In less than twelve hours a convicted felon, adjudicated
rapist and, pertinently, adjudicated insurrectionist will take the oath of
office to become the forty-seventh president of the United States, despite
being barred from doing so by the Constitution.
By training, I am an English teacher and by vocation, a
writer, not a lawyer or Constitutional scholar. Yet, the legal as well as moral
and practical reasons the soon-to-be Felon in Chief ought not to take office
are obvious to me. To name just a few non legal disqualifications: He does not
have the intelligence, mental competence, attention span, education, breadth of
knowledge, public spirit or integrity to serve as dogcatcher, much less
President of the United States. For decades he has been well known to welch on
his debts, stiff his contractors, mistreat his employees, lie in his business
dealings, drive enterprise after enterprise into bankruptcy and cheat on and
abuse his wives. Rumors of incest with his elder daughter have swirled around
him, even after her marriage, rumors that seem totally believable given his
character (or lack thereof). Even absent his many civil and criminal legal, er,
problems, DJT is by no stretch of the imagination presidential material.
Add in those legal entanglements, most notably his
Constitutional disability, and we are left with someone who is not only odious,
but will become an illegitimate president the moment he takes the oath of office. And, I’ve barely scratched
the surface of his villainy and depravity!
Endless hours of commentary and magnums of ink
have already been spent on how and why he won the Electoral College vote and
eked out the barest of pluralities in
the popular vote. Everyone has a different idea and Democrats remain, as
always, un-wrangleable cats. Being a Democrat is worse than being a Red Sox
fan. The Sox eventually got their shit together. But, you get two Dems
together, and you end up with three opinions. It’s aggravating! Besides, all
this blothiating is worse than useless, since it distracts from the point at
hand: As of 12:01 Monday, January 20 2025, the United States of America will
have an illegitimate president, whose government is committed to destroying
this country in the interests of making obscenely rich individuals and
corporations even richer, while the MAGA controlled Congress bows and scrapes,
and rushes to do his bidding. It’s a horror I never expected to experience in
my beloved America. I don’t know how – or if – we are going to survive it.
