Thoughts Since Being Away & My Thoughts On the Colorado 14th Amendment Hearing

On November 2nd I was admitted to the hospital because my hemoglobin count was discovered to be miniscule and my blood pressure was exceptionally sporadic jumping within very high ranges and very low.  I was administered several units of blood because it was thought I might be suffering internal bleeding.  The next morning a procedure was performed to attempt to locate and cauterize the bleed.  I stayed in the hospital another night while they monitored my blood levels and felt I was stable enough to return home even though my blood pressure was still very low.  They have been monitoring me though daily home visits, and now I believe only three visits this week.  My blood pressure is now in the low normal range and I seem to have enough stamina to proceed.  

I suppose all of us have moments of “medical crisis” where potential survival might have fated against that survival.  I have had a plenty.  I guess the first was chicken pox.  I do not think anyone actually suspected I would die, although some children who grew up in the bygone days of the fifties and sixties did die from what was often called the “childhood” diseases—measles, mumps, chicken pox and whooping cough.  I was not personally aware of any, and chicken pox appeared to be the weakest of the diseases (in terms of ill effects and duration) upon those I knew who caught the disease.  But I could not seem to recover.  The pox lingered and I remained in bed week after week.  It was totally crippling to my personality that had always been described by some who knew me as a personality in perpetual motion.  I was discovered to have the pox in the beginning of the summer vacation, the vacation ended, I remained with the pox and it was not until towards the very end of October I was considered capable of returning to school and leaving my bedroom.  In the meantime my baby sister contacted the infection and recovered within a week.  

But in point of fact,I never really felt ill.  I clearly had the pox, and I was kept confined to prevent its spread (even from my sister whom I did not see but nevertheless caught the disease), and yet feeling healthy, I was chafing at the restraints.  My inability to either fall truly ill or to recover from the illness was never in any way life-threatening but throughout my life something I considered a “peculiarity”.  Especially since I always seemed to wipe off colds in less than a day and very rarely ever fell ill when class or workmates began spreading diseases amongst themselves.  If others stayed away from sickmates, I would often feel unthreatened and visit them, feeling I would not become ill in the presence of someone else who was suffering from any illness.  So the lingering chicken pox always seemed somehow so out of the norm..

On the other hand, there were multitudinous times when I suffered physical consequences from being wounded or becoming concussed from blows from fists, stones, and hammer blows upon the head.   I was once slashed across the chest with a two by four with several protruding nails that torn my flesh and caused severe external hemorrhaging.  But I recall no instance of actually losing consciousness.  I was thrown from a car once and rolled across the pavement for nearly a half mile that once again torn off a great portion of my flesh, and on another time I was walking across an entrance driveway to a business when a vehicle came charging out of the lot and at a rapid pace, seemingly oblivious to my presence.  I screamed but he didn’t slow down, and I braced myself for the impact and threw myself on the hood, then rolled off onto the pavement, once again suffering facial contusions and a laceration on the skull.  If a cat has nine lives, I’ve often thought I’ve had double that amount. But then I’m quite sure many others have had similar brushes with injury.

But no matter the injury I always recuperated remarkably fast,contusions and cuts clot rapidly and begin to heal within minutes (clot and scab over). Well as you may be aware I have a genetic autoimmune disease that was discovered very late in life when I did come close to death, or was at least informed I was dying back in 2020 and then due to covid  was sent outside the range of my normal HMO providers and a new doctor discovered I had celiac.  This also seemed somewhat peculiar.  I mentioned this to the nurse who came to visit and she said she was aware of others with autoimmune diseases that seemed to shake off illness and injury more easily than those with normal immune systems.  Peculiar.  I do not understand the workings of the human body I must confess and I don’t know why I had began to heal and suddenly began bleeding internally after nearly two years of steady improvement.  I guess that is why we have doctors.

The consequences of my injuries however have left my body racked in pain these days and I refuse narcotic intervention that might somehow cause me lessened mental awareness.  So I’m forced to rely on the occasional tylenol if head pain itself begins to dull my mental facilities.   Otherwise I know pain itself is not mentally debilitating and while I would like to not feel physically debilitated that is the inevitable consequence of years of physical contact with life.  Yes, I am abashed I can’t walk twenty miles, that I struggle to make it to my own gate, and that sometimes I chastise myself for my memories of former physical prowess, that I remain in conflict with  those memories and my present condition.  That I have not come to peace or accepted my condition and continue to “boast” of past accomplishments that are in reality no more present realities than the pages of any history book…they simply are false memories in relationship to my present reality.  Are my memories of the past even true if they are not currently possible? At what point is reality and memory true and how do I refute overemphasizing the past to the present and prevent the over emphasis of the past from exceeding its own reality?  For me, the answer, is not so much what I remember of the past, but my contemporaneous notations of the past, and whenever I  go beyond that I assume I go into unchartered territories of fictionalized memories.  The challenge becomes understanding how to self-criticize my own memory and recognize that I, as well as anyone, am perfectly capable of falsifying my own memories towards a more favorable interpretation of myself.  

