IN SEARCH OF AN HONEST COURT

“You did not defend your beliefs.”

I did not pretend to. You post is about your wish to challenge the results of the election. That is your belief and your burden of proof to provide, not mine. I’m happy with the election. The Election officials officials, including Republican Trump supporters, after investigating, found no credible evidence of election fraud. Trump’s DOJ found no credible evidence of fraud substantial enough to overturn the results. The Courts have not been presented with any evidence credible enough to even hear the cases.

“You attacked mine, and you can’t see the difference.”

I challenged your assumptions, yes. Perhaps it’s the lawyer in me that thinks this is how it works, but even as a scientist, when you present a theory and subject it to challenge, don’t you have the burden of defending it?

“Let summarize what you wrote.
1. Tom has psychological problems. He sees the cup half empty.”

Not the way that I would put it. Someone can have a certain psychology without necessarily having a psychological problem just as one can have a certain taste for food without having a food problem. It only becomes a problem if it hurts their health and ability to function, and all such things are a matter of obsession and degree, don’t you think?

“2. Trump’s case is frivolous. Proof is the courts are not interested.

I assume you mean “truth is”, but yes, Trump’s claims are indeed frivolous and thus the Courts are indeed therefore not interested.

“3. Tom has not investigated anything. He should trust the people Trump’s team has accused. Trust the authorities who have weakened our election system to the point of absurdity?”

Have you investigated? Which authorities? Do elections become weaken ti the point of absurdity only when your side looses? How convenient?

“4. Trump peddles conspiracy theories. Russia! Russia! Russia! on the other hand, was just the truth. Not cult like at all.”

That a Russian military computer skunkworks interfered in our election is what Trump’s own DNI said. That Trump’s own Campaign Chairman provided privileged RNC polling data to a known Russian agent is a fact supported by confession evidence. I could go on, but it’s beside the point. Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that “Russia, Russia, Russia” was a baseless conspiracy theory, a complete hoax – how does that prove that Biden stole the election? This is like a man saying that, because his wife’s accusation that he is cheating on her is unfounded, it proves that she is cheating on him. The two allegations stand or fall on their own merits – one neither proves nor disproves the other.

“5. At some time Tom needs to give up and accept the mark of the beast.”

“The mark of the beast”? Maybe you should start with a nice tattoo of a fish like our brother John?

“6. Anti-Trump news, all we have heard from the so-called mainstream news media for over four years, is righteous.”

This too is a non sequitur to a court case of election fraud, but let’s humor it for a moment because it is an assumption worth spending more time on. Let’s say you lived in a country where the leader had authoritarian tendencies (but unlike Trump, was actually competent). Let’s say that that leader constantly lied and condemned the press as biased for not going along with his lies. Let’s say that he called them the “enemy of the people” and condemned them as “fake news” for just reporting the truth and fact checking that leader’s constant lies and wild and hateful conspiracy theories. Would you be surprised if the free press fought back? Would you be surprised if a free press were openly biased against such a leader? Are you surprised that what is left of the free press is fighting back against the rulers in places like Hong Kong, Russia and the Philippines? Do you just happen to like the lies in Trump’s case as long as he panders to your ideological hatreds. There are people in Russia, China and the Philippines who like the lies of the authoritarian leaders there too, don’t you think?

“Unlike Russia! Russia! Russia! Trump’s accusations are cultic nonsense ripe for satire.”

Now you nailed it!

“Tom should be ashamed for even considering the possibility Trump might be right.”

You are responsible for your own shame, but we have kind of gotten beyond the point of shame with Trump worship here, haven’t we?

“After all, Democrats like Joe Biden are honorable people who only want to sell the organs of aborted babies, not adult political prisoners like the Chinese Communists.”

I object to the premise and form of the statement. But it is also irrelevant to whether there actually WAS/IS any evidence of any election fraud or conspiracy broad enough to sway the election, only to your psychological need for there to be fraud even if there isn’t. Put another way, even if you believe some nonsense that Joe Biden personally aborts babies and eats them for breakfast, it does not mean he stole the election – it just means that you desperately want to believe one thing because you strangely believe the other. Fortunately, such beliefs don’t hold much weight in court.

“Besides throwing Trump’s case out of court without a serious investigation, what belief did you defend?”

In the case of the most recent SCOTUS dismissal, I thought that the court would throw Trump’s claims out of court because the plaintiffs lacked standing and failed to bring a justiciable cause for which the Supremes had jurisdiction, I told you so and they did just that. That’s not my “belief” or an assertion requiring my or their “investigation” – that’s just basic constitutional law 101. (The more important question for you is why did your Republican leadership lie to you about something so summarily obvious to me and any first year law student?). As to all the other dozens of cases that the courts have thrown out to this point, the Trump plaintiffs have failed to bring any evidence or even an actionable cause for fraud or anything else. This is the basic Rules of Civil Procedure standard for dismissal. Courts don’t “investigate”. That’s not how it works bro. How many time do I have to say that before it sinks in?

This is simply how our constitutional institutions work, how they have always worked. Institutional justice is not about right always winning or the process being perfect – institutional justice is about having a decent (albeit imperfect) and well know institutional “process” at all. This is why “due process” is mentioned in two Amendments of the Constitution (the 5th and the 14th). It connects and binds everything else together. It is its own field of Constitutional law that effects every single other area, including the democratic institution of voting in each state.

The stability of rules predictability and process confidence is more important than perfect calls and perfect outcomes. Increment process change to address truly unjust outcomes (the American Revolution) is always preferable to the insecurity and chaos that follows from throwing out the whole process and starting over (the French Revolution).

If you drastically flout, change or destroy the “process” so that your ideology always wins, you may think that you have made the system more righteous, but you have not. Why? Because you no longer have “due process” and, because the Constitution is mostly about process, you no longer have a Constitutional government – you eventually have a totalitarian state governed by a deterministic ideological manifesto by the pure political power of an oligarchy or a person. You think that you understand the Constitution because you have a simplistic ideological understanding of what you want it to be, but you don’t really understand what the Constitution is actually – a complex “process” that defines and binds numerous democratic institutions of our constitutional republic into predictable structural powers and protections from the role of the courts to the role of the press to the role of voting, all in constant state of incremental flux and evolutionary change to adapt to an ever changing technological, economic and cultural environment. That’s what I believe in. That’s what I swore an oath to defend. That’s what you simply refuse to understand.