Debate has ended
Politics in America has changed. The debate has ended. The president, Republican Senators, and Representatives, realizing they have lost every argument based in fact and reason, have strapped on their guns, stopped talking, and are headed for the street. Lawlessness is the strategy. Gerrymandering, rule breaking, and lies are the tactics. Authoritarian rule is the prize. If they win this prize, we will lose America as a free, democratic state.
Our country was founded with the rule of law and civil discourse to settle arguments. In the legislature one side argues against the other but in the end both sides are part of the same structure, the same country, and the same world. It feel now as if the two sides are farther apart then they have been since 1858, the lead up to the civil war.
Perhaps this has happened because we are a diverse nation. Large segments of our population have pledged their primary allegiance to something other than making our country work well, to something other than our constitution. The fundamentalist christians put their god before their country and the bible before the constitution. A large segment of the population put money first. These are the greedy, the free-marketeers, the libertarian-philanthropists. Whatever increases their wealth, gets their vote. Racism is the prime mover of a larger segment of our population than I was aware of. Starting with the Obama presidency and the inclusion of non-caucasians into the decision making process began a new wave of white supremecy. Obama was a symbol of this hatred even though he was half white and raised in a white household. Objective reality has no answer to this kind of hatred. On the left side of the divide we find that science is the central idea for many people. Where the constitution differs from science, they want an amendment. The socialists among us value larger government involvement with ownership of resources, power, infrastructure, and education. Their motive is the greater good for the greater number.
To me, it seems, that those who value something more than the constitution could compartmentalize their lives a little, so that when it came to politics the constitution is the core document. In the rest of their lives, god, money, race, or science, and socialism could be the organizing principle. This would bring us all together again into a country and allow me to delete the first paragraph of this essay.
For the last ten years we have been drifting away from the constitution as the guiding principle of our country. The main reason, in my opinion, was the Obama presidency. He was and is the vanguard of the future, a future many the above mentioned groups do not want to see happen. His christianity was pro-choice and drove off the fundamentalists. His monetary policy was practical. Bailing out the 2008 recession got him labeled a socialist by the libertarians. His tax policies and bank regulations drove away the wealthy. Only the bankers who got their bonuses applauded and then turned on him because of increased regulation. The fact that he was half-African ignited racism even in those who hadn't recognized its smoldering embers. The demographic change if the country, which will put whites in the minority soon, was symbolized by his election. As for those who worship science, they stayed neutral. The far left supported his cause with the money and influence available to them. Most of us moderates voted moderately and hoped for bipartisan cooperation. But it didn't happen. The Republicans refused.
In 2010 the midterm elections handed control of the House and Senate to the Republicans. Here is a quote from Politico in 2010:
In 2016 Donald Trump was elected by the electoral college's gerrymandered districting in spite of losing the popular vote. His victory was assisted by Russia. The evidence for Russian influence is clear. What is not clear is whether the election was altered enough by their participation to have changed the outcome. A recent book Cyberwar: How Russian Hackers and Trolls Helped Elect a President What We Don't, Can't, and Do Know states that after examining all the evidence the odds that Russian cyber attacks swung this narrow election to Trump are extremely high. The book was written by Kathleen Hall Jamieson the director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. Other books disagree, but Jamieson is well known for her neutrality.
Soon, the Republicans will probably vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme court, another accomplishment based in changing the rules of filibuster. On April 17, 2017, in order to confirm Judge Gorsuch, the Republican unilaterally voted to end the ability to filibuster the cloture motion and close debate. This has been described as the ‘nuclear option’ because it gives a slight majority power beyond the ability to persuade through reasonable argument; the normal system used in the legislature for decades. Once again, the Republican party has failed to support their case using information, facts, and reasonable argument. Once again, they have strapped on their guns.
