Extemporaneous musings, occasionally poetic, about life in its richly varied dimensions, especially as relates to history, theology, law, literature, science, by one who is an attorney, ordained minister, historian, writer, and African American.
Tuesday, November 22, 2016
"PENCIL-WHIPPED!"
PENCIL-WHIPPED!
"Being pencil-whipped," is how a former, prospective, client from Oklahoma referred to his discharge from his job at a Post Office, there.
That term "pencil-whipped," more broadly, refers to many instances in which unwary people overlook terms, nuances, and/or meanings in written documents, contracts, treaties, that they later come to regret, upon realization,much too late!.
That term, "pencil -whipped" may also include the United States Constitution 's infamous 3/5's clause, which gave the large slave-holding South a Congressional representation advantage over the small non-slave holding North in Congress, and by extension, in the Electoral College. By counting blacks, who had no vote, as 3/5s persons, practically all early American Presidents were Virginians.
Exceptions were John Adams and his son, John Quincy Adams .
President-Elect Donald Trump has benefited by reason of the same Constitutional, post-colonial, pencil-whipping, that gave the lesser-populated slave-holding South its gerrymandered (read "pencil-whipped") electoral mechanism to still win, even if it lost the popular vote. Their device survived Civil War, Reconstruction, etc.
Despite losing the popular vote, now by 1.7 million, if the Electoral College follows suit with their states' popular votes to select Trump President on December 19, 2016, when votes are counted in the Senate, he will become the 45th President of the United States!