You don’t have to like Trump, and I don’t, to recognize that a state Supreme Court declaring that the front-runner by a huge margin for the Republican nomination will not be allowed to appear on the primary ballot in Colorado is an ominous escalation in what my readers already knew for a long time: we no longer live in a republic where the people have even the pretense of a say in their own governance. In an unassailable two party political system, if one of those parties isn’t allowed to play? The last vestige of living in a free country evaporates.
The Colorado Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that former President Donald Trump is ineligible to appear on the state’s primary ballot.
The extraordinary 4-3 ruling makes Colorado the first and only state to disqualify President Trump from appearing on a state primary ballot. The decision revolved around an interpretation of the 14th Amendment, which bars certain individuals from public office if they have engaged in an “insurrection.”….
….”We conclude that because President Trump is disqualified from holding the office of President under Section Three, it would be a wrongful act under the Election Code for the Secretary to list President Trump as a candidate on the presidential primary ballot,” reads the majority opinion.
“Therefore, the Secretary may not list President Trump’s name on the 2024 presidential primary ballot, nor may she count any write-in votes cast for him,” the order added, as Colorado state law does not permit write-in votes to be counted for ineligible candidates.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/colorado-disqualifies-trump-from-appearing-on-primary-ballot-5547236
That Trump has not been found guilt of “insurrection” seems irrelevant. The “Justices” of the Colorado Supreme Court have declared him guilty of a crime that he has not been actually charged with….
Not only can he not appear on the ballot but apparently the Secretary of State is barred by the ruling from counting write-in ballots for Trump. This is being done in the name of preserving democracy, where democracy means you can vote all you like but you may only vote for the candidates your betters permit you to vote for. Saying you are a champion of “democracy” doesn’t mean anything. North Korea is officially the DPRK, or Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, but it is a “hereditary dictatorship” where the only person you really can vote for is the dictator that is the son of the prior dictator.
Lots of people are writing about this and better than I will and I also assume the Supreme Court will step in to stop this, so I want to instead think about the broader ramifications of the ruling. There is a concerted “lawfare” effort to deny Donald Trump the Presidency and it circumvents the electoral process entirely. This is not happening in a vacuum, instead it is a part of a broader effort that has been going on for 150 years to bring to heel the pesky American people with their inconvenient tendency to think for themselves and respond violently to being told what to do.
There is an old saying that claims there are four boxes that form the foundation of liberty: the soap box, the ballot box, the jury box and the cartridge box and that we ought to “use them in that order”.
The soap box represents free speech, the freedom of assembly and the right to petition the government. This is enshrined as the very first of the amendments to the Constitution in the Bill of Rights:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
In other words we can get up on a soap box and tell the President he is an asshole. The Federal government cannot interfere with peaceful gatherings nor may it attempt to control the press. Nor can the Federal government tell you how or who to worship, or even that you must worship at all. Free and open political discourse via the “soap box” is critical to our representative form of democracy.
The soap box is being systematically undermined, via blatantly unconstitutional “hate speech” laws, censorship in the academy and often via a public-private partnership such as what we saw in 2020 when social media companies were working hand-in-glove to promote some speech while suppressing or even banning other political speech.
Immediately following the soap box is the ballot box, or the right to vote to elect people to represent us, as we live in a republic rather than a true democracy. It is an article of faith that the American people vote for the President and Congress, often electing idiots and scoundrels along with a few truly evil people, but we voted for them. The United States was supposed to be the great experiment where our leaders were elected rather than being hereditary, said to govern by the will of the people rather than by divine right.
Many normies began to discover in 2020 that the right to vote is a farce and many people are realizing that it has been for a long time. To paraphrase the quote attributed to Joseph Stalin , it doesn’t matter who casts the votes, it only matters who counts the votes. Or as others have said, if voting mattered they wouldn’t let us do it. If Colorado succeeds, it will be the most blatant move yet to show the peasants that we only get to vote for who They let us vote for and therefore the sacred ballot box is rendered meaningless.
