Tag liberal

Bi(Partisan) Curious

Dusty Leave a comment

Donald Trump is going to turn me into a conservative.

That’s probably not true. But it does feel like I have grown a bit more in tune with conservatives as I understand them – certainly how I idealize them, which I know is about as far away from the truth as are the demonizations of the left that are so popular on the right, that we are babykillers or pedophiles or corrupt Fascist socialists who sell American secrets to China so we can feed that money to Hamas to promote anti-Semitism. But one obvious thing keeps coming up: I have grown much more suspicious of government, and much more frustrated with government inefficiency; and both of those feel conservative-leaning.

I mean, maybe it’s not Trump: maybe it’s because I’m getting older, which supposedly swings people to the right; though to be frank, I’m not getting richer, which I think is the actual reason why people become more conservative as they age. It’s always easy to demand higher taxes on the rich when you aren’t one of them – though it is also true that liberals, masters of NIMBYist virtue signaling, are also fond of raising taxes on other people and not on ourselves. I suspect as well that growing anxiety and paranoia contributes to the stereotypical political changes that come with age; as my own anxiety and paranoia are focused almost exclusively on government and authority, it’s basically driving me closer to socialism – or anarchism, even – rather than the increased fear of crime and of marginalized people which I’ve seen in older people around me.

But I’ll tell you what, I do think there needs to be a rebirth and resurgence of the conservatism that I grew up with (Now THAT makes me sound like an old man), at least the conservatism I think I grew up with; though it would be swell if people would first figure out that trickle-down economics is a lie intended to consolidate wealth and power in the hands of those who already have it and who then espouse trickle-down economics. The economic side is coming along, I think, as Americans may actually be figuring out that the Republicans we elected last year have done somewhere between fuck-all and fuck-you in terms of helping make life more affordable, while they fire thousands of people, reduce useful and vital government services, and cut taxes for the rich, as personified by Elon Musk. (I tell you what, if Musk turns out to be a double-agent for progressives, I will yell “AHA!” Because not a lot of genuine conservatives could have managed to throw as much shit on the GOP as Musk has done. I mean, he’s no Trump, but it still seems too much for it to be coincidence.) But I think the rest of what I imagine as idealized conservative values, like small government, local government, a clear focus on maintaining the rule of law and of the Constitution: that is what I think we actually need. And then, inasmuch as conservatism ever represented the values of independence and personal integrity, “family values,” patriotism and Christianity both in a humble, individual sense, I think people turning back to that would be an incredibly good thing.

Though honestly, it would be best if that happened to the people who are actually supposed to be conservative, namely Republicans, rather than if it happened to me. But I will confess a certain imaginary scenario in which someone like me, and maybe actually me, steps into the void left in the GOP after Donald Trump dies or becomes politically insignificant (and God willing let that happen soon), and helps people to remember that there is nothing particularly wrong with conservatism, that progressive ideas need to be tempered in rational ways, that there is benefit in a marketplace of ideas and a political process that features opposition and negotiation, that a single-minded government is dangerous no matter how right-minded (or left-minded) that government is. That the problem with the current GOP is, first, Donald J. Trump, and second, everything that Trump represents: authoritarianism, white supremacy, anti-intellectualism, hypocrisy and narcissism. Not the essential values of conservatives, which, while I generally don’t agree with them, I don’t think they are at all bad. I think the Republican party returning to those values – maybe a little more modernized than the 1950’s Eisenhower Republicans I’m probably imagining – would be the best thing for our country, barring an actual leftist revolution that swept the entire nation along with it, and I keep looking for someone to carry it out.

Can’t find them. Not in Trump’s GOP.

Can you imagine that, though? If someone charismatic enough to actually get Republicans to listen reminded them of what the party of Lincoln should truly be about? I can’t imagine a change in the politics of this country that would have a more immediate positive impact. Not even the hard pendulum swing to the left which I suspect is coming after this particular round of violent greed is over, because as long as progressives and liberals and Democrats in government are opposed by people who will lie with every breath, spread rumors and character assassination with every press interaction, start pretty literal fistfights over every disagreement, and ignore all political norms (Which, to be clear, are the ESSENCE of conservative sensibility, and there is not a much better indication that the Trump movement is not authentically conservative – other than the obvious abandonment of respect for law and order and police authority, in favor of supporting a multiple felon and the complete discarding of all due process) in order to exploit any opportunity to harm their opponents and increase their own power, government will continue to be too dysfunctional to inspire any long-term support for progressive ideas and movements.

