Heartbreak for what could have been
I’m not a frequent diarist on DailyKos, but I cannot help speaking out at this time of deep dejection.
Yesterday, Kos emerged defiant. Ben Jealous echoed his sentiments on television. I understand their feelings. I am old now and tired out by forty-five years of having to claw and scrap just to try to hold on to the fundamental commitments to justice that were first attained by the giants of liberalism during the middle third of the twentieth century. But hope is now eluding me.
Today you can see what we are up against. The media is rushing to normalize the most deviant sociopath ever to capture the American presidency. They are desperately trying to spin their own certainty of black times ahead into a false optimism that the most morally degenerate elements of American society will stop acting wickedly now that they have captured all the institutions of government. On what theory? That power ennobles rather than corrputs? That the Constitution will automatically rein in their ambitions? That the momentum of post-FDR government programs and agencies will carry on despite all attempts to destroy them?
The Constitution is not magic. The institutions do not perpetuate themselves—especially when moral degenerates gain the power to dismantle them at will. And now they have it. For the talking heads to imagine that Republicans will restrain themselves in any way, or moderate their ugly passions for the sake of any good higher than power is a fantastical self-delusion. Almost nothing in my five decades of political awareness provides evidence for this.
When John McCain had the basic human decency to stand up to an ignorant, racist, xenophobic old woman spewing hateful invective against Barack Obama, he was hailed by the media for his statesmanlike pushback against the fear-based nativist rhetoric that has fueled his party since Roger Ailes first figured out how to capture the racist vote for Richard Nixon. When John Ashcroft, on what might very well have been his deathbed, rejected the despicable attempt of Dick Cheney, through lackeys Alberto Gonzales and Andy Card, to browbeat him into reauthorizing the post-9/11 domestic surveillance program, he got a lot of admiration from the pundit class. The never-Trumpers became the darlings of the press for publicly planting their flags against the orange menace.
These were surely praiseworthy acts. But they are high-water marks for Republicans. These rare exhibitions of character are swamped by capitulations to the moral degenerates who, since the late 1960s, have helped the Republican party not sink back into permanent minority status. Most Republicans never demonstrate a single moment of character in their entire public careers. At least McCain and Ashcroft were capable of it. We will see whether the never-Trumpers stand firm now and make common cause with liberals, or whether their fair-weather virtue vanishes in the face of the vitriolic vengeance that will no doubt be coming their way.
Nor should we believe that cravenness does not infect the Democratic party. It is unfolding even today. There will be cooperation with the Trumpists, not implacable resistance. The press is praising Democrats for that already. Perhaps it makes them feel superior. “See? Their side may be reprehensible obstructionists, but our side understands that we all need to work together. Because democracy. And America. And Kumbayah.”
They did this when Cheney/Bush captured the presidency. And what was the result? Unnessary wars, out-of-control spending for which there will probably never be an accounting, and the worst economic crash since the Republican-created Depression of the last century.
Now the Democrats are gearing up to do it again. Only this time they are in a much weaker position than last time. Control of the legislative and executive branches belongs to Republicans. As Eric Cantor said in an interview this morning, this is an unprecedented opportunity for Republicans to get everything they ever wanted. Do you really think Democrats will be able to cajole implacable, power-mad Republicans to sacrifice any of their pent-up regenerate demands by preaching sweet cooperation and rational persuasion?
And yet, that what Democrats will try again. Some of this cravenness is simply the result of political reality. The leadership will have to tolerate defections by Democrats from red states in the hopes that those seats can be held in the next cycle by throwing meat to the howling dogs. But this hope is vain. Republicans control the next cycle. Unless the Republicans excesses bring them down much faster than usually happens, Congress will only become redder in 2018.
So the resistance will not come in any organized way from Congress. Despite our outrage, we will have to carry on this fight with only isolated, powerless members of Congress voicing support for us.
But that’s not the worst of it. Early signs seem to show that the left is about to tear itself apart along the lines of its main interest groups. If that happens, there will be no coordinated resistance to match the concentration of power that Republicans, their corporate overlords, and their degenerate base-voters are about to unleash.
But even that is not the worst of it. Liberals, even as they grieve over the coming onslaught, do not seem to grasp the true desperation of this moment. Will Obama’s legacy be expunged? Yes, and very quickly. Don’t kid yourself, for example, that some aspects of the Affordable Care Act cannot be rolled back because the machinery is too huge. Only a person who cares about consequences for other human beings argues that way. The Republican party on the whole is not composed of such people.
