Texas, besides having refused to expand healthcare coverage via the Affordable Care Act for low-income residents, and currently is the lead plaintiff in the bid to kill the law in the U.S. Supreme Court, is once again “leading the way” in demonstrating that the power-mad arrogance and divisiveness of Republicans pose a greater threat to this country’s institutions and the well-being of its people than any conspiracy theory that any far-right crackpot can concoct. Today Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a last-ditch lawsuit in the U.S. Supreme Court—no doubt at the behest of Donald Trump—to stop the electors from casting votes in four states won by Biden, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Paxton—as others have—claims that there were “unconstitutional” changes in state voting laws in responding to the pandemic, which in his opinion was a “failure to abide by the rule of law” which “casts a dark shadow of doubt over the outcome of the entire election.” Of course the only room for “doubt” after Biden won by more than 7 million votes over Trump—a 4.5 percent margin—is to be found in the empty headspace of hyper-partisan fanatics who can’t face reality, which seems to be most Trump supporters.
Those who voted against Trump have reason to be uncomprehending how anyone can view Trump and his rhetoric and actions as anything but proof of psychological instability of a very dangerous kind. In a USA Today op-ed, Dr. Kenneth Paul Rosenberg and Norman Ornstein suggested that Trump’s behavior since the election “suggest irrational exuberance and lack of control, possibly a sign of a mood disorder called hypomania. His life-long history of disregard for others and deceit, if correct as reported, are characteristic of a personality disorder on the narcissistic and even sociopathic spectrum.”
To many, that may be too kind in evaluating Trump’s “condition.” Trump’s niece, Mary Trump, said in an Associated Press interview recently that his current state is “criminal, cruel and traitorous” and that “If anybody deserves to be prosecuted and tried, it’s Donald. (Otherwise) we just leave ourselves open to somebody who, believe it or not, is even worse than he is.”
Maybe some of those people are what the Global Post’s Stephen Lyon called “wannabe stormtroopers," and who MSNBC’s Steve Schmidt referred to as “Camo-clad paramilitary fetishists festooned in tactical gear and carrying assault rifles storming our state capitols while ‘protesting’ is obscene. It is an assault on the sanctity of representative democracy and our American system.” We have seen this most plainly in Michigan, when armed thugs briefly occupied the state capitol building, and more recently when armed pro-Trump thugs gathered in front of Michigan's Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s home "shouting obscenities and chanting into bullhorns in the dark of night."
Protesting from the left has died down considerably since the election; in Seattle the “black bloc” guys are in hibernation. This no doubt indicates that Trump was seen as an obstacle to peace and justice, and now that he presumably will soon be gone, at least one point of all the protesting has been accomplished. But what will happen if Trump and his minions somehow prevail in overturning the election results—essentially doing what Trump supporters have been claiming, that the election was “stolen”? In fact the real “theft” will have occurred if Trump somehow is not ousted by January 20. People thought that six months of protesting was too much? If Trump steals the election, or is allowed to, I don’t think anyone will be prepared for the kind of “protesting” that happens next.
For the armed pro-Trump “opposition,” it isn’t enough to hear opinions such as that by conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Brian Hagedorn, who voted with the three liberal justices in a surprisingly close 4-3 decision to throw out the latest attempts by Trump surrogates. Hagedorn, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, “expressed alarm at the group's request to throw out nearly 3.3 million votes, calling it a ‘real stunner.’ We are invited to invalidate the entire presidential election in Wisconsin by declaring it ‘null’ — yes, the whole thing. This is a dangerous path we are being asked to tread. The loss of public trust in our constitutional order resulting from the exercise of this kind of judicial power would be incalculable."
Yet the state Supreme Court’s ancient dinosaur of a far-right Chief Justice, Patience Roggensack, insisted that there is possible “fraud,” and appointed an “independent” retired judge to rule on yet more outlandish conspiracy claims before the Electoral College meets on Monday. One thing that no one ever points out is that the question of whether election rule changes due to the pandemic were against state laws or not is a moot question, especially in states which had Republican-controlled legislatures; they allowed the rules, and Republican voters also took advantage of the changes. Voters who simply did what they were allowed to did not do anything illegal—and they should not have their vote taken away just because Trump doesn’t like the result.
Can we expect the adults in the room in the U.S. Supreme Court to end this attack on democracy? Chief Justice John Roberts no doubt has no stomach for this, but Trump tweeted that he fully expects Justice Amy Coney Barrett to vote “right.” But today the court rejected a request to throw out 2.5 million mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania, so it seems unlikely that the Texas lawsuit will get a better hearing. The end may finally be in sight as far as the election is concerned, but given Trump’s vindictive, destructive and sociopathic nature, the Trump “era” is far from over—and if he can’t accept “defeat,” we can expect tens of millions of people to take to the streets to get his and his Republican allies minds straight.
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