Think of it: if the Democrats as they are currently constituted, headed by people like AOC and Cory Booker, Jamie Raskin and Adam Schiff, and Pete Buttigieg and Gavin Newsom, rather than Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, trying to actually enact Medicare for All, over the objections of Senators Donald Trump Jr. and Marjorie Taylor Greene-Trump (Dunno if she’ll marry one of the Trump boys or get Trump himself to adopt her, but I promise that she’ll be part of the family in the next decade. I am going to put my money on her taking up with The Nazi Cheeto himself after Melania finally divorces him.), who holds a filibuster on the floor of the Senate to accuse every one of the Democrats of supporting Chinese Triads in smuggling Fentanyl into Gaza to make Palestinian super-soldiers who will be unleashed across the southern US border to rape white women in order to bring about a wave of abortions which will then be used to distill that baby brain juice which keeps the Clintons alive.

What are the chances that any progressive/liberal alliance would be able to survive through that kind of inferno of flaming horseshit?

As long as Trumpian MAGA fanatics remain popular, they will ruin all attempts at a functional government. Because that is the larger Trumpian project: the undercutting of a functional federal government and a social power structure that serves the public interest and the general welfare promised in the Constitution, in service of the two main goals of the movement, namely a more lawless society where wealthy people and the white supremacist power structure can have free rein, and a right-wing-media-fed zeitgeist of apocalyptic terror that allows Daddy Trump to claim that only he has the strength and intelligence to save us all from the dangers and threats that surround us.

I do think that there is real value in conservative ideas and values – at least in real conservative values. It would have been wonderful if the last twenty years had included more genuine attempts to balance the federal budget and reduce the deficit and the debt, particularly in the times of economic growth, so long as it had been done the right way, by raising taxes on the wealthy. You know, the way Eisenhower did it: because asking the wealthy to contribute their fair share would show a respect for individual responsibility, and patriotism in the humble sense that asks everyone to contribute to the betterment of this nation and the people who make it up. (Also, while I’m no expert, I swear that taxing the rich seems pretty dang Christian…) Which value, when taken to a Trumpian extreme, is turned into that your-own-bootstraps nonsense which then justifies – or rather pretends to excuse – cutting Medicaid and food stamps and all of the social safety net, while allowing billionaires to extract all the wealth they could ever want without any return on our investments which made the wealth possible in the first place. I think the progressive desire to create programs that produce positive change is wonderful, but when combined with the liberal/Democratic desire to protect everyone and everything that needs protecting, it leads to levels of red tape and bureaucracy that undercuts the progressive program entirely; and, at least in theory, real conservatives would be useful in tempering or preventing that excess. Take, for example, this: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0uxWGBxJWf2oAB9uyDMoOB?si=407ef6fb2213428a

This episode of Jon Stewart’s wonderful podcast features Ezra Klein, the progressive former MSNBC host, who discusses a program intended to build rural broadband access under President Biden’s infrastructure bill. The program had a fourteen-stage process before a region – state or county or city – could receive grant money, which process produced so much red tape that out of 56 regions that applied for grants to build broadband infrastructure, only 3 had finished that process in the three years between the law being signed in 2021 and the end of infrastructure spending in 2024. And none of those three had actually managed to get the money and build the broadband. Klein goes into agonizing detail – he wrote about this in his most recent book – and shows how all of the delays and all of the red tape are well-meaning, but basically none of it is necessary, and taken as a whole, it was destructive: because no rural broadband was built. Multiply that by every other program Biden’s administration passed, and you can see why the Democrats lost the election: because even their important and genuine accomplishments never actually came to pass in the real world. Klein talks about how Biden planned everything on a six- to ten-year timeline – when elections happen every two or four years.

The best line in the podcast was this: “We are stuck between a party that wants to destroy government, and one that can’t make government work.”

I would argue that conservatives arguing for real conservative values could have counteracted the problems that come with a too-singleminded focus on liberal and progressive values. To be fully transparent, I do think that much of the problem is in the liberal influence on progressive movements, because I think it is liberals and Democrats who insist on political correctness and purity tests and virtue signaling, where progressives are focused on functional efforts to improve people’s lives. Klein talks about that, too, that part of the issue was things like a requirement that the subcontractors hired for the broadband installation represent women and non-white minority-run businesses, which is a great intention to have and a wonderful thing to try to do – but it’s not the point. The point was to build rural broadband (Which, coincidentally, would do a hell of a lot to help a large number of marginalized people; remember that women in rural areas are the ones who can’t find meaningful work opportunities, and also remember that the rural areas of the South are largely not white. Or maybe that’s not so coincidental, but it does show why liberals given total control can sometimes step on their own feet.). It’s this desire, not to achieve real progress, but to be liked, to be good, while working through the process, which makes the left twist itself into knots and get nothing done – though what I am ignoring is the fact that progressive goals and projects are frequently unpopular, because they are expensive and difficult and do not tend to aggrandize benefits in the hands of those who already have privilege, and it requires a spoonful of liberal/Democratic people-pleasing to help the progressive medicine go down… if there’s not going to be an actual leftist revolution, that is.

