Today the Secretary of State for the state of Maine removed Trump from the 2024 ballot. Maine’s state official joins Colorado's Supreme Court in ruling that Trump should not be on the ballot, because of the 14ᵗʰ amendment’s prohibition that disallows insurrectionists from running for or holding federal office. I am conflicted about this. Not about whether Trump is an insurrectionist, in my mind he clearly is, but rather is the amendment self-executing or not. Add the political imperative that democracies defeat candidates at the ballet box, not in the courts, and I fear my county is on the road to civil violence in 2024. It could get very bad, and the repercussions could resonate for generations. This while the world is on tenterhooks, waiting to explode from China to Russia to Israel and Iran to Ukraine. A prescription for a worldwide conflagration.
As I write this, eating breakfast in a restaurant, two women are seated near me. Apparently, their flights were canceled, and they are guests of the hotel just biding time. Aunt Jeanne would call them “poodles”, because of their hair styles and color. That is what she called her mom and her mom’s two sisters with their early 1960’s hair style and bluish tint. One lady, my best guess is she in her seventies, and one even older, talk about Trump as " . . . not a very nice man, but I'll vote for him, because he speaks his mind." Their basic argument is that he is a straight talker unlike all other politicians. Geez. We could be in for trouble.
If SCOTUS rules that he is immune from his actions, taken on behalf of his campaign, then we will have created an elected Monarch not a President. The presidency would be elevated to a position above the law and the occupant would not be obligated to follow the civic standards incumbent on all of her other citizens. If that comes to pass - I will lose the love I have for my county. A country that I have actively loved, serving in her military, her government, and in her civil life in business and in my local community. Hard for me to admit, as a sixty-eight-year-old New England man, that I may have fallen out of love with my republic. My extended family fought in all her major wars, on both familial sides, beginning with the French and Indian war that ended in 1763 which opened the land around here to be settled. Colchester was incorporated in 1763 before the concept of Vermont even existed.
My loyalty is to the constitution. It declares to the world that no man or no woman is above the law. I took an oath of fealty to the US constitution twice in my lifetime; and I still feel honor bound by that sworn promise . . . even in the sunset of my life.