When the system isn’t working the way it should or some injustice is committed, we are promised the right to seek justice via the jury box. Americans are supposed to “have their day in court” where we make our case to an impartial jury in public, not via some secret tribunal. If someone accuses you, you have a right to face that accuser in an open court. This is preserved in the Sixth Amendment….
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.
A significant percent of the Bill of Rights focuses on your legal rights, the Fourth deals with things like how your property and person can be searched, the Fifth with indictments via a Grand Jury, the Seventh with civil suits and the Eighth with appropriate bail, fines and punishment for crimes. Clearly the Founders realized that preserving the rights of the people was critical to balance against the necessity of legal actions. In a free society the burden is on the state to prove your guilt and it has always been understood that this means that sometimes the guilty will go free in order to ensure that the innocent are not jailed.
That started to go out the window in 1992 when the officers involved in the Rodney King traffic stop and arrest were acquitted of the charges against them, sparking riots in Los Angeles, but then quickly were indicted for Federal charges of “violating his civil rights”, an intentionally broad and vague term that can mean almost anything when a black is a “victim” and mean absolutely nothing when the victim is White.
It has only gotten worse since then, with political prisoners like James Fields, Derek Chauvin, Greg and Travis McMichael and William “Roddie” Bryan among others being incarcerated for various bullshit “crimes” in order to stave off black rioting. Meanwhile others are given the proverbial slap on the wrist for committing actual crimes. The last vestiges of the notion that the justice system was a final bulwark against government abuse went out the window with the ongoing detention and torture of political prisoners in an America gulag for the “crime” of unauthorized tourism on January 6th. The decision by the Colorado Supreme Court to disenfranchise Republican voters in Colorado is just the most wanton example but it certainly won’t be the last as many states are attempting to disenfranchise voters as well.
That leaves us with only one box to fall back on, the cartridge box, representing the use of violence as a last resort and when all else fails. It harkens back to the Declaration of Independence. After a lengthy listing of more than two dozen grievances against King George III we read:
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
The language of the First Amendment, “…to petition the Government for a redress of grievances”, echoes these words and our situation today is similar. Having been systematically stripped of our right to free speech via the soap box, of our right to choose our own leaders via the ballot box and of the right to fair and impartial trials to right the wrongs against us in the jury box, we are left only with the fourth box: the cartridge box. If the peaceable means to assert our rights are taken away, we must take the harder road. The only question is when.
We all realize that for most of us things aren’t personally severe enough yet to step over the line and the costs to doing so are greater than we are willing to take on. Posts like this invariably attract anonymous internet tough guys who rail against others for not “doing something” when those same anonymous internet tough guys are also not doing anything. At least in my case I am saying what needs to be said, and doing so openly and under my own name, knowing that it not only has closed off many vocational opportunities but also puts me at real risk. I don’t claim that makes me especially courageous, but it does give me a place to tell the anonymous internet tough guys to put up or shut the fuck up.
The time is growing closer with each new attack like the Colorado decision and we can all look at a calendar and see that 2024 is just over two weeks away. The Iowa caucuses are 26 days from now, and the New Hampshire primary is just 8 days after that. Your vote is meaningless but what They will do to prevent Orange Man Bad from slipping back into office quite likely will impact you even if you are sitting out this election. That means being prepared now, physically and mentally, for what you might have to do.
This isn’t the path most of us wanted. Had They simply been content to leave us alone, we could have lived our lives in obscurity and peace, but that isn’t how They work. With all other peaceable avenues closed off to us, there is only one path forward and I sense we are standing just shy of the first step that will inexorably lead to settling this thing that has been festering for over a century, once and for all.
Yet in the same breath the court stayed their own ruling until the US Supreme Court has a ruling on it… another virtue signaling nothing burger. Conservative Treehouse has a post on it…
Yes…so purely symbolic..And the reasoning is a joke..Trump has never been an “officer” of the Government…that term only applies to appointed officials, not elected ones..Four democrat judges making fools of themselves in public….