I don’t really know, at this point, if conservatives really do have that no-nonsense gruff exterior that we think of as people just getting shit done; but that’s what I’m imagining. I just picture a 60-year-old white man (Hey, I’m not stupid enough to think that the GOP will suddenly become multicultural; let’s not go too far into the fantasy) in a committee meeting, who just keeps responding to every liberal feel-good virtue-signaling suggestion with a steady beat of “The goal here is to build rural broadband.” Basically, I think we need people in government who just want to get shit done: not necessarily make sure that everything gets done in exactly the “right” way.

There is an important point to be recognized in the conservative drive to demand people work hard: because while government is necessary to make changes for large groups of people, particularly changes that are not profitable for any other group currently with privilege and power, what it comes down to, always, is people working hard. People in government work hard to make it possible for everybody else to work hard, by trying to ensure that everyone has an opportunity to actually benefit from their hard work. That’s the truth. Take it from me, a government employee who works hard to make other people work hard, so they can benefit from their own hard work. That’s what school is. And I don’t know that liberalism actually pushes people to work hard; within my example of myself and schools, liberals are the ones who get 504 accommodations and IEPs enacted and followed, and who make sure that the curriculum includes social-emotional learning and multicultural perspectives: conservatives are the ones who teach math and science and history. (English teachers are all liberals. With very few exceptions, who are mostly psychopaths.)

In the most simple sense (And I know I’m oversimplifying and basing this on stereotypes; doesn’t make me wrong, though), the recognition in liberal politics of the burdens of social marginalization and intersectional oppression, of mental health struggles and of the value of self-care, promotes a deeply valuable drive for people to take it easy, to relax and take care of themselves. But conservatism does value and push individual hard work, personal responsibility, self-reliance. Not Trumpian pseudo-conservatism, of course, which pushes people to hate everyone who doesn’t have dirt under their fingernails (Daddy Trump, as in all things, excluded, of course) unless the skin of those hands is brown, in which case they should be hated anyway no matter what is under their fingernails; but conservatism tells us that people need to do things themselves, and be responsible for the consequences of their decisions: which allows people to actually make those decisions themselves, without approval by a dozen committees, and then (in theory) holds them responsible for those decisions.

Liberalism is necessary to make sure that conservatives don’t treat people like shit in the name of promoting personal responsibility. (Also to make sure that conservatives in this country don’t go full white supremacist; which would naturally occur, as conservatism by definition is trying to retain and preserve a past system, which in this country means an oppressive racist and sexist system.) Progressives are the ones trying to make the world a better place, rather than trying to retain the status quo. I do not imagine that a United States run by conservatives of any stripe would be the best version of this country. But my God, watching the Democratic party fuck up every single opportunity that we vote for them has worn me the fuck out. The 2024 election broke me. The Republicans are going to lose in the midterms next year, and I am looking forward to that: but I cannot stand to watch Democrats win control of Congress in the coming reaction to Trump, and then do every fucking thing wrong again, so that 2028 swings back to the goddamn Republicans.

But right now, there is another reason. The main reason, the real reason, why I find myself wishing for a renewal of a conservative movement that probably never really existed. It’s not policies, not red tape and bureaucracy, not tax breaks, not cuts to the social safety net. It’s not the next election, not the future of how we see government. It’s none of those things.

I want to find a way to ensure that this country will still exist.

I’m trying not to overreact. I’m trying to see this as just more bullshit from Trump. But, I mean — he fucking sent in troops. Thousands of troops. To LA, to California, under his command, his and that fucking idiot Hegseth. He sent them not because they were needed, not because they were asked for, not because their presence will help: just because he wants to start a fight with the left, with California, with Gavin Newsom personally, who has been criticizing Trump for years, and who is willing to fight him back. Because MAGA wants to have the fight with the left — by which I mean the majority of the population of this country, the ones who don’t want a dictator, who don’t want tyranny, who actually want this to remain a Constitutional Republic, a country under the rule of law. They want to fight all the rest of us. They want to hurt us because they think we have stolen their country and filled it with illegal immigrants and trans people and abortions and fentanyl. They want us to pay for that: and Trump wants to help them do it. Not because he gives a shit about this country or what is happening to it; just because he wants to point his finger and see people die at his command. He wants the full might of the U.S. military to obey him, and destroy those he wants destroyed.

This is not about left and right, liberal and conservative. It’s about this asshole sending fucking troops to LA. It’s really just about life and death: life and death of immigrants and marginalized groups in general, life and death of this country and its self-image, life and death of the rule of law and the experiment in democracy that seems, at last, to have failed.

Our President sent troops to LA. Not to enforce the law: to enforce his will. To set off a fight — a fight that people are giving him — so he can escalate the tension until people finally snap, and fight, for real, fight for life and death.

