Jesus fuck, stop being such pedantic idiots about whether or not Donald Trump should be prohibited from holding public office. The fucking 14th Amendment is absolutely fucking clear that he shouldn't be allowed near an election. And yet we keep having these pearl-clutching debates about what it means, how it's the end of democracy, and other assorted shit. No, it's the way the country avoids our stupid electoral system and our stupid voters putting a madman into office...again.
Look at these insane arguments.
1. "We should let the people decide." You sound like an absolutely pathetic little bitch if you say this and more than a little brain-damaged. The fucking people fucking decided in 2020 and the reason we're even having this discussion is because Donald Trump and a whole bunch of other elected officials decided that they were going to overturn that result because of shit they made up, shit that no court anywhere with every kind of judge agreed was real, and shit that no one has every been able to prove other than to keep asserting the shit is actual shit when it's just shit shit. If Trump is on the ballot again in 2024 and the people decide again that he should be shoved into the history books as another "holy fuck, that really happened" chapter, do you honestly think that this time he'll go quietly? He never goes quietly. Between the bellowing and the flatulence and the heavy breathing, he will always make a racket. It's madness to insist that any election with Trump involved will end up as a regular election unless he outright wins (even when he does, he's a total cockknob about it), and he shouldn't even have a chance to do that. I don't wanna keep going through this shit again and again like some moronic time loop we can't escape from. It's not supporting democracy to allow the person who says he's going to pretty much murder democracy run for the office that will let him do it. Fucking madness.
2. "He needs to be convicted of insurrection first." Read the third section of the 14th. You see anything in there about a conviction being necessary? That's also part of Trump's argument that he shouldn't be tried for anything because the Senate already absolved him of all crimes (actually only one and that one isn't even part of the indictments against him). Being prevented from holding office isn't even really a punishment. Barring his conviction on any of the roughly 8000 other crimes he's committed, Trump is free to speak his normal bullshit. He can wander the mildew-scented halls of Mar-a-Lago, waiting for the omelet bar to open up again. He can pretend he's a businessman and launder more cash for Russian oligarchs. Fuck, he can do anything he likes. But he violated his oath of office pretty fucking clearly, so fuck off on running for president. It's like if you write a bad check at a business and they put your fuckin' photo up and say, "Don't sell cigarettes to this asshole." You can go to any other store you like, just not the one you fucked with. Oh, and everyone forgets the final part of Section 3: "But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability." Yeah, Congress can, if it wants, say, "Oh, it's cool that you wanted to dick over the entirety of democracy. All is forgiven." Wait. On the other hand, keep that part quiet. I could see Democrats actually going along with that for the sake of going high when they go low or some other lie that conveniently lets you off the hook of actually doing something.
3. "The 14th Amendment doesn't include the presidency." Oh, fuck off. The Constitution doesn't specifically bar dead people from running for office. Look at it. Someone should try running the corpse of JFK or something. Except everyone fucking knows that dead people can't run. In the debate over the 14th Amendment in 1866, one senator asked why it didn't say the president or vice president. Senator Lot Morrill from Maine responded, "Let me call the Senator's attention to the words 'or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States.'" In other words, are you fucking blind? Stupid? Both? Of course it includes the presidency. And if you are also saying that it was only meant for the Confederacy, well, they also debated whether or not to put a sunset date on it and decided against it. C'mon, motherfucking textualist judges, you know what to do.
4. "Trump didn't commit insurrection." Shut the fuck up, you nattering Nazi. Read the January 6 Committee report. That prick was planning to steal the election before the first vote was even cast. And the only reason we're still talking about the Big Lie is because an entire economic ecosystem is based on this fraud, from mind-numbing podcasts to entire careers built on promoting that lie and, in the most insidious of ways, slowly degrading the faith in our elections (the last of which was the most secure presidential election in history), like rising seas eroding a coastline. Trump never stopped committing insurrection. And he never stopped profiting off his insurrection.
5. "His followers will cause violence if he's off the ballot." I'm not a fucking hostage and neither should the election or the country be. You could make the same argument as to why Trump needs to be president. I could go into why his idiot hordes of MAGA drones mostly won't do shit, but instead lemme turn it around and say, "Oh, so you would rather have the leader of those violent morons running the joint? Fuck outta here."
It's so blatantly obvious, and yet the apologists and pollyannas dance around like they believe their feet will touch lava if they come down on the side of the plain language of the Insurrection Clause. But such cowardice is the way that totalitarians take over. We have the ability to stop this Trump bullshit. It's right there. Hell, it was put there by Republicans, you know, the ones the GOP is always bragging about ending slavery. And they knew that if you let traitors in the door, then the traitors become the government.
By the way, it's not just wild and woolly internet liberals who believe the Insurrection Clause says what it plainly says. Lots of conservatives are on board, too, because the most conservative thing you can do is follow the words of the Constitution (except the first part of the 2nd Amendment, of course).
Fucking hell, the Constitution has the stake already sharpened to put in the heart of the fuckery we've been dealing with for the last 8 and a half years. Can the Supreme Court break out the mallet and get the job done?
