(LifeSiteNews) — With Colorado and Maine now seeking to remove former President Donald Trump from the ballot, the question arises: What strange magic destroys democracy to defend it?
The answer lies with bipartisan legal activists, whose actions are replacing the rule of law with the rule of lawyers. Parties and public servants of the old left and right are conspiring to ban the most popular presidential candidate from standing for election.
This is a process which has no hope of surviving contact with the U.S. Supreme Court. It is legally doomed, and is enacted for reasons more reminiscent of diabolism than of democracy. Its story is that of a decline in the prestige of the United States, whose legal system is disgraced by its misuse in the staging of a curse – against a champion of the people.
News emerged in December that the many other cases of lawfare against Trump would be delayed by the involvement of the Supreme Court. In a grand irony, it is now claimed that this latest bid to legally hamper Trump will in fact help to free him from the courtroom – allowing him to spend more time campaigning – as it too is referred to the Supreme Court.
So where did this latest – and seemingly futile – attempt to Stop Trump through lawfare come from?
Case history
The Supreme Court of Colorado voted 4-3 in favor of removing Donald Trump from any and all voting papers on December 19.
The ruling means that Trump’s name will be forbidden from appearing on the Republican primary ballot in the state – as well as removing him from the presidential election of 2024. The ruling was opposed by Chief Justice Brian D. Boatright, who voted against it. CNN reported him as saying:
In the absence of an insurrection-related conviction, I would hold that a request to disqualify a candidate under Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment is not a proper cause of action under Colorado’s election code.
Therefore, I would dismiss the claim at issue here.
In short, Trump has not been convicted of “insurrection,” and so the charge is groundless. This is therefore an instance of name-calling. Who first called Trump these names? The CNN report tells us:
A group of Republican and independent voters filed the lawsuit, in coordination with a liberal government watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
Yet Colorado’s court – backed by its sensible bipartisan mob – was not the only one to say “yah boo” to the Bad Orange Man.
ACLU: Anti-Civil Liberties Union?
The state of Maine made a similar ruling, but not by a court of seven. This was done by Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, who considers herself qualified to decide on what democracy is and is not (on behalf of everyone else).
A pro-abortion campaigner, Bellows spent eight years working for the ACLU – a rights group notorious for its zealous attachment of verbal slurs to any cause or individual opposed to the liberal agenda.
So how did Bellows reach this decision? It was suggested to her by another concerned group. This time it was “former Maine lawmakers” – who all happen to despise Donald Trump. As Reuters reported on December 29:
The decision came after [the group] said that Trump should be disqualified based on a provision of the U.S. Constitution that bars people from holding office if they engaged in ‘insurrection or rebellion’ after previously swearing an oath to the United States.
These regime loyalists celebrated Bellow’s brave intervention to prevent people voting for the leading presidential candidate:
The former lawmakers – Kimberley Rosen, Thomas Saviello and Ethan Strimling – said in a statement that Bellows ‘stood on the side of democracy and our constitution in her decision to bar former President Donald Trump from Maine’s ballot.’
So who are these dutiful saviors of democracy?
Rosen and Saviello are both former Republican state senators. Strimling is a former Democratic state senator.
Nothing unites the uniparty like the threat of genuine change.
The ruling in Maine: one woman, no vote
Following the seizure of her mind with Trump Derangement Syndrome, Bellows issued her ruling on Thursday, December 28, in which she said:
I do not reach this conclusion lightly. Democracy is sacred … I am mindful that no Secretary of State has ever deprived a presidential candidate of ballot access based on Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment.
She continued (in her most serious voice):
I am also mindful, however, that no presidential candidate has ever before engaged in insurrection.
The self-regarding drama aside, Bellows’ phrasing asserts her own belief as a fact: that Donald Trump is guilty of insurrection. Has Trump been convicted outside the minds of people like her? No. Bellows did not, of course, invent the grounds for this narrative with her friends. She simply listened to other voices – this time from outside her head.
