Crime and Punishment: We the People vs Donald Trump

This election is about justice. About justice for all. About the sacredness of the law. And about We the People – who make sure it stays that way.

Once again, it is up to We the People of the United States. It is an awesome task, weighty, and non-negotiable. It connotes privilege, duty, and accountability to ideals beyond the self.

The lofty language of the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States aims at our hearts and minds. Americans are summoned to capture the spirit of the Republic’s most fundamental beliefs and transform them into wise decisions. With each election, Americans are called to overcome the parochial, petty, and – these days – the putrid to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, and insure domestic Tranquility…. 

We must catch our breath here because We the People are obliged to admit that the more perfect Union is subjected to divisiveness, Justice is in the eyes of the beholder, and domestic Tranquility but a conceptual nuisance when trashing the Capitol.

Yet, it is up to We the People to make amends. The Founding Fathers insisted that the power to transform the Union lay in the hands and hearts of the People and that those elected to legislative or executive offices were there merely on a provisional basis, their authority limited and balanced against each other. And that is a good thing, too, for people err and their lack of judgement should not ever be sufficient to derail the Great Experiment.

On November 5 comes the opportunity, perhaps of a lifetime, to put things back on track.

Here are a few things We the People can adjust:

1.     Vote for candidates –President, Senators, Representatives – who in word and deed have committed themselves to preserving the Union, not dividing it.

2.    Vote for candidates who in word and deed exhibit a sense of Justice for All (more on this point below). Only those candidates deserve your vote who respect the law, as you are expected to abide by it. Voting for convicted felons is itself a criminal act, at least morally.

3.    Vote for candidates who in word and deed uphold and insure domestic Tranquility. Those pussyfooting around January 6 are out.

Accept the above as a surefire guide to the election taken right out of the Preamble.

While we are at it, about four million Americans are not allowed to vote because they are convicted felons (e.g. sex offenders). Some are out of prison, having served their sentences, but are unable to reinstate their voting rights. Florida leads the states that are dragging their feet on this issue; it would be interesting to do the numbers to find out whether complying with their own laws would be enough to tip the balance in Florida. Remember when hanging chads in the Sunshine State clouded the presidential race between George W. Bush and Al Gore in 2000, and the Supreme Court as the cavalry of choice saved the day – for Bush, need we add – catapulting him into the White House by a margin of just five (5) electoral votes, Gore having won the popular vote, by the way.

But the point we should draw attention to is the alienating fact that felons (e.g. sex offenders) are allowed to run for office. The obvious solution to this moral double standard of potentially grave consequences cannot be that we ask four million felons to run for office, but that We the People make it unequivocally clear that absolving a single felon of all wrongdoing for the purpose of flattening the moral high ground or worse is unacceptable in the pursuit of high office.

Do not count on the Supreme Court to advance the cause of Justice.

We the People are the final arbiters of right and wrong.

Consider the Court’s decision on March 4, 2024, just one day before Super Tuesday, to ignore Trump’s chief role in the January 6 putsch attempt. The Court argued that the 14^th Amendment to the Constitution, Article 3, did not apply when Colorado decided to keep Donald Trump off the ballot for inciting insurrection against the United States. The Court, in brief, argued that such a decision would be in the purview of Congress, not a single state, and allowing each state to come to its own conclusion on the matter would create a “patchwork” of rules across the land.

Pardon me for saying so, but that is a spurious argument. Forgive me for saying so, it is downright cynical. The electoral process in the United States is already a “patchwork” and it was designed that way on purpose. The Founding Fathers left many of the particulars of how elections are run to the states. They saw no need to hamper the states’ abilities to fashion their own laws under the guiding principles of the Constitution. Think about it next time when Iowa and New Hampshire vote way ahead of the rest of the Nation effectively winnowing the field of candidates and rendering Colorado’s attempted decision to keep the one candidate with a relevant criminal record off the ballot somewhat quaint.

We the People are summoned to overrule the Court to make sure the decision by nine justices is but a minority opinion. People who violate the Preamble’s solemn call to ensure domestic Tranquility belong in jail, not in elected office.

It would have been an act of kindness, if the Court had left it at that. But the Court’s decision on July 1, 2024 to expand executive immunity for “official acts” in connection with Trump’s role in the January 6 putsch attempt further discredited the Court as a final arbiter in matters of life and death of the Nation. And if ever, Heaven forbid, the United States were to slither down the path to authoritarian rule, we will remorsefully look back at the decision by six out of nine Supreme Court Justices to allow it to happen.

We the People must correct the Court and assert sovereignty. It could well be that we will trace Trump’s loss on November 5 (if he loses) to that decision by the Court that would shield him from further legal trouble, ironically, for it seems to me that enough registered Republicans have come to realize that the rule of law applies to Presidents also and that to claim otherwise is a grave violation of the Preamble, of what it stands for, and of the will of We the People.

The Preamble is written to capture the spirit of the Constitution and the laws of the land in a nutshell. It enjoys absolute priority. Trample on it, and all that follows is but spilled ink.

We the People may differ on policies – the economy, immigration, foreign policy, and a hundred issues – but never on the priority of the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States.

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