René Descartes had famously used the statement “I think, therefore I am,” as a starting point for his philosophical inquiries, where he used the act of thinking as an evidence for the existence of the thinker. While most, if not all, philosophical statements are abstractions based on observations and not proven facts, their acceptance and adoption by those who are expert in the field provides a strong support for those who subscribe to that philosophy to treat them almost as facts.

Now, we have a “stable genius” occupying the White House who, based on his actions since taking office for a second term, believes that he can act as a dictator, because he won the presidential election. Unlike the philosophical statement in the previous paragraph, this assertion is a propositional statement and has a truth value that can be easily determined. And that determination only requires examination of the existing facts and the laws. I will dig deeper, but first, I want to start by a reminder from an earlier post that discussed a very closely related subject. In that post, I had expressed my opinion about the minimum requirements for a functioning democracy as follows:

“The minimum requirement for a democracy to function is that, at every election, each individual voter is able to correctly identify and vote for a person/party whose policies protect that individual’s own interests. Ideally, each individual should be able to determine what is in the best interest of the entire society, and vote based on that. But that is too idealistic. In practice, meeting only the above minimum requirement should be considered a very high point for any society.”

But I think it is even more important to point out that even in a very successful and functioning democracy, not everything is up for negotiation or majority vote. For example, democracy does not imply that elections can change facts and reality. Even if the entire population of the Earth participate in an election to opine on whether the Earth is flat or not, and they all vote for the flat option (as it would very likely be the case at some point in the history of mankind), it won’t make any difference in the fact that it is not. Facts are not subject to majority opinion, or how people feel about them, or how they prefer them to be.

But even outside the realm of facts, there are other things that are not subject to the results of ordinary elections. The fundamental societal values and principles based on which the core laws or the Constitution of a society is drafted, for example, are decided once, and after such Constitution is ratified, by popular vote or otherwise, they are no longer subject to the results of ordinary elections. Granted, those principles are not carved in stone either, but the process for changing or amending the Constitution is usually very different and more involved than ordinary elections. And even the more specific laws and statutes that are constantly made or updated through some voting process within the legislative body, are not subject to the results of other, unrelated elections, including the presidential elections.

It is, then, so astonishing to see that some members of the current administration try to justify any act of the administration by saying that “the President won the election by the largest majority,” and that he “has received a huge mandate from his voters” to do pretty much whatever he wants. Aside from the premise of this argument being factually false, since the President did not even receive a simple majority (50%) of the votes (he received 49.8% of the popular votes, with only a 1.5% margin to the second candidate; by contrast, his predecessor, Joe Biden, received 51.3% of the popular votes, with a margin of of 4.5% to the second candidate, who was, incidentally, the current president), the conclusion they draw from that false premise is also preposterous. Presidential elections decide who the next president of the nation is going to be, not the level or scope of their authorities. The responsibilities and authorities of the president are determined by the Constitution and other applicable laws. Even if a president receives 100% of the votes of 100% of the eligible voters, their authorities will not be any different from any other president, nor will they be magically shielded from the consequences of violating any of the applicable laws.

Even more importantly, the justice system is not supposed to operate based on the majority opinion, or be affected by the results of presidential elections. The justice system deals with facts and laws, neither of which are subject to people’s opinions. As such, it is beyond imagination to see that some, even among legislators and justices, seem to be perfectly comfortable with the fact that the outcomes of several recent criminal prosecutions, or even convictions and sentencing, were so drastically influenced by the result of a presidential election. To appreciate the absurdity of the notion of justice system being influenced by majority opinion, imagine a case in which a very popular and good looking actor or actress, indicted for murder, is exonerated without trial, or even worse, after conviction, simply based on an online poll taken by a TV show. Yes, it might be the case that 100% of the viewers of that TV show, or even 100% of the eligible voters in the nation, prefer that individual to not face legal hardship, but that should have zero bearing on how the legal system processes and decides the case (based on examining the facts and determining the applicable laws). And if that person is convicted and sentenced, it will not make the process any less democratic, just because the outcome was something different from what the majority preferred.

We are now, unfortunately, at a juncture where the President and his cabinet of sycophants (who spend a good portion of the cabinet meetings’ time on praising their boss), are hell bent on insisting that somehow the results of the 2024 presidential election give magical powers to the President; powers that have never been afforded to any other president, even those who had won their respective elections by larger margins. While these kinds of arguments were somewhat emboldened by the 2024 Supreme Court opinion on absolute presidential immunity, even the same supreme court that made the very generous and expansive immunity ruling does not seem to be willing to go along with all the unlawful consequences of a president considering himself to be above the law, jut because he won the election.

This is likely going to end up in a stand off between the Supreme Court and the White House, and it probably is not an exaggeration to say that it would be the ultimate test for how much beating the American democracy can take and still remain alive. If the Supreme Court caves in, as many major law firms, tech companies, and media corporations have done in recent weeks, then it should be fair to say the American democracy is no longer alive. The recent moves by the Supreme Court, however, provide some hope that it is actually possible even for this Supreme Court with its conservative super majority, to find the fate of the world’s oldest democracy more important than the egos of a narcissist president, and then have the courage and integrity to stand by that belief. I have been proven wrong in the past, especially in cases where I was being considered to be too optimistic. I sincerely hope that this is not one of those cases.