The Court or the Guillotine?

Much of our concept of liberty is built around the idea of tightly controlled trials governed by rules enforced on and powers granted to both sides. It's designed to be resolute, and after many opportunities for appeal, final. You could say it's the cornerstone of our republic.

We've counted on this concept for so long that most of us never dreamed of an America without it---until recently.

Most of what this administration, and Project 2025, wants depends on suspending due process and openly denying the power of the court. I don't want to say something callous like "this all started with Brown v Board of Education," but maybe it did. It's been building a while. Some of these strategies go back to the fifties. Until now, we have managed to keep the fight in the courts, but I'm worried that one side has decided they can't win in court, so they have other plans.

I couldn't read fast enough to become a lawyer. Even if they let me spread law school out over seven years, my dad would have never allowed it. I'm pretty familiar with the concepts, though, and I grew up at the feet of some of Mississippi's most important lawyers. Even if they weren't trying to teach me, I listened as close as I could so I would learn regardless.

I think these people in Washington know they can't win in court, and that's why they're doing this. What terrifies me is the idea that, if we can't have this fight in court, then the only other option is to have it in the streets. The NRA has been openly talking about this for a generation, with the result being politicians taking Christmas card photos of their nine-year-old holding an AK in front of the Christmas tree.

I don't like saying "we" as in "we on the left" because I'm only on the left on a few key issues, but WE want to, and have been trying to have this fight in court as our constitution designed. Making an end run around the judiciary doesn't mean that WE will just give up the fight. If you make US, WE can and will fight somewhere other than the courts. We will do our best to be gentlemanly and civilized about it, but that's what the courts are for, and y'all say you don't want to do it there, so I won't make promises nobody will keep.

Due Process might be the most important principle in the Constitution. Make no mistake, though, taking due process off the plate doesn't render the people powerless. I have this theory that they're gonna find out that THE PEOPLE can fight with both their hands and their feet, and their nails and their teeth if they have to

Roaming around Fondren last week. I saw a really pretty twenty-five-year-old girl wearing a guillotine t-shirt. My friend said that she was too young to understand what the guillotine suggests. My reply was that nobody buys a shirt with a guillotine on it without knowing what it means. I don't know who this child belongs to, but I've seen her with an RBG t-shirt and a Bernie t-shirt. She may be but small, but she is fierce.

Good night, and good luck.