THE KOBAYASHI MARU TEST

“Kobayashi Maru” is a Star Trek term that people who are not Star Trek fans know the meaning of. The phrase "Kobayashi Maru" has entered the popular lexicon as a reference to a no-win scenario. The term is also sometimes used to invoke Kirk's decision to "change the conditions of the test."

In Star Trek stories, “Kobayashi Maru” is a test designed to test the character of Starfleet Academy cadets, by placing them in a no-win scenario. The Kobayashi Maru test was first depicted in the 1982 film “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.”

In the stories, the “goal” of the exercise is to rescue the civilian ship “Kobayashi Maru,” which has been damaged and is now stranded in disputed territory between the Federation and the Klingon Empire. The cadet being evaluated must decide whether to attempt to rescue the Kobayashi Maru - which means putting their ship and crew in danger - or to leave the Kobayashi Maru to certain destruction. If the cadet chooses to attempt a rescue, an insurmountable enemy force attacks their ship, and they must deal with that.

Metaphorically, that test certainly applies to where we are today.

The term has been applied to real-world scenarios with no perceived positive outcome or that requires outside-the-box thinking, such as constitutional law, where the scenario is an event that may only be dealt with successfully by extra-constitutional, or unconstitutional, methods with the goal of protecting the constitution.

Commentators have used Kirk's unorthodox answer ("I don't believe in the no-win scenario”) to the test as an example of the need to redefine the premises upon which an organization operates - changing the rules rather than playing within them, that by stepping outside the rules of the game one can redefine the game.

While current indications show a shift in the national tide as we have hoped would happen, and with it the increasing likelihood that the enemies of out constitutional republic will fail in their assault, one possible outcome of the election of 2024 is that we may face the Kobayashi Maru Test.

Right now we face a “Crisis of Democracy” in the case of removing Donald Trump from the ballot under the rule in Article 3 of the 14th Amendment, which states that an individual who has taken part in an insurrection against the United States, or has given support to those who have, cannot occupy a political office under the United States and must not appear on the ballot.

“Democracy,” is on both sides of this case.

There are those who see excluding an immensely popular political figure from the ballot as being profoundly undemocratic.

Others see clearly that what is truly undemocratic is to empower a uniquely dangerous demagogue who has already disobeyed his solemn Oath to protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign or domestic, and is thus a genuine threat who would end the constitutional republic that now exists, were he returned to office.

The tension between these two clashing visions can be resolved only by attending to the Constitution’s own specific implementation of “democracy,” which was the product of a great democratic process after a series of insurrectionary and democracy-imperiling events 160 years ago in the aftermath of the Civil War

Following President Andrew Johnson’s actions allowing the former Confederate traitors who had waged war against the United States to reorganize their states and rejoin the Union with a simple oath of allegiance easily taken with their fingers crossed behind their back while so doing, men who had played leading roles in the rebellion and war against the United States were elected by political means that involved suppressing the votes of those opposed to the former Confederate traitors retaking office - black and white.

Under President Johnson’s new rules, former Vice President of the Confederate States of America Alexander Stevens was elected a Senator from Georgia, one of the states that had led the rebellion. When asked what he intended to do as a Senator, Stevens said openly he planned to prevent the government taking action to protect the freed slaves, and that he expected to act with the other Southern Senators and congressional representatives to rebuild the power the South had held in Congress before the war, in which they were able to prevent the enactment of any law or adoption of any policy to which they were opposed.

Had that happened, much more than the treatment of the former slaves would have been at stake. While the Southern reactionaries were out of the government during the war, many progressive acts, such as the Homestead Act opening the West to small farmers, or the Morrill Act, establishing publicly-funded institutions of higher learning in each state - both of which had been opposed by the Southern representatives before the war - would be in danger of repeal by the coming Southern majority. With the South effectively a one-party state, in which anyone elected to office could hold that office for so long as they wished, the South would retake control of the congressional committees, which were based on seniority.

It was decided that those who were proven by their actions to be dedicated to the destruction of the democratic constitutional republic, would be allowed no place, no power, in the government of that republic.

And thus Article 3 of the 14th Amendment was written and became law when the Amendment passed and became part of the Constitution.

