They’ll squint their eyes very tightly, click their heels three times

I finished the book Let Them Lead, Unexpected Lessons in Leadership From America’s Worst High School Hockey Team, by John U. Bacon. I heard about this book because Bacon, who lives in Ann Arbor, almost weekly discusses Michigan sports with the morning host of Michigan Radio. I heard the basics of this story in those weekly discussions. In addition to what sounded like the ultimate underdog story I was intrigued and wondered if any of his lessons might apply to my own leadership roles. The hockey team at Huron High School in Ann Arbor finished the 1999-2000 season with zero wins, 22 losses, and a couple ties. They were looking for a new coach. Bacon, who had played on that team about a dozen years before (and never scored), decided he wanted the job. He had done several assistant coaching jobs in a variety of sports in addition to his paying job as a freelance writer, mostly writing about sports. But he had never been head coach. So this is the story of what he did to turn the team around. The book expands what he did into a general team building guide for corporations (he does a lot of speaking at corporations) and anyone in a leadership role. It doesn’t lose the story. In general he supplied the framework and got the players to buy in. His framework included meaning, purpose, belonging, discipline, challenge, and leadership. Yeah, what a lot of teenagers are looking for. Adults too. He tapped into the challenge and started summer workouts and made them hard. Some exercises strengthened the individual, some strengthened the team. People respond to a challenge. They want to be able to say that was hard and I did it. That brings to mind President Kennedy announcing his goal to get America to the moon. He said we’re doing this not because it is easy, but because it is hard. Bacon quickly got his seniors, especially the team captain, to actually lead. Wearing the “C” was not an honor, it was a job. He had them lead workouts. At one point he actually turned the coaching of a game – the lineup, player substitution, everything – to the seniors. He had two basic rules from which everything else derived. Work hard. Support your teammates. If the guys did that he was satisfied. Showing up on time was a part of supporting the team. Wearing the proper clothing to a workout was part of working hard. Soon he didn’t have to encourage the players because they encouraged each other. He asked them to set most of the goals. He designed exercises to show that when one of them messed up, like getting an avoidable penalty, the whole team was affected. Because the team was so cohesive he could design complicated plays that baffled their opponents. By the end of his third year the team ranked fourth in the state and 53rd in the nation out of almost a thousand teams. On unique feature of the book is after he wrote it he sent it out to the players, many of whom he sees at an annual barbecue and are now in leadership positions in business. Many shared stories, such as how a scene had played out from their point of view and many of those comments are in the book. This book is a good one. Yesterday I wrote that no one seems to be answering the question of whether the nasty guy is mentally ill and why isn’t that question in the national conversation. This morning I got an email from my friend and debate partner saying he’s been wondering the same thing since the nasty guy first announced his run from president. My friend wrote, in part:

His pathological lies are in fact mental illness – that's listed in the psychiatrists' directory of mental conditions. But there's much more – the temper tantrums, his recent Christmas Eve and Christmas Day messages, the narcissism, his guilt-free sexual abuse of women, the inability to ever lose, be wrong or even mistaken, the obstruction to being held accountable, the abuse of the law by bringing frivolous lawsuits, the inability to respect the law about something as obvious as national security secrets, accusing others of everything abusive that HE does, calling opponents "deranged", the lust for revenge. Even his facial expressions while giving speeches shriek "mentally ill" to me. This is a sick, sick man-child, unable to live in peace with his fellow humans. Not to be trusted with any responsibilities. ... Underneath the rage, bitterness, victim-hood and denial, does Trump actually understand that he has done wrong? I want a team of psychiatrists to answer that question.

Mark Sumner of Daily Kos reported on comments made by nasty guy attorney Alina Habba on Sean Hannity’s Fox News program.

In discussing the court’s review of the Colorado Supreme Court’s removal of Donald Trump from the state’s primary ballot, which was based on his violation of the 14th Amendment by supporting an insurrection, Habba made it clear that she expected justices appointed by Trump to “step up” and give him the ruling he wants. In particular, Habba singled out Justice Brett Kavanaugh. “You know, people like Kavanaugh,” Habba said to Hannity, “who the president fought for, who the president went through hell to get into place, he’ll step up.” If that sounds like an explicit demand for a quid pro quo, that’s because it is.

That demand also sounds like it’s coming from a mob boss. Do what I say or my supporters will bring violence.

The result of this obvious attempt to strong-arm the court is that any ruling in Trump’s favor will be looked on as suspect. No matter the justification, a ruling for Trump will seem as if the court were agreeing to give him the payoff Habba demanded. And at a time when the legitimacy of the court is very much in question, this sets up a situation where every ruling for Trump will be seen as another crack in what remains of that legitimacy.

News reports today say the Supreme Court has accepted the appeal of the Colorado case saying the nasty guy has committed insurrection and should be banned from the ballot. The case will be expedited, but that still means oral arguments in February and likely no ruling until after voting on Super Tuesday. There have been pundits that say the way the Supremes must rule is obvious – the nasty guy committed insurrection (as the Colorado case and several others have concluded) and the 14th Amendment is clear that he cannot serve as president (as both the Colorado and Maine cases concluded). Dartagnan of the Kos community looks at how the Supremes will view the case. Clarence Thomas will not recuse himself, even though his wife Ginni was in on the planning of the insurrection. That’s a clear conflict of interest. He’ll will quite likely view the whole case as liberal exaggeration in the same way his conservative goggles allow him to dismiss his own extensive corruption. Though Alito doesn’t have an insurrectionist wife he sees the world through matching goggles while declaring his superior intellect and the nonsense of “originalism” will get him what he assumes will be best for the country. As for the rest of the conservative justices, they have been installed by right-wing political machinery that got them where they are and that must be defended.

As the man responsible for installing three of their ideological colleagues, Trump still embodies that machinery. To allow Colorado (and any other state) to toss Trump off the ballot would constitute a repudiation of the party that brought them to the pinnacle of power they now enjoy. They’re not going to be inclined to do that.

The Supremes are likely quite aware that when the Colorado and Maine decisions were published the justices in Colorado and the Secretary of State in Maine received violent threats. That’s what seditionists do.

But, as we all know, this ultra-right-wing court simply somehow, some way, must allow Trump to remain on the ballot. So what may happen is they’ll squint their eyes very, very tightly, click their heels three times, and declare that Jan. 6 wasn’t an “insurrection” after all.

Thomas would of course, declare what his wife was involved in was not an insurrection. The rest of the conservatives would agree.

The irony here is that when the right-wing Supreme Court reached its coveted goal by overruling Roe v. Wade, it did so in part by scrutinizing the very same 14th Amendment that it now finds being waved in front of its face by the state of Colorado. As Cole notes, the court’s ruling in Dobbs “rested squarely on originalism.” But now, faced with the same 14th Amendment, they have to find a way to invalidate or eviscerate its plain language and intent to get the result they want. So they’re in a box, and it’s a box they created for themselves. They could escape the box. They could do exactly what the 14th Amendment tells them to do, and rule Trump ineligible to run again for public office. That’s what a court genuinely following an “originalist” jurisprudence would do. But that isn’t likely to happen. For this Supreme Court, it would mean telling most of the Republican electorate that they’ve been living a lie for the past two years, despite what Fox News and right-wing media have told them about Jan. 6. It would also mean repudiating the Republican Party that put these conservative justices where they are today. This court isn’t going to do that, because it too is living a lie, a lie called “originalism” that has suddenly become very inconvenient for them to follow.