Victor Davis Hanson: The Colorado Insurrection

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson,

Donald Trump is being erased from the Colorado primary (and general?) ballot, by warping the 14th Amendment, and in a way never envisioned by its creators.

So now can one be guilty by fiat of Confederacy-like “insurrection,” when he has never been charged with, much less convicted of, such a crime?

How can a buffoonish January 6th riot become an “insurrection,” when no one was armed, there was no plan to seize power, and protestors were advised by the purported insurrectionist leader “to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard”?

As far as election insurrectionary interference, why did liberal journalist Molly Ball label the leftwing effort to defeat Donald Trump in the 2020 election a “cabal” 

(e.g., “That’s why the participants want the secret history of the 2020 election told, even though it sounds like a paranoid fever dream–a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information”)?

And why did Ball double-down and further call it a “conspiracy” 

(“There was a conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes, one that both curtailed the protests and coordinated the resistance from CEOs. Both surprises were the result of an informal alliance between left-wing activists and business titans, of CEOs, Silicon Valley billionaires, street protestors…Their work touched every aspect of the election. They got states to change voting systems and laws and helped secure hundreds of millions in public and private funding. They fended off voter-suppression lawsuits, recruited armies of poll workers and got millions of people to vote by mail for the first time. They successfully pressured social media companies to take a harder line against disinformation and used data-driven strategies to fight viral smears.”)?

As far as efforts to nullify the popular vote, do we remember the pathetic 2016 ensemble of C-list Hollywood celebrities?

(e.g., Martin Sheen, Debra Messing, James Cromwell, BD Wong, Noah Wyle, Freda Payne, Bob Odenkirk, J. Smith Cameron, Michael Urie, Moby, Mike Farrell, Loretta Swit, Christine Lahti, Steven Pasquale, Dominic Fumusa and Emily Tyra)

They were drafted by leftwing groups to cut commercials urging the electors to reject their constitutional duties of reflecting their states’ popular votes, and instead, as faithless electors, to vote instead for Hillary Clinton, the loser in their respective states’ popular votes.

How did they rationalize that anti-constitutional gambit? Well, remember Martin Sheen’s shameless sophistry to ignore the Constitution and the election results?

“As you know, our founding fathers built the Electoral College to safeguard the American people from the dangers of a demagogue, and to ensure that the presidency only goes to someone who is to an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications.”

So what makes a high elected official an insurrectionist?

Current or past advocacy for using violence against the government, as represented by, say, the Supreme Court?

Or urging on more protests that had already turned violent, eventually leading to 35 deaths, 1,500 injured police officers, $1-2 billion in property damage, and a torched courthouse, police headquarters, and iconic church?

Attempting to break into the White House grounds?

Sending the president into a secure underground bunker?

If so, remember Kamala Harris’s summer 2020 boasts about the protests that, she knew (contrary to “fact checkers”) had already a long history of violence:

“But they're not gonna stop. They're not gonna stop, and this is a movement, I'm telling you. They're not gonna stop, and everyone beware, because they're not gonna stop.

They're not gonna stop before Election Day in November, and they're not gonna stop after Election Day.

Everyone should take note of that, on both levels, that they're not going to let up - and they should not. And we should not.”

What was the Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer intending, when in 2020 he incited a throng at the very doors of the Supreme Court, warning of violence to come to two justices whom he called out by name?

“I want to tell you Gorsuch. I want to tell you Kavanaugh. You have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.”

“Hit you”?

Now we have ballot suppression to add to the long list of farces, hoaxes, and lies all designed to destroy a candidate who otherwise might win popular support for an agenda the majority of Americans have consistently supported.

So the leftwing Colorado Justices join the “Russian collusion” spectacle, the Alfa Bank “pink” hoax, the “Russian disinformation” laptop ruse, the precedent breaking two impeachments of a president in his first term, the caper of trying an ex-president as a private citizen in the senate, and the ploy of raiding an ex-president’s home.

What exactly is the Left doing?

They accept they have no majority support for the current President or his agenda. They fear the voters will elect a Republican. They are horrified that it might be Donald Trump, whom they especially loathe. And they are terrified that Trump might do to them what they would certainly do if they were in his position.

The Left is mightily frustrated that after controlling all the sources of information, communications, and institutions (e.. CEOs, traditional and social media, entertainment, the Internet, Silicon Valley, academia, K-12, foundations, sports, and popular culture, etc.), and having a vast advantage in fund raising and money, they still cannot stop the will of the majority.

And the Left wages lawfare because they assume the Right is either too timid, too incompetent, too preoccupied, or too principled to reciprocate in kind - especially given they gloat that there were never any consequences for all the past hoaxes and ruses they perpetuated.

But this time they may have jumped the proverbial shark and shown themselves to be the true and only insurrectionists that will face the consequences of any angry public in November 2024.