Overcoming My Kavanaugh-Related Despair

I have a personal confession to make.

I sat down tonight to update my blog, with no shortage of topics about which to write.  My mind started to sort though them.  I reviewed my Diigo library of news articles I saved toward that end.  The nightmare that is the confirmation process of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court has been unfolding at breakneck speed over the past month.  Discussing that process, and what it has revealed about our country at this point in history, is easily worth a month's worth of blog posts all by itself.

And then I came face-to-face with it.  Despair.  The same sense of hopelessness that I felt in the days immediately after the election two years ago.

It puzzled me for a while.  There are a number of reasons to not let despair wrap itself around me.  After all, the midterms are less than a month-and-a-half away, and things look very promising for the Democrats.  They will probably take back the House, they may take back the Senate (although that's a bit iffier), and they will undoubtedly make significant gains in state office-holders.  There is, of course, the current inexplicable madness here in Maryland, where Larry Hogan, routinely saved from his worst mistakes by a Democratic supermajority in the General Assembly, has a 22-point (that is not a typo) lead over Ben Jealous in the gubernatorial race.

But even that is not the principle source of my despair.  Hogan's lead is principally the product of local print and broadcast media that are scared of looking too liberal, and a voting base too tuned in to its own short-term pleasures to really dig into the issues, the positions of the candidates, and the potential consequences that four years of either man may bring.  I'm fairly confident that, if we end up with four more years of Hogan, his perception of a mandate will end up leading to mistakes that not even a legislature can easily fix, and that will remind voters that Maryland has done well as a blue state for decades for a reason--namely, being a blue state.

So, why is this blue voter/blogger feeling so blue?

I think it comes, as much as anything, from what the Kavanaugh confirmation process has revealed about the extent to which one of our two major political parties (guess which one) given a choice between democratic (small d) processes and conservative outcomes, chooses conservative outcomes every time.  In other words, it has absolutely no faith in its ability to openly, freely persuade voters that its ideas are worth adopting.  Its only faith, in fact, is not even in the ideas to which it gives lip service in its campaigns, is in maintaining institutional control of the levers of power.

I began to think about this very recently, after I read a Twitter post by Bruce Bartlett going back to the fiasco of Obama's nomination of Merrick Garland to the seat on the Supreme Court now held by Neil Gorsuch.  That Gorsuch is on the Court instead of Garland was, of course, the by-product of a campaign overseen by Mitch McCONnell over the course of 2016, one in which McCONnell invented the "Biden rule" that Presidents could not make nominations to the Court during an election year, when the voters (contrary to the Constitution) should be allowed to "weigh in" on the process.

At any rate, Bartlett's point was as simple as it was completely accurate.  Then as now, McCONnell was the Senate majority leader, and had the votes to simply give Garland, out of respect for the Constitution and the traditions of the Senate, a normal confirmation process strung out over the better part of the year, terminating in a vote where he would find a way to whip his entire caucus into rejecting the nomination.  At that point, he could easily say that it was too late to consider someone else, and that would be that.  McCONnell, in other words, controlled the process in any event; it would have been easy for him to manipulate it in a way that preserved the illusion of tradition and fairness without being too-cute-by-half about it.

So, why didn't he do it this way?

I think that there is only one possible answer.  Mitch McCONnell knew that preserving even the illusion of the process was not enough to intimidate opposition from the Democrats.  To do that, he had to deliberately sabotage democracy itself.  He had to game the system to such an extent that the Democrats would have to either go outside of it to advance their goals, or be aided by some sort of deux ex machina set of circumstances.  He was prepared to deal with the former by questioning the patriotism of the opposition, and the latter by the fact that his party's funders have the financial resources to muscle the Republicans' way though anything.

The Kavanaugh nightmare has revealed not only his preparation, but that of his caucus and his contributors, for dealing with both possibilities.  The restrictions on access to Kavanaugh's records, as well as on  the questions that Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee could ask him, led to Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey's decision to disclose some of the documents that Republicans were hiding.  Booker's decision, as he acknowledged, put him at risk for expulsion from the Senate, and Republicans wasted no time in floating that possibility out to the press.

But then, there was the discovery that Kavanaugh might well be another Clarence Thomas, a man with a history of sexual abuse that he and his supporters were working to cover up.  Even then, it appeared that the Republicans were prepared to counter this news; within hours of it surfacing, the Republican chair of the Judiciary Committee, Charles Grassley, produced a letter signed by no fewer than 65 women attesting to Kavanaugh's character.  The existence of this letter, combined with Kavanaugh's denials of the allegations against him, raise the possibility that Kavanaugh is willing to commit perjury to reach the Supreme Court, and that Republicans on the Judiciary Committee were willing to suborn it to help him do so.  (This wasn't the first time that Kavanaugh had been exposed as a perjurer in the process, moreover.)

Then, however, things began to spin a little out of control into deux ex machina territory.

Kavanaugh's accuser, originally anonymous, came forward to say that she would be willing to testify before the committee.  Corroboration of her story slowly began to emerge.  And one of Kavanaugh's supporters worked with a public relations firm to float and promote a ridiculous story that the accuser might have confused Kavanaugh with someone else who arguably looked like him.

One might be tempted to think that Senate Republicans would decide to call it a day on Kavanaugh's nomination and move on to the task of getting re-elected in a few weeks.  But remember what I said about McCONnell:  he believes the system has been so gamed in favor of his party that he can do anything.  And with that in mind, consider the following recent quote from the majority leader.

You’re all following the current Supreme Court fight, and you will watch it unfold in the course of the next week.  President Trump has nominated a stunningly successful individual. You’ve watched the fight, you’ve watched the tactics, but here’s what I want to tell you: In the very near future, judge Kavanaugh will be on the United States Supreme Court.  So my friends, keep the faith, don’t get rattled by all of this ― we’re gonna plow right through it and do our job.

I'll leave it to the reader to decide whether "gonna plow right through it and do our job" is how one would characterize one's response to a situation in which sexual abuse has emerged as a major factor.  I think it's enough to say that the quote reveals what he believes his "job" to be.  Not to defend the Constitution.  Not to submit his politics to an open political process.  Not to respect his opponents and their rights to participate in that process.  No, not even to respect the concerns and injuries of a citizen who has come forward to tell her painful story and look past her own pain to protect the country from giving a monster a lifetime chance to re-shape the laws of our country.

Mitch McCONnell sees his job as protecting Mitch McCONnell  First, foremost, and last.  The same is true of nearly every Republican in Congress.  And it is especially true of the Republican who has the misfortune to occupy the White House.

And that is the source of my despair.  That, and the knowledge that enough of my fellow countrymen and women support these Republicans to the point at which I am beginning to believe that civil unrest, and perhaps even civil war, might be the only door that leads out of our current national misery.

But, if history teaches us anything, there is always a door.

And, even if I do not live to see it, or walk through it, I'll do everything I can to help others find it and use it.  As long as I can breathe, and type, that's my promise.

Larry Hogan: A Kinder, Gentler Version Of T****

I am a native of Baltimore, and have lived in Maryland most of my life.  Politically, I have watched it evolve from middle-of-the-role Republicanism, when it gave its electoral votes to Richard Nixon three times, to middle-of-the-road Democratic politics in the wake of Nixon's self-immolation by way of Watergate, as well as the self-immolation of his Vice-President, Spiro Agnew, a former Maryland governor whose corrupt past caught up with him in time to give us Gerald Ford as his replacement (and later Nixon's).

Middle-of-the-road, in fact, is more or less the normal state of politics here in the Old Line (or Free) State.  That status, as well as the two nicknames, reflect Maryland's geographic position among the original 13 colonies and the issue that divided them as well as the rest of the expanding nation, even to today:  race.  

Its northern border, part of the Mason-Dixon line (named for the two surveyors who created it to resolve a border dispute among four states) is now political shorthand for the divide within the nation over this issue.  Maryland, in fact, was a state with slaves and slaveholders, kept in the Union at gunpoint by Lincoln in a battle that gave the state its official song, "Maryland My Maryland" (its original anti-Union lyrics long since politically corrected by our General Assembly).  The zoning of Baltimore, the state's largest city, was designed to enforce the legal segregation of the races its white residents wanted.  That zoning still strangles the development of the city.  And yet, the proximity of Baltimore to other large, Northeastern cities such as Philadelphia, New York, and Boston brought a degree of liberal thinking and cosmopolitan social life to Maryland.

