Our Supreme Court's Crumbling Credibility

Many Supreme Court justices have been appointed in the final year of a Presidential term, including Anthony Kennedy in 1988 by Ronald Reagan – with a Democratic Senate majority.

In January 2016, Barack Obama nominated Merrick Garland, a widely respected moderate judge. Republican Senate leadership refused even to bring Garland’s name to a vote. The excuse was the presidential election ten months away, which Republicans said should decide which party could nominate a new justice. Sen. Lindsey Graham said the Republicans would do the same in 2020, if a Republican president were completing his term and a Supreme Court seat came open. Democrats complained, but were powerless.

The Republicans’ action was unprecedented. Further, their rationale was fatuous. If a party’s senators may go on strike for the last year of the term of another party’s president, why not the last two years? Or three? One party could simply freeze the other out of the Supreme Court Justice appointing business.

The Republicans have acted lawfully, but unwisely. This can’t end well. I don’t approve of the Republican leadership’s power grab in 2016, or the current hypocrisy in rushing Trump’s nominee through. I don’t like what the Democrats may feel compelled to do in response. Court-packing has a bad name, but Congress could do it. The Constitution doesn’t set the number of justices (initially six). Dems could create a 15-member supreme court; then some day the Republicans could up that to 21.

The Constitution doesn’t call for parties. One could reasonably argue we’d be better off without ‘em. But after Republicans have used Russian help and unprecedented tactics to create a Court out of step with voters, it’d be hard not to take lawful corrective measures.

The Republicans have weakened the Court. Our forefathers founded a country of laws, which works only so long as citizens trust that laws are enforced fairly. That’s what the black robes and formalities are for. Justice is blind to color, faith, or politics. Although no judge can be completely neutral, our system depends on approaching that ideal as nearly as we can. Many justices were approved by acclamation. But now, increasingly, the question is not the candidate’s experience, sagacity, and judicial chops, but her party loyalty and position on abortion. We may get a nominee with just three years on the bench, and who wasn’t primarily a trial lawyer. But she’s indicated she’ll place her political beliefs above legal precedents.

And what of our democracy? Trump has broken laws and destroyed many safeguards against a corrupt dictatorship. He’s fired inspectors general (positions created by both parties as watchdogs for corruption and misconduct), and this week replaced one neutral IG with an aide to Trump-worshiping far-right Congressman Nunes. Republicans are using various tricks to decrease the vote count among people of color. Trumpist lawyers will wage an incredible fight, on the least excuse, to overturn an adverse result. Now Trump refuses to say he’ll leave the White House voluntarily if he loses.

In 2000, Republican justices bowed to party loyalty in Bush-Gore, tossing cherished principles out the window. Now a far-right supreme court, including three Trump appointees, could decide this election. It had seemed the Chief Justice’s respect for law, and his concern for his legacy, might lead him to choose law over Trump; but this new appointment could “trump” law and legacy.

Republicans know they’re increasingly unappealing to voters. Are they hoping a dictatorship will save them?

                                               – 30 –

 

[The column above appeared this morning in the Las Cruces Sun-News, as well as on the newspaper's website and on KRWG’s website. A spoken version will air during the week on both KRWG and on KTAL, 101.5 FM (http://www.lccommunityradio.org/), and will be available on demand on KRWG’s website.]

[We will now have a Supreme Court that is deeply out of step with the U.S. population. A majority of that population voted for Hillary Clinton and will likely vote for Joe Biden. The Supreme Court will have a two-thirds majority of deeply conservative justices. A larger majority of U.S. citizens believe pregnancies and abortions are for a woman, her doctor, and perhaps her husband or lover to decide – not the law. This Supreme Court may overturn Roe v. Wade.

Two points are a little less obvious. One is that Supreme Court credibility is being shredded, and will continue to be shredded. Legally, the Supreme Court is supposed to be interpreting the U.S. Constitution (and U.S. laws). Usually if the Court has decided a point in the past, the Court will respect that precedent. If this Court flatly tosses Roe v Wade out the window, it’s saying “Listen, this isn’t about the Constitution or any orderly process, we just think this way and have the power to do this.” Similarly, if a later Supreme Court re-interprets the Constitution as it has been interpreted in the past, as including women’s right to choose to abort a pregnancy, that will seem a political decision, not a neutral interpretation of the U.S. Constitution. The more often and the more plainly these things happen, the less moral or ethical authority the Court retains.

