I’ll start with a film about Nazi Germany—Sophie Scholl: The Final Days. Sophie Scholl was a young German woman involved in resistance to the Nazis, in particular a group called the White Rose. She, along with her brother and many others, were captured and executed by the Nazis. This clip depicts their show trial (sorry, no subtitles):
This scene, near the end of the film, shows the court blaming the Resistance for Nazi military defeats, for breaking down German unity, demoralizing the troops, etc. I was struck, when I first saw the film (with subtitles), by the similarities between the court’s rhetoric here and George W. Bush’s rhetoric in the so-called war on terror, casting dissent as treasonous.
Bad as Bush was, Donald Trump is/will be immeasurably worse. We’ve already seen his skill at using outrageous blunders to his advantage. Look at the Navy SEAL killed in Trump’s botched raid. He skillfully exploited the widow’s grief during his address to Congress, making criticism look unseemly and unpatriotic—and suddenly, the calls for an investigation went away, he looked “presidential,” as Van Jones clumsily admitted, and he got a boost in the polls that was mitigated somewhat by the Sessions revelations the next day. Masha Gessen had the best reaction, tweeting: “Tonight we saw how it lasts. He’ll be president of war. Bernie Sanders applauds, Van Jones fawns. In a year criticism will be unpatriotic.” She’s right.
Which brings us to Neil Gorsuch. When he was a student, he founded a student group called “Fascism Forever.” Seriously, that’s a thing that happened. www.dailymail.co.uk/…
Gorsuch founded the ‘Fascism Forever Club’ during his freshman year at Georgetown Preparatory, a now-$30,000-a-year private Jesuit school that is one of the most selective in the United States.
He served as president until he graduated in 1985, according to his senior yearbook.
And in college, he had not changed: fusion.net/…
He heatedly defended the Reagan administration through its worst controversy, criticized apartheid protesters, scorned black movements, and even founded a publication known for attacking campus activists…
In January 1987 Gorsuch, then a sophomore at Columbia, wrote a staunch defense of the Reagan administration over the Iran-Contra scandal—when the White House was caught making secret weapons sales to Iran (which was outlawed at the time) to trade for hostages (also outlawed) and raise money for Nicaragua’s right-wing contras (you guessed it, also outlawed)—in the Columbia Spectator.
Dismissing the “illegality claim” as a “superficial issue,” Gorsuch wrote that Reagan possessed the executive authority to make the trade—a classic conservative argument:
Many have speculated that the President doesn’t legally have the power to transfer funds from the sale of arms to Iran to the Contras, yet few recall —or more correctly, choose to recall—the powers of commander-in-chief. Jefferson, with his word alone, bought the whole of Louisiana and sent Louis and Clark off to explore it. More recently, FDR freely sent dozens of U.S. Navy vessels and arms to England before our entry into World War II. These presidents did not ask, nor did they need to ask, Congress, Sam Donaldson, or those precious presidential pollsters. Simply because members of Congress, news commentators, and folks at Columbia may not like Reagan’s action does not, believe it or not, make it illegal.
And:
The capstone to Gorsuch’s college days? A Henry Kissinger quote next to his senior yearbook photo: “The illegal we do immediately, the unconstitutional takes a little longer.”
That’s a Trump rubber-stamp if I ever saw one. Someone with a history of being enraged by the existence of anyone who is not a white straight Christian. Someone who has declared he believes the president has the power to break the law if he so chooses. Someone who also once declared, “There is no good and evil; there is only power and those too weak to seek it.”
Okay, just kidding. Neil Gorsuch didn’t say that (although he and Trump probably would agree with it). Lord Voldemort said it.
Despite it all, Kushner describes Gorsuch as “affable” and “very intelligent,” with a knack for appearing moderate.
“He’s a pleasant face masking extreme political views,” Kushner tells me. “He was always taking as far right of a position as he could, but he would make an effort to sound reasonable.”
“I’m sure he’ll sound like that in the Senate hearings, but they’ll need to really delve into his positions. His political orientation is very dangerous.”
Kushner is not Jared Kushner, to be clear. This Kushner is much, much different. Read the whole article.
Deja vu all over again
We have seen this movie before. When Bush picked Samuel Alito, it came out that Alito had become involved in politics due to his personal bigotry. Alito himself declared he got involved due to “disagreement with many of the Warren Court’s decisions”—you know, expanding civil rights, one person one vote, protecting media against libel suits, protecting personal privacy, expanding individual freedom beyond what any court before or since has done. Alito’s first political endeavor was to join Concerned Alumni of Princeton, a group that opposed Princeton’s decision to start admitting women. (Two women who later graduated from Princeton? Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.)
And when it came out, the political establishment and Democratic weenies assured everyone that Alito’s views as a young man weren’t reflective of how he is now, that he’s matured, that judges sometimes surprise us, all the standard bullshit. Seldom do people’s politics change much from their teenage/young adult years to their death. Case in point: My grandma cast her first vote for FDR. Now over 90, she has been voting Democratic ever since.
And what has Alito done since the Democrats decided to cave and appease Bush and the Christian right? Written multiple decisions that have been disasters for working women. There’s a direct line from Alito’s involvement with Concerned Alumni of Princeton to his opinions in Hobby Lobby, Ledbetter v Goodyear, Vance v Ball State, Harris v Quinn. And to what would have been his opinion in Friedrichs v CTA, killing off public sector unions, had Scalia lived. You know that public sector unions have a great deal of female membership? A majority of teachers are women—don’t forget that when authoritarian males go after such unions. As usual, the Democratic excuses were just that—they had no basis in reality whatsoever.