The ACA will be repealed almost immediately on Trump’s accession to the presidency. Will the Republicans also try to replace it with something else? Only if it serves their purposes. Perhaps they will see it as politically expedient to try to paper over the fact that they are destroying access to health care by resurrecting Paul Ryan’s pathetic attempt to cobble together something that looks like a “free-market” approach. It doesn’t matter whether they keep or drop the “replace” part of their mantra. They will not, as Joe Scarborough keeps insisting, lose the blue-wall states instantly when the suckers realize they’ve been taken. Oh, I suppose it’s possible they may lose some races there in 2018 if the rurals figure out that they’ve been swindled. But that will be too late. And Republicans need not fear political backlash. More on that later.
But let’s go back to the expurgation of Obama’s legacy. All his executive orders will be reversed. DACA—gone. Dreamers will no longer be able to dream. The ban on “enhanced interrogation techniques”—gone. Americans get to torture again.
And there are also things called “presidential memoranda” that govern the actions of agencies under the executive branch. Republicans will almost certainly move to repeal all of Obama’s, including these:
- Student Aid Bill of Rights to Help Assure Affordable Loan Repayment 03/13/2015
- Establishment of the Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center 03/03/2015
- Promoting Economic Competitiveness While Safeguarding Privacy, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties in Domestic Use of Unmanned Aircraft Systems 02/20/2015
- Expanding Federal Support for Predevelopment Activities for Nonfederal Domestic Infrastructure Assets 01/22/2015
- Modernizing Federal Leave Policies for Childbirth, Adoption, and Foster Care To Recruit and Retain Talent and Improve Productivity
- Enhancing Workplace Flexibilities and Work-Life Programs 06/27/2014
- Helping Struggling Federal Student Loan Borrowers Manage Their Debt 06/12/2014
- Advancing Pay Equality Through Compensation Data Collection 04/11/2014
- Updating and Modernizing Overtime Regulations 03/18/2014
- Creating and Expanding Ladders of Opportunity for Boys and Young Men of Color 03/07/2014
- Job-Driven Training for Workers 2/05/2014
- Enhancing Safeguards To Prevent the Undue Denial of Federal Employment Opportunities to the Unemployed and Those Facing Financial Difficulty Through No Fault of Their Own 02/05/2014
- Retirement Savings Security 02/04/2014
- Establishing a White House Task Force To Protect Students From Sexual Assault 01/27/2014
- Establishing a Quadrennial Energy Review 01/14/2014
Getting rid of these will surely make America great again, right?
Oh, and the Paris climate accords? Toast. Hey kids, sorry you’re all gonna die in mega-storms because Republicans believe God won’t let the earth perish no matter how much trash we dump into the air!
But that’s still not the worst of it. It’s not just Obama’s legacy that Republicans want to expunge. It’s the entire liberal and progressive legacy from the beginning of the Republic.
Now that they have irresistible power, they will—without concern or compunction, given their past performance even when they had much less power—launch their long-desired attack on the institutions created by Johnson’s Great Society programs, by FDR’s New Deal programs, and by Teddy Roosevelt’s Square Deal programs.
Think the Department of Education has long to live? Forget about going to college, middle class and lower class: without Federal support, most small colleges and even some state colleges will not be able to make it, and costs will rise exponentially beyond what they are now. Think Housing and Urban Development will emerge unscathed? You’re on your own, low-income housing seekers—that’s the free market for you.
Think that Medicare is too ensconced for them to touch? You’d be wrong. Sure, they may keep the name, but they’ll pass Paul Ryan’s plan that raises the eligibility age and turns over the keys to insurance companies while handing out a few thousand dollars to “help” people purchase policies that won’t begin to cover their needs.
Think that Social Security is beyond their reach? Not by a long shot. Remember when W. tried to privatize it? The backlash prevented him, but he had to care about political consequences because he had already hoist himself up by his own Iraq debacle. The Trump brigade does not need to care at all about political consequences. (More about this in a moment.) Privatizing Social Security will come back, probably in some newly dressed-up version of Paul Ryan’s private savings accounts and “progressive price indexing”—benefit cuts that ease in at first to lull beneficiaries, and then balloon over time. Whatever their final strategy, Republicans will make sure that nothing is done to keep the program solvent, so that they can claim that it “failed” when they finally give it the axe.