Because Trump wants a war.

If Conservatives, real Conservatives, would help prevent that, then – yeah, I’ll be one.

I am a middle-aged white man, after all.

And whatever else I think of this country, I don’t want America to fall. Not like this.

Whatever it takes.

More Like POO-Preme Court, Amirite?

Dusty Leave a comment

Ha! POO-Preme.

Neener-neener-neener GIFs - Get the best GIF on GIPHY

I will definitely change that title.

But there’s nothing I can do to change the Supreme Court.

Let me start with the reasons why the Supreme Court should be changed.

First and foremost, it has been captured by one political party, in defiance of all of the ideas they claim to hold dear: in defiance of democracy, in defiance of the ideals in the Constitution and the will of the Founders, in defiance of our nation’s proud traditions.

Should I use the word “captured?” Yes: if it wouldn’t be better to use the word “corrupted.”

Captured because Mitch “Fucking Turtle-Necked Chinless Redneck Powerhungry Asshole” McConnell (Am I the only one who uses that nickname for him? I shouldn’t be.) delayed a Supreme Court nomination for a damn year, after Antonin Scalia died in 2015, with some absolute bullshit about how it wasn’t appropriate to name a new Justice during an election year — and then he turned right around and named a new Justice during an election year, only a month before the Presidential election, when Ruth Bader Ginsburg died in 2020. What McConnell did wasn’t illegal, which is why those two Justices he stole for the GOP — or to be fair, one or the other of them was stolen: if we want to accept that Justices shouldn’t be named in an election year, then Neil Gorsuch’s nomination was legit and Amy Coney-Barrett’s was not; if we think the Justices should be named whenever the seat is empty, then Barrett is legit and Gorsuch is not — are both still Justices on the Court, making bullshit decisions according to their political ideology; but it’s clear that what McConnell and the GOP did was in defiance of all honor and decency, and intended only to swing the nation’s highest court over to their side so they could achieve their ideological goals. He did the same thing with the lower courts, holding up nominations through Obama’s second term in hopes of getting a Republican President to go with his Senate majority: which of course he did, and that’s why hundreds of federal judges were named by Trump instead of Obama. Which is bullshit — but it’s bullshit as usual. The Supreme Court nominations were not. That was blowing through precedent and decency for political gain. That, along with a hundred other examples of same, are why I will never accept criticism from the Republicans about Democrats playing politics. You don’t get to criticize when you do worse shit with more terrible consequences.

But hey, let’s pretend that all is fair in politics. (It’s not, as all is not fair in love nor war, whatever the old cliches say.) Because I certainly won’t pretend that the GOP’s justification for all of their shenanigans — that they are protecting the country from Marxism — has any merit at all, whatsoever. But sure, let’s pretend that as long as it’s legal to pull BS, you can go ahead and pull it. So then the 6-3 Conservative majority is permissible, even if it’s shitty.

So now let’s talk about corruption.

Let’s talk about Clarence Thomas accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in gifts from a Republican mega-donor with interest in cases before the Court, from which Thomas never recused himself. Nor did he report the gifts on his disclosure forms. Also never disclosed that Crow paid his great-nephew’s tuition in expensive private schools. Or that Crow bought Thomas’s mother’s house. (My favorite counter-example, by the way, is that Justice Elena Kagan turned down a gift basket of bagels and lox from old high school friends because she wasn’t certain how it would look in terms of the ethics of accepting gifts.)

Let’s talk about Samuel Alito doing the same thing — accepting lavish vacation “gifts” from a conservative billionaire with cases before the Court.

Let’s talk about Neil Gorsuch selling a house to a law firm that has had several cases decided by the Supreme Court, from which Gorsuch never recused himself.

Let’s talk about Chief Justice John Roberts’s wife, who recruits lawyers for high-end firms that are frequently before the Supreme Court, making $10 million in commissions, which Justice Roberts described as “salary” on his disclosure forms. Also never recused himself.

Makes Kavanaugh and Coney-Barrett seem almost righteous.

I mean, unless you believe Christine Blasey Ford. Which of course I do. So that makes four conservative justices guilty of some questionable connections to wealthy Republicans with business before the court — and one credibly accused of sexual assault.

Wait, no, sorry — two. Because I fucking well believe Anita Hill, too.

And while we’re at it, let’s give that crapstack Thomas the trifecta, and include his wife, Ginni Thomas, who has frequently been closely connected to cases before the Court, from which her arrogant asshole of a husband has never recused himself. Not to mention her involvement in the Insurrection of January 6, 2021.

That’s the majority on the Court. To be fair, all of the Justices, including the liberal ones, accept travel as gifts from donors; mostly it is for appearances and speeches and so on, but sometimes it is for vacations. It’s just that they declare those vacations.

