Fascist rulers need absolute immunity to be effective, not presidents

I finished the book In Search of Emma, How We Created Our Family by Armando Lucas Correa. He’s in a long-term gay relationship with Gonzalo. Since childhood Correa wanted to be a father. At age 42 Correa had a dream about holding his daughter. This is the story of turning that dream into a reality through surrogacy. It did not go smoothly and Correa tells us about the agony of every choice (who to choose for the egg donor?) and every setback, and also every joy along the way, especially at the end when he can finally hold Emma. He then jumps ahead four years for the birth of twins Anna and Lucas. Along the way he recounts the history of surrogacy and lingers over the stories of cases that went bad, such as the surrogate refusing to give up the child. It’s a good story and very much shows how much love Correa and his partner, siblings, parents, and other relatives had for the new babies. It also shows what LGBTQ people are willing to go through to become parents. I did have one small annoyance with the story. For much of the story, especially the first third, this was Correa’s passion, not one for both Armando and Gonzalo. He kept referring to “my” future daughter, not “our” daughter. I was quite a ways into the story before finding out that Gonzalo wanted the child just as much. I finally did a count of the number of books I read last year: 36. I heard today the number most people read in a year is two. Kerry Eleveld of Daily Kos reported that the day after the nasty guy’s lawyers argued he has immunity in criminal cases a reporter asked him about it. His answer was yes, a president had to have immunity because he wouldn’t be able to do anything and would be prosecuted once he leaves office.

In essence, in Trump's telling, a president must have absolute immunity in order to function. How convenient … not to mention false. Actually, autocrats, authoritarians, and fascist rulers need absolute immunity to be effective, not presidents. When President Joe Biden was asked about the matter in December, he said he "can't think of one reason" for total presidential immunity from criminal prosecution. Trump can likely think of a lot of reasons: extortion, grifting from the White House, and losing an election all come to mind. There are a lot of reasons to need absolute immunity as president when criming comes as naturally as breathing.

Mark Sumner of Kos wrote that Republicans are incensed that the nasty guy was tossed from the ballot in Colorado and Maine. So Sen. Thom Tillis introduced a bill that says the Supreme Court has “sole jurisdiction to decide claims arising out of section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.” Yeah, he wouldn’t propose it if he had any doubts that the Supremes would declare the event that made him and his colleagues flee the Senate chamber was not an insurrection. This bill has little chance getting past the Democrats of the Senate and the current president. Eleveld reported:

Whether by hook or by crook, a majority of Americans—56%—are willing to see Donald Trump kicked off some or all state ballots, according to an ABC News/Ipsos poll released Friday.

John Hartzell, who also goes by Middle Age Riot, tweeted:

I'm not saying Donald Trump should die in prison. I'm saying we should give him the chance.

I’ve written before about Project 2025, the effort by the Heritage Foundation to give the next Republican president, whether or not it’s the nasty guy, guidance on how to become a dictator. SemDem of the Kos community provides a more detailed look about what’s in the document and how it came to be. The first such conservative plan was published in 1980, when Reagan became president. This first one was 20 books. By the time Reagan was done 60% of the ideas were implemented.

The Heritage Foundation would go on to print updates to this plan on a routine basis, with the previous one being called Project 2020. Yet Project 2025 is unique in its audacity and complete disregard for constitutional checks and balances.

They also appear to be a lot more public about it, with a tent to pass out info in Des Moines, Iowa.

Yet at the heart of Project 2025 is an audacious attempt to reverse a century of perceived liberal encroachment in Washington. The plan literally seeks to undo the very fabric of American governance.

What departments that aren’t eliminated – Justice, Education, Commerce – are converted to efforts to please the president. Civil servants, workers that are supposed to be immune from politics, partly to protect their institutional knowledge, would become “at-will” employees who can be fired for insufficient loyalty. Remember all those inept attempts at conservative policies, like the Muslim travel ban? Project 2025 has the goal of making sure future attempts are not inept. This dangerous plan is based on the “unitary theory” of the Constitution. It claims that Article II, the part of the Constitution that describes the presidency, grants the office holder complete authority over the federal bureaucracy, eliminating any checks and balances. When Reagan assaulted the federal government he called it too big and emphasized “accountability.”

Project 2025 goes beyond the Reaganite view that the government has grown too big, but rather that the government is weaponized against conservatives. This initiative seeks to completely dismantle the government and the institutional protections in a quest to destroy what they call the deep state.

Project 2025 knows not to speak of eliminating Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, known to be political suicide to those who attempt to touch them. But Republicans are now talking about undermining them by significantly underfunding the Department of Health and Human Services that administers them.

What’s most alarming is that after all the attention that was paid to this initiative after it came out, the Heritage Foundation didn’t walk back any of it. They are yelling from the rooftops about their plan to turn this country into a Christo-fascist nation, and the media is treating it just like another political platform.

Even if Democrats win in 2024 Project 2025 doesn’t go away. It can sit until the next Republican presidential candidate with authoritarian dreams. Wayne LaPierre became the head of the National Rifle Association in 1991 and was the one who radicalized it from a hunters association into a vehement voice for gun rights. An Associated Press article posted on Kos reported he stepped down a week ago, just before the start of a civil trial over his spending for personal travel and other perks with the NRA picking up the bill. He is accused of spending a lot on himself, including more than a half-million on eight trips to the Bahamas. That got me wondering what one has to do to spend over $60,000 per trip. Apparently one starts and ends the trip flying on a private jet and in between keeps up a very high level of luxury. Michael Adder posted a cartoon showing LaPierre in the courtroom at the defense table looking at two women at the prosecutor’s table where one says, “The only thing that can stop a bad guy with an expense account, is a good guy with an expense account.”