Some of that is a bit sketchy. The real injustice however is the clear violation of the 5th Amendment. Trump is having rights taken away due to a crime he’s never been convicted of, or even charged with.
It is somewhat common for them to do stuff like this as a trail balloon, knowing it might not work immediately but setting the stage for a more permanent measure later.
Speaking of lawfare, Arthur, have you seen what’s being done to VDare by the same New York AG that’s going after Trump/the NRA?
They’re even trying to force them to release the real names of their writers and donors–to AG James’ leaky-as-a-sieve office. It’s crazy.
I did see that, my name is on the donor list to VDare but I don’t much care as my boss, me, approves of my blog.
Curiously the J6 protestors are not being charged with insurrection (except by MSM), only with impeding an official proceeding.
“Anyway, hundreds of peaceful Capitol protestors have been convicted by D.C. juries under 18 U.S. § 1512(c)(2), a law passed in 2002 after the infamous document shredding story fell out of the Enron case. The law provides up to 20 years in prison for illegally destroying evidence or — and this is the tricky bit — when someone “corruptly … obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so.””
https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/corrupt-obstruction-thursday-december
That law’s use against J6 participants is also on review in the US Supreme Court…
That it has taken this long for it to hit the court is a travesty, those people are being held in a gulag.
Being a cynic, I don’t look at this as anything other than kayfabe. I don’t think Trump is just part of the dialectic designed to impose the desired synthesis. He is constantly holding rallies (which make him money, by the way), saying he is going to do this or that when he is re-elected. But, he said the same things in 2016 and what did he accomplish? Apologists say, “Oh, he was stymied by obstructionists in the Federal government that defied his orders!” But, what they don’t acknowledge is that he was the titular head of the Executive Branch and could have removed those obstructionists. And didn’t. He constantly put Swamp Creatures in the bureaucracy. You must understand that the United States governments (Fed, State and local) have been bankrupt for years. The borrower is servant to the lender. This country has been bought and paid for with fiat currency. The lenders own the government and are not going to let anyone in that could upset their monopoly. Trump is just the “face” for his followers and the “heel” for the Left. “Keep your eyes on what’s happening in the ring, rube, so we can siphon off everything you own. You will own nothing and be happy. Do you want some watered down ketchup with those bugs?”
Trump’s main achievement was refusing to go to war against Iran or Russia, which was huge…That’s why DC scum hate him so much…
Not to be argumentative, but they already “hated” him from day one, before his term was over, which would be the only measurement of “refusing to go to war”. And he did find a “war” he wanted to participate in…..Operation Warp Speed. Which he still claims as one of his “contributions”.
Look, “they” don’t hate Trump. He just serves the Emmanuel Goldstein role for the Left. Have you seen the picture of Clinton, Bush, and Obama together? The one where they are all grinning like a Cheshire Cat? That’s how much they hate Trump. They are just are performing kabuki theater to keep the masses ginned up and divided.
Exactly.
Trump was a good guy, then the narrative needed a bad guy so he did a ‘heel turn’ as they call it in pro wrestling. Just like they did with Bush2, who was atheist Satan in his day. Then a few years after he was out of office he became “an elder statesmen” for saying pro-lefty shit.
They don’t really hate Trump, They hate the people that voted for Trump. He is a talisman that represents the White middle and working class.
“But, what they don’t acknowledge is that he was the titular head of the Executive Branch and could have removed those obstructionists. ”
I disagree. I don’t think the Presidency has the unilateral power people think it does. The president may issue an executive order, but it is a huge administrative state, a literal 4th branch of government, that enforced said executive orders. If this administrative state doesn’t play ball, it doesn’t matter what the president executive orders a president signs off on. Recall that piece of shit obese traitor General Miley calling China saying if Trump ordered a strike on China, he (Miley) would give them notice.