So yes: I consider the Court to be captured. To be corrupted. And that’s without even talking about the questionable decisions they have made over the last decade — going back to the Citizens United and Shelby County decisions, whose implications are still affecting us and our election processes, most intensely.

So let’s talk about those decisions.

First of all, as background, we should discuss the doctrine of originalism, which is a crock of fewmets to begin with. Created most actively by Robert Bork (80s kids will remember) as a reaction to the Warren court, which ended segregation, to the chagrin and outrage of every White supremacist then and since, originalism is the doctrine that the Constitution should be interpreted according to the original intent of the Framers who wrote it, and not adapted to meet the changing needs of the society they tried to shape into a democracy — pardon me, a Constitutionally limited Republic; Lord knows I don’t want to be accused of using the wrong term to describe this country, and therefore not knowing what the hell I’m talking about.

(Also, “AR” in “AR-15” doesn’t stand for “Assault Rifle.” It stands for “Armalite Rifle.” Don’t let anybody mock you for that one, which is quite literally the stupidest argument in the history of the gun control debate.)

There are several problems with originalism. For one, it’s impossible to know for sure what the Framers intended. We have their language in the actual Constitution, and we have in some cases writings they left behind explaining their intent. But — and please, take it from me, since this is literally all I do — all writing requires interpretation. And no author’s intent is purely apparent from their writing. Please see my last post for more on this.

Now, it’s fine to interpret the wording of the Constitution; that’s what the Supreme Court is for. The problem with originalism is they claim there is only one legitimate way to interpret that wording, and it’s their way. Why does one interpretive model always win when another must always be wrong? Go ahead, you try and justify it; I can’t. The objection against the more liberal decisions of the Supreme Court is that they interpreted the Constitution instead of following what it says; but since everybody interprets the Constitution, as everybody interprets all language and communication, it’s simply absurd to claim that THE OTHER GUYS are interpreting, and you’re going straight to the true essence. It’s bullshit.

The second problem with originalism is that, even when you get it right, the Framers were a bunch of racist sexist elitist shitheads. Sure, they had some incredible progressive ideas, especially for their time; and they had incredible intellects and great powers of reasoning, remarkable political acumen and voluminous knowledge of history and philosophy and so on, and, yes, wonderful rhetorical skill: but they still thought that only White men of means should be in control of this “free” nation they were creating. So it seems to me like their intent is not always the best guiding light for this modern nation descended from theirs. It is also ridiculous, by the way, to claim that this nation’s success is itself proof that the Framers had everything exactly right: that would require that everything in this nation’s history happened exactly as the Framers intended, and surely that whole Civil-War-Emancipation thing, not to mention women’s suffrage, was definitely not their intent.

Third problem with originalism: just like the Framers’ intent, the application of originalist doctrine is — malleable. It’s reasonable to interpret the Framers’ intent with firearms; while the form and function of firearms has changed in several ways, the essential concept of guns then and now is the same: it is a force multiplier that gives one person the ability to kill another from a distance with minimal risk to the shooter. So if we think that all of the Framers’ thoughts on guns were the best ever (and they probably weren’t — but actually, I think the problem is that we misinterpret the Second Amendment, not that the Second Amendment is a terrible piece of law), we can maybe apply those thoughts to modern gun control laws. Probably not a good idea still, but not absurd. But to say that “free speech” and “free press” and “free assembly” actually define the internet is to misunderstand the internet entirely. There is not any way you could print a thing, in any sense of “print,” that could reach 5 billion people around the world in mere seconds; but the internet can do that, in theory. There is no speech that could ever reach 5 billion people, period; but one YouTube video can. There is no sense of assembly that includes the ability to link FIVE BILLION PEOPLE in real time, but in different locations — but the internet can do that. The internet is a new thing. It is not a thing the Framers could have predicted, and therefore it is not a thing for which we can find the Framers’ intent. We have to make that shit up. Which means that, according to originalist doctrine, there should be no regulation of the internet at the federal level at all, because the Tenth Amendment reserves that power to the states. The same as the bullshit justification for the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade. Yet, strangely, the originalists do not claim that all internet regulation in any form should be done at the state level. Why? Because originalism is not a solid doctrine, it is all and only interpretation — opinion. It just has a particularly convincing, albeit specious, justification for why this opinion is better than other opinions.

The fourth problem with originalism (What, did you think three was enough? You thought I was done? AU CONTRAIRE, MON FRERE.) is, following the same logic, we should examine the intent of the original framers of the doctrine of originalism, Robert Bork being the main one. Robert Bork was an asshole. He was also one of the most influential people behind movement conservatism and trickle-down economics, which means we can also blame this crapstack for income inequality and our current plutocracy. It makes perfect sense that Bork would create originalism, and look to the 18th century Framers for guidance: he, like them, was a sexist, racist, elitist shithead. Which means that his doctrine should also not be a guiding light for a modern enlightened society.