Think that anti-trust laws and any legal constraints whatsoever on corporations are so entrenched that Republicans can’t get at them? Wake up. Trump is entering the presidency with more power, probably, than any president has ever had. Republicans will pass any laws they like. Nothing can stop them. They need not fear political backlash.
Why not?
Here we are beginning to get to the worst of it. Very shortly, Republicans will not only control the legislative and executive branches, but also the Judiciary. Once Trump appoints his second Supreme Court justice, the takeover of American government will be complete. Republicans will no longer need to care at all about judicial scrutiny of the laws they pass. They can, and will, pass anything they like, knowing that any challenges brought in the courts will ultimately be made to disappear by the Supreme Court.
If you’re relying on the Supreme Court to advocate for justice, you’re captured by post-1954 thinking. In 1875, Congress passed a civil rights bill. In 1883, the conservative Supreme Court vitiated that act. It wasn’t until the 1950s—three generations later—that the Supreme Court had enough liberals on it to make it stop defending the “rights” of the states to violate their citizens’ rights, to make it stop defending Jim Crow, and to make it stop looking the other way while black people got lynched all over the South for seventy-five years.
And this is why Republicans have nothing to fear from political backlash. Once they have a Supreme Court in place that will actively advocate injustice, they have nothing to fear from anyone who tries to stop them through the channels provided by the Constitution. Court suits will be dismissed. And one of the first priorities of the Republicans in every red state and in the Congress will be to write new voter disenfranchisement laws that will be upheld by the Supreme Court. The next time North Carolina writes a law disenfranchising African-American voters, it will go into effect. The new Jim Crow is here with a vengeance: using deep data, Republicans all over the country will figure out ways to disenfranchise not only minorities, but Democrats in general. Because Republicans will own the Supreme Court, they will get to devalue liberal votes as much as they want, just as if the three-fifths rule were back in the Constitution.
They will own the Supreme Court for the rest of my lifetime, and probably for the rest of your lifetime too, even if you’re only a teenager now. And it is through this Supreme Court that they will reach all the way back to the Founding to undo the first liberal achievement of our nation—federalism itself.
If you read the “Anti-Federalist Papers”—the collection of speeches and writings from those who actively opposed adopting the Constitution—you find some of the same ideas that animate today’s Republicans. Ideas like “small government,” “states’ rights,” “federal overreach.” The anti-federalists deployed these ideas as building blocks in their arguments against the Constitution. Let me say that again: the anti-federalists deployed common modern-day Republican tropes against the Constitution.
It is a massive instance of historical irony (rooted in massive deception, self-deception, ignorance, and cynical Republican sophistry) that anyone believes today’s Republicans support the Constitution. Their historical DNA comes directly from those who fought most ardently to kill the Constitution in the womb.
For the anti-federalists did not go away just because the American people rejected their benighted and narrow-minded self-interest. They survived, dinging the Constitution whenever they could through the early 1800s—especially when it came to saving the institution of slavery. The Confederates—small-government, anti-federalist “conservatives” to the core—were their descendants. And they did not go away just because the American people defeated them in battle. They survived, captured the Supreme Court after Reconstruction, and imposed their “small-government,” “states’ rights” brand of injustice on the nation until the mid-twentieth century. Today’s Republicans, by absorbing the Dixiecrats and the white supremacists starting in the late 1960s, are also the heirs of the anti-federalists. Their most cherished beliefs are antithetical to the Constitution, and, like their predecessors, they try to subvert the Constitution by pretending—to others and even to themselves—to be its greatest friends.
Why did the anti-federalists hate the Constitution so much? There were many reasons, both petty and consequential. But the main reason, I think, is because they grasped somehow that the Constitution would be the most powerful political mechanism ever invented to advance the cause of justice. Even with all the horrible injustices that the Constitution sanctioned, the Framers managed to insert a great innovation that would work progressively over time to temper and eventually eliminate both those injustices and others that would arise in the course of time. (Madison, in Federalist 51, typically puts his finger right on the point: “Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit.”)
That innovation was the two-tiered justice system that layers the federal judiciary on top of the state judiciaries. For the first time in history, it was possible for legislators and executives to be told by someone with firm authority that something they were doing was wrong and had to stop.