Secondly, the Supreme Court makes a difference not only on Roe v. Wade and gun control. It makes decisions on other headline items (whether or not governmental regulations aimed at combating global warming are permissible; immigration; First Amendment rights to free speech and freedom of religion) but a host of unnoticed issues that matter to someone: what protections do we have against monopolies? What are our rights to sue companies that do things that hurt us? If a big company does something clearly wrong, that hurts many people a little but no one enough to make it sensible for anyone to sue alone, how easily can those victims band together in a class action? Who gets to control the Internet? Do certain issues get decided by the feds or by the states? And, occasionally, who won the Presidential election. Suffice it to say that if you are a middle-class or poor person, your rights against big corporations are in trouble; and if you’re an endangered bird, you’re history.  Oh, and if you have a pre-existing condition, forget health insurance! ]

Socialism, What Is?

What’s this “socialism,” anyway?

It started with Christian Utopian Socialists such as the Hutterites, an Anabaptist branch that lived on communes. They felt that living in a communal manner, rather than seeking financial profit from each other, emulated Christ and his disciples. (I’m not saying Jesus was a socialist; but He did say, “You cannot serve both God and Money . . . Be on guard against all kinds of greed; a man’s life does not consist of the abundance of his possessions!” Between pure socialism and unbridled capitalism, which would He preach?) History is littered with efforts by Christians to practice socialist ideals.

Neither pure socialism nor pure capitalism appears to work. Capitalism is too harsh and socialism ignores people’s selfish side. Each is theoretically consistent with democracy. In practice, either eventually perverts democracy, ending with a small group running things, usually corruptly, and holding power through force and/or propaganda. (Kerala, an Indian province, seems an exception. I’d love to visit there.)

Karl Marx didn’t invent socialism. He built on the work of many highly regarded philosophers we don’t find it necessary to hate. Marx essentially said that while capitalism had helped societies marshal technologies to develop new material goods, which worked great for some, but was not working for most people, and was therefore unsustainable.

During the early 20^th Century, many local and even Congressional elections brought socialists to office in U.S. cities and states. Only extreme right-wingers considered it evil.

Then Russian Communists came to power. Although the Czar needed overthrowing; it’s probably unfortunate that the Communists wrested control of the revolution from the other groups involved. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics perverted socialism. While some (Julius Martov?) were benign idealists, Stalin and others clearly sought and retained power through any available means. While early on the Soviet Union tried to improve the lives of the average citizen, few would try to excuse Stalin’s conduct.

Soviet conduct toward smaller nations was ugly. Think Greece, Hungary, Czechoslovakia. Sadly, U.S. conduct was equally unfortunate and misguided. (Think Iran and Guatemala in 1954, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua and, most tragically, Viet Nam.) Maybe a historian could parse out how much our legitimate distrust of the Soviet Union and the Soviets’ quite justified distrust of us led each government to excesses. Neither side was as evil as the other believed, or as pure as it claimed.

The philosophy, socialism, got mixed up with Russia’s expansionism (built on reasonable fears), which conflicted with our national interest. The Soviets used the socialist ideal as a cover for international power grabs. We got their philosophy and actions confused. Our leaders used that confusion to cloak justify our international power grabs. Socialism and third-world independence did conflict with the United Fruit Company’s profits.

Tien An Men Square

The Chinese Communist Revolution started idealistically and gained popular support. The U.S. opposed it, for some stupid reasons. Mao had better intentions than we supposed; and the Chinese government made an honest (though sometimes tragically misguided) effort to better the average citizen’s life. However, it’d be hard to justify what was done to Tibetans, or during the Cultural Revolution. (In China I met survivors of the Cultural Revolution, and Tibetans, whose stories broke my heart.)

Almost all present governments offer some blend of capitalism and socialism. Many are doing better than we are. Yet we still find ourselves hollering,“Socialist!” like some half-understood playground insult.

Democracy is fragile, and precious.

                                                           – 30 –

 

[The above column appeared this morning, Sunday, 20 September 2020, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, as well as on the newspaper's website and on KRWG’s website. A spoken version will air during the week on KRWG and on KTAL, 101.5 fm (http://www.lccommunityradio.org/) during the week, and will also be available on-demand on the websites.]

[It was ironic, this morning, to take a TV break and see an ad targeting a candidate for alleged sympathy to allegedly “socialist” ideas. Those ideas seemed to be ideas for aggressively tackling global warming. I’d call those “survival” ideas.]