What has popularly become know as Maryland's "middle temperament" comes out of the close proximity within a geographically small state between liberal Baltimore and the more conservative counties surrounding it.  Early in the state's history, the need to function socially and economically led its politically divided residents to work hard at avoiding conflicts and finding ways to cooperate peacefully.  This pattern persisted well into the 20th century, which is why Maryland produced moderate governors of both parties such as Theodore McKeldin, a Republican, and William Donald Schaefer, a Democrat.

However, and with all due respect to the late Speaker of the House of Representatives "Tip" O'Neill, all politics in the United States are no longer local.  Almost every aspect of our life has been nationalized to varying degrees, as the functions of national government have expanded into formally localized functions such as schools, and the operation of the economy has been restructured to favor large, nation-wide enterprises over local ones.  As this has happened, Americans no longer discuss politics face-to-face.  They discuss it media portal to media portal, through an endless barrage of cameras and Web sites that thrive on conflict, or at least the appearance of it.

And so, in the 21st century, Maryland politics has begun to reflect these trends.  In this century, the state elected governors with more of a taste for combat rather than consensus:  the sharp-elbowed Robert Ehrlich and the morally earnest Martin O'Malley, who, in very different ways, wore out their welcome in a state whose middle temperament had little stomach for being pushed in one direction or another.

Enter Larry Hogan, stage right.  Very far right, in fact, but with some knowledge of how to conceal it.  A political legacy, whose father (also a Republican) voted in Congress for the impeachment of Nixon.  A supposedly self-made small-businessperson who is, in fact, worth millions of dollars by way of a commodity that practically sells itself with the right connections:  real estate.  A man with a slightly goofy, grinning public persona perfect for that cliched politician complement, a "guy you could imagine having a beer with."  A man who would seem to be a perfect fit for a state with a middle temperament.  

And a man who, to an electorate weary of conflict and accustomed to making choices based on style points, seems to be a kind of hero.  How else to explain, in a supposedly "blue" state, his 16-point lead over his Democratic opponent for re-election?

But, in fact, Hogan is the political equivalent of the guy sitting all the way at the end of the bar, complaining that the beer is watered and the pretzels are stale, and demanding to pay less and get away without leaving a tip.  A man to whom much has been given financially, who still doesn't feel that he's been given enough.  A man who expects to be seen as a hero for being sick, but who doesn't see the irony in being saved by government-back health insurance not available to every citizen under his charge.  A man who, in Oscar Wilde's words, knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.  But also a man who knows, perhaps by way of his real estate experience, how to wrap up nothing and sell it as something.  And so, he has positioned his likeability in such a way that it conceals the ineptitude and inherent racism of many of his policy choices.

How else to explain his decision to throw away a billion dollars in federal transportation money by cancelling the Baltimore Red Line project, which could have been the backbone of a real, city-wide commuter rail system and thereby cut through the legacy of the city's racist zoning practices?  As a former state procurement officer, I personally know that Ehrlich, for whom Hogan worked as appointments secretary, believed in capturing every dollar Maryland could get from Washington.  He would never have thrown away that money.  

And the repercussions of this decision affect the whole state, since it makes getting additional federal moneys for transportation projects less likely.  This is not just something we can ill afford; in fact, we can't afford it at all, given the current status of our infrastructure and commuting needs.  All in the name of protecting the racial status quo.  Cancelling the Red Line was not a decision that eliminated a fiscal "boondoggle"; it was a tightening of the white noose around the city's African-American residents.  Take a look.

For that matter, how else to explain his bragging about cancelling O'Malley's so-called "tax on the rain," which in fact was a tax to fund the management of rain run-off from from the kind of rampant suburban development that helped Hogan make his fortune?  He didn't eliminate the "rain tax" to help consumers; he did it because he felt it was picking his pockets, as well as the pockets of his like-minded cronies.  Now, to protect the stapled-together, overpriced townhouses multiplying their way through Howard County, his Republican cronies in that county want to "save" historic Ellicott City by tearing it down, one block at a time.  

This is their response, and Hogan's response, to the floods that have twice submerged the historic district and led to deaths on their watch, NOT to better regulate the development that led to the floods and the deaths in the first place.  After all, it's not as if historic preservation is an economic generator that could, in fact, raise revenues and help pay for some of that regulation ... oh, wait!

Larry Hogan.  Putting development over people's lives.  Putting racism over ending poverty.  Basically, a Maryland version of D****** T****.  A man with a smile on his face and a shiv in his pocket for anyone who will stop him from lining it.  Not a man with a middle temperament.  And not deserving of a second term as governor.

John McCain: Loyal To America, Betrayed By The GOP

It is a sad commentary on the current state of not only American politics but also American civility that the death of a prominent U.S. Senator (and decorated veteran) is a cause for partisan fighting.  Nevertheless, as the death of John McCain has illustrated, that's where we are.

In the past, flying the American flag at the White House at half-staff would have been a given, a fact worthy of no more in the news than a brief acknowledgement.  Instead, under T****, it became a source of headlines over a period of several days.  First, the flag was flown at half-staff for a day, along with a T**** tweet that expressed family condolences but nothing else.  The next day, the flag was back to full staff, at which point a media firestorm erupted that ultimately brought veterans groups into the fray.  This apparently let T**** to conclude something that would have been obvious from the beginning not only to any experienced politician but to any human being with an iota of common sense:  spitting on the memory of a war hero makes other war heroes, the kind that vote regularly, deeply unhappy.  Ultimately, T**** reversed course, lowered the flag again, and followed up with a tweet on McCain closer to the one he should have originally sent.

And, not to put too fine a point on it, but for the record:  all of this from a man who objects to NFL players of color using the National Anthem as a background for making a point about a public issue.

I think we can say that this is the juncture at which the T**** hypocrisy has gone from epic to galactic.

When it comes to John McCain, of course, there are two, albeit interrelated sides to his story:  his military service, which deserves to be exalted, and his political career, which can be said to be something of a mixed bag.  To get some idea of the extend to which the latter is true, take a look at this, and then take a look at this.  The latter is worth noting especially in the context of his unsuccessful 2008 presidential campaign, at which point he had moved away from the center and more toward the politically-correct extreme-right ideology that defines the modern Republican Party.  Nevertheless, he still tried to conduct his campaign on the assumption that all of us are citizens of the same democracy, worthy of respect for that reason alone, and that elections were the arena for sorting out our differences on how to govern the country, not for promoting gossip and slander about each other.  This moment has been circulated a great deal over the past several days, but it's worth sharing any number of times, in part because it makes my point about his conduct in 2008.

McCain received a great deal of criticism from within his own party for his defense of Barack Obama, and some of that criticism suggested that he lost that election in part because he was not tougher on Obama personally.  To a degree, this line of "thinking" is meant to explain the subsequent rise of the Tea Party, the "birther" movement, and T****'s presidency.

The problem with it, however, is that it is both unfair to McCain, and unfair to reality.

John McCain didn't lose the presidency because he failed to launch a success ad hominem campaign against Obama.  He didn't even lose because, to borrow a phrase, he selected a running mate with the apparent I.Q. of a dead flashlight battery (although G-d knows she didn't help).  He lost because he was the candidate of a political party bereft of new ideas, and hopelessly wedded to ideas whose history carries the overwhelming stench of failure.

Until the September Wall Street crash, the polls and pundit consensus was that, in spite of public antipathy for the Iraq war, the election was McCain's to lose.  I am neither a pollster or a paid media pundit, but I can tell you that, based on having followed elections (up to that point) for 40 years, I thought that the election was McCain's to lose.  I saw Obama as (compared to Hillary, whom I had supported in the primaries) too liberal and too inexperienced to successfully compete against McCain.  Obviously, I was wrong, and I'm delighted that this was the case.  But it was the crash that gave Obama the opening he needed to get his message across to enough voters that he could win.

