In a remarkably clear but spectacularly frightening op-ed piece in Slate, Lili Loofbourow make the case that Trump’s opportunity to stack the bench with a hard-right judge in his own image will doom the country for decades.
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Because countries are not people, it’s tricky to translate whatever “loving one’s country” means—it’s quite abstract—into the language of heartbreak. It sounds melodramatic. What can heartbreak mean as a civic matter? And yet it is what I feel.
A corrupt but weak president—this has been my comfort, his weakness—has been given a gift that will make him strong. After upholding the travel ban, weakening labor unions, and allowing crisis pregnancy centers to misrepresent themselves to women seeking help, Justice Anthony Kennedy announced he was retiring before the midterm elections. That decision empowers a reality-television star who lost the popular vote by millions to reform the Supreme Court for at least a generation—a court that rather than rebut his claim to power has affirmed it. In his own branch, he asked James Comey for a loyalty oath and lamented not getting one from Jeff Sessions, whom he has repeatedly condemned for recusing himself in the Russia investigation, saying he never would have hired him as attorney general had he known. There is every reason to think he will do the same for a Supreme Court nominee. When Neil Gorsuch—who took the seat Mitch McConnell withheld from Merrick Garland—seemed to distance himself from the man who offered him the robes, Donald Trump reportedly considered pulling the nomination. Trump has said he will pardon himself if he needs to, a controversial stance that would likely need approval from the high court. Now he has been given a way to assure it. He holds the power over the person who can rubber-stamp him into invulnerability.
The capitulation of two branches of government to a terrifying third, elected by a minority, is not how our government was envisioned. That is frightening. It is also, depending on the America you want to live in, painful.
This is powerful and frightening stuff, of course, and it certainly appears to be a scenario that is real risk to our Democracy—more than I would have expected even a few days ago. It is a scenario borne not just of Trump but of the craven cowardice and careerism in among Republicans in office, and especially in the senate. And, if the Senate acquiesces to whatever werewolf in judge’s robes Trump puts up, that may very well be where we end up.
But, that raises an extraordinarily important set of questions: Are there no Republican statesmen (and women) left at all? Are there no heroes? Are there no humanists among Republican members of the Senate, who care about the rights we may be about to lose? Is there no one on that side who sees this dystopian future and is willing to call it what it is, and then vote against it? The is little doubt that abortion is a focal point here, but as the Slate author notes, that isn’t the biggest risk, by a long shot. The biggest risk is that with a Trump henchman added to Scotus, we lose a long list of rights, and indeed, our democracy. So, the painful and dystopian vision in the Slate article has to be quickly weoponized: this picture must be painted, IN A HURRY and it needs to be made clear to the handful of potential targets in the Senate that there is a huge risk that this is where we are headed if Trump’s henchman is approved. And that this would be a disastrously new America of their making. And that history will remember, over the decades it takes to put our democracy back together—assuming that we can.
And, we must reach out to corporate America as well, to get them to ante up to stop this. Tom Steyer, THIS is where we need you. Impeachment hast to come later.
We rapidly need to warn America of these risks, and then warn Republican Senators against become the creators of these risks. As she further notes:
The country we thought we shared is changing faster than anyone expected. I wrote last week about the cognitive mismatch I felt at the relative normalcy outside my window as our government punished parents by taking their children away—in many cases, permanently. One week later, I cannot unsee how much even my window has changed and will change. The party ruling our country has demonstrated there is no principle it will respect, no norm it will endure. My rights as a woman are in danger. Civil rights are in danger. And the republic is in danger.
I am sad, above all, because the damage being done now no longer feels like it can be stemmed—let alone reversed—with a single election. This will last decades. The downturns my generation has already weathered—the 2008 crisis that hinged on obscure derivatives traded by a privileged few, robbing wealth from millions—were only the beginning.
And she concludes:
The country I believed in, which aspired to true equality of opportunity, and welcomed immigrants, and strove to make the American dream available to everyone, failed often. The ideal was never the reality, but at least there was an agreed-upon goal, one worth working toward in common. Even that is gone. The most vital trust that our government, as a whole, will protect the interests of the people has been violated.
But must it be violated, or are there a couple of Senators left in what was up to very recently a magisterial body who can be heroes rather than craven, careerist cowards? What about you, Jeff Flake? Or even you Chuck Grassley? Or Collins and Murkowski? Or even you, Senator Graham or Senator Burr? Are you really willing to give up on our democracy and our rights in yet another flash of craven careerist cowardice? Are you really?
Personally, I grieve not only for what our country is becoming, but for the fact that supposed statesmen and women may be willing to take us there. I really am shocked about that possibility, and until very recent, it never would have seemed possible, despite the dissolution of true conservatism built on a liberal democratic foundation within the Republican party.
I was recently criticized on Kos for calling this a potential non-shooting civil war. Do you think the author from Slate would disagree with me? That this may be where we are headed? I am afraid not.