On June 30,2022, James Fallows posted an article ruminating on whether we here in the United States live in country that is great or just lucky. He begins by pointing out that the rules by which we govern ourselves are quite old and although seemingly fundamentally sound and the country as a whole has done relatively well. He adds, however that nevertheless“it has been profoundly shaped by incidents of luck, good and bad.” He then goes on:
“—The good has mainly involved certain leaders, in certain times. What if George Washington had dreamed of clinging to power after his first two terms, rather than stepping aside? What if Abraham Lincoln had not been available in 1861? Or Franklin Roosevelt in 1933 and 1941? Or Martin Luther King in the early Civil Rights era? Or someone more impulsive and insecure than John F. Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis?
—The bad has mainly involved moments of abysmal history-changing misfortune. What if Aaron Burr’s bullet had been a few inches off, rather than hitting Alexander Hamilton in the torso? Or John Wilkes Booth’s bullet? Or Lee Harvey Oswald’s? Or James Earl Ray’s? Or Sirhan Sirhan’s? What if the Palm Beach County registrar had not produced “butterfly ballots” in 2000? What if George W. Bush had paid more attention to the al Qaeda warning memos a few months later? What if James Comey had kept his peace one week before the election in 2016? What if the major media had realized that “But her emails!” was a stupid and destructive theme to keep harping on?”
What about the current political situation in the US? Did we somehow plan to get here? Shouldn’t the 200 year old institutions have protected us from today’s turmoil and threats to the very foundations of our democracy? Fallows points out that, “A string of intentional actions and luck have brought us to the current thin-ice moment of national governance.”
“—The intention includes Mitch McConnell’s sequence of stonewalling one Supreme Court nomination, and ramming another through on a rocket-docket basis. Plus gerrymandering, and weaponization of the filibuster, and much more.
—The bad luck includes Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s reckless bet that at age 80 she could outlast Barack Obama’s second term in office and beyond, rather than putting her successor’s appointment in Obama’s hands. What if, what if: If Obama had appointed a successor to Ginsburg just after his re-election in 2013, and if any Republicans had dared counter Mitch McConnell’s stonewall of the Garland nomination in 2016, none of what the Court has done in this past month could have happened. Roe, gun control, the EPA, gerrymandering, church and state, the Indian Laws, the foreshadowing of more, and more radical to come—none of it. What if.”
(Ibid)
Fallows then points out that all the branches of our “antiquated” governing system are under severe stress. He cites the previous President plotting to overthrow the election results by force, “was thwarted only by “luck”—that some of his associates, young and old, decided not to go along.” The legislative and judicial branches he points out are also under stress and he describes the nature and source of those threats. The Judiciary, he writes, “has gone rogue, in a way no living American had previously seen. (As I wrote online after the Indian Law ruling, the Court’s motto has been changed to l’etat, c’est nous. Which I will intentionally mis-translate as, “We are the law.”)” As for the legislative branch he decries the utter failure of the Republicans to join with the Democrats in resisting this wholesale assault on our governing institutions and the rule of law.
He then returns to the role of “luck” and not the strength of our governing institutions in resisting the overthrow of our democracy.
“Can luck run out?
Here are the people who, according to recent testimony, the U.S. is “lucky” to have had at the right place, at the right time:
—Jeffrey Rosen, and his colleagues Richard Donoghue and Steven Engel at the Department of Justice, who defied Trump’s orders to announce that the election was stolen, in contrast to the complaisant Jeffrey Clark.
—Brad Raffensperger and Gabriel Sterling, Republicans in charge of Georgia elections; Shaye Moss and Ruby Freeman, also of Georgia; Rusty Bowers of Arizona; and others who refused to knuckle under to Trump election claims. And their counterparts in other states.
—Cassidy Hutchinson, who gave her extraordinarily poised and straight-arrow testimony this week, centering on the crucial, uncontroverted evidence that Donald Trump knew the mob was armed, and still urged them toward the Capitol.
But: What if Jeffrey Clark had already been in place, rather that Jeffrey Rosen?
What if election deniers had moved Raffensperger and Sterling out of place, and Moss had been terrorized out of doing her work?
What if Hutchinson had been enticed, threatened, or in other ways persuaded not to give her testimony. under oath?
What if the numerous bills giving controls of election results to partisan state legislatures had already taken effect?
We are on thin ice.
(Ibid)
Whether it is akin to some sort of Brownian motion or a murmuration, politics, like life itself, seems to be significantly unpredictable. That we can learn from our mistakes has no bearing on the future except to perhaps to remove that particular mistake from the infinite set of disasters that can occur. We are on thin ice, the best we can hope for is to not fall through into the freezing water with our next step. And yes, luck can run out but we have no option but to carry on in our march to that far shore.
See also:
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