Democracy doesn't die in darkness: the lights are on

Huh, the Supreme Court building...looking morally vacant.

i hope no one was surprised by the SCOTUS ruling on limited immunity regarding the 45th president's criminal cases. I'm unpleasantly shocked that it finally happened, but now that's passed, all I can think of right now is ruminating on how it's all come to this.

Essentially, thr ruling paves the way for any number of possible futures of govnance in this country. i don't feel like reading tea leaves, but in the short term, it has rendered holding power at the highest level accountable nearly impossible. 

The ruling is vague enough to tie up cases in what is to be considered "official business" at any given point in a president's tenure, but no matter how you may want to spin it, its meaning is clear; the president cannot be tried for criminal acts while in office. The president is now quite literally "above the law" and this, to anyone paying attention - and I'll definitely be revisiting that - overturns a fundamental tenet of the United States constitutionally and foundationally, that no one is above the law.

Through the past couple of years, we've seen civil liberties attacked, women's right to reproductive healthcare almost eradicated in nearly half of the states, and ramped up assaults on LGBTQ+ people, particularly trans people. Over the past eight years, we have seen a weaponized so-called conservative party stack courts across the country and at the highest level with demagogues and frankly, reactionary agendas designed to ensure that any sense of unity in the "United" part of the nation's nomenclature is oxymoronic.

In the past 16 years, we saw stonewalling of legislation in the Senate and later the House that could have gone much farther in ensuring a more equitable state of affairs. The current House of Representatives is on track to be the greatest do-nothing Congress in history, even more so than the "Do-Nothings" of the 80th Congress, but the road was paved by them by the militancy and stonewalling of one party that knows how to play the long game and the ineffectual, pearl-clutching wafflers of the other. 

We could push farther back. The rise of Newt Gingrich during the Clinton years and his ilk's grandstanding was more effectual than people realize. It paved the way for other performance artists like Ted Cruz to somehow hold onto power by presenting as a populist while boasting one of the least meaningful resumes in the Senate's history. 

More importantly, though, is the foundation laid by Ronald Reagan with its nearly anarchic levels of deregulation of industry, ginning up of anti-abortion rhetoric as a campaign point (which folds nicely into what we now call identity politics; see also "crack mothers" and the administration's reluctance to act on the rising AIDS epidemic), and of course, that little Iran-Contra kerfluffle. When the major selling point of your platform is that "government's not the solution, it's the problem", you are, of course, tapping into popular discontent. And here's where the G.O.P.'s propagandistic genius shines.

Playing on the sentiments and very often, ignorance, of the people you wish to rule (emphatically not represent, unless you mean the wealthy and elite), is a tried and true formula for obtaining and maintaining power. I don't care if there have been and maybe are some Republicans who actually do feel the call to service; the party overall has done what it started out to do, at least as far back as the late 1940s, and then some.

If the years following World War II were characterized by unimaginable prosperity and a more robust middle class than the U.S. had ever seen, there were already malcontents who saw that a more equitable and prosperous society would mean less for them. This isn't merely greed or power for power's sake; many of these men - from William F. Buckley, Jr. to Milton Friedman, and Irving Kristol - had strong ideologies that political status/might was indicative of a superior man, that the rabble didn't know what was best for the country, and of course, that a social safety net equalled a welfare state and a more equitable economy would lead to communism.

If you were alive during the sixties, you would have been agog at the power of the John Birch Society and how pervasive even the waning influence of the Ku Klux Klan still held. Or maybe you wouldn't. It's not a stretch to say that the Birchers just metamorphosed into MAGA supporters and the KKK still wields s kind of soft power throughout the Deep South in the form of passing policies that continue to make voting increasingly difficult for Black people to vote.

But it takes two to tango and I would be remiss if I didn't ask what the Democrats were doing all this time. To be sure, on Democratic presidential watches, we went to the moon, passed the Civil Rights Act, and have enjoyed growing and often expanding economies (it's inconvenient that Clinton left office with a budget surplus that both of Bush's terms squandered in record time and that while the 2008 economic crisis hit hard, the economy still grew under the Obama administration). Under the Biden administration, the economy has grown to pre-2018 levels, even if polls show that most people feel like inflation is out of control and there is economic insecurity. I'll come to this later.