The fifth and final problem with originalism? There are five originalist justices on the Supreme Court. Want to guess which five? Well, the easier way is to guess the one who isn’t: it’s Roberts, who strongly believes in stare decisis and respect for precedent. Roberts was the one who agreed with the Dobbs decision in favor of the state of Mississippi’s specific statute limiting abortion access; Roberts did not agree that Roe should be overturned. Because Roberts, while a conservative, is not an originalist. Alito, Barrett, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Thomas are, and those five votes overturned 50 years of precedent, and removed a Constitutionally protected right from American citizens.

And then, when they struck down affirmative action, and the right for LGBTQ people to receive equal treatment in the free marketplace, they did it again — overturning 50 years of precedent in the affirmative action case, and removing Constitutional protections of the rights of Americans in the 303 Creative case, the decision that gave a Colorado web designer the right to refuse her services to (hypothetical) gay clients, as it would somehow violate her First Amendment rights. This time with Roberts joining in. Because he’s still a prick.

Okay: I was going to go through the decisions that I think the Court has decided wrongly, but I think this thing has gotten too long already; turns out I have a lot of beefs with the current Supreme Court. This is a good list from Truthdig of the bad decisions of the Roberts court; it doesn’t include the most recent ones.

YARN | I got a lot of problems with you people... | Seinfeld (1993) - S09E10 The Strike | Video clips by quotes | 0f8e26b9 | 紗

Okay. So we all agree the current Supreme Court sucks. (MY title, by the way, was inspired by a Tweet I saw that called it the SUCK-preme Court. And mine’s better than that. But I will change it before I post this, I promise.) What do we do about it?

No, we can’t expand the court. Sure, it’s tempting, and there are both precedents and logical reasons for doing it — the best I’ve heard is that there are 13 Appeals Courts (12 districts and the Federal Appellate Court) and so there should be one Supreme Court justice per Appellate court, which would allow Biden and the current Democratic Senate to name four new justices and win a 7-6 majority going forward — but that only starts a game of back and forth: if the conservatives get a majority after liberals expand the court and add four seats, then the Republicans would add at least another two seats and take the majority back. And so on.

By the same token, we can’t impeach all the Justices. They haven’t committed high crimes and misdemeanors. (Thomas probably has.) They did say under oath that they would hold to established law in regards to abortion rights, but it’s not perjury if you changed your mind after you answered the question; and who could prove that the Justices were lying when they said something that wasn’t true? The free gifts from Republican donors, and the money taken in by Roberts’s wife, did not provably change a decision made by the Court; the law firm that bought Gorsuch’s house, for instance, received his vote eight times, but he voted against them four times — and honestly, it’s a pretty good bet that Gorsuch would agree with a conservative law firm two times out of three without anyone buying a log cabin. As we all learned with that other corrupt piece of shit Trump, it’s about the quid pro quo.

Though I learned it from Hannibal Lector.

Quid Pro Quo Qpq GIF - Quid Pro Quo Qpq Hannibal Lecter - Discover & Share GIFs

No, the truth is, there isn’t anything we can do about this current court, except suffer.

But there is something we can do about the situation in this country, which the Supreme Court is making worse.

We can pass laws.

We can elect Democrats who can win a majority in both houses of Congress, and win the White House. It wouldn’t even be that hard, honestly, because so much of the country is blue; I know we’re fighting GOP gerrymandering and election tampering, but surprisingly, those were two of the decisions the Court made that went the right way, so neener neener.

neener Neener* GIF | Gfycat

But really: the Court can only toss out legal protections if they are not enshrined in law. They can toss Biden’s student debt relief plan (EVEN THOUGH THE PLAINTIFF HAD NO STANDING, GODDAMMIT), but they can’t tell Congress not to cancel student debt.

And the better we do at electing Democrats, the better off we will be in terms of election maps and rules going forward: and that will snowball in the future — until we can properly nominate new Justices to replace these assholes.

This court’s biggest mistake is in overturning precedent in order to appease their personal biases. We should not make the same mistake, and so compound the problem, by expanding the court or by impeaching Justices for being assholes. Not to be morbid or anything, but Clarence Thomas is 75 and Samuel Alito is 73; I think we can expect to name two new Justices in the next ten years — and so if the Democrats can maintain control of the White House and the Senate, or at least one or the other, then those can be liberal nominees, and that will swing the Court back to a better balance.

And then the liberal justices can just overturn all of the fucked up decisions that this court is making. Which is what happens when you throw out precedent: the next guy also gets to throw out your precedent, and reverse all of your decisions.

You know who pointed that out to me? My dad.