Alexander Stevens and the other traitors were “immensely popular political figures” among their fellow insurrectionary traitors who were retaking political control of the newly reorganized states that were being returned to the Union under the policies of Andrew Johnson. Those who say today that excluding such “immensely popular political figures” from the ballot - regardless of their known political beliefs and actions - is “anti-democratic” would have been among the Copperheads (a term for northern Democrats who supported the South) who argued against the adoption not only of Article 3 but the entire 14th Amendment.

Today, Donald Trump and his supporters expressly state their intention to demolish the provisions of that amendment as regards the definition of who is a citizen, among their other planned attacks on the Constitutional rule of law, should they return to office. They are no different from the former Confederate traitors who also wished to continue waging war on the United States.

It has been “interesting” to watch the progression of authoritarianism in the United States over the past 60 years since the “Goldwater Revolution” failed.

We’ve always been told “it can’t happen here,” that there are rules and traditions preventing such a change, that authoritarianism was not even possible in the United States, without some wider cataclysm.

However, the past eight years have shown that if the would-be authoritarian takes on those traditions and guardrails one at a time, his partisans will say that this particular guardrail, this rule, this tradition, must be ignored, because it would be too inconvenient, too “divisive” to enforce it. But of course we need not worry, since the next guardrail can already be seen, and that will stop him.

Don’t worry about his nomination in the primary; he’ll lose the general election.

Don’t worry about his successful election; the party will keep him in check when he takes office.

Don’t worry about the party falling to his dominance; he can always be impeached.

Don’t worry about impeaching him; he can always be beaten in the next election.

Don’t worry about his coup attempt; he can be impeached again.

Don’t worry about the second impeachment; the criminal courts can bring him to justice.

Don’t worry about the criminal cases; there’s always the 14th Amendment.

Don’t worry about him winning; he’ll be blocked from staying in office past this term by the 22nd Amendment.

Unfortunately, it turns out that Trump’s genius was realizing this truth before the rest of us. His lifelong legal strategy of delay and bamboozle is perfect for gumming up the operation of all the defenses the system has built in to constrain him.

The Italians could say of Mussolini, “No one could have really known what he’d do, not for sure.” The Germans could say of Hitler, “No one could have really known what he’d do, not for sure.”

We in the United States cannot say that. Because we know what he’ll do. For sure.

We know what he has done in his first time in office. We have experienced it. When he tells us what he will do now, how he will destroy the Constitution, and the rule of law and destroy the democratic republic that is founded on that Constitution and the rule of law; we know he will do it because we know he has already tried to do it. His supporters promise they will do it.

Maya Angelou once said if someone tells you who they are, you should believe them.

What we are looking at in this year of 2024 here in the United States is the struggle between the idea of democracy and the rule of law, against authoritarianism and totalitarianism.

That struggle is also going on elsewhere. But if it is lost here, it will be lost everywhere.

We’re supposed to let him run on a platform of destroying what we have? We’re supposed to hand over power to him to do that, if he pulls off another Electoral College scam? We’re supposed to just give him the power he needs to do what he has told us he will do? What we know he will do?

We’re supposed to nod our heads and say “Here, you win, we lost, have a good day”?

We’re supposed to just let the fucking New Confederacy walk in and take over????!!

Democracy isn’t a suicide pact.

It’s been said many times, by conservative legal scholars, that “The Constitution isn’t a suicide pact.”

It’s a well-known rule of law that you cannot use the law to destroy the law.

Democracy matters. Freedom of expression matters. The rule of law matters. Values matter. That’s what’s at stake.

Our ancestors already made the decision for us. The rule is NOT that we surrender all because a “rule” says so. That rule has been superseded in this case. The rules of the game have already been changed. We can save the Kobayashi Maru, and damn any six traitors on a compromised, discredited, corrupt court who say otherwise.

For me, I can take Senator Angus King’s words, spoken on January 31, 2024 in debate over supporting the Ukrainian battle for survival, as a lodestar, a guide for action:

“I want to stand on the side of resisting authoritarianism, on the side of democracy, on the side of the values that the country has stood for and that people have been fighting for, for 250 years.”

WE are the ultimate defenders of the Republic.

Donald Trump cannot be allowed back into power, regardless. Ever.

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