Dear America,
There is something ignoble about castigating the dead; they cannot defend themselves, much less rectify their deleterious conduct. But since the late justice Ginsburg first reported having pancreatic cancer, I have felt that she should retire so that a president we could trust, then Barrack Obama, could appoint her successor. Apparently, president-emeritus Obama actually had the late justice to lunch in 2013 and subtly--apparently too subtly--broached the subject of retirement with Ginsburg, who was then four years into a battle with a form of cancer with an average 5 year survival rate of just 9%. She didn't respond to the overture, and my reproof of her is that she should have thought of the nation, and in fact of the very principles for which she stood before she let her personal preferences guide her.
There is no need to attempt to reprise the effects she had on American law and policy. There has been plenty of that in the media over the past week, but in addition there has been the revelation of her dieing wish that a president other than Donald Trump--that is implied by her statement that she wanted it to be "the next president"--would name her replacement. Unfortunately, that ship has all-but sailed. And the irony is that both Trump's arrogation of a prerogative that Mitch McConnell peremptorily denied Trump's predecessor with some casuistry about waiting a year until the next president was elected is probably impelled by the same thing that motivated Ginsburg to decline to retire: hubris. Ginsburg clung to power just like Trump is doing, and for the same reason. Thus, in some sense, Trump's nomination of the young female version of the late justice Antonin Scalia is a kind of cosmic justice...karma if you prefer. Obama could have been more forceful. Ginsburg could have actually been humble, not like Niel Gorsuch, who claimed to be humbled by his nomination to the Supreme Court when what the context of his remarks translated to the fact that he was actually proud of it. (Apparently he knows that pride is the first of the deadly sins but he was sly enough not to admit it, or maybe dumb enough not to know the difference.) But Ginsburg wasn't humble, and Obama doesn't have forcefulness in him, so here we are: a president afflicted with near fatal egotism and megalomania is choosing who will replace a justice who thought herself above contemplating the future that her conceit assuredly guaranteed. It's a synergy of egotism that has left the rest of us bereft of legal outcomes that would have protected us, and thus exposed to the risk of outcomes that will circumscribe our lives in undesirable, if not abhorrent ways.
I remember thinking exactly that when word of Ginsburg's pancreatic cancer was announced to the world. She had already overcome colon cancer in 1999, which reduced her prospects of surviving pancreatic cancer for five years from 37% to 12%. She was starting her tenure under a new administration in 2009 with a meager chance of surviving all the way through it, and I thought that it would be prudent for her, in the name of all she believed in, to retire. She had survived the disastrous presidency of George W. by the grace of God, risking more appointments like Bush's other two, Alito and Roberts, all the while. But now, with the election of Obama she could leave at an opportune time. Time passed and she stayed on. My mother-in-law fought pancreatic cancer bravely but she lasted only 6 years with the disease, and that was against the odds. However I tried to reassure myself that Ginsburg would do even better, and she did, but not long enough. She took an awful chance and we all lost. Now we get Trump's choice, and while she may be brilliant, she is what you would expect from Trump in terms of her juris prudence, personal philosophy and policy tendencies. She, Amy Coney Barrett, will round out a six justice conservative majority, the oldest member of which is only 72. We have at least 15 years of conservative slant in our highest court's opinions ahead of us, and probably considerably more. That's enough to put guns in the hands of every lunatic in the country without the regulation that the first four words of the second amendment require regardless of what the "originalists" insist violates that very amendment, send women back to dirty allies and back rooms for abortions, insert God into most everything we do and require us all to swear our allegiance to Him, flag and country. It's long enough to change our democratic republic into a virtual dictatorship, perhaps with Donald Trump still in power like some of the tyrants in more and more countries around the world: Xi, Un, Putin, Erdogan, Lukashenko, and so forth.
So, I blame McConnell for enabling Trump with the support of other hypocrites like Lyndsey Graham, and Trump for seizing the opportunity, but without Ruth Bader Ginsburg, their apostasy wouldn't have been possible. We and our nation are the victims of pride...not ours, but someone else's, and we can't say that we weren't warned. St. Augustine bemoaned pride centuries ago, and now we have a concrete demonstration that he was right.
Your friend
Mike
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