And that’s how we come full circle and start this blog off the right way.

Much better than that awful title.

I promise I’ll change that.

Okay, no I won’t.

I Thought It Was Funny GIFs | Tenor

Happy 4th of July, everyone.

This Morning

Dusty Leave a comment

This morning, I think I have an answer to my question from yesterday morning.

Yesterday, I was wondering what I could say to my wife, to my students, to myself, that would help comfort us in the face of inevitable suffering, and I wished that I could rely on God as that answer, because then I could at least stop thinking about it — and I should have said worrying about it and fretting about it, because that’s the point; it’s not the idea of not thinking, it’s the idea of “let go and let God.” Which I can’t do, but I appreciate that people can.

But I have another cliche that I have gleaned from outside of the fields of the Lord (And that enormously obscure reference is brought to you by the podcast I’ve been listening to, Sunday School Dropouts. Probably also why God has shown up in this atheist’s morning ramblings.), that as I understand it, many churches focus on as the heart of their message (and others may sprinkle in, in between railing against homosexuals and abortion and Democrats in Washington), which is this: God is love.

Once again, that doesn’t work for me. But it comes with another way of looking at it, that I think does fit in nicely with what I’ve been looking for:

Love is God.

That is to say, love is everything. Everything that matters. It is the alpha and the omega, it is the answer to all questions, all doubts and fears. Love. And love, I think, can offer an answer precisely as satisfying  — and not any more satisfying — as can the answer “God.”

What should I tell my students when the future looms ominously over them? Love. Look for love in your life, look for love in what you do; if you don’t find any love in your life, then change it, and if you don’t find any love in what you do, then stop doing it. Don’t work for money, work for love: and I don’t mean to be flippant there, because I am a person who works for money precisely because he cannot live on what he loves; but for me, the money I earn is spent on those I love, and used to give me an opportunity to do what I love, which I am doing right now. So I never mind my job very much, because it is done for love, if not always in love. And yes, sometimes I love my job: I do love books and poetry, and I love writing, and I guess I don’t entirely loathe my students. (No, I love some of them. More, I love the people they become, and the potential I see in them when they are young.)

What do I tell myself when I am in my darkest, foulest, most hopeless moods? Love. I have lost some of my liberal idealism in these last few years, and I have begun to lean a wee bit more conservative; it has made me worry, because I know that this is a common pattern, especially among aging white men, as we start to get a taste of power and become greedy and start worrying about people taking away what we have. And I do not want to be that guy. But I think that so long as I focus on love, so long as my actions and intentions are begun with love in mind, then I won’t turn into someone I would hate. At least some of my shifting to the right is based on the consideration that people on the right can’t be bad people, can’t be evil people, not all of them. (Trump is.) Not any more than there are evil people on the left. It’s not reasonable to take a person’s political leanings as the sole evidence of their morality or their value, or anything else apart from their political leanings; evil people are conservatives, conservatives aren’t evil people. Thinking that makes me give some conservative ideas (like the free market and lower regulation, the independence of states and, perhaps most shocking to me and those who know me, the value of the Second Amendment) the benefit of the doubt, and that makes me move away from my liberal roots.

But that doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if I’m a liberal or a libertarian or a moderate or an anarchist: so long as I consider what is best for my fellow men, and treat them always with respect and with love, then my ideas will never be bad, even if they are wrong.

I also need to remember this for myself when I am disappointed in my writing career. When I think about how old I am compared to other writers, and when I realize how good I am compared to some other writers — and then when I think about how entirely devoid of success I am compared to most other writers; I need to remember: love. I do this because I love it, because I love the me who does this. And so long as I write for love, with love, and out of love, then I can’t be a failure. I am a writer.

What do I tell my wife when she worries about our future, about what we’ll do for money, about where we’ll live, about how we’ll see the world and how we’ll live in it? I will tell her, as I do as often as I possibly can, that I love her, without limits and without end, and that I always will, and that love will see us through, no matter what else happens. Always. Love.

It doesn’t solve the problems we all face. But then, neither does God. I hope that it brings you some comfort, as it brings me some. I hope that it gives us all the strength to keep fighting towards our goals, and I hope it keeps us from hating those who fight against us, or at least in the opposite direction. I hope that the love in your life is enough to make you smile, as it is for me, even on a Monday morning.

Thank you for reading what I write. I won’t say I love you, because I don’t know you, but I love the fact of you and the existence of you, and what you give to me. Thank you.

Now go love!

Compromise

Dusty Leave a comment

I think I have a solution. To one problem, at least.