So, gee, the Democrats sound swell. Sure, if you're willing to ignore how easily they rest on their laurels, how little they've held abuses of power to account, and how dumb they are when it comes to playing hardball. But more to the point is that if the Dems have historically taken what they thought was the high road and not gotten down in the muck, they have been utter shit at presenting a unified front and this, again, is where the Republicans have it down.

Allegedly, the centrist Republicans are not fans of Trump and allegedly, don't want him in the presidency. Yet, they have de facto thrown in behind him in the name of party unity. I don't know, though; if I saw the advantages thrown my way by stacked courts and the latest ruling, I'd be tempted to say "huh, maybe this can work."

Of course, this can also backfire. Beginning now, if Biden comes under fire by the GOP, he can claim immunity for action deemed "official"; this, of course, would be a non-starter for SCOTUS and Congress, but it would be in a horrific way, funny. 

But then again, I wouldn't count on great wit here. The Dems, under Johnson were one of the more corrupt pork-laden groups and didn't exactly do a whole lot to staunch our escapades in Vietnam. Dixiecrats' records on racism is pretty in your face and by the seventies, the Carter administration's respone to the oil crisis and a tanking economy was lame, at best. Throughout the 80s, I'll give props to Tip O'Neill's leadership in Congress and there's much to be said for Kennedy's galvanizing of the party in the Senate, but to what end? Ultimately, Reagan won because he and the party were successful at winning the hearts and minds of corporate leaders and fearful white people. 

It was in the 80s that New York was still presented as a city on fire, despite increasing gentrification and the Disneyfication of Times Square. But it fed into the idea that big cities were catastrophes owing to rampant crack addiction, death metal, and rap. Instead of calling this bullshit out, the Democrats concentrated on doing what they do best; mealy-mouthing about policy and legislation they were trying to pass. Hardly sexy stuff for the average American. We'll get to the Average American in a bit, but let's also note that even after Bush took the presidency in 2000, the Republicans were in control until 2007. It's arguable that last great period for the Dems ended in 2011.

Before I get too swept in governing party's and their respective foibles and failures, let's note that the Average American has very little to no clue about the legislation that does or doesn't get passed by his elected officials. I don't know how much anyone should be or can be invested in policies and legislative acts at the voter level. It's a lot. 

Nevertheless, it should be the responsibility of every registered voter to have some idea of what their representatives are doing for them or to them. And frankly? I don't think the Average American knows nor cares. Engagement at the polls has never been particularly robust at the local or state levels. When it is, you can be sure that people vote more out of fear than understanding or simply because they just like this person but/and really don't like that person. The anomaly here is Senator Ted Cruz. How? Why? I don't know.

Back to the voter, though. I'll be revamping a piece I'm working on about voter engagement and understanding of issues later, but right now, I'm speaking broadly and coloring outside the lines because something that doesn't get remarked on enough is that the Declaration of Independence has been let down by the people. Repeatedly. 

The degree of apathy that I've seen take root among the polity over my lifetime is both understandable and discouraging. Hell, as a kid, I was pretty apathetic myself, but I figured that at the very least, if the system was corrupt or broken, it was the least of my responsibilities to try to understand what these people in the halls of power that we elected (whatever minority that won over whatever other minority of turn-outs) were doing. 

Did I agree with Sartre that "elections are a trap for fools"? Actually, in my younger days, yes. To some degree, I still feel that voters are being played for fools, but that might be by design. 

Power doesn't want educated people; powerful people fear those who know more than they and they will do their best to silo people from getting together and figuring out the game. They can do this by sowing seeds of fear, distrust, and misinformation. At more advanced stages, they can do this by manipulation education. I live in a state where this is likely to be more pronounced than in others. But eventually, what power wants is antithetical to democracy. 

If the demos is stupid, then they can be ruled. The veneer of "free elections" may hold, but power knows that those who vote will do so for emotional reasons primarily and if power has done its job well, those emotions will be fear and resentment. Weaponized, electorally, the targets will be anyone informed candidate who calls power out for its bullshit and excess.

