“The House That Scalia Built”: The Bitter Beginning Of The 21st Century That Scalia And The Bush Dynasty Gave Us
Two waves broke this week: a pair of deaths on our national shore that changed everything. They are inseparable in the annals of our time. Goodbye to all that a Supreme Court Justice wrought, and the House of Bush brought.
If only it were that simple.
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is dead at 79, the Dickensian, most opinionated character on the bench. Friends — many of whom knew him as an operagoer, a city denizen, and an avid socializer — called the father of nine children Nino. His burial is Saturday.
The “master of invective,” as one put it, Scalia was considered brilliant, and was often callous in withering dissents on, for example, gay marriage. Taking a dim view of President Obama’s lead in the delicate Paris Agreement on climate change, his last vote was to immobilize the emissions standards. How nice of five Republican men to disrespect the Democratic president in the world’s eyes. As it happens, the Folger Shakespeare Library is staging “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” — fitting, considering Titania’s haunting lines that warn of global warming.
Nobody on the creamy marble Court was more polarizing since the Civil War. The unabashed carrier of the conservative cross, Scalia seldom let up on his pounding force and lashings, even in victory.
On “60 Minutes,” Scalia scolded half the American people, saying: “Get over it!” He referred to the infamous 2000 Supreme Court decision that swung the presidency from Al Gore to George W. Bush by one vote. He had a chance to be civil; he didn’t take it.
Meanwhile, the Bush dynasty hangs onto its last breath with Jeb Bush’s floundering presidential campaign. His brother, former President George W. Bush, left Texas to campaign, but the magic was missing. The 43rd president looked aged. Jeb has a penchant for saying their father, Bush senior, is the “greatest man alive,” or some such.
Here’s the double knell: The House of Bush is the House that Scalia built. At least, he was an architect. Now a tragic link ties those names together.
Their historical cadence will join other follies. “Sophocles long ago/Heard it on the Aegean,” English poet Matthew Arnold wrote in “Dover Beach.” Now I know what Arnold meant when he saw an elegiac sadness in ages and armies.
All we need to do is go back to 2000 — when our known world ended — when five Republican Supreme Court justices gave new meaning to “one man, one vote.” The deciding votes were out of the citizens’ hands; nine officials voted 5-to-4 — freezing a close vote count in Florida to determine the true winner. They shut democracy down.
That rude decision changed the course of the 21st century. George W. Bush swerved into war in Iraq, giving rise to ISIS today. Remind me: What were we fighting for? Following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, were the pretext to war, when 19 men (15 Saudis) were hijackers in a clever plot. The unprepared U.S. Army and the American viceroy, Paul Bremer, destroyed civil society in Iraq. What a mess.
The Court outrage for the ages must not be forgot in Scalia’s dramatic death, political to the end. The decision is full of rich contradictions. Scalia, who often mocked “nine unelected lawyers” in democracy, sprang into action by stopping vote counting in Florida. The governor of Florida then was Jeb Bush. In unseemly partisanship, Scalia departed from his so-called “originalist doctrine” to strongly urge the Court to stop counting. He also abandoned his emphasis on states having a say in governance by shortchanging the Florida Supreme Court. Hs loyal colleague, Clarence Thomas, followed him every step — Thomas who was nominated by President George H.W. Bush in 1991.
Justice Scalia died on a West Texas luxury ranch during a hunting trip. His death was apt, given his pugilistic style in upholding gun rights and every conservative cause in creation. Washington can’t get over that he’s gone, friends and foes alike. The senior sitting justice loomed large as the fiercest player, in every word he spoke and wrote. The vacancy gives President Obama one more try to work his will on a hostile Senate.
It will take time for the country to heal from the bitter beginning of the 21st century that Scalia and the Bush dynasty gave us. And for the record, I will never get over it.
By: Jamie Stiehm, The National Memo, February 19, 2016
“I Fear I Have Been Mistaken”: President Trump is Now A Possibility. And It’s Terrifying
Like many members of the media, I have spent much of the past six months pretending I have some idea of what will happen in the presidential election. Specifically, I have maintained a sanguine and somewhat bemused certainty that, whatever else happens, there will be no President Trump.
Today, with every meaning of this phrase, I fear I have been mistaken. At this moment, with the final Des Moines Register poll in and considering what I have seen and read about Trump’s supporters in Iowa and elsewhere, it would be foolish to say that President Trump isn’t a possibility. And that is terrifying.
