If you think about it, among all our checks and balances, voting is the most important. It is what keeps elected officials in check, what moderates their behavior. Voter opinion–when voting is done honestly–has to be a continual calculation. On the one hand this creates a type, that of the cunning and cynical politician, who lies to get reelected; but on the other, it represents a real check on tyranny and arbitrary behavior, one in which the people speak directly.
I saw it alleged this morning that Trump carried California. On first glance that may seem ridiculous, farcical. It is one of the Bluest of the Blue States. But if you think about it Newsom is destroying that State. He is empowering the billionaires and destroying the marginal and middle classes. He is fiddling (and partying) while California burns, on his orders, at his will.
Why WOULD the State as a whole be eager to embrace this mindset implemented nationally, which is what Joe Biden obviously represents? Why would they not be furious, sick and angry at the wholesale destruction of their lives, of some 40 million people, who have suffered from lockdowns and draconian reductions in freedom, all implemented in response to a bad flu?
The only thing that keeps politicians in check is the desire to be reelected. If they no longer need to fear ever losing an election again, then that is when anything becomes possible. Newsom’s only regret from the French Laundry episode is that it was discovered and publicized. He is fully able, morally–OBVIOUSLY–to live like a king while the peasants suffer. And politically, if he knows he will never lose again, there is no downside to this. There is no cost at all.
He will then have become Nicolas Maduro.
And yes, the Second Amendment was part of the system of checks and balances too. But it has not been relevant since the Civil War. Let us not hope it does not soon become the FIRST Civil War.
We need protection from the Supreme Court. This is the time.