"Go Ask Alice"

                                  “Go Ask Alice.”   

         Recently, two constitutional scholars, in a published article, have posited that former president Trump is ineligible to run for re-election, because his cooperation and coordination of the January 6^th Insurrection make him subject to provisions on an 1870’s law that forbids persons involved with an insurrection, against the united States of America from, holding public office. The law in question was passed after the American Civil War, as a means of precluding leaders of the rebellion from holding or running for public office.

        Defenders of the aforementioned former president raise some reasonable objections, though they posit some objections that at best should be considered in the realm of the Lewis carol classic “Alice in Wonderland.”

        It is true that the former president is presumed innocent of all charges, unless convicted of them in a court of law. That presumption of innocence is a fundamental right of all Americans. In that to date, Trump has been indicted on 71 counts of criminal conduct, that condition may well change after several trials occurring in the next year.

       The other defense is a lesson in the power of semantics and linguistic obfuscation. “January Sixth was not an insurrection” is the claim. Some say it was just a “gathering of tourists” expressing their first amendment rights of free speech. The fact that several thousand rioters, many armed with various weapons, assaulted and over ran the capitol police force, causing the death of several, The Congress of the united States itself was routed, fleeing for their very lives and interrupting the peaceful transfer of power from one administration to the next, is somehow forgotten.  The Cries of “hang Mike Pence,” the sitting vice President of the United States, are also not remembered. Threats to the Speaker of the House, all with violent intentions are also submerged in the rhetoric. Perhaps the visiting tourist were just having a bad day, some offer. The damage to the capitol is also not considered. “The place just needed a little touching up” some offer.

       Lastly, I ask somewhat plaintively, “What about our rights as citizens of the United States?” Are we not allowed to conduct the nation’s business without our duly elected representative chased from their offices in fear of their lives? What about our rights to having free and fair elections in America. Fifty nine courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, ruled that the 2020 Presidential election was legal and without blemish from any sort of fraud, even though the Trump forces and their lawyers screamed fraud, loud and long.

       What about our rights as Americans to expect the peaceful transfer of power in Presidential elections, as had been the case for 236 years? When is someone going to begin to assert our rights as Americans in this violent assault on Democracy?

         When hearing some of these silly assertions, by the former president and his supporters, I hear in my head the rather loud rendition of Gracie Slick and the Jefferson Airplane, powerfully belting out that magical and mystical song “White Rabbit.” 

“Go ask Alice,” they sing loudly. “I think she’ll know.” Perhaps we should subpoena Alice and ask her what she thinks. Was this “pleasant visit by tourists,” that resulted in death and destruction, the disruption of an official seating of Congress and the threat of hanging a sitting Vice President was indeed a phantasm, dreamed up by left wing partisans?

       Or maybe we should politely ask members of the Trump forces to quit smoking whatever brand of opiate they are operating under and start speaking and acting like Americans, operating under the strictures of the United States Constitution, like all of the rest of America. As a parenthetical though, I do have to thank these fabulists. I have not had the pleasure of thinking about or listening to Gracie Slick and the Jefferson Airplane for many years.

       God Bless America and all those who defend her.

                                      -30-

                              (659 words)

                        Joseph Xavier Martin