Here are the things I have said to tamp down the notion that Trump could win the nomination:
“The establishment Republicans will rally behind a candidate.”
“He doesn’t speak the language of the evangelical voter.”
“Veterans will see right through him.”
“He doesn’t have a real infrastructure or ground game.”
“You can’t win without making significant ad buys.”
“His negatives are too high to get very far.”
“His supporters aren’t dedicated enough to caucus.”
I’m still holding on to some hope for the last one. (Not since high school have I wished so fervently for a snow day.) The rest of these assumptions have either been falsified or called into significant question.
You’ll notice I didn’t even bother listing the numerous things Trump has said to offend people. I have stopped believing it is possible for Trump to give offense – or, rather, I have stopped believing that giving offense is a reason people would cease to support him.
All he really needs to do is win Iowa — an increasingly likely outcome. After that… Well, tell me the first state he’ll lose. Not New Hampshire (leads by 18). Not South Carolina (leads by 15). Not Nevada (leads by 12). Super Tuesday states have been infrequently polled, but the two with the biggest delegate prizes (proportionally distributed) have recent results. Trump leads in Georgia by 10 points, and in Texas the “poll of polls” has him closing the gap with, ahem, “native son” Cruz to just two points. In Florida, he leads by 17 points.
What’s more, polls of a shrinking field seem to suggest that as long as a standard-bearer for the establishment remains in the race, Trump will continue to dominate. Cruz emerges the victor only in a head-to-head battle – a bittersweet indication for Cruz that he is not quite as hated by moderate Republicans as he either claims or should be.
I will refrain from running through specific general election scenarios, because — she sighs heavily — we are not there yet. Here is where we are: The strong possibility that Trump will get the GOP nomination, and that means that there is a non-zero chance that he will win the general election.
Non-zero is, to say the least, less that certain, but it’s a greater chance than most political professionals have given him up until… now. And non-zero is enough to scare the shit out of me.
Rationally, a Trump primary victory is clearly disturbing, but until this week I hadn’t considered it beyond an uncomfortable commentary on the Republican electorate on the way to a certain Democratic victory.
If we – I – have been so wrong about Trump’s chances at making it to the general, then I think it’s only appropriate to question all our assumptions about his chances nationally.
I spent much of this week reading and watching interviews with Trump supporters. I’d taken the previously reported incidents of slurs and scuffles at rallies seriously, of course. But a distracting voice in my head countered that crowds take on their own personalities, that protesters often intend to provoke responses, and that, besides, could you really ascribe the same level of ugliness to everyone? Surely, those responses were the extreme of the extreme.
Go read the report put together by CNN. It’s a collection of quotes left to stand mostly on their own, taken not from those kicking and punching and shouting but the rest of the crowd. There is nothing new here, not really, it’s the same ill-informed nationalist doggerel as he spouts. It’s chilling not because it’s somehow more extreme than you thought it’d be but rather because their complaints are so uniform and matter-of-fact:
“White Americans founded this country,” one 64-year-old woman told CNN. “We are being pushed aside because of the President’s administration and the media.”
A recent study delivered statistical proof of the mindset only implied by the language: Trump supporters are attracted to a quality that goes beyond “being a successful businessman.” They are attracted to his authoritarianism. They are, in fact, in favor of turning authoritarian ideas into policy:
Trump voters exhibit statistically significant and substantive authoritarian attitudes. For example, Trump voters are statistically more likely to agree that other groups should sometimes be kept in their place. They support preventing minority opposition once we decide what is right.
Trump supporters kick the fundamental tenets of Madisonian democracy to the curb, asserting that the rights of minorities need not be protected from the power of the majority. And they are statistically more likely than Trump opponents to agree the president should curtail the voice and vote of the opposition when it is necessary to protect the country.
To put it another way. The frightening thing about Trump voters is not that they’re angry, it’s that they believe they’re right—and they believe they’re winning.
Trump has, to use language Trumpkins would likely sneer at, empowered them. That sense of empowerment matters because the difference between authoritarians and populists is any sense of respect for minority opinions. In a world run by authoritarians, the only break on unjust behavior is whether you can get away it.
So, now, imagine a Trump nomination. Imagine how empowering that would be, and to whom.
There are two prevailing theories for why journalists and data crunchers got Trump’s trajectory wrong. One argument has it that Trump’s candidacy is a “black swan event”—an unprecedented amalgam of unreproducible and unpredictable circumstances, simply too weird to have foreseen.
