March 2024 Archives

Dear America,

I've admitted this before, but I think I have to reiterate today as recent Republican activity has precipitated todays letter: I don't trust Republicans, and conservative Republicans in particular.  I make this re-admission in light of, for example, the pronouncements of Mitch McConnell.

McConnell recently expressed his intention to leave The Senate when his term expires in 2026.  I hope he will keep true to his stated course on this issue especially in light of what he has done over the past eight years, starting with the last year of Barrack Obama's second term.  You will recall that in March 2016, after Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died, Obama nominated Merrick Garland to take his seat on the bench.  McConnell insisted, along with other party hacks like Ted Cruz, that no nomination should be considered in the last year of a presidency, and so he refused to put Merrick Garland before The Senate for a vote.  Garland's nomination ended with Obama's second term without ever having been considered.  That's why we have the conservatively biased court we have today; Trump got to nominate three justices, the first in the first year of his presidency.  But then Ruth Bader Ginsburg died in 2020, the last year of Trump's presidency, and the sheer casuistry, if not overtly perverse deceit of McConnell's argument became obvious.  But McConnell's apostasy on that issue, despite the profound effect it will have on our nation, is the least of it.

After January 6, 2021, a "date that will live in infamy" to use the old FDR characterize the villainy of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, McConnell conceded that the insurrection that day was infamous and he condemned then-president Trump for his precipitation of the riot by traitors who attempted to reverse our vote for Joe Biden through violence.  He also impugned Trump for his failure to put a stop to the attempted revolution.  But shortly after McConnell announced his intention to retire from The Senate he was asked if he would vote for Trump if he ran for reelection, to which he replied that he would do so if Trump were the Republican candidate.  When the member of the press asking the question then reminded McConnell of his condemnation of Trump's actions on January 6th, McConnell said that he had also said subsequently that he would support the party's candidate by way of evading the question of Trump getting his support if he ran again, and that he did.  But the fact that Trump's albeit-unsuccessful impeachment for the insurrection and his subsequently being charged criminally in that regard haven't deterred McConnell from endorsing Trump for reelection makes it plain that McConnell, despite his sanctimonious fulminations about God and country puts party loyalty ahead of what he would no doubt call patriotic duty were Trump a Democrat.  It is naked apostasy of a very primordial kind.  It demonstrates that McConnell is a liar in principle, not just about facts, but about the most singularly important issue for an American politician: preservation of the union.  McConnell is an unscrupulous scoundrel, and his party supports him fulsomely.  That casts doubt on the members of that party of exactly the same consequence.  If McConnell cannot be trusted to put American democracy ahead of party loyalty and the party condones his conduct, members of the party cannot be trusted either.

Of course, all this only explains why I would have to see a Republican candidate for anything to be a departure from the Republican ethos before I could vote for him or her.  It apparently doesn't change anything for Republicans as they continue to support McConnell, but also the abjectly morally bankrupt patron for whom McConnell has whored himself, Donald Trump.  I find all this daunting at best, and that is why I make sure that my passport is current.  Trump is sufficiently unscrupulous to admonish anyone who will listen about what he apparently takes pride in: his prediction of bloodshed when he loses the 2024 election, making him 0 for 3 in that department.

The fact that his Republican supporters cheer when he says such odious things is, as I said, daunting.  It makes conservatism dastardly in my opinion.  But as I have said before, I think the electoral math renders Trump nothing but a bad dream for this country.  I just hope this country wakes up soon>

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

This morning the Supreme Court of the United States decided in favor of Donald Trump and against the decision of the Supreme Court of the State of Colorado, ruling that Donald Trump cannot be denied the opportunity to appear on the primary ballot of the Republican Party in that state seeking the party nomination for President of the United States.  I have felt considerable apprehension over the case as it pended before the highest court in the land ever since Trump's lawyers appealed the state decision, and now that the SCOTUS decision has been issued--and I would add that it was unanimous, liberals and conservatives in agreement--my apprehension has been converted to fear.  It is not a predetermination of the case against Trump over the January 6th insurrection, but it certainly bodes ill in that regard in that section 3 of the 14th amendment to our constitution prohibits an insurrectionist from holding not just federal office, but state office as well, and thus, this decision raises a question: If Trump decided to run for governor of Colorado, could that state bar him from doing so, or from holding that office if he won?  It seems to me that the plain language of The Constitution clearly was intended to preclude either advent, but does this decision constitute a precedent precluding a state from exercising a power that seems clearly to have been provided by the constitution?  And if so, are there other powers provided by The Constitution that are also in jeopardy of rescission under some as-yet-unforeseen circumstance?

Until now, I never would have had any such concern.  While we have had conservative and liberal courts in the past, the political complexion of the court never seemed a threat to our liberties before.  But now, with a six to three imbalance in the conservative direction on The Court, and with a liberal minority so myopic as not to see the implicated moral hazard that today's Colorado decision precipitates, the potential for reversion to the days of monarchy, or the advent of authoritarianism seems that much greater...the doom of American democracy that much greater a threat...with the prospect of electoral victory of Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election looming in the air.  And what that portends is an electorate willing to silence American humanism and curtail the right of the people to practice it in favor of a peremptory ethos that prescribes the kind of evangelical fervor and sanctimony that might well lead to the re-emersion of witch trials and McCarthyism.  We are on a slippery slope thanks to not just the conservative wing of The Court, but the liberal wing on which many of us have counted for sanity on fundamental matters of law and rights as well.  I fear there's trouble, my fellow American friends, right here in America's capital city.

There is, however, a way in which we can inoculate our beloved country to prevent its backslide into totalitarianism.  We can vote.  Many advents make this so, though this one bodes danger more than any other I can think of other than January 6th itself.  If a constitutional provision as plain on its face as section 3 cannot be counted on to keep evil from our doorstep, we must all take refuge in the only fortification available: the ballot box.  Even the Supreme Court can't take that away from us as long as we occupy it...at least as long as we occupy it to good effect.  So now it is up to us to prevail upon fickle Democrats, reasonable Republicans and members of the uncommitted plurality to exercise a veto on the decay in the institutions that are charged with protecting our liberties.  We cannot lower ourselves to a Trumpian form of insurrection, but we must take whatever measures are allowed by law.  That means engaging in the political process at the ground level, at least in states and venues in which Trumpism prevails, and every American knows whether that misfortune persists where he or she is registered.  I cannot say what options are available toward that end, and surely they vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but they all harbor under the rubric "activism."  We must all be open to activism now.  Our lives, both figuratively and literally, given what the Trump mania has produced in human depravity and gangster mentality, are in jeopardy and only we can fend off the miscreant and his minions.  Only we!  That's us, America.



Your friend,

Mike