Thanks to RMJ for pointing me to the statement of John Lewis that says that Donald Trump is not a legitimate president of the United States. In the Huffington Post piece about the interview with Chuck Todd, Representative Lewis said:
“I don’t see this president-elect as a legitimate president,” Lewis told Chuck Todd, host of NBC’s “Meet The Press.” “I think the Russians participated in helping this man get elected and they have destroyed the candidacy of Hillary Clinton.”
Lewis added that he believes there was a conspiracy “on the part of the Russians and others” to help Trump get elected.
“That’s not right, that’s not fair, that’s not the open democratic process,” he said.
That is a truth that cannot be stated more clearly and it is a truth which will have the most devastating consequences for this country. It is a truth that points out so much about how seriously wrong this country has gone since the Supreme Court under Republican leadership has been dismantling the Voting Rights Act.
Through those states where Republican governors and legislators have been implementing what is obviously racially, ethnically and other means of suppressing the votes of groups that tend to favor Democrats they have given the dictator of Russia more of a voice in choosing the president of the United States than citizens of this country have. The director of the FBI and may of his agents have aided in the effort John Lewis talked about as has much of the American media.
Either you believe that the declarations basic to the establishment of this country are really true and of actual meaning or you don't. You either believe that democracy is based on true and consequential foundations of it is a sham. If you believe, as the Declaration of Independence said, that
"Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,"
which can only mean the honestly informed consent for that to mean anything, you either really, truly believe that or you don't. John Lewis, in his long life of service to American democracy, in making his statement endorsed and called into effect the next statement:
"That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it,"
Lacking the power to abolish it, John Lewis has both the credibility and the power derived from those truths held to be self-evident in our founding document, to declare the Trump presidency is, by the terms set out in that document, illegitimate.
The warnings contained in that paragraph of the Declaration will, I'm afraid, become more evidently true though hard experience.
"That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."
How much more obvious than having the Constitution that followed that, allowing the installation of a president, with a minority of the popular vote, with the decisive help of foreign dictators, as interpreted by Republican Courts and also aided by a baldly partisan Republican director of the FBI meets all of the requirements of an illegitimate government, such as the universally touted Founders gave as their reason to abolish their ties with Britain.
Jimmy and Rosalind Carter, Hillary and Bill Clinton should change their mind and not go to the inauguration. John Lewis is right to not go and pretend this is a legitimate inauguration of a legitimate president.
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