MAGA normie is what he is because he still thinks there are options. Trump is but a final hail Mary representation/manifestation of those options.
The Court will run cover for the administrative state.
Trump is going to fail. The administrative state is a cancer that has grown for years and endorsed with the SCOTUS Chevron decision. There is no way he is going to remove the deep state in 4 years. The deep state will fight back.
But cancer usually runs it course until the host dies killing the cancer too.
The Gay American Empire is dying in real time.
Well, he actually is the head of the Executive Branch which is in charge of the military. What apologists for Trump don’t acknowledge is that as a billionaire businessman, he had his own intelligence gathering operatives. He should have been aware of Miley’s treason. The fact that he either wasn’t or didn’t do anything about it should make anyone question his rhetoric about draining the swamp. Plus, as he was head of the Executive Branch, he was also in charge of Executive Orders, with all the power inherent in them. So, if his Executive Orders weren’t being enforced, he should have known it. Are you saying he didn’t? If so, how good a businessman was he really? And if he had gone down swinging, it would have been better than going down without doing anything. Which is what he did. Acknowledging that “Trump is going to fail” acknowledges that he already failed the first time around, so voting for him is just mental masturbation to keep the normies and grillers happy and avoid admitting that there’s nothing they can do about anything.
The officers in the US military serve at “the pleasure of the President” and can be fired by the President, just as President Harry S Truman did to General Douglas MacArthur during the Korean War. And Presidential appointees can be fired by the President in like manner. Trump did none of this, citing fear of impeachment – and that didn’t stop him from being impeached, twice. He was good at announcing policy, but unwilling to enforce it, even though he had the power to do so. He has conned the American people into believing that he is strong, even though he proved to be weaker than Biden – and thus he is unfit for the office.
PS – it’s not up to the courts to decide who shall run in a primary election, that’s up to the political party whose primary it is
Colorado’s GOP is already talking about switching to a caucus, the whole thing is a fiasco.
Should have been, “I think Trump is just part of the dialectic……”
Excellent piece.
Thanks!
Commierado tried to do the same back in 2016.
They want SCROTUS and comrade commissar Roberts (CCP) to get the Emmanuel Trumpstein case for two minutes of hate?
Let all the delusions fade away until even the last normie sportsball griller figures it out.
A great sorting is underway.
Watched an interesting viddy stating that the FUSA has always been a crown colony of perfidious Albion and the “Empire of the City” axis of EVIL…London (finance), Rome (spirit), District of Criminals (military).
Long live the Peoples Democratic Republic of the Western Hemisphere!
No one should trust Roberts any father than they could throw Lizzo.
Excellent article Arthur!
This is throwing shit at the wall everywhere and seeing what sticks. If all attempts to keep Trump out of the White House fail, the Democrats will point to decisions by the “conservative partisan SCOTUS” and consider him an illegitimate President.
That all of this will widen the split in the country, regardless of whether it is ultimately successful or not, they care not one whit. Destruction of the US, whether politically or economically, serves the interests of globohomo just as well. They are willing to see it fall, if they get to own what’s left. What we have to accept is that the collapse is baked into the cake now, the only question is whether political collapse comes before economic disaster or the other way around.
The problem with flipping the table is those pesky unintended consequences. They look numerous and large to me and what keeps me up at night is how they figure to control them.
Collapse seems unlikely.
The Left has been engineering a slide downward as a way to gain total control. This is mostly intentional. Living standards will plummet, some groups of angry people will kill other groups of angry people. And in 10-20 years we’ll be living in a new USSR, maybe a few if there is a split at the top.
Unless we organize a region to fight back, but no one wants to do boring stuff like talk to neighbors when fantasizing about Mad Max is so much more fun.
In reality Colorado isn’t even in play for Trump, and he sure doesn’t need Colorado to win the nomination, which is why this seems like a trial run.