Nicholas Kristof's column in the October 4th issue of the NYTs describes the problem with confirming Kavanaugh. The ABA's code of judicial conduct states that judges should have “compassion, decisiveness, open-mindedness, courtesy, patience, freedom from bias and commitment to equal justice under the law.” During the confirmation hearing Kavanaugh was attacked by the Democrats for behavior in high school and college. In response, he angrily attributed this attack as being "revenge on behalf of the Clintons." His attitude had the distinct feeling that he was a political operative rather than a fair justice. His bias to the right and his non-judicial attitude are well known to the ABA. In 2006 his qualification was downgraded from well qualified to qualified at the time of his appointment to his current bench, but upgraded to well qualified before his Supreme Court nomination. According the Washington Post the ABA is considering downgrading his rating again because of his behavior during his confirmation hearing.
The appointment of Kavanaugh will be another unilateral decision made possible by gerrymandering and rule changes rather than debate; another loss for the American people. To this we can add such things as the Republican attempt to destroy Obamacare, their refusal to fund an Obama initiate to upgrade America's infrastructure, their refusal to tax the wealthy, their refusal to regulate banking, and their refusal to act humanely toward immigrants. All of these refusals were based on stated obstructionism of Obama, not on rational policy information.
And now we have Trump, the perfect no-nothing president for a no-nothing congress. Trump is all about lies, name calling, rants, insults, mockery and more lies. He was elected because the Republican majority refused to enact the economic changes that Obama proposed. These obstructed policies would have corrected some of the economic disparity in this country and lifted the burden of poverty from millions in the centers of urban decline and rural abandonment.
Will irrational obstructionists like McConnell and Ryan, and an ignorant, blowhard like Trump change America from a democracy to a fascist state, ruled by proclamation rather than consensus?
So, I've strapped on my bag loaded with pamphlets rather than my guns, and taken to the sidewalk, instead of the street, to go door-to-door, to fight the gunslinging attitude of the Republican party. Maybe I can talk a few people into voting for America rather than against it. Once we give up using reason to support our views, we have given up the thought-stream that arose in the Enlightenment and has, decade by decade, carried us human beings to a better place.
Our country was founded with the rule of law and civil discourse to settle arguments. In the legislature one side argues against the other but in the end both sides are part of the same structure, the same country, and the same world. It feel now as if the two sides are farther apart then they have been since 1858, the lead up to the civil war.
Perhaps this has happened because we are a diverse nation. Large segments of our population have pledged their primary allegiance to something other than making our country work well, to something other than our constitution. The fundamentalist christians put their god before their country and the bible before the constitution. A large segment of the population put money first. These are the greedy, the free-marketeers, the libertarian-philanthropists. Whatever increases their wealth, gets their vote. Racism is the prime mover of a larger segment of our population than I was aware of. Starting with the Obama presidency and the inclusion of non-caucasians into the decision making process began a new wave of white supremecy. Obama was a symbol of this hatred even though he was half white and raised in a white household. Objective reality has no answer to this kind of hatred. On the left side of the divide we find that science is the central idea for many people. Where the constitution differs from science, they want an amendment. The socialists among us value larger government involvement with ownership of resources, power, infrastructure, and education. Their motive is the greater good for the greater number.
To me, it seems, that those who value something more than the constitution could compartmentalize their lives a little, so that when it came to politics the constitution is the core document. In the rest of their lives, god, money, race, or science, and socialism could be the organizing principle. This would bring us all together again into a country and allow me to delete the first paragraph of this essay.
For the last ten years we have been drifting away from the constitution as the guiding principle of our country. The main reason, in my opinion, was the Obama presidency. He was and is the vanguard of the future, a future many the above mentioned groups do not want to see happen. His christianity was pro-choice and drove off the fundamentalists. His monetary policy was practical. Bailing out the 2008 recession got him labeled a socialist by the libertarians. His tax policies and bank regulations drove away the wealthy. Only the bankers who got their bonuses applauded and then turned on him because of increased regulation. The fact that he was half-African ignited racism even in those who hadn't recognized its smoldering embers. The demographic change if the country, which will put whites in the minority soon, was symbolized by his election. As for those who worship science, they stayed neutral. The far left supported his cause with the money and influence available to them. Most of us moderates voted moderately and hoped for bipartisan cooperation. But it didn't happen. The Republicans refused.