And the crash was the inevitable love-child of two failed policies joined at the hip:  tax cuts paid for with Federal Reserve debt, and two wars paid for the same way.  The history of Vietnam and the Reagan years should have taught Republicans to know better.  But the Republican Party is no longer a political party because it no longer incubates ideas.  It is a cult of fanatics who think that history will inevitability award their unwillingness to learn, when in fact history teaches exactly the opposite:  those who cannot adapt do not survive.

John McCain did not let the Republican Party down, anymore than he let his country down in Vietnam.  The GOP let McCain down.  As well as his country, its supporters, and itself.  This leaves we the people, we the living, to continue to do what he expected us to do in 2008:  sort through our differences without losing faith in each other or in ourselves.  And, above all, without weaponizing the flag that is designed to bring us together.

As for the senator, fair winds and following seas to the far horizon, and peace and grace to his family and friends.

How "Never" Are The President's GOP Critics?

Since our current president began, nearly three years ago, to become a major force within the Republican Party, and subsequently became the current occupant of the White House, there has been a small cadre of commentators, party officials, and campaign consultants who have publicly identified themselves as "Never-[his last name]."  Since TRH has taken the position that it will not give the current present the publicity oxygen he doesn't deserve by using his last name, we'll just refer to these people, in today's post and otherwise going forward, as "Nevers."

At any rate, if (like me) you spend a significant about of time on Twitter, you know who most of these people are.  They are not, however, a uniform movement of thought, apart from their antipathy toward Trump.  Some of them, for example, are people with a high degree of institutional loyalty toward the Republican Party, or toward institutional conservatism (e.g., think tanks and foundations), who feel that the current president's sordid and criminal lifestyle has tarnished the ability of those institutions to advance their traditional beliefs.  They don't object to the Administration's policies as much as they object to the personal conduct of its leader and his subordinates (to say nothing of his children).  A few of them are people who have issue-specific objections (e.g., immigration), and a very few are people who feel that the conservatism of American politics has veered in directions that are ultimately too extreme to be fairly called conservatism.

I follow a number of these people on Twitter, principally to maintain a sense of what's going on, intellectually and otherwise, on the other side of our ideological divide.  I find myself "liking" much of it, re-tweeting some of it, occasionally responding to it (sometimes with support, sometimes with criticism).  Initially, and perhaps naively, I did this in the hope that doing so would lead to a dialogue of a more expansive nature, one that might be in some small way the beginning of a larger effort to bridge that divide and perhaps move all of us toward real solutions for Americans that most, if not all of us, could support.

What was I thinking?

Much of my attempts at dialogue were with Tom Nichols, a professor at the U.S. Naval War College and a staunch Reaganite who, in spite of his political beliefs, voted for Hillary Clinton and encouraged others to do so.  This led a number of Clinton supporters to attempt to engage him in a dialogue with on a broader array of issues, with varying degrees of success (mine, alas, were not particularly successful).  To his credit, he objected to Mitch McConnell's political shell game with Barack Obama's nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court.  But the conduct of the current Administration has not either moved him from supporting the Republican Party or a broad array of conservative principles generally.

In fact, the support he has gotten from liberal Tweeters has not even moved him more generally to a more positive view of liberals as individuals.  Take a look at the following tweet from him, and you'll see what I mean.  He stills seems to hew to the literal party line that liberals are just congenital squabblers, incapable of uniting with anyone outside of their "tribe" for the sake of supporting a larger goal.  And, with perhaps a handful of exceptions, the tweets of other "Nevers" are not much different in this regard.

Which has led me to wonder, in response, how much the "Nevers" are truly to be trusted with respect to the sincerity of their objections to the current President.

Are those objections so strong that they are willing to give up the various fruits of the poisonous tree?  Would they be willing, for example, to give up the Republican Congress' middle-of-the-night tax cuts for the haves at the expense of the have-nots?  Would they join Dr. Nichols in repudiating the process that wrongly denied Garland the opportunity for a hearing on his nomination?  Would they, for that matter, repudiate the handshake deal between the current president and Anthony Kennedy to replace Kennedy on the Court with one of his former clerks?  Would they support the concealment of that clerk's previous records, to prevent whatever apparent political dynamite that lies therein from seeing the light of day?

Quite frankly, it is the history of the modern Republican Party--and, for that matter, the modern conservative movement--that should inspire more questions about the sincerity of the Nevers than any such questions that could be directed at liberals.  Every time they want to talk about 1960 and the Chicago graveyards, we should remind them about 1968 and the sabotage of the Vietnam peace talks  Or 1972 and a certain hotel break-in (and a certain subsequent cover-up).  Or 1980 and the delay of the release of the Iranian hostages.  Or 2000, and Florida.  Or two frigging years ago, and an election that in all probability was won by Vladimir Putin.

In fact, here's a challenge to the Nevers.  You want to come together with us in opposing the current president and his systemic attempts to profit from the systems he is supposed to be administering for the benefit of us all?  Then let's start with the application of the so-called "Biden rule."  Let's let the American people "weigh in" on the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, and see what that yields.  It would be one small but real way to make up for your participation in the disaster that gave us Justice Son-of-Anne-Gorsuch.

And, going on from there, let's stop President What's-His-Name from taking the dominant human rights issue of our time--the international refugee crisis and its subsequent impact on our immigration process--and pass the bipartisan 2013 immigration bill on which John Boehner sat in a doomed attempt to keep his Speakership of the House of Representatives.  A bill supported by 68 Senators, enough to ratify a treaty (and when was the last time that happened?).

And one last thing, relative to the refugee crisis and its root cause:  let's come together and figure out a way that all of us can agree on and support to stop the only planet we currently have to live on from burning to a crisp.

Well, there it is.  A path out of our current hell, and a means by which the Nevers can demonstrate their good faith, and we can demonstrate ours.

Your move, Nevers.

Death Of An Empire, British-Style

Supposedly, according to Benjamin Franklin, death and taxes are the only certainties in life.  Here's one more you can add to that list:  empires crumble.  If you've read any history, or were taught it by anyone competent, you know that history is about the rise and fall of empires that seemingly had everything they needed to exist indefinitely.  That kind of security is an illusion, in part because successful empires, like successful people, become complacent.  Humans have a natural tendency, even need, to gravitate internally to a sense that their lives are relatively stable.  They view their successes as permanent monuments because they feel a need to be in control of their lives. 

And successful empires, composed of successful people, function much the same way.  Their leaders view their prosperity, their institutions and their cultures as things that will endure long after they are gone, because doing so relieves them of the need to do any further hard thinking about their futures.  They can enjoy the fruits of their labors, more often than not the fruits of others' labors, secure in the fantasy that things will never change.

Except that, of course, they do.  Humans change, from generation to generation, and from location to location.  Which raises the need for empires to adapt to the changes.  Some make a half-hearted effort to do so, while some pretend that they don't need to do so at all.  The former fall apart slowly, due to the half-hearted nature of their efforts.  The latter fall apart much more quickly, because they make no efforts at all.

I would argue, especially on the strength of recent events, that the British Empire is an example of the former.

In its imperial conduct, Great Britain's history is hardly a tale of unalloyed wisdom.  On the one hand, at its absolute peak in the previous century, its physical, political, economic and cultural reach literally circled the entire globe, an accomplishment never seen before or equalled since.  "The sun," it was said, "never sets on the Union Jack."  On the other hand, its treatment of its colonial subjects was often far less civilized than its self-image would otherwise suggest.  In at least some cases, that treatment led to serious reversals for the British, including the losses of colonial possessions covering all of North America and the entire Indian subcontinent.

Still, the British Empire, in one form or another, has lasted for literally centuries, and, in the process, done much to spread the enactment of democratic principles all over the world.  Even in the loss of nearly all of its colonies, it has managed to preserve aspects of its culture, as well as extensive economic relationships, with many of its former global subjects.  At the same time, it embarked on a new phase of its existence, as part of an economically integrated Europe.  All of this demonstrates an ability to adapt that does much to explain the Empire's longevity.

