Thursday, September 27, 2018

In Their Court

In the hours after the testimony at the Senate Judiciary Committee, watched by millions of Americans, the Republican leadership pushed hard to bring the confirmation process to a vote, reportedly so that Senators wouldn't have too much time to think about what they'd seen and heard.

Christine Ford was credible, and Brett Kavanaugh was incredible.  As numerous columnists and commentators pointed out, he was so angry and unhinged in demeanor, and so intemperate in his accusations against Democrats and "the left" that he disqualified himself from any kind of judgeship, let alone the Court that routinely decides political questions.  Any illusion that he might be impartial was completely and shockingly shattered.

And that's without the actual threat that he made in his opening statement, to wage war on his political opponents, which he now still hopes to do from the Supreme Court bench.

I saw the above photo on a story and thought that the editors had chosen an especially unflattering one.  But then I saw his actual testimony and realized this is what he looked like throughout it.  Self-righteous, sneering, self-pitying, entitled, contemptuous, vicious, as well as untruthful on known facts, and evasive by means of repetitiveness.  You could not cast a more obvious villain.

He was in essence mirroring the antipresident, and Republican Senators on the committee then took turns mirroring him.  They worked themselves up into a partisan frenzy, fueled by charges of a conspiracy against them for which there is no evidence--not that they bother with evidence anymore.

So now the Senate Republicans may take the elevation of total partisanship to its most brutal and obvious extent yet.  With this vote on an unfit appointment to the Supreme Court, party and ideological partisanship becomes officially supreme.  There is no other value, including justice, fairness and the common good.

It is a bitter irony that extreme right ideologues belong to something called the Federalist Society, and claim adherence to the "original intent" of the Founders.  For there was nothing the Founders found more threatening to the Republic than unbridled party partisanship.  President George Washington believed that the very existence of political parties could doom this democracy.

Their nightmare came true with Mitch McConnell and a Republican majority that is without a single statesman, a Senator with conscience informed by history and law and the delicate balances of government.  Beginning at least with 1994, the Republican party has elevated a combination of ignorant ideologues, corrupt bullshitters and hypocrites to Congress.  Caring about nothing but party politics and their ideological agenda, they effectively hijacked the electoral system in the states, to unfairly maximize Republican seats and unconstitutionally suppress non-Republican voters.

As a result, Dan Wasserman points out: "a majority of the Senate now represents 18% of the population and answers to a subset of voters that is considerably whiter, redder and more rural than the nation as a whole."

Still, the Republic had survived eras of incompetence, corruption and destructive passions, because there were a few in responsible positions who rose above it, and there were lines that no one dared to cross lest the integrity of basic institutions be compromised.

Now the traffic crossing those lines is so routine that they have been wiped away. We have learned how vulnerable our system is, and how much depended on common beliefs and ethics that the Founders and following generations simply assumed.  They thought they'd covered all the infamous possibilities with their careful checks and balances in the Constitution.  But they didn't imagine this.

Now at this hour before the votes, there is no bulwark against this deep injury to the American system and ethic beyond a few Republican Senators who might make the right decision for the wrong reasons.

Women will rightly see this as the worst recent example of male privilege--that is, of the already privileged males.  It is well known to psychologists like Dr. Ford as well as most minorities and the powerless that it's hard for the powerful to pay any attention to them.  But that's only one level of what's going on.

How can any reasonable person look at that photo and decide that this man is fit to serve on the United States Supreme Court?

Yet it's likely that Kavanaugh's most fervent extreme right supporters would happily make the above photo the official portrait of him as Supreme Court Justice.  It is a portrait of how far we've fallen.

Wednesday, September 26, 2018

In Our Court

Ignoring the news most of the time is how I imagine I'd feel taking time off from working at a pre-20th century insane asylum.

Nevertheless...

1. Just to point out that it was reported that on Monday the anti-president proposed firing Rosenstein from Justice in order to deflect attention from the Kavanaugh news.

So now the Kavanaugh hearing is Thursday--and so is the anti-president's meeting with Rosenstein.

2.  At this point, what Kavanaugh did or didn't do in high school and college may be somewhat uncertain, but his present day response to the accusations is in itself so troubling as to be disqualifying.  There are many ways to respond, but a blanket denial, along with a decidedly weird claim of temperance and sexual innocence beyond college years, is so--well, first of all nuts, especially given the evidence of his male friends--but also so arrogant and clueless that it suggests psychosis.  Given other evidence, he may even be a pathological liar--just like the guy who picked him.

3.  There are so many reasons to reject K. for Supreme Court Justice that any sensible Senator can simply take their pick.  But one especially strikes at the integrity of the Court, raised on Tuesday by Chuck Todd: the expectation of judicial impartiality, called into question by Kavanaugh's partisan political activity, but shattered completely in recent weeks, by his daily residence at the White House and his Fox interview:

"But how impartial can a Supreme Court nominee be when he goes on Fox News — of all possible platforms — to defend himself?

Indeed, you can argue that the entire process of this nomination — the protests, the accusations, the defenses and now the Fox News interview — makes it almost impossible for Kavanaugh to be viewed as an impartial player. And it’s doubly tough for someone who, despite serving on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, worked on the Ken Starr investigation in the 1990s and in the George W. Bush White House in the early 2000s.

It’s that perception as a partisan warrior that has always made Kavanaugh’s nomination problematic — even before these allegations against him. And it’s a perception that gets reinforced when you go on Fox News."

The integrity of the presidency has been shattered.  The concept of impartiality may not even be real to this Congress, and certainly isn't to the new R party.  But if K. is elevated to the Court, it's officially chaos in America for a long time to come.

Sunday, September 23, 2018

Weekend Update

How bad are things?  I just watched the 1956 film Earth v. the Flying Saucers, in which Washington is invaded by extraterrestrials, trying to zap the Capitol, the Supreme Court and the White House--and I was rooting for the flying saucers.

President Obama spoke in Philadelphia.  Viewing the video, his themes are familiar now from that first speech in Illinois but the interaction with the crowd is always new.  This time I was impressed with the people behind him as well as in front of him: white people have learned call and response.  At last!

On the so-called Economic Miracle, Obama: "They act like it just started.  Please."

"On November 6, you can restore some sanity to politics."

Though he mentions it, the issue that gets to the common heart is the destruction of children whose parents were desperately seeking protection, or a better life, but for whatever reason they arrived, the destruction of families and the destruction of children is a despicable act that needs to be repeatedly repudiated more often and more loudly.

Of course the latest despicable circus in Washington that threatens to destroy the Court and country may get louder than anything.

That's two "despicables" in one post.  So time to sign off--