This is what the anti-federalists really could not abide, any more than their Confederate progeny or their modern-day Republican descendants. They do not want to be forced to do the right thing when they want to do the wrong thing. It’s as simple as that.
Now, for the first time since World War II, Republicans have captured the prize they so long sought: Absolute control of all three branches of government. They have had control of the presidency and both houses of Congress since WWII, but they never before also controlled the judiciary. Soon they will. In very short order, they will fill all the hundreds of judicial vacancies they have so strenuously held open in preparation for this day. Then they will replace the open seat on the Supreme Court with a Scalia clone, returning SCOTUS to a 5-4 “conservative” majority. And then, as soon as one of the liberal justices passes away or retires, they will replace that seat with a sixth “conservative.” At that point, they will own the Constitution. From then on, it will mean what they say it means, no matter how unjust their interpretation is. There will be no meaningful scrutiny of this nation’s laws. The anti-federalists are back, baby, and there’s nothing we can do about it.
Now, finally, we have come to the worst of it.
The new Supreme Court will continue to profess fealty to the Constitution, but they will interpret it according to the desires of those most opposed to everything it stands for—the anti-federalists. No branch of the government will be looking out for the rights of non-”conservatives” or minorities.
And here is what this means for the most vulnerable among us.
If you are a woman, a minority, or both in a red state, your civil rights will mean nothing. Red states will recriminalize abortion, and shut down Planned Parenthood (which will also be crippled by Federal legislation defunding it). There is nothing you can do about it. Even if your state court has the independence to condemn the state law, the “conservative” federal courts will reverse them, and if not, then the Supreme Court will reverse them because Republicans want it that way. Red states will pass “police powers” laws that virtually immunize police officers from prosecution for brutality. There is nothing you will be able do about it. If the Supreme Court even agrees to hear a case against such laws, the outcome is predetermined. “States’ rights” must be respected. Some red states will go after the LGBTQ community again through legislation. What will the new Supreme Court have to say about that? Guess.
If you are currently on any form of public assistance, your civil rights will mean nothing. Red states will quickly start passing laws that eliminate your assistance, if the Republicans in Congress don’t get around to doing it fast enough. Sure, try to take them to court. See how far you get. The Justice Department isn’t going to be taking up your case. They’ll be too busy prosecuting a black college student and her parents and the university she attends for “reverse discrimination.”
I could go on, but you get the idea. Every depraved idea ALEC ever dreamed of enacting into law will be tried somewhere, and it is extremely unlikely that any of them won’t be upheld by the “conservative” federal courts or the Supreme Court.
Are you still holding on by a thread to the hope that the SCOTUS justices have some intellectual integrity that will stop some of this? Sorry. When there are five “conservatives” on the Supreme Court—let alone six—the other justices will not have the votes to prevail. The sort of people that get appointed to the Supreme Court by Republicans when they know they don’t have to care about public opinion—those brought up through the intellectually twisted and sophistically named Federalist Society—are trained not to care about justice except in speech; in practice, they use their skills to create smokescreen arguments in support of the positions they favor. (Scalia never met a logical fallacy that he didn’t like if it could get him even a risible pretext for his preferred outcome.)
There may be certain individuals who put up resistance in all three branches, but they will be cut off at the knees. Do you think Attorney General Rudy Giuliani is going to prosecute a single police officer for killing an unarmed black man, no matter how much resistance come from his staff? Do you think Michael Flynn will ever go after pro-Christian religious bigotry at the Air Force academy, no matter how much resistance comes from his staff? And there won’t be any resistance anyway, because any token liberals who are allowed to stay in whatever Federal agencies that are left will only be window dressing. (And, by the way, the conservative faction within the FBI is now riding high, folks! We haven’t seen the end of Clinton “scandals,” investigations, and prosecutions, not by a long shot.)
Does all this sound like lunacy to you? Do you think it can’t happen here? (Read Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here if you really want to get spooked out about how easily it could happen here.) I can only tell you that I’ve been watching these people for nearly five decades, and they have habitually tried to do unbelievably unjust things when they don’t have a chance in hell of getting their wishes. I, and many others, are convinced that they will attempt anything when they have every means of getting what they want.
***
My friends, I don’t say all this just to frighten you—although it is true that we should all be very frightened. I say it to give you some idea of the reality that now faces us. Without an independent judiciary, justice is unattainable under the Constitution. We are entering a time like the post-Reconstruction era, a time in which justice will not be forthcoming. The Constitution, the greatest force for justice, yet invented, will be short-circuited for the foreseeable future. Is there anything we can do in the face of this enormity? We want to fight, but we have no weapons to fight with. Where do we turn now?