But that ability may be coming, alas, to an end.  And the root cause of that ending may be found in the inability of its two major political parties to adapt to a changing world.

On the one hand, the Conservative Party, like its Republican counterpart here in the U.S., is now dominated by the likes of Nigel Farage, a man who can't stand the idea of living or working next to people who don't "look or sound" like him.  As a consequence, he led the successful fight to extract Britain from the European Union, which was supposed to open up a whole new world of economic opportunity for the British, freed of the alleged tyranny of European rules and regulations--and especially freed of European travel rules that increased the number of immigrants to Britain.

Only now, the whole thing doesn't look like such a good idea.  Britain has effectively entered an economic world in which nothing is certain, in which it will have to fend for itself on trade issues in a world where nations now function on a much more independent basis where trade is concerned.  As a result, British citizens have resorted to stockpiling food and other basic necessities.  As for Farage, the man who started it all, there might be reason to think that, suddenly, when confronted with evidence that his great cause was not so great after all, he might even agree with that assessment of it.

On the other hand, you have the Labour Party, which ought to be in a position politically to exploit the failure of the Conservatives to leave Europe without consequences.  Ought to be, but isn't.  Labour, like its Democratic counterpart in the U.S., has a seemingly unlimited capacity for shooting itself in the foot .  And, when that tendency is combined with the institutional anti-Semitism of much of the British intellectual classes, you end up with a party identified with hatred, and not with progress.

Two great political parties.  Two great institutions of a historically great nation.  Both now dominated and stained by the consequences of their bigotry, including the loss of the ability to adapt to a world that is changing, and will continue to change, whether either party likes it or not.

Unless one or both of them learn to change themselves, and to adapt, the sun may yet set on the Union Jack for good.

The Casualties Of Our Current President

First, and of least importance here, an announcement of a change in policy.  Namely, mine.  This is the last time TRH will use the name of Donald Trump in discussing the issues of the day, even as it relates to him.  Henceforce, I will only refer to him here as "the current President."

Why?

For the simple reason that, past and present, he has always lived for self-promotion.  That's why is name is always the most prominent feature of every building he has ever built.  Of every product or service he has attempted to promote.  Of just about every aspect of his public life that you--or rather, he--can name.  It's all he really cares about.  Not his family, his "projects," or even his Presidency.  Everything with him is all about getting and seeing his name out there.  And that is a process in which I will no longer participate.  If promotion is truly the air that he breathes, then I am willing to do my part to suffocate his Presidency.  His Presidency, mind you, and not him personally.  I have no wish to turn him into a martyr.  (So, any FBI agents looking at this, shoo.  Nothing to see here.)

Now, on to a discussion of his casualties.

My current work as an attorney takes me back and forth between Baltimore and Washington, D.C. on a routine basis.  Because of the limited nature of public transportation in Maryland, which has a lot to do with racial issues*, I'm forced to do a large portion of that by car, rather that by taking advantage of the forms of public transit that other large metropolitan areas can take for granted.  I don't like having to do that, because the resulting four-hour commute daily is exhausting, even using the Washington Metro for part of it.  But I do it.

It does, however, give me the opportunity to see how people drive on a regular basis.  And I can tell you that how people drive has changed a lot over the past two years.  It's gotten much, much worse.

Not a day goes by that I don't see an accident, and frequently more than one, along my route.  Many of them appear to be little more than fender-benders, fortunately.  But I can tell you that their number has increased dramatically.  And sometimes, they are much more than fender-benders.  Not long ago, I saw two instances of cars that had caught fire--one on my trip to D.C., and one on the way back.  I have no idea if anyone was hurt in either instance, or how badly they may have been hurt.  But the possibilities in that regard are as tragic as they are obvious.

Frankly, I view this increase in stressed-out driving as a consequence of living under the current President.  It's difficult to know what else it can be related to successfully.  Even if his policies aren't always directly affecting people, his behavior and conduct generally have left many people wondering, from day to day, whether or now the United States is truly a safe, stable place in which to live.  Whether he's selling (or giving away) our domestic resources to Republican donors or foreign businesses, or helping Vladimir Putin turn the nation into a new Soviet republic, more and more people are beginning to wonder about their future.  As in, whether or not they will have one.

Stressed-out driving is bad enough but, when even one life is lost, it's a tragedy with ripple effects that are not always easy to measure.  Sometimes, they can even radiate around the world.

Here is one recent, especially tragic example.

Amy Meselson, an immigration attorney who devoted her life to saving refugees, and who did in fact help save many of them, committed suicide last week at the relatively young age of 46.  You can read about her life and her work here.  Whatever your feelings about immigrants and immigration may be, especially refugees, it cannot be doubted that she saved many lives to an extent that will have long-lasting benefits for the refugees and everyone whose paths they cross.  Nor can it be doubted that her loss is a savage and tragic loss for all of us, especially for immigration attorneys and advocates such as my wife (and me, for that matter).

Ms. Meselson suffered from depression, and it will no doubt be tempting for some--especially immigation-haters--to blame her death on herself.  But that is why it is important to read the entire obituary, and not become mesmerized for political reasons by that one fact.  She worked for a long time on behalf of the world's most vulnerable people, accomplishing more than most people do in a longer lifetime.  Consider the following paragraph:

Ms. Meselson had dedicated her career to defending hundreds of vulnerable immigrants from deportation and helping them navigate the gaps between the child welfare and national security bureaucracies. She recruited volunteers from corporate law firms to represent foster children in immigration cases, and she successfully lobbied for a special juvenile section in immigration court.

That's not the life of a person defined by depression.  But I believe that the end of her life came about at the intersection of her illness and the current "policy" on immigration in the U.S. (if one can dignify it by an increasingly abused word).  And let's be clear, as Laura Ingraham made clear this past week on the Fox Network:  that policy can be reduced down to the phrase "Get rid of 'em all."  It's no longer just about the undocumented anymore; it's about those who, in Ms. Ingraham's words, make our country no longer "look" like it used to.

We don't need more Laura Ingrahams; we need more Amy Meselsons.  We can't afford the loss of even a single one.  The loss of her life is a casualty that can and should be laid at the feet, publicly, of the current Administration and its selfish, racist pursuit of the interests of rich white men.  Along with the stressed-out motorists I see every day.

And when you read a piece like this, that chronicles the current President's dereliction of duty to the people of the entire nation, whether they voted for him or not, whether they have white, black, red, yellow or brown skin, you should know that you are looking at the tragedy of an Amy Meselson or a stressed-out motorist times thousands.  Give our current President enough of a chance, and it can easily become millions.

The casualties of this President are real.  They mount on a daily basis.  How many of them will have to mount before the current crisis ends?

Well, as always, that depends on you.

*A subject I will be discussing more extensively in future blog posts, especially as the current gubernatorial campaign here in Maryland heats up this fall.

And, Finally, For July ... Please, Joe, JUST GO AWAY!

Shame on Joe Lieberman for attacking Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the unexpected victor over fourth-ranked U.S. House Democrat Joe Crowley in the primary election for Crowley's seat, as being "too lefty" for the Democrats and their November chances.

I have to admit that I do not have an unalloyed brief for Ocasio-Cortez.  She's obviously a tremendous new talent, and knows how to touch on a lot of bread-and-butter issues in a way that Democrats used to do routinely, and seemingly have long since forgotten how to do.  At the same time, she's a political rookie, and political rookies make political rookie mistakes, whether its about explaining how you will pay for your promises (as she did the other night in an interview with Trevor Noah), or in denouncing the Israeli shooting of Palestinian protesters at the opening of the new U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem, doing the latter in an artless way that left her open to charges of anti-Semitism from those who live to make such charges to score cheap political points.

On cue, regarding the latter mishap, enter Joe Lieberman, stage right, carrying a dagger.  He immediately pounced and demanded that all true Democrats do the "centrist" thing and vote for Crowley, still on the fall ballot on a third-party ticket.  According to Joe, only by blatantly stabbing the party's nominee in the back can we all truly enable the party to "reach across the aisle and get things done."  Republican things, to be sure, but things nevertheless.

You know, like the Iraq war, which Joe supported.