And so as I have been recuperating I have been lying here questioning many of my own self-assumptions.  One thing that I have always stated is that I never began a physical confrontation.  But is that in anyway a true assumption?  Certainly I’ve never struck back in self defense, except once, and that is my most shameful memory.  I can’t deny its occurrence, and whenever confronted with the memory I know I try to find a rational justification for myself. But my contemporaneous notes of the incident show that I simply had no self-justification, I simply, on that occasion, did not restrain myself from reaction. 

My personality, as I’ve often stated, is very reactive.  I know I am reactive and as a consequence I have, with the exception of that one incident, built a shield around my reactions to control how I intend to react, to direct my own reactions to permit myself to not respond in self-defense.  It is said that during the civil rights resistance the followers of Dr. King were “trained” to not respond to physical attack in kind.  I have tried, similarly, to establish this shield around me. And yet, I have not developed , nor attempted to establish, often to my own regret, a similar shield against verbal attack.  While I do try to restrain my phraseology from negative personal insults against another, I have never restrained myself from negative attacks on the ideological positions of another, and in all fairness to those who might have attacked me, simply not calling someone a name that might carry negative connotations, does not liberate me from my sometimes creating very negative feelings amongst those I may have had disputes with and the words that I may have used, I have to admit, have consequently created both negative feelings against myself that have sometimes led to violence against myself, so to suggest I have never began or defended myself against a physical confrontation is a false memory of self-justification. And quite frankly people often hear an implied name calling.  Sticks and stones may break bones, but words can create more volatility and lead to the sticks and stones that break bones.

And as I peer out at the conflicts in our society today I wonder how many of the stones being thrown are due to the words we continue to cast upon each other.

Judge Luttig’s 14th Amendment Argument

Before going into the hospital I had begun listening to the Colorado 14th Amendment hearings on whether Trump was disqualified from serving in government again.  My opinion had been that the events of January 6th disqualified him was formulated on the day of January 6th.  I have written before that I believed the appropriate resolution should have been to immediately impeach Trump and try him upon the reconvening of the congress on January 6th even before certifying the Biden election result.  I truly believe he would have been successfully convicted that morning and Mike Pence would then have successfully led the transition.  I also thought Trump, should have been immediately afterwards led away in handcuffs and awaited in jail until the full cause of what had occurred had been investigated  and an appropriate trial had determined his responsibility.  Well that’s what I thought on January 6th, 2021 and I still firmly believe the handling of the events of that day were erroneously delayed. Sometimes justice requires removing what might become more harmful if it is not removed.

The outcome of January 6th,could have been different.  Trump’s calling out of his supporters to maintain his presidency could have succeeded.  In this case, the United States government would have transferred to their hands, and the rebellion would have successfully overthrown the government.  There would be a new government, the former government would now be in new hands with Trump in firm control. It would have been a successful coup, not an insurrection, even if at a later date the coup failed, for its duration the coup would have toppled the existing government and would have been the government.  That could have happened, at least, according to plan, it appears that that is what was supposed to have happened.

But of course we know more about the plan than we did on January 6th.  But we still have not completely connected all of the dots.  So let’s try to connect them with a bit of logical projections from what we do know.  

For the moment let’s focus mostly on January 6th itself.  There was obviously several prongs to Trump's coup plans.  There were the fake electors and the attempt to get vice-president Pence to halt the count.  There were attempts of course to get certain states to change their electoral votes before January 6th.  But I am not quite convinced some other version of Jan 6 would not have occurred to completely implement Trump’s plan had any of them succeeded. There was still a last minute attempt to pressure Pence to agree to participate in the plot even on the morning on January 6th before the ellipse speech as well as conversations on the morning with some members of Congress that we have no idea of what was actually discussed, but probably mere confirmation that those members (Jordan at least) that the congressional members who had been involved in the plot were still ready to participate in whatever had been agreed to in meetings we knew had already taken place but at least at present we don’t know what was actually discussed.

