Douglass speaks urgently to our crisis. "It was an honest president backed up by ... people ... who regarded society as superior to its forms... They resolved to save the country with the Constitution if they could, but at any rate to save the country. To this we owe our present safety as a nation."
After the Court’s decision yesterday, I think there’s an argument from necessity for Biden seizing Trump and trying him by military tribunal, given the sudden unavailability of Article III courts. Plus, itʼs just the sort of thing they’ve authorized an active and energetic chief executive to do.
It makes me uncomfortable that this is the same logic used by the Christian Nationalists. I don't know what to do with that, or how I feel about it. Maybe I'm mad they're forcing a crisis on us, that this would be necessary at all.
It's a paradox that serves the reactionaries. MAGAists view society as friends to be supported & enemies to be crushed. Liberals do not. We believe in pluralism. But the MAGA anti-institutional, friend-enemy move induces a response in us. We have to see them as the enemies they've made themselves.
The example was deliberately chosen. Once the time for debate and diplomacy was past, we went to war, and didn’t stop until we had their unconditional surrender. Admitted, the motivation for post-war reconstruction was complicated by the Cold War, but the point remains.
That’s because you’re an institutionalist…and I don’t say that as an insult. Ideally, we’re all institutionalists! Your discomfort is arising from the fact that the institution is breaking down, and that necessitates the discomfort of justifying WHY the institution is valuable, and (ctd)
Ultimately, that requires getting back to first principles…and since first principles are necessarily unjustifiable beyond “this is what I think,” it feels at first blush that you’re in the same situation as Christian Nationalists, making stuff up to justify things being the way you want them to be.
At some point, as the systems break down, we’re all going to be confronted with “why do you believe the things you do?” and we need to be able to be confident in our moral position. Personally, the fact that my position aims for the ability of all people to fulfill (ctd)
themselves in their own way, consonant with not harming others, gives me confidence that I’m in a better moral position than those spouting “only those who agree with us and accept being bound by our restrictive set of codes are worthy of participating in governance”.
This, and/but I'm also waiting for the draft amendment to the Constitution that explicitly allows for the prosecution of any federal office-holder after leaving office.