The worst thing we can do is turn against one another. The Republicans know full well that they can kill the newly crippled left if the Bernie socialists and the Warren progressives attack and split off from the mainstream liberals, who, whatever their faults, still have hearts concerned about justice and equity.
We have to come up with good ideas to keep our voices loud and strong in the public awareness, because that is the only effective tool we have left: consistently calling out Republicans for their horrible ideas and horrible morality, predicting the horrible consequences, and keeping score for those who don’t keep track for themselves. We need to coalesce into a ubiquitous presence that can capture the media’s attention and keep pounding on the mess that Republicans will be creating on a daily basis, predicting what will happen when they get their way, and making the connection for people between their suffering and the Republicans’ horrendous policies.
My wife’s idea is that Clinton, Obama, Warren, and Bernie should become the public faces of an opposition “shadow government” like they have in Great Britain. Maybe some of the never-Trumpers would come on board, like Michael Gerson, or even the smarmy Bill Kristol. On a daily basis, every reprehensible proposal Republicans put forth should be attacked for the deception it is, opposed with progressive proposals, and called out for the disastrous consequences it will produce. With someone keeping score like this, people might be more inclined over time to begin seeing the evil that has them in its grip.
And that’s right. I said “evil.” This is not some “difference of opinion” that can be worked out through compromise. Modern Republicanism is fueled by irrational fear, aggressive ignorance, and implacable hatred. Frank Luntz was on television during the dawn of the disaster on Tuesday night, when the talking heads were starting to look for something positive to say. The usual tropes about “looking forward” and “coming together” and “compromise” and “healing wounds” started to pop up. Luntz burst their balloons by telling them that he’s been doing focus group with the deplorables for over a year and there’s one thing above all that they want. It’s revenge. (That’s for bringing us this insight, Frank, after spending your career teaching Republicans how to appeal to these moral degenerates.)
Irrational fear, aggressive ignorance, implacable hatred, and a thirst for vengeance. Add to that pride (the sin of Lucifer, you Bible thumpers!) in their irrational fear, aggressive ignorance, implacable hatred, and thirst for vengeance. This is not a political stance with which to differ. It is active evil that every decent person must oppose.
It is our misfortune to have to oppose it from a position of near-absolute powerlessness for a very long time, unless some unforeseen event occurs to divest Republicans of the absolute power they now possess. They may, for instance, overplay their hand so spectacularly that even the “boobocracy” (as Mencken called our less-than-rational fellow citizens) can’t miss their evil, and they lose big in the 2018 midterms. A case-in-point from just today: it looks like Trump’s EPA transition team is being led by the chief climate change denier at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Myron Ebell, who calls climate change “nothing to worry about”! But perhaps this is not spectacularly stupid enough for the contemporary boobocracy to catch on.
Or they may fight themselves into oblivion when the Tea-Partyers and Trumpists demand utterly insane things that the leadership knows will cost the party politically. Many are pinning their hopes on this. My intuition tells me it’s not going to happen: Republicans usually find the lowest level when all restraints are lifted.
So where does that leave us? There is an old Latin proverb that applies: *Aequam memento rebus in arduis servare mentem, non secus in bonis.* Remember to keep your wits in hard times, not only in good ones.
We must fight. Let us do so with our wits about us in these hardest of times. Let us do so strategically, in solidarity, refraining from attacks on those who are actually on our side, and taking the fight to where it belongs: the evil that is Republicanism, and the false philosophy of “conservatism” that props it up.
I am an old liberal. I am tired. I am heartsick at the sudden, unexpected loss of the dreams that were on the cusp of becoming reality. I will probably not live to see a woman president. My granddaughter will probably grow up in a much more misogynistic world than it was on Monday. All my grandchildren will probably have much, much worse lives than would have been the case if Hillary had won. My minority friends will suffer in ways that I never have had to face, because I don’t look like “the other” to those who populate the “heartland.” For all this I am sad, and I feel guilty that I hardly have the energy left, and probably not the lifespan, to battle this existential threat to humanity into oblivion once and for all.
But I will rest a bit and then stand up again. Elizabeth Cady Stanton never quit. HIllary never quits.
Death take us fighting, but let us never quit!
