Are You Ready for Minority Rule?

 “Things are always changing. This is just one of the big jumps instead of the little step-by-step changes that are easier to take. People have changed the climate of the world. Now they’re waiting for the old days to come back.” Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

It was cold in the apartment this morning. I started the coffee brewing and donned my heavy Chelsea Football Club sweatshirt. Although I didn’t want to, I looked at the news; it confirmed what I knew -- the GOP had succeeded in ramming Amy Coney Barrett down our throats eight days before the presidential election. 

Mitch McConnell achieved his dream of cementing minority rule, and said as much on the floor of the Senate. The cynical, corrupt man from Kentucky held the power, and he used it with ruthless efficiency. I wondered what might have happened if the tables had been reversed and the Democrats held a majority and tried to seat a moderate associate justice at warp speed. Would the Dems have trampled Senate rules, procedures and norms? I doubt it. They don’t have the killer instinct or sufficient disregard for the institution. For far too many years, the Dems believed they could deal with the GOP on level terms, as if both sides play by a common set of rules. They don’t. It was this naivete on the part of Barack Obama that drove me crazy during his first term. No matter how many times Republicans dissed him, Obama kept trying to find common ground. Obama wanted to make policy, the GOP only wanted to expand its power. Even if the GOP had been a minority party, I think McConnell would have found a way to block the Democrats from rushing to confirm a justice. Appeals to rules and fairness work on Democrats, but bounce off Republicans like BB’s off armor plating. 

I don’t know what will happen on November 3rd and in the weeks after. I’m not confident that Biden will win, despite early indications that the turnout will be record-setting. What I imagine, though, is that regardless of the results, Trump will preemptively claim victory, either on election night or the next day, and FOX News and Breitbart and all the other Trump mouthpieces will amplify his claim. Trump will blitz the public with tales of massive fraud, cheating, and fake absentee ballots. Lawsuits will follow in all the states where the vote tally is close. Trump might hold rallies in those states, and encourage his supporters to demand a halt to the count by marching on election offices in a sea of MAGA red. After living through the 2000 election, it’s not a stretch to imagine the final outcome being decided in Trump’s favor by a hyper-partisan Supreme Court. 

And then what? 

For many years the Dems believed they could deal with the GOP on level terms, as if both sides play by a common set of rules. 

Even if Biden prevails -- and let’s hope he does -- Trump will have more than two months to plant boobytraps, string Claymore mines, and retaliate against his perceived enemies. That’s a long interregnum, particularly with Covid-19 resurgent in many states. Trump & Company have surrendered to the pandemic, raised the white flag, folded the tents and let the horses and mules run loose. Damn the needs of the people, let them fend for themselves. The coming winter looks long and dark. Despair lives next door. In less than four years, Donald J. Trump has driven a wedge between millions of Americans. His talk of red and blue states, his sowing of mistrust in public health experts, and in simple measures like wearing a face covering; his constant lying about the severity of Covid-19, which he knew about in February; his demands for loyalty over competence; his grift and self-dealing; his cruelty and stupidity. The man is a reckless and destructive sociopath, and we are not free of his evil stench, not by a long shot. Trump may lose at the polls in a margin too big to steal, as legal analyst Glenn Kirschner puts it, but we shouldn’t for a moment think Trump will leave the national stage. His cult followers, the people who wear the red hats and can’t get enough of his act, will still believe in him, listen to him. If Trump calls them to Mar-A-Lago, they will go. If Trump tells them to march into the Gulf of Mexico, they will, like lemmings off a cliff. 

Tell me, please, what happened to America? 

In a week at least the fund-raising text messages and emails that daily barrage my phone will end. I remind myself that the antidote to despair is to focus on what is within my control. The present is a soap bubble. The old days aren’t returning. Octavia Butler is right -- things are always changing. 