I don’t have a solution to most of them. The antifa started violence today in Berkeley, which is only going to increase tensions as it gives more weight to the victimization narrative that drives much of the right-wing/white supremacist movements; “Look at those violent leftists, attacking innocent Trump supporters.” I keep wanting to tone down tensions around Mr. Trump himself: the man will surely go down in history as one of our very worst presidents, but we will survive this, nevertheless; until and unless he commits an actual crime, we should not call for his impeachment, a process that should never be used for partisan purposes. But then Trump himself keeps doing the stupidest shit imaginable, and he keeps driving everyone around the bend. Why the hell is that guy holding campaign rallies? And pardoning Joe Arpaio? Are you kidding me?

So I can’t fix that. I can’t fix the eternal war in Afghanistan – not because I don’t know the solution, I do: it is GET THE HELL OUT OF AFGHANISTAN – but for some reason, that is an untenable answer to the majority of Americans, who seem to believe this bullshit about “not pulling out before we get the job done,” because doing so will leave a power vacuum which will lead to the rise of terrorist groups. Somehow we never take it to the next step in the logic, which is: that means that WE are the power in Afghanistan, and we expect to remain the power in Afghanistan because as long as we are there, nobody else can have power. I heard a former soldier on NPR today saying that he expected we would have a military presence in Afghanistan for decades to come. Decades. Decades that we will be the power in Afghanistan. Which means we are an invading, conquering force, and if you don’t think that that makes more terrorists than any power vacuum ever could, well, you’re just not thinking.

I wish I could solve that one. However, not all hope is lost, because I do have a possible solution to at least one problem: the problem of Confederate monuments.

The inspiration is this.

Can’t take down that ridiculous bull? Build another statue that makes that bull seem pathetic. Or that at least gives people an opportunity to see the bull in a new light.

Now, I realize that both sides in this debate believe they already have the perfect solution: one side thinks we should leave all of the monuments up, and the other side thinks we should tear them all down. And both sides have very simple arguments that they find convincing. I don’t want to say that either side is right or wrong; not because I don’t have an opinion, but because trying to argue that way has gotten us – here. To marches and murder in Charlottesville and fights and arrests in Berkeley; and I don’t want to know where else it will lead. We’re not going to settle this by yelling at each other. We have to find a way to compromise.

So here’s my idea. Leave up the monuments. And build more.

For every statue of Robert E. Lee, add a statue of Frederick Douglass, or Harriet Tubman, or the soldiers of the 54th Massachusetts. For every Stonewall Jackson, a Nat Turner. For every statue honoring the Confederate soldiers, add another statue honoring the victims of chattel slavery. Match Confederate tombstones with tombstones for the victims of lynchings – and state on the tombstones that the bodies that should be at rest under those tombstones are lost, thrown into unmarked graves or burned to ash or sunk in the swamps. People on the right want to remember our history? Okay, let’s remember every part of our history: let’s commemorate the four hundred years of murder and torture that this country is founded on.

How could anyone complain? I’m not suggesting we do anything to the monuments that already stand; if they have plaques that paint the Confederacy as a legion of honorable men fighting for justice, then fine, that can represent one side of the argument. We can word a plaque that shows the other side of the argument, and put it on a nice twenty-foot-tall bronze Malcolm X. White supremacists can pretend the new statues don’t exist, but they certainly can’t argue that they should be taken down; any person who feels oppressed by the presence of racist memorials can take solace in the simultaneous presence of anti-racist memorials, side by side with the racists.

Why stop there? I keep hearing arguments – mostly straw man arguments, but still – about Washington and Jefferson, who both owned slaves. I think both of those men should be commemorated for what they did for this country, but I can’t disagree that their ownership of slaves makes their legacy troubling. So how about every statue of Thomas Jefferson has a statue of Sally Hemings? Maybe a taller Sally? Looking over Jefferson’s shoulder? Or maybe a full family portrait of all of their children, all six of them lined up right in front of the President. How about we take the portraits of George Washington and add an image of every slave he owned into the background? Imagine that on the dollar bill: George’s sour puss surrounded by tiny, tiny portraits of thousands of African and African-American slaves. Think that would make the point? It would sure make a hell of a watermark, wouldn’t it?

I understand the argument that we shouldn’t try to forget our erase our country’s history. I understand the argument that remembering our history shouldn’t include commemorating it with statues and monuments and schools named for men who defended chattel slavery. But I think we need to remember that the Civil War was fought by the Union not to free the slaves, not to end slavery – but to keep this country together. This is also, I think, a pretty troubling legacy; it’s actually pretty hard to understand how defending a political entity is worth slaughtering half a million of its citizens. But I do think this country is essentially good, and that it is better if it is united, rather than a house divided against itself.

So let’s unite: the good, the bad, and the ugly parts of our history, all together, all immortalized in bronze and marble, for everyone to see, for everyone to be proud of, and also, if not ashamed, then – humbled. This is who we are, after all. We shouldn’t forget it.

Come on, think of it this way: if we do this, then everybody gets a trophy.