Those voices belonged to two lawyers, whose work to frame Trump as the enemy of the people who love him began last summer.
On shaky legal grounds
The grounds for removing Trump from the ballot are provided in theory by Section Three of the 14th Amendment, which bars “insurrectionists” from standing for public office. Intended originally to prevent subversion after the Civil War, this section has become a totem for regime loyalists of right and left, united in their mission to Stop Trump.
How did this obscure section of the U.S. Constitution come to inspire this latest act of anti-Trump lawfare?
In August 2023 the Pennsylvania Law Review published an article titled “The Sweep and Force of Section Three.”
In it, two activist lawyers made a dramatic case. They claimed the section was not limited in application to former Confederate loyalists – whose rebellious allegiance disbarred them from public office – but instead extended to the present day.
William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen breathlessly claimed that a text written to prevent Confederate rebels from gaining power actually meant that former President Donald Trump should be immediately and permanently disqualified from running for office.
What is more, they claimed this means he deserves no due process and even loses his constitutional rights, including those of free speech under the First Amendment.
It is the work of these two men which led to the futile attempts to bar Trump from the ballot – neither of which have yet taken legal effect. They most likely never will, as the authors of this political pantomime piece almost certainly know.
The point is the pointed finger, not the lies behind it. To like-minded people, being called the right names is everything. Being called the nasty ones reduces you to nothing. This is the belief system which inspires stunts like these. That, along with spite – and the fear of being found out as a corrupt and conniving fraud.
Name-calling
Most commentators agree that the measures in Maine and in Colorado will fail, and are expected to be overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court.
What is more, Donald Trump has risen in the polls on every occasion he has suffered personal attacks from the corrupt establishment.
Why do it, then? The point of this political theater is to name – and boo – the designated villain. Trump’s enemies in the liberal establishment are people who rely on the power of words to shape reality.
One way in which this is done is to label their enemies as racists, bigots, anti-Semites, or even “insurrectionists.” If you believe in word magic, simply saying things are so is enough to make them so.
By the same process, men become women and homosexuals are “married,” whilst Russia loses a war it has clearly won, and Ukraine (which has suspended elections and banned the opposition) is fighting for democracy.
The purpose of this exercise is to equate “Donald Trump” with “Enemy of Democracy” in the popular imagination – and thereby destroy him.
Stuck in the mud-slinging
When the liberals call you nasty names, they then call you this name to remove your rights. In Trump’s case, being an “insurrectionist” means he is automatically disqualified from politics without appeal.
Hey presto! Calling Trump this name makes his career prospects vanish, just as being labelled a “racist,” a “transphobe” or an “anti-Semite” can dissolve the lives of anyone else. You – for instance.
This is an example of word magic – sorcery – in which people are literally and intentionally cursed to become untouchable. The attachment of the Nasty Name designates them as now being less than human. They can – and should – be mistreated, and denied even the most basic rights. This is a power which is at once entirely superstitious and devastatingly real – as long as enough people believe in its power.
Ultimately this is the weakness of the Nasty Name juju. It relies on belief, as does the power of the regime generally. It is not Trump who is undermining popular belief in the word magic of the ruling ideology, however. It is the collision with reality.
Presented with a godless administration mired in permanent war corruption, which has applauded the larcenous Black Lives Matter movement and sparked crisis after crisis in foreign affairs, the American people are painfully aware of the policies and politicians which are destroying their democracy and their economy, along with their way of life.
The sorcery of slurs is invoked to defend a regime which refuses to secure the border, cannot keep open the seaways, and is unwilling or unable to stop a massacre in Gaza which threatens to spark another major war.
It will not Stop Trump, but it will do much to discredit the rule of lawyers. This tactic has been used to corrupt the rule of law by people whose fear of vengeance is so great they must strike first. It is a desperate bid to speak truth into powerlessness. As it fails, expect more desperate curses from this exhausted regime. Nothing they say now will help them.