Excuses and more excuses
And yet, we see Democrats starting to make similar excuses on Neil Gorsuch. They say we need to be kumbaya and bipartisan (sure, if you have your head up your butt), or that Gorsuch will moderate once on the court (wrong again—how moderate are Thomas, Roberts, Alito? How moderate was Scalia? How moderate was Rehnquist?), or that Gorsuch is the best we’ll do with Trump (which sets the bar really low. Also, stop normalizing Trump.). Senator Michael Bennet, eager to play the role of Neville Chamberlain, will introduce Gorsuch at his confirmation hearing. The always-valuable Ian Millhiser blasts him here: thinkprogress.org/…
The classic prisoner’s dilemma works something like this: two men are arrested, held in separate cells, and are told to confess to a crime. If they both refuse, they will get off with a fairly minor sentence (maybe half a year in jail). If both men confess they each receive a harsher sentence (two years). But if one man confesses and the other remains quiet, the confessor gets off scot-free while the other man receives a draconian sentence (10 years).
The best possible outcome — the one that leads both men spending the least total amount of time in jail — is for both men to cooperate with each other and serve their brief six months in jail. But the only way for each man to avoid the worst possible outcome for himself is to not cooperate with the other man — that is, to confess.
Judicial confirmations work the same way. In the best of all worlds, Democrats would confirm well-qualified, ideologically reasonable Republican nominees, and Republicans would do to the same for Democrats. But we do not live in that world. Just ask Merrick Garland.
Democrats, in other words, are in the same position as the prisoner who knows that his partner-in-crime will rat him out. If they do not resist Republican nominees — and certainly if they do not resist ideologically extreme nominees like Gorsuch — they will be like the prisoner who sits in jail for a decade while his faithless partner enjoys sweet freedom.
Republicans will continue to treat future nominees just like they treated Garland, and they will know they can get away with it because Democrats will do nothing to them in return.
Millhiser nails it. And given Trump’s authoritarian tendencies and his rubber-stamp SCOTUS with Gorsuch, jail won’t just be a metaphor.
Donald Trump is not a normal president, the Republican Party is not a normal party, and Neil Gorsuch is, in the words of terrific NYT columnist Charles Blow, the “fruit of a poison tree.” They are bullies attempting to make the Constitution into a fascist document, and the only way to beat a bully is to stand up to him. Be Winston Churchill, not Neville Chamberlain. As described here, there’s a lot more to gain from standing up than by caving as usual: pulse.ncpolicywatch.org/…
You’ve heard some of the excuses. There’s “Let’s save our energy for the next fight” and “Kennedy will calm him down” and “Justices tend to get more moderate as they age.” And then there’s the tried and true “We have to be better than the Republicans and not sink to their level.”
Well, here’s how all of those sentiments really and practically translate: “We don’t care enough about our country and its future to fight for what’s right.”
- See more at: http://pulse.ncpolicywatch.org/2017/02/03/progressives-must-play-hardball-not-cave-gorsuch-nomination/#sthash.jTO5E6h5.dpuf
He concludes by quoting Eugene Robinson in the Washington Post:
With just 48 votes, all Senate Democrats can do is filibuster, denying McConnell the 60 votes he needs for a final vote on the nomination. In response, McConnell could employ the “nuclear option” — changing the Senate rules to eliminate the filibuster for Supreme Court confirmations. In the end, Gorsuch would be approved anyway.
But I believe Democrats should wage, and lose, this fight. The 60-vote standard looks more and more like an anachronistic holdover from the time when senators prided themselves on putting the nation ahead of ideology. These days, so many votes hew strictly to party lines that it is difficult to get anything done. The Senate is supposed to be deliberative, not paralyzed.
And I can’t help thinking back to 2009. Republicans made an all-out effort to stop the Affordable Care Act. Their motives were purely political; some GOP senators railed against policies they had favored in the past. Ultimately, they failed. Obamacare became law.
But this losing battle gave tremendous energy and passion to the tea party movement — which propelled Republicans to a sweeping victory in the 2010 midterm election. It is hard not to see an analogous situation on the Democratic side right now.
Democrats cannot stop Gorsuch from being confirmed. But they can hearten and animate the party’s base by fighting this nomination tooth and nail, even if it means giving up some of the backslapping comity of the Senate cloakroom. They can inspire grass-roots activists to fight just as hard to win back state legislatures and governorships. They can help make 2018 a Democratic year.
- See more at: http://pulse.ncpolicywatch.org/2017/02/03/progressives-must-play-hardball-not-cave-gorsuch-nomination/#sthash.jTO5E6h5.dpuf
One final note regarding the Democrats’ pathological obsession with bipartisanship: I happen to suffer from obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) myself. I know a lot of things that I do, I should not do. But I do them anyway. That’s how the illness works. Once I start, stopping myself is really, really hard, and the more I do it, the harder it is to stop. If something interrupts me, though—my parents call me, my friend shows up, I have to go to work—I can often stop. I sense a similar dynamic at work here. Democrats seem to have a neurotic compulsion to be bipartisan and get Republican approval for everything they do, and only when a greater force pulls them the opposite way will they actually do what is right.
So call and call and call some more. Go to town halls, tweet at them, send emails, whatever. 202-224-3121. Traitor Michael Bennet’s direct line is 202-224-5852. Also, any Democrat who backs Gorsuch should get a primary challenge. This is the only Trump policy move not reversible by a new president or new Congress. If you vote for Gorsuch, you are voting to make the Constitution into a fascist document. No matter what state you hail from, that’s unforgivable.