[I studied China, then saw it firsthand in the mid-1980’s. I sympathized with China, and had little patience for Taiwan, where the anti-Communist Chinese had fled after the revolution, and were able to build a country because the U.S. protected them. China was interesting: compared to India, it was more egalitarian; one didn’t see the huge contrasts in wealth I heard about in India. Almost no one was well off, but everyone had a roof, a job, food. However, I met so many people whose lives the Cultural Revolution had destroyed, including some older folks I grew close to, who’d been punished for speaking English or being a Catholic or a professional, as well as casual acquaintances like a cabdriver explaining that for two years of his childhood, there had just been no school. Then in Tibet . . . well,

I’ll save those encounters for a different post, but it was a sad education. I realize Tibet was no perfect society before 1959, and there were serious inequalities, but the Chinese did wrong on a huge scale.

Meanwhile, I ended up staying on Taiwan while I wrote a novel and waited for approval on a film I’d pitched to National Geographic TV. I came to respect much about that country, and to be fond of it. Yet to build it, the mainlanders had started by massacring large numbers of native Taiwanese, a crime our government kept quiet about.. (It was a county the size of New Jersey. I actually played basketball on national television once.) At any rate, I saw the virtues and the warts of the Peoples Republic of China, close up; and I got an even closer look at the Republic of China (Taiwan). Perhaps the closer you get, the less simple anything is.]

[On the often “socialist” theme of the Bible, there were many other quotations, including some from the Old Testament, that wouldn’t fit in the column. Then this morning a friend and reader commented:

”Thanks very much for the excellent reminder of a very neglected Biblical theme.  A careful study of the Old Testament laws had quite a few “socialist” features including rules about gleaning the crops, cancellation of debts and proper treatment of travelers and immigrants. 

”Christ practiced “socialized medical/mental health care” without discrimination based upon social taboos/distinction.  Matthew 20 names full employment and living wage as “kingdom of heaven” characteristics.

”Acts 4:32-37 records the establishment of socialism within the Christian community in Jerusalem early in the history.  Same thing with healings (medical/mental).  Indeed the whole community became so popular that the whole community was driven out of Jerusalem (Acts 8:1-3) just like in the US several times in our history.

“The 1st centuries saw the formation of monastic groups that are still in existence and are still socialist.  Mondragon cooperatives in Spain were founded by a Catholic priest and he used the Catholic social justice teachings to structure it. 

”So these theological feather weights that are so noisily prominent in the US are the “anti Christ” in our midst!!!  Quite a history, no senor? ]

[Finally, the author of our “Pledge of Allegiance” was Francis Bellamy (1855-1931), an American Baptist minister and a leading Christian socialist. Like Pope Leo, he championed the rights of working people and a more equal distribution of wealth and income, which he believed reflected Jesus’ teachings. In 1891, Bellamy was fired from his Boston pulpit for preaching against the evils of capitalism and describing Jesus as a socialist. His Looking Backward was a favorite book of my father’s. But Bellamy is best known for the “Pledge of Allegiance,” which he wrote in 1892 as an antidote to Gilded Age greed, misguided materialism, and hyper-individualism, as reflected in the radical words “with liberty and justice for all.” (Bellamy did not include “under God” in the Pledge. Congress added that in 1953, during the Cold War).]

 

 

What Would You Say to Your Grandchildren? / "What did you do in the Climate Crisis, Daddy?"

Whether we agree or disagree with removing historical figures from places of honor because of their terrible treatment of other groups, we must acknowledge that, in their times and cultures, these figures were regarded as heroes and statesmen. 

Most such people thought of themselves as good. Many now think otherwise. 

Southern slave owners thought Blacks were less intelligent. Blacks had no English-language skills and knew nothing of European culture. Whites kept Blacks uneducated, partly to avoid facing the horror of what they were doing. Eventually, the existence of black poets and scholars, if nothing else, should have made equality obvious to anyone whose economic interest or psychological weaknesses didn’t require believing themselves superior to someone. 

The question we all should be asking is how our conduct will be regarded by our great-grandchildren and their kids. They will loathe us for our selfish inaction as the Earth warms. 

We have had ample warning about warming. In 1981, leading scientists warned us in a British TV documentary, “Warming Warning.” In 1988, Dr. James Hansen testified to the U.S. Senate that, “it is already happening now.” In 1997, the first Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment report was published. “An Inconvenient Truth” was released in 2006, but clearly proved too inconvenient. 