Or John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign, which Joe supported to the extent of reaching across the aisle all the way to the GOP convention.

Or like his 2000 running mate on the Democratic ticket, Al Gore, who he stabbed in the back by publicly declaring that the Florida recount effort should be ended, even while the Gore campaign was still pursuing a recount.

In many respects, Joe is every bit as much of a narcissist as Donald Trump:  so in love with his public image that he can't quite see the feet of clay upon which it rests.  I met him at a fundraiser for his 2004 Presidential campaign (it's a long story, and I won't go into it here), and was decidedly unimpressed.  He seem less like a person and more like a fribble.

A fribble who will not go aways.  Please go, Joe.  You've damaged democracy enough for the sake of your self-righteousness.  It can't take any more of you, and neither can we.

Lord & Taylor, Debt Forgiveness, And Cash Repatriation.

I was saddened to learn about the soon-to-be closing of Lord & Taylor, in part because it was one of my mother's favorite New York department stores, and in part because it joins a long list of other now-departed Fifth Avenue retailers (Bonwit Teller and B. Altman, to name but two) that represented what was left of a more stylish, and much more personalized form of retailing that began in the 19th century, endured for much of the 20th century, and now seems to be definitively winding down to a close in the 21st.  For us, the storied names of these shopping palaces are little more than nameplates.  But, once upon a time, there were actual people behind the nameplates, people whose tastes and marketing skills, along with a highly competitive marketplace, gave those nameplates the value that at least some of them have managed to retain long after their namesakes have vanished from our midst.

It's easy to blame the disappearance of Lord & Taylor (actually, downsizing the number of outlets) on the prevalence of shopping via the Internet, which gives shoppers an unlimited amount of range and convenience.  And there's no question that Internet shopping traffic has had a major adverse impact generally on traditional bricks-and-mortar retail outlets.  For me, as for others, it would be somewhat hypocritical to complain about this too much.  I lament the vanishing of traditional book stores, but I also buy books on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.  In many respects, the Internet is the proverbial better idea, and shopping is a major aspect of our lives that reflects that fact. 

But it's not hypocritical to note that, in the pursuit of convenience, we've lost an important part of our social lives as well.  Stores like Lord & Taylor used to be not just places to shop, but to spend time with family members and close friends.  Most of these stores had restaurants, which became places to extend the social aspect of shopping.  These days, you're lucky to find as much as a McDonald's in a Walmart (and "lucky" may depend on how you feel about fast food).

In any case, convenience plays a large role in the disappearance of the Lord & Taylor-type stores.  Physical elegance and social contact mean less to modern shoppers than they once did; getting goods quickly, and as cheaply as possible, are what matter most.  But there is another factor as well:  debt.  During the 1980s, when economic expansion was fueled not by tax cuts, as is commonly believed, but by massive amounts of public and private borrowing, the ownership of many former "carriage-trade" stores such as Lord & Taylor was consolidated through mergers that were funded by massive loans  These loans, unfortunately for everyone, proved to be so large that they stores themselves could not generate enough revenues to service the debt and generate profits for the new owners. 

This fact, combined with a reduction in the variety of merchandise available in each of the stores, slowly led to the closing of many of the individual stores, which by this point had become little more than nameplates.  Once upon a time, you could reasonably guess where an item had been bought just by looking at it.  But, as time passed, that was less and less true.  Macy's no longer needed to tell Gimbel's anything; they were both selling the same merchandise--and, as a result, only one of them has survived to this day.

The problem of debt strangling our economy is by no means limited to retail.  In addition to its other problems (climate change and the spread of autocracy), the world economy is forced to chow down on servicing a level of debt that now stands at $247 trillion.  A level of debt that has its roots in the go-go '80s--when, economically (to borrow a Stephen Sondheim lyric from "Follies) everything was possible and nothing made sense (then or now).  There is clearly no way out of this financial trap except debt forgiveness.  What is needed now is an international conference to work out the terms of this, on a global basis.  Perhaps that can actually happen, once everyone faces up to the need for it--and it may take a cataclysmic event for everyone to do so.

But what if we could do it?  And what if it could be combined with incentives to repatriate currencies that have fled their home countries, seeking tax shelters oversees?  (U.S. dollars, we're looking at you here.)

Maybe some of that forgiveness, combined with a little cash, could save what's left of the carriage-trade model, before it vanishes altogether.  Maybe some of that cash could help to not only provide the Lord & Taylors of the world with much-needed capital, but also with new, aspiring merchants to find ways to combine Internet-age convenience with old-school social experience.  Maybe, if we can liberate money from the tyranny of debt service, and get it to start moving at the same speed as the people who make, save, invest, and spend it, we really can bake a large enough economic pie for everyone.

Admittedly, this is just a dream.  But maybe necessity will make it a reality.  I hope it happens before we say goodbye to another Lord & Taylor.

America? Russia? Can You Tell Which Is Which?

And now, sadly, on to what is only the second-most important story of our time.

During the Cold War, and for a long time after its unofficial end in 1989, Americans could take pride not only in its "hard power," as defined by its military strength, but also in the "soft power" of its ideals, and its willingness to pursue making this ideals a reality.  It's fairly safe to say that much of the social progress that has been made in this country, especially in the area of civil rights, came about as a consequence of that willingness, at least in part.  How, after all, could we lecture the rest of the world about freedom and equality if we as a people ourselves were neither truly free or equal?

Unfortunately, that question is now a haunting one.  Because, under the current occupant of the Oval Office, much of that social progress is not only beginning to unravel, but is seemingly being thrown into reverse.  In truth, much of this reversal has been going in slow motion for quite a long time, beginning with the Reagan era.  But those of us on the progressive side of the fence has always maintained the faith that democratic processes, and a commitment by all political sides to abide by them, would be enough to eventually set this country headed in the right direction.

In fact, the end of the Cold War itself seemed to validate that point of view.  So did the election of Barack Obama to the Presidency, after a period of manufactured warfare and bankrupt economics.  American ideals, during the Bush years, had been put to the ultimate test, and had proved to be enough to vanquish a serious attempt to thwart them.

But, as it turned out, the ultimate test was yet to come.

In 2016, the nation elected, and swore into office, a man whose victory had come about despite credible reasons to believe that a major foreign power, Russia (the functional successor to the Soviet Union) made massive, direct attempts to intervene in the outcome of the election and manipulate that outcome for its own benefit.  And, although a few fingers were lifted against this horror in the form of demonstrations and legal challenges, the weight of public opinion leaned in the direction of those who believed that "our system" was strong enough to survive any attempt to thwart it.

For myself, however, and for many others, my weight shifted in the other direction.

I have long believed that the modern conservative movement, as launched in the post-World-War-II era, understands words like "freedom" and "democracy" in a very narrow sense.  Specifically, the freedom to be a conservative, and to insist that democracy only be allow to promote conservative points of view.  I have seen the truth of this in its willingness to promote right-wing dictatorships over legitimate democratic movements that were deemed to be "too leftist," in its insistence on "balanced" coverage from supposedly "liberal" media (while allowing the conservative counterparts to be as "unbalanced" as possible), and in its willing to promote an authoritarian perspective on faith under the twin guises of "tradition" and "religious freedom."

The tipping point, however, occurred for me even before Election Night 2016, courtesy of  Mitch McCONnell, the Republican leader of the Senate.  (I'll use his name, since a little manipulation allows me to tweak it in order to properly reflect his character, but will deny him the respect of pretending he leads a "majority.")  Fresh from his successful denial of Merrick Garland the proper respect that a Supreme Court nominee deserves, in the hope that a Republican successor to Obama would get to fill a Court vacancy, McCONnell refused to cooperate with Obama's pre-election plan to share with the public what was then known about Russian plans to sabotage the election.  He baldly stated his intention to denounce any such attempt as "partisan" in nature.

