In my post this past weekend about the COVID-19 crisis, I tried to cover the proverbial waterfront in writing about it. There is a lot to discuss, obviously. And, as it has become topics A through Z in the media, I realize that, along with all of us, I'll be re-visiting the subject on a regular basis, even if that means I'll be largely adding to or updating my discussion of different aspects of the crisis. But there's one aspect of it that can't be discussed enough, even if the repetition becomes overwhelming. That aspect isn't the virus' threat to our lives. It's the virus' threat to our political freedom--to our democracy itself.
I'm not talking about social mobility or economic opportunity when I say this. I'm talking about the powers our government is willing to assume, without our consent (or, worse yet, with it), over our day-to-day lives, or even over our election system--our ability to choose who governs us. Within this century, we have already had a taste of how this works. The 9/11 tragedy led to, among other things, the enactment of the PATRIOT Act, which has been re-enacted despite concerns on both sides of the ideological fence about the extent to which it amounts to a unilateral surrender of our most basic constitutional rights. Now, in the face of a very different and perhaps more dangerous threat to our safety, further surrender of those rights may be on the table.
Bill Barr is a name that should be written or uttered with the utmost contempt. From the moment he became the T**** Administration's Attorney General, he has done everything in his power to act as though his "client" is not the country, but the man who appointed him. After all, that's how T**** treats everyone who works for him: not as professionals with the independent knowledge and experience to do their jobs, but as indentured servants with no responsibility except to obey, even if obedience requires them to rebel against every inch of what they know.
Barr, however, doesn't seem to object to this expectation. Far from it. Indeed, he has gone out of his way, against formidable competition from other toadies working for T**** (here's looking at you, Secretary of State Pompeo) to be Number One when it comes to waiting hand and foot on Dear Leader. First, there was the gamesmanship with the Mueller report This was followed up with the even worse gamesmanship with the impeachment investigation and the subsequent trial. Now, however, he's really poised to top himself.
Take a look.
You'll notice, if you look at the article, that no rationale is provided for this blatantly unconstitutional power grab, other than the fact of the pandemic itself. This is T**** 101: if you can fill people with enough fear, and then manipulate that fear with rhetoric (whether factual or not), you can get them to practically beg you to be as big a bastard as you want to be. Or, if you please, to hand that role off to a willing sycophant. Enter Bill Barr, stage extreme right, carrying a copy of the Constitution in one grimy paw, and a sharp pair of scissors in the other.
It offers a measure of comfort, however small it may be right now, to know that not all Republicans are willing to torch our most basic rights for the sake of short-term political gain. Tale a few minutes to read this piece from the Atlantic, written by a deputy attorney general for George H.W. Bush. He says everything that needs in this moment to tell you what Bill Barr really is, culminating in an utterly justified call for his resignation. That call hasn't been heeded, of course, and won't be. But it does tell all of us what we should think about Barr's latest proposal, and how little heed should be given to it.
In fact, as terrifying as the virus itself can be, we should be no less terrified by how that fear can easily be manipulated to do damage not just to our lives, but to our entire way of life, to what we hope we can leave one day (hopefully, far in the future) to our children and grandchildren). As a lawyer, I know how easy it is to abuse the "slippery slope" concept in making an argument But the truth is that it need only take a few small, easily-digestible steps to reach a point at which freedom is little more than a slogan.
It has already happened in Hungary, a nation with an admitted history of despotism, but which in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War had been one of the new democracies that emerged from the rubble of the Warsaw Pact. T**** and his cronies aren't worried about this, of course. But you should be. We can only hope that we will have an election this fall that will allow us to elect a real President, one who will have to deal with this and an thousand other catastrophes.
When (and, G-d willing, if) that happens, one of the first things that should be taken up is this. Or, even better, a Constitutional amendment that allows voters in federal elections to do what they can do in state elections: elect an independent Attorney General whose allegiance will be directly to the voters, and not to a President who expects him or her to be a toady.
And in the meantime, Barr's "proposal,' and anything else like it, should get the same response from the rest of us: give it a long walk off a short pier.
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