Two things are very clear right now: warming is happening faster than predicted, and that as the Earth warms, the harm compounds and grows exponentially. Replacing reflective white ice with brown land and blue seas expedites the warming. 

We are already realizing the consequences of inaction: the melting Alaskan tundra, Miami's endangered water supply, and our 100º days and drought. It was 120º in L.A. county last week. Wildfires have turned the sky over San Francisco a sci-fi orange. Greenland’s ice is melting at a rate once predicted for 2070. In December, fires sent people in Australia running for their lives into the ocean. This week fires threatened Portland, Oregon. 

 It’s too late to prevent significant warming, but we can somewhat mitigate the damage. If we do not take meaningful action soon, including national and personal sacrifices, your kids’ kids’ world (even ours, in a decade or two) will be mighty grim. 

Temperatures will be higher, and stay higher longer, exposing people to potentially fatal heat levels. The Arctic Ocean will be iceless in summer. Forty percent of permafrost will melt, releasing massive amounts of methane and carbon, further raising temperatures. Eighty-plus million people will be refugees. Destructive superstorms will be stronger and more frequent. Rising seas will inundate low areas along the coast, despite vast amounts spent on seawalls. Many areas will be abandoned; but with the world amply populated, and many other areas becoming uninhabitable, where will people go? And what will they eat? 

As our great-grandkids – who will avoid having children because of the ugly world surrounding them, and the scarcity of food – struggle to squeeze into Patagonia and southern New Zealand along with everyone else, I wonder if they will recall our treatment of Latin American immigrants and whisper, “Karma?” Surely – if history is still taught (and taught somewhat honestly) – future generations will hate us. They will know that when their hellish predicament could have been avoided, we knew (or twisted everything around to avoid knowing) and did nothing. 

Our evasions and rationalizations will look even less reasonable and more inhumane to them than slave owners’ do to us. Maybe we should sacrifice some comfort for their sake. 

 – 30 –

 

 [The above column appeared this morning, Sunday, 13 September 2020, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, as well as on on the newspaper's website the newspaper's website and on KRWG's website. A related radio commentary will air during the week on KRWG and on KTAL (www.lccommunityradio.org) and will be available on demand as well.]

 [A book I want to read -- and kind of don't want to read -- is Our Final Warning: Six Degrees of Climate Emergency. I remember when the discussion involved how to keep the Earth from warming one or two degrees Celsius before some point in the future. Now, if we continue blissully ignoring or denying the problem, we could see the two degrees in my lifetime]and four degrees by 2075. Mark Lynas's book will sharpen a reader's focus on just what that means in human terms. And natural world terms. We're losing species rapidly, and the polar bear is one we'll lose pretty soon.) None of it is real pretty. All of it is something we should all know. And if you can accept that kind of world as your kids' and grandkids' future, that's interesting.] 

 

 

 

How This Could Go

Donald Trump should be toast; but will precisely the problems that should sink him help keep him afloat?

Capping four years of incompetence, lawbreaking, and ethics violations, Trump has mismanaged the pandemic so badly the U.S. easily leads the world in per capita cases and deaths; and just when several troubling police shootings of Black people have awakened more whites to systemic racism than anything since the 1960’s, Trump is still peddling racism. Logically people would reject Trump to save lives and to diminish our society’s racism and divisiveness. Plus, Joe Biden capped the Democratic “convention” with the best speech of his life. Why wouldn’t Biden rout Trump?

Polls show people recognize Trump has screwed up big-time; but beyond the death toll, COVID-19’s big impacts are confusion, grief, fear, and cabin fever. Though most people respect the restrictions many state governors have imposed, despite Trump, many people are impatient, angry, and frightened. History shows that such people often leap into the hands of an authoritarian demagogue making false promises that it’s all okay, or that only he can fix it.

Could impatience with the restrictions that stall COVID-19’s spread, and fear of the unknown course of the pandemic, draw many to Trump’s simplistic worldview? Yep. From the frying pan into the fire. But it’s happened before.

Even some white people whose eyes were opened by the murder of George Floyd are not immune to Trumps’ thinly-veiled racism. The George Floyd murder was horrible; but if Trump says violence could reach my neighborhood, . . .

Substantively, in the debates, Biden should cut Trump into pieces. Biden knows his stuff; he projects a good nature and good intentions; Trump is lazy and doesn’t read. But Trump will freely assert whatever comes into his head, in oral bumper-stickers. He’ll project absolute certainty, and complete contempt for Biden. Biden’s thoughtful responses may get lost, or seem weak by comparison, or exceed his time limit. Fact-checking by networks or newspapers will seem dry and unconvincing – and be labeled an anti-Trump plot.

