Understanding the Constitution...Or Not

MY MEMBERSHIP ON FACEBOOK is starting to pay some dividends. I am learning things I might never have learned anywhere else, because I do not participate in any other social media platforms, including twitter. I must therefore rely on other people to keep me abreast of the president's twitter tweets. One simply must remain abreast of the president's twitter tweets, to be culturally literate. If true, this one is the twitter tweet to end all twitter tweets. But..can it be true, and if it is, how can it be? Apparently, president Trump tweeted that the twenty fifth amendment to the American constitution is "unconstitutional". Yes, that's rights, one of the constitutional amendments is...unconstitutional. You understand how incredible this statement is, right? Its as if he is claiming that the constitution is unconstitutional, which he in fact is saying. How can anything in the constitution be unconstitutional? Well, it can't be, any more than a gallon of water extracted from the ocean can come from some place other than the ocean..or something like that.. The process by which amendments can be added to the constitution is very clearly spelled ot in the document itself, and it involves ratification by three fourths of the state legislatures. Its right there in the document, easy to find, easy to read. Anyone, including Trump, even Trump, can read the constitution. Any amendment which appears in the document, all twenty seven of them, have undergone this ratification process. Therefore, all twenty seven of them, and any new ones ratified in the future, and there are likely to be more, are, by definition, and by law, constitutional. Get it? Of course you do. We all do, We all get it, and we all love the process and love the constitution itself, including, or so we thought, the president himself. The twenty fifth amendment, the one Trump thinks is "unconstitutional" deals with what happens when the president is not capable of being president. Throughout American history, several presidents and vice presidents have gotten sick, and have been unable to do their job. Every time this has happened, confusion has ensued, because the constitution if very vague about what to do. So the 25th amendment was enacted rather recently, in 1967, to try to clarify the situation. It only made maters worse. The amendment is long and complicated, and confusing. The part Trump doesn't like concerns what happens when the president is a moron, mentally ill, or insane. In that case, members of the cabinet, or members of congress can "gang up" on the president, and remove him or her from office, legally. Trump is worried about that, because many Americans think he is crazy, with good reason, and there has been much talk about invoking this clause in the 25th amendment. Well, actually, I personally believe that we should scrap the constitution entirely and replace it with another version, a more modern updated version better suited to our currents needs, and this in fact is what Madison, Jefferson, and the other founders thought would happen. Madison and Jefferson would be appalled if they knew that we were still using their eighteenth century document in the twenty first century, but that, as they say, is another matter. Did we just read on twitter that Donald Trump said that the twenty fifth amendment to the constitution is, "unconstitutional"? Oh, dear heavens, please tell me that we didn't. But, there it was right there on Facebook, posted, so how can Facebook be wrong? My current plan, for lack of a better one, is to go back to bed and simply pretend that it did not happen, that somebody made the whole thing up, or that I dreamed it, had a bad night sleeping, had a nightmare, and just went ahead and dreamed that the president of the Untied States declared the United States constitution unconstitutional. That might be the best idea, for me, personally. Maybe the whole horrible episode will just kind of go away.