Injustice Nation

 

“For five decades, the Court has, with striking regularity, sided with the rich and powerful against the poor and weak, in virtually every area of the law.” Adam Cohen, Supreme Ineqiality: The Supreme Court’s Fifty-Year Battle For A More Unjust America

Dispirited. Another week of soul fatigue. The fuckery goes on as the election nears. Suppression tactics in full swing. It’s not subtle. Strip large urban areas of ballot drop-off boxes. Reduce the number of polling places so voters have to endure long lines and hours of waiting to exercise their right to vote. If the powerful wanted people to vote in large numbers, they would make it easy to do so. Instead they (state level Republican legislatures and secretaries of state) make it hard for as many people as they can. Aided and abetted by the Supreme Court’s gutting of the voting rights act, they create formidable barriers. According to Rick Wilson of the Lincoln Project, Florida excels at election fuckery, which explains, in part, why so many of the leeches that squirm their way to the top of the GOP hierarchy hail from Florida. Rick Scott. Ron Desantis. Marco Rubio. The list goes on. Right-wingers and the State of Florida have had a long love affair.

Ever since Robert Bork spoke his mind too freely, the confirmation process has been like bad Kabuki theater. The whole shebang is a farce, and most of the time the hearings are dull, ponderous, long on posturing opportunities for senators, and devoid of substance. 

Amy Coney Barrett will be confirmed as the newest Supreme Court Justice and will park her uptight, reactionary butt in RBG’s old chair. The Democrats can’t stop this confirmation train, not even with dynamite. It’s a done deal. The Court will soon have six Catholics. Think of that. When John F. Kennedy ran for Senate in the mid 1950’s, and then president a few years later, his Catholic faith was a big deal, a campaign “issue” because it made WASPS uneasy. Today’s WASPS have nothing to fear because this Catholic-laden court will protect their class interests. Amy Coney Barrett hails from some weird Catholic sect in South Bend, Indiana, and reminds me of someone who has been indoctrinated. The first time I saw her photograph I thought she could be a character from Westworld. Like a robot, she was programmed to evade, to duck and dodge, to bob and weave, and refuse to take a position on the simplest matters of law, like whether or not the Constitution allows the president to change the date of a national election.  Ever since Robert Bork spoke his mind too freely, the confirmation process has been like bad Kabuki theater. The whole shebang is a farce, and most of the time the hearings are dull, ponderous, long on posturing opportunities for senators, and devoid of substance. 

I felt the weight of the times today. It was 95 degrees outside in the middle of October, in a year when 4 million acres of California has been torched by wildfires and the long term weather forecast points at a mild, dry winter for a swath of the country. The drought will worsen, the risk of devastating wildfires will increase; the cycle is as vicious as it is obvious, but don’t bother trying to convince the US Supreme Court; after all, climate change is a contentious public issue. Fuck. I have this sinking feeling that the next several years will be grim for millions of people. My family isn’t impervious to these riptides, and I find myself worrying about the future.  Even if we manage to push Biden and Harris across the line next month, the road will be rough. It’s going to take a concerted effort to powerwash Trump’s shit stains from every federal agency. Even if Democrats flip the Senate -- which is absolutely necessary if we are to have any hope -- the GOP, though weakened by it’s romance with Trumpism, will still do everything possible to thwart Biden and Harris. We can’t fool ourselves. A Biden victory will not restore the nation to the state it was in when Trump took the reins. The shit we’re in is much deeper; Trump has done a number on America. Trump bent the nation over and sodomized it. 

To stop backsliding into the abyss, the Democrats must win the Senate and the White House and hold both long enough to appoint justices who are not products of the Federalist Society.  If the country is to make any progress on the thicket of intertwined problems staring us down -- from climate change and health care as a right, to racial and economic justice, gun control, campaign finance reform and mass incarceration, mass surveillance and militarism -- we must have more democracy, not less, but thanks to Mitch McConnell and the reactionary Federalist Society, that’s a ways off. The Nixon Court has become the Trump Court. Fire in the hole, America. 

Power must be one hell of a high, better than opium.