If you read transcripts of Biden's and Trump’s convention speeches, you’d laugh at Trump. While Joe was Mr. Good Guy, Trump (low-energy as he was) stood in front of a live crowd, at the supposedly non-partisan White House, with scores of flags and bigger fireworks. That image will stick. Most folks can’t or won’t compare their speeches’ accuracy.

Yeah, the polls are cheering, although some who fancy Trump don’t admit it. (Some of those people are friends of mine.) But polls only approximate what people think and feel.

Vote totals are different. Our undemocratic electoral college system means Trump could win despite losing the popular vote by 5%. Extreme gerrymandering and voter suppression mean 100 strong Biden voters may not translate into 100 valid votes for Joe. That’s particularly true with balloting by mail. Many mailed ballots get lost or disallowed.

So yeah, I worry. Trump is destroying our country.

I don’t predict a Trump win. But it’s clearly possible. Each of us should spend more time than we might wish on trying to do what we can to convince everyone we know to vote for Mr. Biden and make sure Biden voters vote early and accurately.

If you’re a Trump voter, look honestly at the man’s conduct.

Our democracy is at serious risk. Our founders (in Ben Franklin’s words) gave us “a Republic – if you can keep it.” We can. Will we?

                                   – 30 –

[The above column appeared this morning, Sunday, 6 September 2020, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, as well as on the newspaper's website. It will also be on KRWG’s website shortly; and a related radio commentary will air during the week on both KRWG and KTAL, 101.5 FM (http://www.lccommunityradio.org/). Later today it will also be available on-demand at KRWG’s site.]

[There are a lot of encouraging signs. Record numbers of Republicans are endorsing Biden; top military officials recognize what a disaster Trump is; and while many who voted for Trump or Hillary Clinton in 2016 will vote in 2020, for Trump or Biden, Biden holds a significant lead among those who voted for Jill Stein or Gary Johnson last time around. Those voters (as am I) are dissatisfied with how our system has been going, but they also recognize that Trump is a special kind of disaster. I hope and trust that enough of my fellow U.S. citizens will see that Joe Biden is a good man with substantial experience and judgment, and that Mr. Trump is destroying our democracy.  The most recent polls I've seen show Biden up six points among Wisconsin voters (50% to 44%) and leading nationally 52 per cent to 42, with very few undecideds.

But.

After drafting this column, I read Michael Moore's warning.  (Trump read it too, and texted that Michael was a smart guy.)  We should take that to heart – not just to mutter, "Oh, shit, I wonder what Canada requires of new residents?" but to STAND UP AND DO SOMETHING.

What you can do is to make damned sure that every day you try to change someone's voting plan or strengthen a Biden voter's commitment to getting to the polls.  We each know some folks who see things somewhat as we do, but don't always bother voting.  Help them with whatever form-filling they need to do to vote absentee, or make sure they know about early-voting and that you'll be happy to drive them to the polls; or remind them of the facts.]

[In a forthcoming post I’ll detail what four more years of Trump would mean for our country.

For now, let’s just contemplate that for patriots and veterans to ignore (or deny, even though Fox News has also confirmed them) Trump’s disparaging remarks about dead veterans and his unhealthy admiration for Vladimir Putin (most recently expressed in his resistance to believing that Russia, as it has done in other situations, used some special nerve poison to weaken and perhaps kill an important political dissident) takes either a special kind of love for Trump or a strong preference for some of what Trump is doing (e.g., anti-choice on abortion). To me, that’s like fussing with the paint on your boat while it sinks. But it’s what they feel, and talking with them is important.]

 

The photograph? Just to say the gentleman on the right was neither a "sucker" nor a "loser."  (She obviously didn't think he was!)  I guess Trump might not call him a loser, because he survived; but neither was he a sucker.  As a graduate student at Duke, close to receiving his Ph.D., he made a reasoned decision to leave for training as a Marine bomber pilot, and thereafter flew in the Pacific.  It seemed the right thing to do.  The village they moved to eventually gave him a special award honoring his integrity -- another thing Trump would have mocked.  What can you get for that plaque on the open market, dummy?  But I guess his many squadron mates who didn't make it back were "losers," which sure would have been news to the surviving squadron members when they were having their reunion at our house in the 1960's.