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The Colorado Supreme Court ruled that Trump will be disqualified from the state’s 2024 presidential ballot. It cites the 14th Amendment of the constitution, which states an individual cannot hold office if they “have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the (U.S.) or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.” Following the decision in Colorado, Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows also removed Trump from the state ballot.
With similar movements happening across the United States, why does nobody seem to care that a former president is being removed from state ballots? Look no further than the country’s reaction to the Jan. 6 insurrection at the beginning of 2021.
“The word ‘unprecedented’ doesn’t even feel like English anymore.”
Many people forget the magnitude of what happened Jan. 6. The Capitol was infiltrated and defaced. People died. The electoral ballot box had to be evacuated from the senate chambers to stop rioters from getting ahold of it. If this had happened in any other country, the U.S. would be the first to call that country Third World or uncivilized. But because this happened here, not even half of the nation called it what it was: an insurrection.
This highlights a very desensitized time in American politics that we have been experiencing since the 2016 election. Whenever a decision is made like the ones in Colorado and Maine, many Americans have no perception of how important they are. Two U.S. states have labeled the former president an insurrectionist, and this stands no matter what the U.S. Supreme Court decides.
Even though Colorado is a blue state and was expected to disqualify Trump from the presidential ballot, the decision to remove a former president or any candidate from a ballot is monumental and salient. A decision that is so fast to be discredited or ignored is all the while so unprecedented.
However, since the 2016 election and the COVID-19 pandemic, the word “unprecedented” doesn’t even feel like English anymore. Everything these days seems to be unprecedented or historical. History is doomed to repeat itself when this level of desensitization occurs because we continue to not learn from the past.
The people appointed to the Colorado Supreme Court and secretary of state positions are qualified, intelligent people chosen to make these decisions. However, such high levels of distrust in our government echo all the way to the surgeon general and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, so when these people have something to say, only a portion of people will take it seriously.
All this goes to say that the next time you are reading or watching the news and see the word “unprecedented,” recall the definition of this word as “never having happened or existed in the past,” and reflect on why it is happening right now in America for the first time. I guarantee you will start to realize the level of desensitization that has occurred in politics and government in this nation over the past 10 years.
Reach Caden Proulx at letters@collegian.com or on Twitter @CSUCollegian.
