the authoritarian being ALLOWED TO SPEAK? Ruth Ben-Ghiat, please call your office.

How have we gotten here?

I’ve mentioned before a looooong essay I wrote, more than ten years ago, about the cottage industry in Barack Obama hagiographies. Obama’s fellatiographers noted, for example, that Obama’s stepfather, Lolo Soetoro, had been ordered back to Indonesia in 1966, and that photos of him from that time show him in the uniform of the Indonesian army. They also mention, with remarkably disingenuous vagueness, that there was maybe some political trouble going on in Indonesia while Obama was there as a child and his stepdad was a soldier.

But what was happening in the mid-1960s in Indonesia is that the Indonesian Communist Party tried to restructure Sukarno’s careful balancing of competing forces in the new country with the kidnapping and killing of a group of right-wing flag officers by leftist soldiers, beheading conservative military power — after which the military responded with the wholesale killing of hundreds of thousands of communists, often with machetes and with a serious commitment to doing the job as grimly as possible: bodies in rivers, heads on pikes, slow killing in front of mass graves. Here’s my last paragraph from that section on the Obama biographies:

And the lesson? Indonesia was where “Ann was Barry’s teacher in high-minded matters—liberal, humanist values,” Remnick concludes. It’s where she taught him the values of “honesty, hard work, and fulfilling one’s duty to others,” where she lectured him about “a sense of obligation to give something back,” Scott adds. It’s where she “worked to instill ideas about public service in her son.” Because Indonesia in the late sixties was the perfect place and time to learn about liberal humanist values and public service.

Barack Obama was a Democrat who attained the presidency, which means that journalists knew he had to be a sainted figure, and he was the first black president, which means that journalists knew he had to be brilliant and extraordinary. So they assembled the threads of his story — Barack Obama went to Indonesia in 1966 with his stepfather, a soldier, during a long period of extraordinarily brutal political retribution by the Indonesian army — and then, pro forma, wove those threads into the foundation of “liberal, humanistic values.”

If Barack Obama had spent his childhood torturing kittens to death and eating their eyeballs in front of a sobbing crowd of kitten-loving toddlers, the Obama biographies would have said that Barack Obama spent his childhood torturing kittens to death and eating their eyeballs in front of a sobbing crowd of kitten-loving toddlers, a heartwarming experience that taught him the value of democratic pluralism and fundamental human decency. The story was written before anyone began working on it: Barack Obama [experience TBD] and [experience TBD], the formative experiences that made him the kind and wonderful genius he is today.

See also this recent discussion with David Garrow, a historian who has written a new (corrected: published a post-Obama-presidency) biography — and who found, as he researched his subject, that he was often looking at evidence no one had ever pursued before. The hagiographers of the Obama presidency-era weren’t looking for evidence; they already knew the story they meant to write. They came up with some evidence-simulating objects for form’s sake, to assemble their liturgy in the apparent form of biography. Their “Barack Obama” was never Barack Obama.

Their “Donald Trump” is not, now, Donald Trump. There’s a formula; they apply it. There’s a narrative to be written. Donald Trump said he would repeal two federal regulations for every new regulation he implemented — textbook authoritarianism! Donald Trump said that America has fought a bunch of “dumb wars,” and should be much more careful about foreign military involvement — JUST LIKE ADOLF HITLER!!!!!!

It’s beside the point to note that the conclusions never matched the evidence. They were never meant to.

This is crazymaking behavior. Constantly spinning narratives that have nothing to do with anything in the actual, physical world is a recipe for a psychotic break. And we have multiple layers of institutional actors who cosplay “elite” — in media, in academia, in government, and in corporations — who’ve been playing with their shadow puppets for so long that they’ve forgotten they’re shadow puppets. They believe themselves.

That’s how you get to we need a single-party ballot to prevent authoritarianism and we have to arrest the opposition leader to prevent authoritarianism. It’s socially distributed insanity, a real descent into the world of false symbols. And it’s becoming incredibly dangerous.

1. The presence of politically untenable third-party candidates on the ballot doesn’t change the functional meaninglessness of the choice, however much it’s used as a fig leaf; the Peace and Freedom Party is not going to provide our next president.