I like that theory because it lets us off the hook, somewhat. And, well, it’s not an inaccurate description… but it’s really more of a description than an explanation. What’s more: all swans look gray in the rearview mirror. The end of Trump might look like the rise of nationalism in Europe or might look like Goldwater’s defeat. But it will look like something that has happened before, because everything does.
Another theory as to pundits’ blinkeredness, popular on the right, has it that we in the political world were simply too caught up in our cocktails and TV green room chatter to notice what was going on out there in “real America.”
This certainly feels close to the truth. There is darkness to be found out there, in the rallying around Kim Davis and the rejection of civil rights in Houston. On the other hand: “Real America” is multifaceted and self-contradictory, like most other real things. Americans show growing, support for an increased minimum wage and police body cameras, and young people have a historically high rate of interracial dating. How were we supposed to pick out the authoritarian strain from the progressive one?
I think we didn’t see Trump coming because we lacked imagination.
Science fiction has done a better job at predicting Trump’s success than political science has, after all. Neal Stephenson Interface describes a candidate guided via the input of real-time polling data directly into his brain. (He even decides to skip a debate.) Dark Mirror has plumbed the phenomenon of “a “joke” candidate becoming so popular that the forces behind him slip easily into despotism and violence.
Social scientists and journalists imprison themselves behind conventional wisdom and, to a lesser extent, evidence–the dark impulses that fuel Trump’s supporters have been mostly invisible to the naked eye: Sure, around the fringes of the Tea Party and in the twisty bowels of internet comments, one could sense the anger and racism, but I avoided looking into the abyss and preferred instead to gesture towards the more intelligible gamesmanship of Washington insiders.
It’s no secret that Trump’s rise has created history’s longest hot mic moment for the media. We have been caught without a script, and the rote truisms and filler material that usually fills the awkward silences have proven increasingly inappropriate to the unprecedented tragicomedy playing out before us.
I now see what my problem was: in discounting Trump’s chances, I relied on guidance from history and reason. These are inadequate defenses against the forces at work in Trump’s rise.
Logic didn’t help us foresee him and won’t work against him. We can’t argue policy, we are going to need something more like a Patronus.
I am not endorsing magical thinking; beliefs in no-cost shortcuts, legends, and mythical creatures are what brought us Trump. But we will need more than debate, a force stronger than facts.
I suspect we’ll need love: love for our country, for the people in it, for the ideas it stands for.
We have to love our country and what it can be more than Trump supporters fear what they believe it’s becoming. His power stems from their belief in that darkness – and with persistence and patience and heart, we’re going to have to make them see the light.
By: Ana Marie Cox, The Daily Beast, January 31, 2016
“The ‘Four Freedoms’ Under Assault”: The Dangers “From Within” Demand Our Attention
In her syndicated newspaper column on Jan. 6, 1941, Eleanor Roosevelt wrote , “America is not a pile of goods, more luxury, more comforts, a better telephone system, a greater number of cars. America is a dream of greater justice and opportunity for the average man and, if we can not obtain it, all our other achievements amount to nothing.”
That afternoon, President Franklin Roosevelt delivered his annual State of the Union address and elaborated on what America is and is not. He spoke powerfully about the fundamental values at the heart of American democracy, which he portrayed as a potent antidote to the tyranny overtaking Europe. He envisioned a world with “four essential human freedoms” at its core: freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. And he proclaimed that such a world could be “attainable in our own time and generation.”
Seventy-five years later, Roosevelt’s vision is being threatened by a retrograde politics that treats freedom as the punch line of a cruel joke against the American people. On the eve of the 2012 election, I argued that Republican politicians – in their fealty to billionaire mega-donors, zealous opposition to a woman’s right to choose, callous disregard for the working poor and terrifying enthusiasm for assault weapons – had perverted the four freedoms beyond recognition. Now, as voters prepare to choose the next president, the idea of freedom is once again under stress and being tested in new ways.
Although Donald Trump is leading in the polls, the real winner of the Republican presidential primary contest has been the politics of fear. With his signature bombast and bellicosity toward immigrants and Muslims, Trump has seemingly mastered the demagogic art of fearmongering. But he is certainly not alone in cynically sowing fear and hysteria among voters. During last month’s debate on national security, for instance, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie promised to escalate an already dangerous confrontation with Russia, citing President Obama’s aversion to military aggression as evidence that he’s a “feckless weakling.” Christie then defended his bluster in a nationally televised interview the following morning, declaring, “We’re already in World War III.”