Sadly, Obama folded, as he did with the Garland nomination.  That's on him, and I have no reservations about calling him out for it.  In fact, Obama's penchant for folding in the face of Republican opposition, even when that opposition may have been little more than bluffing, is mirrored in a sad tendency by Democrats generally to put too much faith in the good intentions of the other side.  That history, to some extent is recapped here.  We have been constantly affronted with Republican disrespect for democracy, and then constantly been told, in the immortal words of Antonin Scalia, to "get over it."  And, by doing so, we have enabled the present moment (myself included) to a far greater degree than any of is probably care to admit.

But make no mistake:  McCONnell put Obama in that position with regard to the intelligence about the election.  It was McCONnell who, faced once again with a choice between country and political chess, chose chess.  Because that is what not only McCONnell, and the party that will follow him anywhere, do.  They are not interested in building a better America, only in the acquisition of power, by any means.  And let's be as clear as possible:  they have not been stopped for a minute by the fact that the current President has a long history of association with Russia that makes plausible the possibility that he is not truly an American President, but a Russian asset.

How much plausibility should you give to that thought?  Or, for that matter, to the idea that conservatives would chose conservatism over democracy?  Take the words of a leading conservative, David Frum, who served in the Bush Administration:  “If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy.”  Again, his words, not mine.

Or, don't take his words at all.  Take a look at what is going on around us.

The banning of a reporter from the White House press pool, and the Presidential denunciation of reporters as "bad people."

The use of employer's rights to restrict freedom of speech for their employees, forcing people to choose between their beliefs and their ability to survive.

The restriction of the rights of the poor to public benefits, for no other reason than to assert who's "in charge.

The caging of human beings who are guilt of nothing more than the desire to flee unsafe countries, in conditions that cannot even be called decent.

The willingness of the current Administration to go to war not for the defense of the nation, but to use warfare as a public relations tool to pump up support for said Administration (here we go, "wagging the dog" again).

And finally, at least for now, the unwillingness of the current Congress to spend any money, or otherwise take any precautions whatsoever, to ensure that our elections are free from foreign--specifically, Russian--interference.

Is it any wonder that Putin wanted the current occupant of the Oval Office to be that occupant?  He's getting exactly what he wants:  a clone of his own country, one nominally led by a man who is easily susceptible to flattery.  As has been pointed out recently, that's the hold that Putin, or anyone, can have over our "President," the only one that's really necessary.  Flattery.  Infinite amounts of it.  That's how you hold on to a world-class narcissist.  You don't need "pee tapes."  You don't need "Playboy tapes."  You don't need any tapes at all.  You just need to keep petting him on the head and say "Good boychik.  Good boychik.  Now go do what I want."

And is it any wonder that Republican members of Congress spent the past Fourth of July not here, but in Russia, doing who-knows-what?  It's enough to remind one of the chilling last lines of George Orwell's "Animal Farm," in which an idealistic rebellion by farm animals against a drunken farmer degenerates into an autocracy led by pigs, who increasing act like the animals former master.  At the book's end, the pigs host and toast their human neighbors, while the rest of the farm animals look on in horror: 

Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.

One wonders if a glimpse of that July 4th meeting would have produced a similar response to the viewer.

This is why it's essential  to vote, and to get others to vote, this coming November.  But, no matter what happens in this election (and a fair outcome is by no means certain, under these circumstances), it is not enough to vote.  We must, sadly, fight the people we have long regarded as our fellow countrymen (and women) on whichever battlefield is necessary.

For they are no longer our fellows.  They are the enemy.  And, for the sake of true democracy, no quarter can be given.

In Not-So-Fake News, We're Either Burning Up Or Drowning

It may be hard to believe that having a potential traitor in the Oval Office is only the second-most important story right now in the world.  And I'll get to that story, in due course.  But, sadly, that is absolutely the case.  Because the nature of the person in the Oval Office may not matter so much when there's a planet at stake.

Yes, I know, I write about this a great deal.  But, since we don't have anyplace other than Earth on which to live at the moment, it might be worthwhile to stop from time to time, look around us, and see what's happening.

And it ain't pretty.

Resource depletion at a record rate, and increasing exponentially from year to year.

Coastal regions slowly sinking into the ocean, and likely never to return.

And if you don't live on the coast?  No consolation there at all, folks.  Chances are that, like Great Britain, you're burning up.  Literally.

Go ahead and call me a creeping socialist for pointing out these articles to you.  Two of them come from the New York Post, nobody's idea of a creeping-socialist newspaper.  Yes, the third one comes from the New York Times, and you can flog the Times as much as you want.  But when both papers are basically telling the same story about the world around us, I think that it has a lot more to do with the reality they're both seeing, and that their respective ideologies can't let them ignore.

Just as there are no atheists in foxholes, there are no climate deniers anywhere the effects of climate change--there, I've said it--can be seen or felt.  And, increasingly, those effects have no boundaries.

And just as those effects are crossing geographic lines, the response to them--the only response based on the facts, that is--is doing the same thing with political lines.  Great Britain, of course, has (barely) a government led by the Conservative Party, a party whose members generally see eye-to-eye with their counterparts in the U.S., the Republicans.  Here, from the Times article, is a single-sentence summation of that government's current take on climate:  "The British government announced Thursday that adapting to a warming climate was now a matter of 'life and death.'”  (Emphasis added, as if it needed to be.)

On the other hand, perhaps it does.

Because while this country was making some--some--real progress on this issue during the Obama administration, Obama's successor (who loves hearing his name, so I won't use it) has been going full-speed in the other direction, discouraging the development of renewable sources of energy, and wedding the country to resources that cannot be reproduced or duplicated, only replaced.

In so doing, he is preying on the fears of two groups:  the owners of fossil-fuel industries, who fear that they will not be able to profitably adapt to an age of solar, wind, and geothermal power, and the employees of those industries (especially coal miners), who fear the loss of familiar jobs and doubt their own ability to adapt to employment in a world of renewables.

It should seem obvious that there are ways by which government at all levels could provide incentives in various forms to enable both investors and workers to successfully and painlessly make the transition from the extraction world of energy to the renewable one.  Obama, of course, translated a number of these ideas into public policy when he was President.  Hillary Clinton, the person who should be sitting in the Oval Office right now, was ready and willing to do the same and more.

But the current President does not actually care about solving problems.  He only cares about political issues at all to the extent that they can be manipulated to promote his personal interests, both in his businesses and in his ability to reach a second term in office.  And he always takes the divide-and-conquer approach to that manipulation.  Thus, problems are never actually solved.  They continue to fester, so that they can remain available for future misuse.

In short, he illustrates the difference between holding an office, and serving the people who have "elected" him to it.  (I'll have more to say about the "election" part of the equation in a subsequent post.)

So, even though public opinion in the U.S. is--admittedly, very slowly--moving in the direction of accepting the reality and the danger of climate change, the reality and danger are growing at a faster rate than is the acceptance of its existence.

What can you do?  Rather, what should you do, for everyone's sake?

Stop pretending the problem isn't real, if that's where you are.  And stop pretending there is nothing we can do about the problem, if that's where you are.  There are many things we can do to not only solve the problem but also, in the process, achieve a level of economic growth that could benefit more than just a handful of investors.  I have said it before, and will continue saying it until either I or the temperature drops:  it's possible to have an environment without an economy, but not an economy without an environment.

And, once you have stopped all of that pretending, one more thing remains:  find out which candidates support policies that address the need to adapt to and overcome the effects of climate change, and only vote for those candidates.

It's our only planet.  It's up to us to save it.

Get started doing that right now.  Before we burn--or sink--together.

A Few Additional Thoughts About The Potential Fate of Roe

Obviously, in considering what a Supreme Court with five solidly conservative votes might do to the country's jurisprudence, almost all of the focus has been on Roe v. Wade, the 1973 landmark decision that recognized a constitutional right to abortion services for women.  It was Roe, after all, that shifted the focus of the conservative moment toward the goal of changing the Court's composition so that it would, one day, overturn the decision.  Reversing Roe has for decades now been, if one may pardon the expression, the Holy Grail of social conservatives.  And now, depending on what happens not only with the nomination and confirmation process for Anthony Kennedy's successor, but also with the midterm elections and the fate of the current Republican majority in the Senate, the Grail may actually be in sight.