Now it is assumed that the only role these congressional actors had was to delay the certification and “send it back to the states.”  So let’s freeze frame this assumption and ask ourselves a few questions.  Even the architects of this plan, notably Eastman, knew that if it occurred, the supreme court would overrule the attempt and at best a temporary delay in Biden’s ascendancy might have occurred, but overall, in itself this would not have affected the outcome of the election.  Sending it back to the states could have only succeeded if the government itself was neutralized so that the only possible outcome was certification for Trump and the only way to do that was if Trump had already assumed control through the successful coup.  

So to illustrate I want to go back to early summer 2020.  We know what Stone was saying about ignoring the results, declaring victory and taking  control of the government.  Well how was Trump to do that without enforcement?  So I was reading many things that were going on within the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers.  So I had access to these groups as early as June and they are already developing chatter amongst themselves about overthrowing the government if Trump fails to gain reelection.  But I was also following the chatter on Q-Anon, the Nationalist Socialist Club (NSC-31) and No White Guilt and I had direct conversations with some individual members of these groups beyond the internet chatter.  I had no knowledge of any of the emails.  I was feeling quite trepidations however because way before the notorious December 19 twitter.  The tweet was not the beginning of the call for overthrowing the government on January 6th, but the confirmation that the plan would be carried out.  

I do not personally know or have any contact with those who were at the January 6th rally, but I did have personal contact with many who were involved in planning the follow-up.  What I l was told was that there was a planning that was just as multi-pronged as the many subplots revealed by the January 6th committee.  The plan as it was presented to me was that there would be an attack upon the federal government that would be followed in the states, and I am aware of many who were not planning on being involved in the national attack but in the follow-up in state capitals, especially here in Nevada.  There was a  minimal reportage of these planned attacked in the press. However I was not privy to when it was to occur only that it was supposed to occur should Biden be declared the winner.  By election day I was in the hospital and I spent much of the next two months in a hospital bed.  By January 6th I had been released under the assumption that I was probably not going to survive the month.  On New Year’s day I had invited my closest friends and my wife and step-kids for what I assumed was my farewell, although I didn’t exactly say I had been told I had less than a month to live, I assumed I would not see many of them again.  The rest I have already written about, I was returned to the hospital, but to  an  out of network hospital  and a new doctor who decided to do a biopsy requesting a determination of celiac which shocked my own doctors when the results came back positive.  

But I had lost all contact with those of the “extremists” and so by January 6th I have to admit I was as shocked as the rest of the populace because I had assumed that whatever was going to occur would have already occurred and since it hadn’t occurred I thought the plans that I had heard about were hot air.  You can believe what you will about  if the plan for violence in state capitals might have been in preparation had January 6th succeeded.  I can’t say if those plans had materialized to follow the capital attack. Like I have said I don’t know how much was wishful air and how much actually being planned.

So I wish to look at a couple of “known” facts that have come out since January 6th.  The first was of course Cassidy Hutchinson’s revelation that Trump wanted to “lead” the attack on the capital.  The second is the stockpiling of weapons, especially the cache stored by the Oath Keepers.  Now let’s take Spencer Rhoades at his word, and let’s assume the Oath Keepers were not supposed to join the riot until Trump called for the insurrection act. Upon which the weapons would have been brought into the fray and the melee would have turned into something it never became, a very well armed clash between the insurrectionists and the police.  

So I began this by suggesting I wanted to suggest a couple of logical, but unproven, conclusions.  Suppose Donald Trump had been able to successfully lead the march on the capital.  What would have been the most propitious moment to declare the Insurrection Act but upon the steps of the capital and against those in the capital who were planning to certify the election?  At which point, any congresspersons who were siding with Trump  would have been able to take a position, supported by the now armed mob, who could have “arrested” those in congress who were non-supportive, and sent the election back to the states to change their tally, possibly under threat of state government overthrows.  The court at this point would have limited options themselves to remove Trump under the same duress that doing so could either be ignored or endanger the lives of any justices who might try to challenge what had become fait accompli.