Meanwhile, in the wake of horrific attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, overheated political rhetoric and sensationalistic media coverage have contributed to an exaggerated sense of the dangers of terrorism. As Stephen Kinzer recently wrote in the Boston Globe, “Fear is becoming part of our daily lives. Yet it is not justified by reality. The true terror threat inside the United States is a fraction of what many Americans want to believe.” We are rapidly becoming, in Kinzer’s words, “the United States of Panic.”
This suspension of freedom from fear has jeopardized another of Roosevelt’s four freedoms – freedom of worship. Whereas “religious freedom” has been abused for years to justify everything from restricting access to contraception to discriminating against the LGBT community, we are now witnessing political threats against an entire religion. Trump has called for a database of American Muslims while Sen. Marco Rubio has suggested closing down “any place where radicals are being inspired,” including mosques. Sen. Ted Cruz and former Florida governor Jeb Bush have argued for a ban on refugees fleeing the Middle East unless they can prove they are Christian. Hate crimes against Muslims are on the rise. And yet, Rubio, the purported “establishment” Republican candidate, asks: “Where is there widespread evidence that we have a problem in America with discrimination against Muslims?”
Roosevelt believed that freedom from want is inseparable from freedom itself. That was the basis for his “Economic Bill of Rights,” which he introduced in 1944, saying, “True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence.” But today’s Republican Party clearly does not share that understanding. Beyond their typically regressive tax proposals, the Republican candidates overwhelmingly support cutting Social Security benefits and raising the retirement age. Until recently, Ben Carson supported abolishing Medicare and Medicaid; Carly Fiorina opposes the federal minimum wage; and Bush claimed that Democrats appeal to African American voters with “free stuff.” Indeed, as conservative writer Ramesh Ponnuru observed, Republican candidates simply have not offered “ideas that would give any direct help to families trying to make ends meet.”
And while there is nothing new about their neglect of those who are struggling, Republican politicians are increasingly hyper-attentive to the demands of billionaire donors, who fund the super PACs propping up their campaigns. Ever since the Supreme Court ruled that money equals speech, the cost of our elections has exploded, making it harder for ordinary Americans to have a say in the political process. At the same time, with the corporate media setting the parameters of legitimate debate and drowning out independent voices, dissenting opinions often do not get the public hearing they deserve. Taken together, the result is that freedom of speech applies to a privileged few more than everyone else.
In 1941, Roosevelt spoke with clarity about the serious threats to America “from without.” Today, we are facing a different kind of danger – but one that also demands our attention – from within. On the 75th anniversary of Roosevelt’s four freedoms speech, may people fight to defend the core freedoms that have animated our nation at its best. In 2016, we are not just choosing a president. We are choosing what kind of country we want to be.
By: Katrina vanden Heuvel, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, January 5, 2016
“Written With The Purpose Of Disenfranchising Blacks”: The State Where Racism Is Enshrined In The Constitution
As the presidential race heats up and the American public becomes consumed with the drama that will inevitably engulf the campaign, we should not forget that democracies are intended to be based on voter enfranchisement, and that in many ways America is still lacking in this regard.
There are many techniques that America could employ to increase voter turnout, but one of our most pressing obstacles is the states that have consistently worked toward disenfranchising large swaths of their electorate. In this election cycle, Alabama may be the most egregious offender. You probably think you know all the reasons for this, but here’s one reason I bet you don’t know: It’s all in the state’s constitution.
To put it mildly, Alabama’s constitution is an absurd document. It is the longest still-operative constitution in the world at more than 310,000 words long. It is 40 times longer than the U.S. Constitution and 12 times longer than the average state constitution. Alabama’s constitution is insanely long because it gives the state legislature the power to administer over most counties directly, and as a result about 90 percent of the constitution consists of nearly 900 amendments. Some of the amendments cover mundane issues such as salary increases for county officials or the regulation of bingo games in Macon and Greene counties. The U.S. Constitution, in comparison, has only 27 amendments.
Alabama’s constitution places the majority of the state’s political power in the hands of a small coterie of officials, leaving counties and municipalities forced to essentially ask permission from the legislature regarding almost any form of self-governing. Alabamans for a long time have railed against the inefficiencies and ridiculousness of this constitution. But the racial undertones and the fact that it disproportionately harms and disenfranchises persons of color should not be overlooked. In fact, it should be the focal point when attempting to understand the constitution that governs Alabama.