So it is worth pondering, for a few moments, the outcome of reversing Roe.  What happens then?  Do we suddenly, or eventually, find ourselves living in a world not unlike the one depicted in Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale," where the reproductive rights of women are completely controlled by a theocracy, one not unlike the contemporary American evangelical movement?  (Full disclosure for those who have not previously read my blog:  I am what I would call a recovering evangelical, now a converted Jew, who knows a thing or two about how evangelicals think and operate.)

It's more likely than not that any reversal of Roe would be based on an analysis of constitutional rights as defined by the Tenth Amendment, which reserves any rights not explicitly guaranteed by the texts of the Constitution or the Bill of Rights to the states or the people.  As the conservative justices would probably put it, since the texts of both documents do not explicitly refer to a right to abortion services, that right must necessarily be defined by the States and the voters (i.e., "the people").  This would undoubtedly led to various levels of abortion rights in different states, depending on the views of the voters in those states and the state governments they elect.

What might be true then, at least initially, is that abortion laws in different states might tend to move even further toward the extremes.  Blue states, free of various restrictions enacted by Congress and the federal courts over the years, might end up permitting unlimited abortion on demand, while red states, no longer obliged by Roe to guarantee some level of access to abortion services would come up with levels of restrictions on women's health care services hitherto undreamed of by the Falwells and Grahams of the world.

The problem with this, however, is essentially the problem with so-called conservative efforts at health care reform, which tends to put ultimate decision-making power on providing health care at the state level.  Health care is not only a national system, but an international one, which means that any decisions made on regulating it ultimately have to be made at the national and international level.  As a consequence, even if Roe is reversed, Congress and whoever is President (hopefully, not the morally-compromised narcissist we have now) will be forced to develop some sort of federal law that will, in turn, control the level of abortion services across the country.  In other, more concise words, we may be right back to where we are now, politically, on the question of abortion.

And there is yet one more interesting, potentially complicating factor for the future legality of abortion services in America.  (Spoiler alert:  it's good news for the pro-choice side.)

The Equal Rights Amendment, which has been limping along toward ratification for decades, is now just one state legislative approval away from full ratification and becoming part of the Constitution.  True, a Democratic Congress and President would have to waive the inability of the ERA to be ratified prior to an earlier statutory deadline, but that's little more than a formality.  As someone who has long imagined (gleefully) the litigation potential in the ERA being part of the fundamental law of the land, it has occurred to me that a reasonable position in litigation on the abortion question might produce the outcome that, for the ERA to be upheld, women could not be allowed to suffer a burdening of their rights based on the disparate impact of pregnancies on women, as opposed to men whose lives are not similarly burdened.  This line of thinking could, in a post-Roe world, lead to a Supreme Court decision that, for all practical purposes, revives Roe under another name.  Then, of course, overturning that decision would become the new Holy Grail of the social conservative moment.

And, to borrow a lyric from Cher, the beat would go on.  And on.  And on.  With quite literally no end in sight.

I have rejected Bill Clinton as a political hero; however, there is something to be said for his standard for the existence of abortion services:  safe, legal, and rare.  I can't help but think that both sides of this seemingly never-ending debate would be better served by less friction in the legal/governmental system, and more cooperation toward making the Clinton standard not only the national one, but the international one.  Women and children everywhere could potentially benefit so much from that level of cooperation.

And it might not hurt our legal/governmental system either.  Maybe, just maybe, it could finally get back to focusing on making the country better, and less on who's winning the political game of chess that never ends.

Time For The Democrats To Create A New Reality

Unsurprisingly, the news of Justice Kennedy's retirement from the Supreme Court unleashed panic attacks among Democrats in Washington, and progressives around the country.  No longer, it seems, would there be a proverbial "swing" vote joining the Court's Democratic appointees in throwing liberals and their supporters the occasional judicial bone (especially major ones like the Obergefell decision on marriage equality).  Instead, thanks to Donald Trump and the ever-duplicitous Republican Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McCONnell, there will soon be a majority-for-life (however long that may be) of five conservative Justices on the Court, ready to reflexively shoot down any and all major precedents of an even remotely forward-looking, people-protecting nature.  Including--and especially--Roe v. Wade.

Or will any of this happen?

Trump holds the power of nomination, and knows that he owes his undeserved place in the White House to the support of evangelical voters who were willing to lose their souls for something less than the world (in this case, control of the highest court in the land).  As for McCONnell, he effective holds the power of advice and consent with regard to the constitutional power of confirming Trump's nominees.  He has already shown himself to be a complete master of how to abuse that constitutional power, first by inventing a "Biden rule" to deny the Obama-nominated Merrick Garland even a vote for the better part of an entire year, and then usurping the power of Senate Democrats to filibuster Trump's alternative to Garland, Neil Gorsuch.  In both instances, McCONnell was able to command the loyalty of every vote in his caucus; in the case of the Gorsuch nomination, he was even able to intimidate several red-state Democrats into "offering" their support.

So, on the surface, nailing down that five-seat reflexively conservative majority on the Court should be a political slam-dunk.

But does it have to be?

I am, at this moment, reminded of that unfortunate statement made by a member of the George W. Bush Administration, in which he famously said that the United States was now an empire that no longer needed to heed anyone's definition of reality--that it was powerful enough to create its own reality.  In the context of fighting the Iraq war, that type of assertion seems dangerously deluded at best, and dangerously meglomaniacal at worse.  However, as applied to issues of a slightly lesser geopolitical magnitude, I'm not sure that there isn't something all of us can't learn from that assertion.

History, even recent history, is filled with instances of people who successfully defied the odds, not necessarily winning victories in the short run, but helping to build them in the long run.  And, sometimes, even moments that weren't designed to be moments of triumph ended up being just that, simply because people acted on their beliefs and not on the calculations of others. 

In a way, Barack Obama illustrates both points.  The chain of victories for civil rights that was set into motion by the Court's Brown vs. Board of Education decision resulted in Obama's election to the U.S. Senate.  His successful presidential campaign was another story; up until the collapse of the financial markets in September of 2008, I thought the the election was John McCain's to lose.  That collapse had almost everything to do with Obama's election.  But had Obama not entered the Democratic race that year--a race that was supposedly Hillary Clinton's to lose--he would not have been able to turn that collapse into the history-making moment of his election.

Luck, as Brooklyn Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey once said, is the residue of design.  And he knew what he was talking about; he knew that the major leagues would have to be integrated one day, but he also know that it would take just the right ballplayer to make it work.  He waited until he had that player--Jackie Robinson--who then went on to make it work.

So why should the Democrats--and their supporters, for that matter--simply accept the consensus odds that there is nothing they can do to stop Trump and McCONnell from packing the Supreme Court?  Yes, it looks right now like there's a glide path to that accomplishment.  But a lot could happen to destroy that path.  And it might only happen if Democrats in Washington stop focusing on the odds and start focusing on why they've been sent there by the voters in the first place--to fight for the people against the powerful (to borrow from Al Gore).

As it turns out, Democrats have regrets about not having fought harder for Garland during the pendency of his nomination.  Those regrets seem to come less from a belief that such an effort would have been successful (it may very well not have been) and more that there is more to be gained in the long run by not running away from every showdown with their Republican counterparts.

For that matter, is it true that they can do nothing?

Not everyone thinks so.  Here is one writer's list of helpful suggestions.  Here is yet another suggestion, and my personal favorite.  After all, there's no constitutional limit to the size of the Supreme Court.  And no "Biden rule" to stop anyone from expanding its membership.  True, it didn't work for FDR.  But that was in a very different era, one in which the Senate functioned in a more bipartisan way than it does now.  We may now very well be in an era in which two wrongs do make a right.

What is essential for Democrats and progressives to understand is that, in the age of Trump, there can and should be no attempt to wait for "a better moment to fight" to come.  That moment may very well never show up.  And, even if it does, nothing will have been gained by staying on the bench waiting for that moment.  If a person has never even learned how to fight by fighting, how will that person even know what that "better moment" really looks like, in order to be able to take advantage of it?

