The usual way of thinking about politicians is: What do we think of them? Do we like the way they look? Do we like the way they sound? Are they on our side of this or that big divide? Do their policy proposals make sense? Do we … like them?

As the next presidential election approaches (is it just me or is the next presidential election ALWAYS approaching?) and candidates for the major party nominations warm up in the bullpen — testing out their various curveballs and sliders in preparation for the Big Game — I suggest trying to look at them from the other direction. What do those politicians think about us, and what do their attitudes toward us tell us about them?

I should probably start with the bottom line: For most politicians, voters are a means to an end. Our primary purpose in life, so far as they’re concerned, is to provide them with lifetime paychecks and unlimited power, whipped cream and cherry on top, thank you very much.

That’s just the nature of our system: Its centralization of authority attracts people who desperately want that authority and will do whatever’s necessary to get it. Narcissists. Sociopaths. Busybodies. Others need not apply; the competition is rigged to reward the obsessively power-hungry.

We can’t do much about that — the whole electoral field looks pretty much the same on that particular metric — but there are other characteristics we can check for.

When Donald Trump tells you he has a plan to end a war but won’t share that plan with you, he’s telling you he thinks you’re extraordinarily gullible, and also that you’re too young to remember the 1968 presidential election, when Richard Nixon pulled the same “secret plan” con vis a vis Vietnam.

When Joe Biden tells you that he’s the candidate of individual freedom, he’s telling you he thinks you suffer from some sort of severe memory impediment. Since you can’t remember his 30-odd years in the Senate, his eight years as vice-president, or his first term as president, he probably assumes he’ll need to remind you to vote two or three times on Election Day alone.

When Ron DeSantis centers his campaign pitch around “the woke mind virus,” he’s telling you that he’s a bizarro whackadoodle crank, or that he thinks you’re a bizarro whackadoodle crank and wants to appeal to your bizarro whackadoodle crankiness, or, likely, both.

When Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. tells you that opposing censorship is one of his flagship issues, he’s just riffing on Biden’s memory loss assumption: He assumes you won’t remember his long record of calling for the imprisonment of those who “deny” the correctness of his opinions on climate change, disagree with him on the efficacy and side effects of vaccines, etc.

And so on, and so forth. If you’re thinking that most politicians don’t hold you in very high esteem, you’re right. They mostly regard you as some combination of stupid, gullible, and crazy. If you vote for them,  they’re probably right.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter:@thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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“I’m looking at the 14th Amendment as to whether or not we have the authority,” US president Joe Biden told reporters on May 21. “I think we have the authority.”

The “authority” he speaks of is the power to borrow money on the credit of the United States, which the US Constitution reserves exclusively to Congress.  “Invoking” the 14th Amendment wouldn’t change that. There are precisely two ways in which he could exercise such power.

The first would be a constitutional amendment creating such a power for him. That would require approval of 2/3 of both houses of Congress and ratification by 3/4 of the states. Unlikely, especially on a short timeline.

The second would be ignoring the Constitution, doing whatever he feels like doing, and daring Congress to challenge him on the matter.

Which, especially since World War 2, is pretty much business as usual.

Truman went to war with North Korea. Johnson went to war with North Vietnam. Bush went to war with Iraq and Afghanistan. Not to mention a great many smaller conflicts, without a single congressional declaration of war, and without a single impeachment proceeding for going to war without that required congressional declaration.

A number of presidents have negotiated and implemented international agreements without the required Senate ratification, via the simple subterfuge of not calling them what they were: Treaties. Recent examples include Barack Obama’s “Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action” (aka the “Iran nuclear deal”) and Donald Trump’s “Agreement for Bringing Peace to Afghanistan.”

The prerogatives of the imperial presidency go beyond foreign policy, of course.  Take, for example, Trump’s 2019 theft of funds appropriated for “defense” by Congress to build his “border wall” (after Congress had expressly denied him funding for that project multiple times). Congress’s response? A resolution “rebuking” him.

The Constitution is meaningless if it’s toothless — if there’s neither any reversal of, nor any penalty for,  actions which violate it. That’s as true at the level of the presidency as at the level of a local beat cop conducting a search without the constitutionally required warrant.

As 19th-century anarchist Lysander Spooner wrote, “whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain — that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case it is unfit to exist.”

Perhaps we should  stop pretending, against all available evidence, that it DOES exist.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter:@thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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I used to live “in the country.” Now I arguably live “in the suburbs.”

No, I haven’t moved closer to the city (Gainesville, Florida). The city’s moved closer to me.

When I moved into my current residence ten years ago, the area around me was largely farmland,  and most residences were either older farmhouses or mobile homes sitting on lots of an acre or more.

Now, only a decade later, I’m nearly surrounded by “suburban housing developments” — expensive homes on small lots, marketed to professionals who work in the city but don’t want to live there.

And hey, that’s how it should be, right? Live where you want to live. Work where you want to work.

But don’t expect everyone else to subsidize your choices.

As the burbs have expanded outward and past my own digs, the main artery connecting them to city workplaces and markets has become more and more congested — “rush hour” traffic jams mean the speed limit may be 60 miles per hour but the average speed is much lower (during “rush hour,” I can ride my bicycle into town on the road-adjacent trail faster than people can travel on the road itself).

When a developer decides to turn a large plot of land into a piece of “suburbia,” one of the main considerations is ease of commute … and neither developers nor prospective residents want to shoulder the costs of road expansion to keep traffic moving.

Try proposing a toll road in any area and see who squawks loudest. It will be the people who use the road and would have to pay the tolls (and the developers trying to sell houses to them).

Instead of “paying their fair share,” they want to shift much of the cost to urban residents who get lower gas mileage (and thus pay more pro rata in gas taxes) and who aren’t even using those suburban roads; to rural residents who aren’t rushing into town and would likely be perfectly happy with two lanes of blacktop; and to pedestrians and cyclists who pay sales taxes that make up the deficit when gas taxes aren’t enough, all while taking their lives in their own hands interacting with entitled, lead-footed suburban motorists.

I have no problem with people moving to the suburbs and commuting to work. But they should shoulder the costs of their preferred lifestyles instead of sticking everyone else with the check.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter:@thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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