The document was ratified in 1901 following a wave of racial terror that engulfed the South after the Civil War and during Reconstruction. Essentially, the constitutions of most Southern states follow a similar pattern. Prior to 1861 they all had their own various constitutions, but at the start of the Civil War they created new constitutions pledging their allegiance to the Confederacy. Following the defeat of the Confederacy these constitutions were no longer valid, and starting in 1868 each state had a new constitution overseen by the federal government that outlawed slavery and ensured black Americans were able to vote, to seek and hold elected offices, and to participate in their governments at the local, state, and national level.
To put it mildly, white Southerners did not embrace this societal change, and rather quickly a wave of terror engulfed the South directed toward freed blacks and Northern carpetbaggers—many of whom were also black—who had moved to the region with the intention of ensuring that the new constitutions and federal regulations were followed. The first iteration of the Ku Klux Klan was formed during this period.
However, the terror inflicted upon blacks during this era was not merely physical and mental, but also political. In addition to the Klan and other terrorist groups such as the White League and the Red Shirts, a political movement called the Redeemers began to steadily grow in popularity in the South. The Redeemers were a white political coalition consisting of primarily conservative and pro-business politicians and leaders. Their political ideology focused on seeking “redemption” by ousting or oppressing the coalition of freedmen—freed persons of color, carpetbaggers, and scalawags (Southern whites who supported Reconstruction). The Redeemers wanted to return their America to an era that favored white life and oppressed all others.
The biggest coup of this era for the Redeemers was the controversial Compromise of 1877 that removed federal troops from South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana, decided the 1876 U.S. presidential election, and ended the era of Reconstruction. In the ensuing years, Southern states created constitutions that reversed the progress and enfranchisement of Reconstruction, but without explicitly violating the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the Constitution.
Jim Crow laws and segregation became legally mandated during this time, but due to the “separate but equal” doctrine, these policies were not viewed as racially unjust. Additionally, since race could no longer serve as a barrier to vote, wealth, education and more became the new determinants, and poll taxes were instituted in states across the South. Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, and Virginia all created poll taxes in their new constitutions that disenfranchised blacks and poor whites. Poor whites had become the collateral damage in the quest to continue the oppression of black Americans in the South.
However, as time passed most of these states created new constitutions or completely rewrote existing ones so that they would not be trapped and forced to govern based upon the abhorrent and immortal standards of the past. Georgia, for example, ratified its current constitution in 1983.
Yet Alabama remains as one of the states whose constitution (PDF) functions as a continuation of the Redeemers ideology: an ideology that resulted in widespread political corruption as whites worked to sustain white supremacy and remain the governing force in Alabama by any means necessary. During the 1890s, whites in Alabama committed 177 lynchings—more than any other state—and by the end of the decade, Alabama had created a new constitution that placed the state under the control of those who committed and/or endorsed the terror.
During the first election held after the constitution’s 1901 enactment, voter turnout declined by 38 percent as a result of poll taxes, literacy requirements, and other legal voting impediments. In 1900 there were roughly 181,000 registered black voters and by 1903 there were fewer than 5,000. Black voter turnout dropped by a whopping 96 percent, and white turnout also decreased by 19 percent.
In recent years, when Alabama has instituted voter ID laws that disproportionately harm communities of color and have systematically closed DMVs in predominantly black counties, thus preventing African Americans from obtaining voter IDs, no one should be surprised. Alabama has always been a state that has found creative legal was to oppress and disenfranchise black Americans while ensuring that a segment of white elites dominate society.
Alabama’s constitution may not be legally racist or oppressive, but that most certainly is its intent. Preventing Alabamans from voting is its main bedrock principle. And while many Alabamans view their constitution as a shame that blights their society, the oppressive principles and ideology that brought it into existence have unfortunately returned to our national political discourse. Voting restrictions have sprung up across the nation, and government-sponsored racial and religious divisions are again commonplace in our political discourse.
Attempts to forcefully return America to a past that encourages racial division and oppression and places political power within the wealthy elites of society only result in staining the future. Alabama’s constitution and its capacity and consistency of racial oppression and disenfranchising voters is only one example, and sadly there are no signs that it will be repealed anytime soon.
By: Barrett Holmes Pitner, The Daily Beast, December 22, 2015
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