Legal Insurrection: "I don’t know if there are any uncorrupted institutions left that matter."

Via Ol’ Remus

Nine years ago today Legal Insurrection published its first post, Obama is Door No. 2.

For background on how we got started and have grown over the years, see our 7th Anniversary post, or scroll through our Blog Anniversary tag.

Last year I noted that while it was a difficult year personally, I was optimistic. That’s been one of my roles over the years, keeping hope alive. But there’s no pep talk this year. Just dread.

The attempts to unwind the 2016 presidential election have changed everything.

I’ve written before how the attempts to intimidate the Electoral College electors into changing their votes was a game changer for me. That went beyond politics into attempted coup territory. It wasn’t just a matter of opposing Trump or Trump policies, which is legitimate, but an attempt to nullify an election. Criticize Trump all you want, I certainly did during the primaries, but respect the vote. If you don’t respect the vote, then you are not just political opposition, you are a danger to our system.

If the assault on the Electoral College was the game changer for me, a runner up was waking up to implications of the concentration of power in a small number of social media and internet companies who have been weaponized to shut down speech and expression. Google, Facebook, Twitter and two handfuls of other companies now completely control our ability to communicate with each other, while internet backbone companies are poised to block internet access altogether.