Outstanding piece of writing! All of those little Beatniks and Lefty’s of the 50 & 60’s are fully bred idiots. They can explain and complain all they want about fairness, equality, and other lofty ideas but the bottom line-it was always all about them. What they want and how much of it and how deserving that they are. Yes, the cartridge box is about all that is left.
Another well written article. “An Evil Man will burn down his own Country to rule over the Ashes”. Sun Tzu
Maybe the cartridge box will be all that we have left. Maybe not. The thing to watch for is how will this “decision” be received by the MAGA people. There is no doubt in my mind these Marxist rat bastards are ratcheting things up in the hopes that some “White, AR-toting, Christian, conservative, Trumptard” will walk into a school, city council meeting, or other Blue Hive propaganda mill and start wasting people. This is the Rahm Emmanuel-Saul Alinsky playbook written large.
Be of good cheer. SCOTUS will shoot this down. Stay vigilant in your own A/O. STFU. The elephant in the room, which the Leviathan and their lickspittles in the MSM cannot control is the continuing uptick in vaccine deaths and illnesses, and the increasing Tik-Tok mutinies in .mil. Bleib ubrig.
“The thing to watch for is how will this “decision” be received by the MAGA people. ”
IMHO, this is spot on. Unfortunately MAGA normie defines limits of the Overton window for acceptable responses. But I think things are moving along in the right direction regarding what normies will accept. I saw a video of MAGA normies being asked if they were OK with a dictator Trump from day one. They responded with an enthusiastic yes.
But MAGA normies still think there is a ballot box solution. Until he is violently relieved of that mirage, he will still be MAGA normie.
I have to give you an “A” in honesty for this posting. It is not always an easy thing to speak the truth, and often it is harder dealing with the blowback from it, because humanity is basically no damned good. A great many people would rather lie, cheat, steal, and murder, than do what’s right, because it isn’t in them to do what’s right and good. They always covet more, and more, until it eats them up. Current WH resident as an example. I will pray for you, Arthur, your enemies are legion, and they do no give a damn.
“I don’t claim that makes me especially courageous, but it does give me a place to tell the anonymous internet tough guys to put up or shut the fuck up.”
“That means being prepared now, physically and mentally, for what you might have to do.”
These are the two most important points of the many made said in this essay.
As someone guilty of the not putting up part, I try to keep my mouth shut and steel myself for if an opportunity comes when I have to commit unspeakable acts.
“To paraphrase the quote attributed to Joseph Stalin, it doesn’t matter who casts the votes, it only matters who counts the votes.”
That Stalin cliché is overrated. What matters most is
• who has power to organize referendums and elections,
• who has power to write the ballots,
• who has power to choose the electors, and
• who has power to coax designated electors to insert their affirmations of submission into the ballot box.
People who want to knock Trump off the ballot understand instinctively this law of electoral power. Trump’s retarded supporters are still stuck on the buzz term, “We the People”, believing it to be a truthful statement of how things are, or at least as things were when the Con was adopted. Their simplicity is evidence that they deserve to be abused.
Nope.
There is not even a hint of the Peasant Class ever using the last Box option.
I have been watching for nearly 70 years.
Like Government Gold, Ammo is manufactured, bought and then put away in deep dark places….Never to be used.
Also, like Government gold, it has become soooo expensive that we do not want to use it.
Unless you have a Corporate sponsor, It is hard to justify the costs of training and practice for we of limited financial means.
Prove me wrong.
Hi Arthur, saw this piece today on The Tree of Woe. Like Mr Habib (first time I’ve heard of him) I suspect we are “here” (cartridge box). He compiled details that leaves one to say there’s no way back and Shit is right at the cusp of hitting the fan. I also suspect much of what we are seeing over seas has been organized like a game of whack a mole to keep the GAE off balance and humiliated.
You all should make it a point to have a great Christmas this year. It really may be our last in a normal setting.
https://treeofwoe.substack.com/p/the-great-satan-and-the-last-man
I think Habib is far too optimistic. The US isn’t going to collapse or disappear. It might shrink back to its borders, and perhaps split. But as things stand right now, the rulers at the top in the near future will be the same types of evil fucks that are there now.