The time to fight is NOW.  Not just because of what could be at stake in future Supreme Court decisions, but also because to not even try may be what leads to a political defeat from which we may never recover.  We cannot wait for reality to move in our favor; none of the great movements in history happened all by themselves.  They happened because people who cared above all about what is right got off their duffs and pushed.  Hard.

Are you listening, Chuck Schumer?  Are you listing, Senate Democrats?  Get off your duffs and push for a better reality.  That's what your being paid for.  That's what your oaths of office require you to do.  For G-d's sake, GO DO IT!

The Seduction Of Anthony Kennedy?

The Capital-Gazette tragedy is the worst story from last week; the loss of life guarantees it that distinction.  But another story potentially presages even more potential loss of life and liberty, with more than a hint of potential corruption linking the Presidency and the Supreme Court.

Submitted, for your consideration, is the following sequence of events:

1)  Supreme Court Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy, the supposed "swing" vote between the liberal and conservative wings of the Court, sided with the conservative majority on a trio of high-profile cases involving Donald Trump's travel ban against some Muslims,* the legal obligation of pregnancy crisis centers to provide information on abortion services, and requirements that public employees pay mandatory dues to unions that represent their interests, but in which they do not have formal membership.

2.) The aforesaid Justice Kennedy submitted to Trump his resignation from active service on the Court, in unusually smarmy language.  ("My dear Mr. President"?  Really?)

3)  Within days for the aforementioned resignation, the New York Times reveals, in a profile of Republican efforts to induce Kennedy to resign ahead of midterm elections that might shift Senate control (and the power to confirm judicial appointees) to Democrats, that Kennedy's son may have, er, *ahem*, "helped" Trump's business interests with loans in nine figures or more.

All this news, in less than a week.  You've got to say this much in Trump's favor:  his business "acumen" certainly seems to have accelerated the rate at which corruption has spread.

And the reach of that corruption as well.

Kennedy, Ronald Reagan's third choice to replace Lewis Powell on the High Court (after Robert Bork and Douglas Ginsburg), has generally enjoyed a favorable reputation during his three-decade career as an Associate Justice.  His reputation as the Court's "swing" vote has yielded some important victories for progressive interests, most notably the majority opinion in Ogberfell v. Hodges that established a constitutional right to marriage equality for gays and lesbians.  And, apart from political ideology or judicial philosophy, his personal and professional reputation have been unblemished by scandal.

Until now.  Now, we are left with the possibility that Kennedy, knowing that he and his family were about to be hit with some political dirt, courtesy of the Times, decided to be very un-swingy on three major decisions, and then, as an additional gift to his son's debtor, open up a vacancy on the Court that could be filled with whiplash speed by the Republicans ahead of the midterms.  All locked into place before the (shall we say) dirt hit the proverbial fan.

And, given that this is Trump that we're talking about, exactly how unlikely is that possibility?

How difficult is it to imagine Trump, in exchange for a rather sizable loan that he may or may not be able to pay back (remember:  Trump), promising to give Kennedy the most favorable possible treatment with regard to replacing him on the Court, including an exit that would help Kennedy to atone for some if the more liberal consequences, first by locking in some major conservative victories in important cases, and then exiting at a time that would theoretically put pressure on Democrats in red states to be intimidated (or, as they say, "bipartisan") with regard to their votes for Kennedy's replacement?

Not difficult at all, I'm afraid.  As several people (myself included) have said on more than one occasion, Trump has a reverse Midas touch.  He corrupts and destroys everything he touches.  Even Supreme Court Justices, it seems.

*Exceptions to the ban, of course, exist for Muslims from nations in which Trump's real estate company has or will soon have development projects.  This despite the fact that several of these nations have supplied terrorists who have attacked U.S. citizens, including, of course, those who were killed in the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.  One should reflect carefully on this, in assessing how seriously Trump takes his responsibilities for keeping the nation safe, avoiding conflicts of interests, and otherwise avoiding Constitutional violations that could provide the basis for impeachment hearings (the Emoulments Clause of the Constitution comes to mind).

Is Lacking A Conscience An Impeachable Offense?

It's doubtful that the framers of the Constitution would have ever imagined a President so wrapped up in his self-esteem that he could give no thought, and therefore no public voice, to the deaths of innocent citizens as a consequence of his own, personal denunciation of their activities--activities that are explicitly protected by the First Amendment.  Yet that is precisely the kind of president currently occupying the office that John Adams prayed would never be occupied by anything other than "honest and wise men."  (We'll overlook the sexism in that sentiment, and leave it up to Abigail's shade to straighten John's shade out.)

In a post last month, I suggested that Donald Trump might be on his way to becoming a dictator.  Well, dictators murder as a matter of course; you can't remain in absolute power unless you're willing to kill off those who rise in opposition to you.  For that reason, it might be said that the willingness to kill one's opponents--or let others do the killing for you--is the most essential trait an actual or would-be dictator must possess.

Well, as of this week, Donald Trump got there, so to speak.  We now have one more reason to think that he's on his way to being a dictator:  he's learned to kill.  Or, at least, if we are to deal in distinctions without differences, he's pretty chill with others doing it for him, once his rhetoric has opened the window of opportunity for them to do so.

Let me walk you through the steps:

In February of this year, Trump used his favorite medium, Twitter, to denounce American journalism as the "enemy of the people."  You can't dismiss this as an alternative fact; it's right here for all to see.  And it's not merely a not-nice thing to say about the press.  The phrase "enemy of the people" is a loaded piece of rhetoric with a long history of use in connection with those who opposed powerful interests willing to do anything--especially committing murder--to maintain there power.  Curiously, given the fact that Trump is nominally a Republican, the phrase has been historically a favorite of Communist rulers, especially those in the former Soviet Union.  Again, not an alternative fact.

And neither is the most tragic news of the past week:  the deaths of five reporters/editors at the Annapolis Capital-Gazette, here in Maryland.  The tragedy of gun violence on which so many journalists have reported finally, sadly, caught up with the journalists themselves.  With not a little help from the nation's highest elected official, whose rhetoric, whether we like it or not, shapes our reality by virtue of his position.

You don't think Trump isn't himself aware of this?  Why, apart from his boundless narcissism, would he be more addicted to Twitter than he is to time spent in the Oval Office?

And that's not the only means by which he betrays his awareness.

Trump, who never misses an opportunity to speak to the press he treats with open contempt, just couldn't find words to express anything about the slain Annapolis journalists.  Not sympathy, Not thoughts and prayers.  Not even a limp-wristed effort to shift the blame onto his political opponents.  Nothing, absolutely nothing (unless you count the meaningless waves).

Not even a master prevaricator like Trump can pretend that he doesn't give a damn about the professionals who give him the oxygen of free publicity.  Is it too much to hope that, in the wake of that monstrous display of public indifference toward human tragedy, the press finally starts acting like the Fourth Estate that they are supposed to be, and stop looking every morning for new and more exciting ways to give Trump a free pass on behavior that has, without a doubt, moved into the realm of the criminal.

Maybe lacking a soul is not a high crime or misdemeanor.  But the fruits of that poisonous tree surely must be counted as such.  This week produced five demonstrations of that truth.  How many more do we need before the press, the voters, and, ultimately, a Congress with a conscience, does the right thing by the Constitution and the people whose interests are protected by it?

A Few Words Of Explanation, Before June Disappears

In posting on this blog, I try to maintain a relatively steady pace of monthly postings.  In the nine-and-a-half years that I have been blogging, some months have had a steadier pace than others.  June of 2018, unfortunately, has been one of those unsteady months, due to a number of personal reasons (not all of them bad ones, but all of them time-consuming, in different ways).  Not surprisingly, the need to comment on various issues has grown exponentially along with my lack of time for doing so.  This is, after all, the Age of Trump.  And, if there is one thing about Trump on which all of us can agree, it is that he thrives on conflict, even if he has to manufacture the conflict in order to thrive.

So, put simply, there's a lot to talk about.  And, if I'm to keep on both current events and my own writer's discipline with regard to supplying a certain amount of monthly content for TRH, I've only got a handful of hours in which to do it.  Thankfully, the software on which I publish operates on Pacific time so, technically, I have a few extra hours.  And I intend to make the most of them.

So, without further ado, here goes ...