The other factor, the Oath Keepers stockpiling their weapons cache, and Rhodes refusing to bring forth the weapons until the insurrection act was invoked unless there had been some kind of pre-planned exchange that this is when the arms would be brought forth.  Just bringing weapons and hoping Trump would declare the insurrection act makes little sense. We are still missing pieces of the plan  that still needs to be explored, that I personally feel we haven’t discovered the full “military plot” of January 6th.  We are just grateful it never occurred, and Trump, prevented from going to the  capital, sat petulant the coup might succeed but the guidance to fulfill the plot never materialized, because frankly he’s not really any more successful at coups than he has been at much else. 

Furthermore, if there was still expectations on the morning of the 6th that Pence could be pressured or that congress could somehow send the electoral votes back to the states, there would have been no need for January 6th as a final alternative already in the making to occur whether or not either Pence, or congress, singularly, would be able to send it back to the states for recertification.  The recertification plan needed to be supported by the successful intervention of the January 6th rioters to insure that the certification that the states conformed to Trump’s desires since the states had already denied his attempts to get them to challenge their own certifications against him.  Furthermore the pressure campaign against Pence begins nearly simultaneously with Trump’s December 19th tweet that confirmed that he was activating the previously planned attack to occur on January 6th, so once again the violence on the 6th appears to be essential to the plan to successfully send the electoral vote back to the states, not because Pence refused to be pressured.  His refusal merely cast himself into the group that needed to be removed by the violence.  Of course I know none of this to be true, I am making a feeble attempt to understand the missing pieces in the violent part of the plan that I hope someone is actually considering looking into.

Now Judge Luttig has stated that the defense that Trump is preventing in Colorado that is aimed to show he is not responsible for the riot is not the reason Trump is barred by the 14th amendment from holding further office because what actually bars Trump from further office is not any actions that he actually did but because the actions themselves were a violation of his oath of office to the constitution.  That oath was not  violated, according to Judge Luttig, just by the insurrection against the capital, but by his attempt to stay in power after losing the election, which is itself a violation of his oath.  So liberally interpreted, everything Trump did from the phone call to Raffensburg, to falsely asserting victory  after the courts had decided that he had lost the election,, to the fake electors and the pressuring of Mike Pence are all part and parcel of a violation of that oath.  After taking the oath of office, section 3 states one cannot hold further office if he rebels, aids a rebellion, or supports any rebellion against that oath, and that oath to the constitution includes the obligation to step down at the end of his term of office which expires after four years.  Were a president to be reelected, his term of office still expires at the end of four years, and he must be resworn into office before his second term commences, or on the day it begins anew at any rate.  Just as congressional members must do upon reelection.  

The Colorado 14th Amendment Hearing

Fourteenth amendment expert Gerard Magliocci supported Judge Luttig’s version or interpretation of section three.  But by this interpretation I do not believe that it is necessary to actually conclude that January 6th had to, of necessity, been “incited” by Donald Trump because even giving aid or comfort is a disqualification.  So to my way of thinking giving aid or comfort to the inciters of the violence who have already been convicted of participating in the insurrection and promising to “pardon” them sounds like comfort which would bar him in the future even if he’d had no part in Jan 6.  Doing nothing for three hours while they ransacked the capital is certainly aiding them; and as expert Bill Banks testified Trump’s oath to the constitution stipulates he had to act, that  those duties required him to defend the capital from attack.  That inaction alone should be enough.  However,  most focus on his egregious actions in inciting January 6th as what disqualifies him from reserving as president.  But everything he did to remain in power beyond the end of his term of office was a violation of that oath.But  was everything a rebellion or in support or aid of a rebellion?  Was it only January 6th that was the rebellion? And can speech alone be enough to exonerate him from direct association with that rebellion if he had no other involvement in the rebellion?   So of course, if we limit Trump’s involvement only to his involvement in January 6th, then his speech and actions on that day do become the determining factor.  This is where the testimony of Peter Simi comes in.  Peter Simi is a sociologist who has specialized in both field work with violent groups as well as interviews and reading media rhetoric of those groups just as an acquaintance allowed me to do with  access to his sites.   Dr. Simi testified about what some of the embedded, or understood language codes meant to these groups which might not necessarily convey the same meaning to others.  One such term was “1776”, that primarily came from the three percenters but then did carry over onto other sites that referred to a new revolution for freedom.