In 2010 the midterm elections handed control of the House and Senate to the Republicans. Here is a quote from Politico in 2010:
Here’s John Boehner, the likely speaker if Republicans take the House, offering his plans for Obama’s agenda: “We're going to do everything — and I mean everything we can do — to kill it, stop it, slow it down, whatever we can.”Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell summed up his plan to National Journal:
“The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”The stated goal of the Republican leaders was to not cooperate with President Obama but to make his presidency fail, at whatever price. As the years passed the Speakers Boehner and Ryan and Senate majority leader McConnell followed through with their plan. No longer would information inform decision-making because whatever Obama supported the Republicans opposed. Information, facts, data, all became irrelevant. The Republicans could used ideology to attack Obama's policies: fundamentalist christian values, untested macroeconomic conjectures, anti-socialist rants, and, behind much of it, an unstated racist tone because of Obama black parentage.
In 2016 Donald Trump was elected by the electoral college's gerrymandered districting in spite of losing the popular vote. His victory was assisted by Russia. The evidence for Russian influence is clear. What is not clear is whether the election was altered enough by their participation to have changed the outcome. A recent book Cyberwar: How Russian Hackers and Trolls Helped Elect a President What We Don't, Can't, and Do Know states that after examining all the evidence the odds that Russian cyber attacks swung this narrow election to Trump are extremely high. The book was written by Kathleen Hall Jamieson the director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. Other books disagree, but Jamieson is well known for her neutrality.
Soon, the Republicans will probably vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme court, another accomplishment based in changing the rules of filibuster. On April 17, 2017, in order to confirm Judge Gorsuch, the Republican unilaterally voted to end the ability to filibuster the cloture motion and close debate. This has been described as the ‘nuclear option’ because it gives a slight majority power beyond the ability to persuade through reasonable argument; the normal system used in the legislature for decades. Once again, the Republican party has failed to support their case using information, facts, and reasonable argument. Once again, they have strapped on their guns.
Nicholas Kristof's column in the October 4th issue of the NYTs describes the problem with confirming Kavanaugh. The ABA's code of judicial conduct states that judges should have “compassion, decisiveness, open-mindedness, courtesy, patience, freedom from bias and commitment to equal justice under the law.” During the confirmation hearing Kavanaugh was attacked by the Democrats for behavior in high school and college. In response, he angrily attributed this attack as being "revenge on behalf of the Clintons." His attitude had the distinct feeling that he was a political operative rather than a fair justice. His bias to the right and his non-judicial attitude are well known to the ABA. In 2006 his qualification was downgraded from well qualified to qualified at the time of his appointment to his current bench, but upgraded to well qualified before his Supreme Court nomination. According the Washington Post the ABA is considering downgrading his rating again because of his behavior during his confirmation hearing.
The appointment of Kavanaugh will be another unilateral decision made possible by gerrymandering and rule changes rather than debate; another loss for the American people. To this we can add such things as the Republican attempt to destroy Obamacare, their refusal to fund an Obama initiate to upgrade America's infrastructure, their refusal to tax the wealthy, their refusal to regulate banking, and their refusal to act humanely toward immigrants. All of these refusals were based on stated obstructionism of Obama, not on rational policy information.
And now we have Trump, the perfect no-nothing president for a no-nothing congress. Trump is all about lies, name calling, rants, insults, mockery and more lies. He was elected because the Republican majority refused to enact the economic changes that Obama proposed. These obstructed policies would have corrected some of the economic disparity in this country and lifted the burden of poverty from millions in the centers of urban decline and rural abandonment.
Will irrational obstructionists like McConnell and Ryan, and an ignorant, blowhard like Trump change America from a democracy to a fascist state, ruled by proclamation rather than consensus?
So, I've strapped on my bag loaded with pamphlets rather than my guns, and taken to the sidewalk, instead of the street, to go door-to-door, to fight the gunslinging attitude of the Republican party. Maybe I can talk a few people into voting for America rather than against it. Once we give up using reason to support our views, we have given up the thought-stream that arose in the Enlightenment and has, decade by decade, carried us human beings to a better place.
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