I have a sinking feeling that is true, there is so much anger and hatred bottled up that it needs an outlet or it will spill over into action.
The Democrats love Lincoln now but kept him off the ballot in ten states 1860. A civil war is a civil war it seems
One of your best.
Long past time to start getting to know like-minded people in our area…
We can’t overemphasize those real world connecitons.
A person had to be kind of dense if he thought they were actually going to give us a chance to vote for the Orange Man in November 2024. But if this Colorado thing is their plan, then frankly I’m disappointed. I expected better. And I still do.
It’s early yet, I still have it about 50/50 that they JFK Orange Man and find some way to blame it on a “right wing extremist”.
I’ve been hoping for them to imprison him or worse for a while. MAGA idiots need to see that the system is broken and no savior will come and free them from it as well as free them from the responsibilities of taking care of things like the founders intended (and actually did). The similar sort of idiots keep ignoring all the other blatant tyrannical shit and hoping to change it through the system and voting again but Trump would be a great martyr figure too.
As for how things go down, I’ve got some book/research suggestions for people:
The Irish.
Bandit Country is a great read for some of the people involved and how things were organized and accomplished. It was very much down to the local level, families, people knowing each other for generations (and those generations fighting). A lot of support from others, even simply not talking to the authorities, much less doing their own intel/logistics aid/etc. The book is related to The Troubles in the 70s so there has been some surveillance changes since then so just keep that in mind and extrapolate.
There are other good reads, first hand accounts from their fight for independence as well.
Alongside that material, find what you can for other events and organizations in later times/modern times, like the insurgency in Iraq/Afghanistan. Reading how the US did things is good too for the other perspective and how they acted against such groups.
As for “we must need a region/states/etc” that is the same sort of dependence on an organization or leadership as looking for Trump/DeSantis/others to do something.
Look into cell structures.
Stand Alone Complexes.
Think Global, Act Local.
Just one man acting alone can do a lot even if he ends up only able to act one time.
I still see people Trusting the Plan and Believing in the System, even after 2020. They are hopeless.
None of these events depended upon people having a majority. A tacit approval by the people among whom the conflict was waged is important, at least locally, and weeding out collaborators was a high priority too.
An example, the PIRA:
“Membership: It is estimated that the Provisional IRA had between 8,000 and 10,000 members overall during its 35-year campaign. Membership peaked at an estimated 1,500 during the mid 1970s although it is thought that from then on there were between 600 and 800 activists and auxiliary support at any one time.”
Numbers from here:
https://www.irishnews.com/news/northernirelandnews/2023/08/07/news/ira_irish_republican_army_provisional_ira_explainer-3507919/
The numbers actually fighting were even smaller than that (but that’s not to degrade the efforts of all the rest who risked themselves in all manner of support).
I’m hoping the Irish follow the example set by their fathers and grandfathers and great grandfathers and all the rest over the hundreds of years of struggles.
Another example of numbers from Afghanistan (taken from wiki):
“During 2001, according to several international sources, 28,000–30,000 Pakistani nationals, 14,000–15,000 Afghan Taliban and 2,000–3,000 Al-Qaeda militants were fighting against anti-Taliban forces in Afghanistan as a roughly 45,000 strong military force.” Their numbers ebbed and flowed as well through the two decades. Not only that, in some of these conflicts, there were multiple resistance/insurgent factions so they were divided up even more though had shared goals.
And, of course, the number 3% gets thrown about a lot regarding the US’s Revolutionary War. However, that was a lot different than other examples I’d rather use since they formed armies, militias used in more conventional warfare for large parts of that conflict, though not all of it of course.
The US is large, but that’s not the scope that people need to think, either.
The system works…when the country is White.
Bad things, man. Bad things.
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Berglander wins. Also, great article, brother Art.