Upon cross, Mr. Simi was challenged on the rather silly grounds (I thought) that groups would not have any such terminology that would take on special meanings only for them.  I say that was a silly attempt to impute Mr. Simi’s testimony because I would suggest every group has such terms that do take on special meaning to the group.  When I was an iron molder during VietNam, to us a “draft dodger” was anyone with a college exemption but more  than likely others qualified the term more specifically.  If one is an avid bowler there are terms that more than likely would be specifically understood by bowlers that might not be necessarily understood by others.  For instance to suggest a bowler achieved a turkey sounds like they probably didn’t do very well to me because generally speaking I don’t associate turkey’s with much grace or prowess.  However when one achieves a turkey one has achieved a feat of three consecutive strikes.  I would think hardly any type of group that people belong to, be it professional or non-professional, would not  have certain words that do have certain special meanings that that group would recognize independently in its relationship to the group that might not correspond beyond the meaning that the group applies to the word.  Generational differences in interpretation of certain words can also sometimes vary and take on new meanings specific to the generation.  In The Great Gatsby when Gatsby is called vulgar, those of us reading today might assume is profane  or crudish behavior.  But the upper class milieu who was saying that Gatsby’s behavior was vulgar were actually referring to his common roots, that he was not really of their class, despite his money.  So I found this rather disingenuous, and either very naive, or presented only because refutation of Dr. Simi’s testimony was impossible to refute because of course people have words they will reference to their group.  

Overall, I found the defense similarly incomprehensible.  When two of the capital defenders were questioned about whether they were aware of  other demonstrations  in D.C. that day the relevance was not only lost on me, but exactly how the fact that there might have been at some point during the day, other demonstrations therefore meant their own struggles to protect the capital from the “mob” were therefore nothing special and just run of the mill, I doubt would have been considered to be so by those officers in comparison had they even been aware of them.  In fact that they were not aware of what else was occurring that day indicates the opposite and the extremity of the conflict they were engaged prevented them from being able to observe any other actions within the city that minus the capital riot they might have been aware of.  

This seem to have been the general defense approach however.  They presented witnesses who were at the capital who did not get involved in actually attacking the capital as if that meant the attack on the capital was of no import.  What were there?  I’ve heard claims (probably a massive exaggeration) of 100,000 that attended the ellipse speech.. How many were involved in attacking the capital?  1200 at most?  Of course everyone didn’t involve themselves in the insurrection.  Of course I imagine more would have if Trump had been permitted to actually go to the capital.  But to suggest that those convicted of the crimes of that day who have, close to unanimously, said they invaded the capital because Trump suggested they do so, is not counteracted because some who attended  did not.  

The defense also called Ken Buck (who to my mind ain’t so bad, he did after all vote to certify the election of Biden and has never accepted any claims of voter fraud, and who by the way has decided the republican party has so lost its way he is resigning after this term) to declare the January 6th committee was partisan ended up refuting his own argument, because apparently there was also a republican investigation and they did issue their own report (I hadn’t known that),cannot jive with the contention there was no minority report therefore the Jan 6 committee was biased because there was no minority report.

Of course I cannot in anyway understand how they thought Kash Patel’s totally refuted claim that Trump had prepared 12000 National Guard troops from the states to be in readiness for Jan 6 was even called by the defendants when Jan 6 committee claimed they believe it was perjured, and yet he is subpoenaed to once again perjure himself and the plaintiffs made mince meat of him and all but once again labeled him to be falsely testifying.  

But I want to conclude with the defense’s only expert witness, Robert Delahunty.  His ideas on deep states, etc, I have no knowledge about, nor do I think it really relevant to his argument that section 3 doesn’t include the president.  His argument was based on two factors, one was that the constitutional oath taken by congress and the constitutional oath taken by the president are different.  Well true to a degree, but both are oaths to the constitution.  Congress takes an oath to “support and defend”  the constitution; the president to “protect, preserve and defend” the constitutional.  Rather than just “supporting” the president must “protect and preserve” which implies to be an even greater duty to the constitution, not a lesser duty to the constitution.

The second reason that Delahunty suggested was that the president is not really an officer of the government; therefore section 3 cannot apply to him.  Now the plaintiffs got hung up on the term that the president often refers to himself as the chief executive officer and harangued Mr. Delahunty that a chief executive officer is therefore an officer.  Well in this case Mr. Delahunty’s argument is correct.  A chief executive officer is often not an officer in a company (sometimes they become an officer after being CEO), and just as often they might be an officer of the company.  So I kept waiting for the plaintiffs o go back to the differing constitutional oaths which they completely failed to do.  So I’m going to do so, because if the oaths distinguish a difference between the duties, then what is the beginning of the presidential oath.  "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

The Office of President.  That settles I should think.  The President swears to execute the Office of the President, so he is an officer.