On US Election Day, Here’s a Sentence to Reflect Upon

A couple of months ago, this item from People magazine showed up in my newsfeed: “First Politician Involved in January 6 Capitol Riots is Removed from Office Following Judge's Ruling.” It was the first time a judge officially labeled the events of January 6 an "insurrection." It was also the first time since 1869 that a U.S. official was disqualified from public office under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.

I read the item quickly, grateful for justice taking its course and expecting to move on to the next news item and the next, as one does over morning coffee.

However, I am a fan of sentences: that is to say, the kind that are made up of words. This sentence from New Mexico Judge Francis Matthew's ruling, therefore, stopped me in my tracks:

"The irony of Mr. Griffin's argument that this Court should refrain from applying the law and consider the will of the people in District Two of Otero County who retained him as a county commissioner against a recall effort as he attempts to defend his participation in an insurrection by a mob whose goal, by his own admission, was to set aside the results of a free, fair and lawful election by a majority of the people of the entire country (the will of the people) has not escaped this Court."

Wow! That sentence is 91 words long, yet the judge never loses track of his noun-verb connection. "Irony" lands neatly on its long-distance verb, "has not escaped." How many lesser mortals would have dumped the verb tense three clauses ago and linked the verb erroneously with some other noun picked up along the way? How many might have weakened its gavel-like impact by splitting that sentence into two or even three?

We would not have blamed the judge for doing either of those things. Well, okay, some of us might have, in the interest of promoting grammatical expression and clarity among public officials. A purist might even want a little comma adjustment, although commas are often up for debate.

By the time this post goes live, the support for democracy in one branch of government will either brighten, south of the border, or dim considerably. Whatever that outcome, in crafting this sentence (run-on, yes, but oh, so perfectly parseable) and carrying it to its just conclusion, Judge Matthew of the state I will always think of as my own has my admiration.