What power knows, though, and what the informed and principled don't or don't want to recognize, is that people don't care. If the number of registered voters actually came out and voted, the political landscape might look very different. Or maybe not; if all registered voters voted, would thay vote for lying oligarchs and wannabe dictators or would they vote for representation that would be principled and serve the needs of the community? Who knows? We rarely see it.

I'm concerned that pointing out voter apathy and ignorance sounds like victim-blaming and I think it might very well be. However, the decisions a voter makes also depends on the quality of information they have. Notice, I'm not saying "at their disposal" because theoretically, we have all the information we need available. How we determine and parse it depends on our experience, education, and all too often, intuition or sentiment. I distrust both of those when it comes to politics, but I know most people vote from their gut.

Are people stupid? Is the Average American an idiot? Honestly, I don't think so. But now more than ever, it's easy to see how easily hoodwinked people are and how, no, in fact, they don't have the critical acumen to do the kind of research to determine if they're following a baloney-blower or not. 

We know that in the 2016 election and in 2020, there were bad actors sowing disinformation to skew the results of the presidential election, but how deep that was or how effective is still debatable. What isn't debatable is how people make decisions based on their news sources. Chances are, if you rely on, say, the New York Times and/or The Washington Post, you are likely to be better informed and it is also likely that you are in a more privileged demographic. If your news source is social media, you are likley to be younger, and in a less privileged demographic. There are other clusters of data here to consider, though.

A 2020 Pew Research survey found people who got most of their news from social media to be "less knowledgeable and less engaged" and this brings up another aspect of media in general; is there a systemic failure of the media to prioritize critical news to readers and viewers? 

This last question opens up a can of worms. What is "critical" and who decides what that is? "Critical" to whom? And most chillingly, it does point to a larger question of who controls the narrative.

I'll take a stab. To me, "critical" would be news of any immediate crisis - environmental, social, health, etc. As we've seen, not everyone felt the same way about COVID in this country; many refused to take precautions to protect others and so on. Or with increasingly chaotic weather patterns, some politicians have doubled-down on climate change denial. This is of concern to me, though it may well not be to someone else. I want representatives who will pass legislation to, at the very least, educate the public on the reality of climate change, but more importantly, pass legislation that would force corporations to face strict penalties for pollution and exacerbating negative environmental impacts.

I would like a news media that would not be beholden to news cycles so that if my community is at risk of being carcinomic petri dish because of tainted ground water, this doesn't get buried on the back page of a regional newspaper (hard-copy or online). I would like a news media that focuses less on candidate's performance at a debate and that would call out those candidates for lies in that debate. Hell, I'd like a new media that would actually call a lie a lie and not a "falsehood" or "erroneous statement".

Perhaps, most of all, I'd like a news media that would actually freak the fuck out over the stacked courts and the fact that the Supreme Court of the United States is systematically overturning rights of the citizens and initiating a constitutional crisis that will affect generations to come. Hyperbole? Only if you don't know the constitution or have paid attention to history over the past, oh, let's keep it simple, half a century. 

And that is precisely the issue; even if we know the history, even if we have lived through it, each person may have a different take on the consequences of various historical events. However, even that isn't insurance against cynicism and apathy. My question is if we've devolved to a polity in which, finally, cynicism and apathy are de rigueur. Do so many people feel so disenfranchised that the idea of working for change or against the prevailing tides of ignorance and misinformation is overwhelming? I understand if it feels that way.

Altogether, I'd argue that we've been watching everything play out in slow motion over decades. There are now people who have stated that they think democracy is a failure and we should change the model to something else, mostly a Unitary Executive branch that would centralize all power at the presidential level. That would be the final nail in the United States' democratic experiment's coffin. And it would be a shame. 

We'll lose everything that we as a nation have genuinely worked on, together. Don't think that under a central "leader" or "president" dissent and therefore, competition (so hightly regarded by capitalists) will be rewarded. Don't think that education that questions power or seeks to ask deeper questions will be supported or that history will even be a meaningful word. I also worry more what happens to populations at risk, to the homeless, to the incarcerated, to non-conforming gendered people. And let's not forget the environment. The one thing we all share is at the mercy of people who can make it worse or maybe - if they were possessed of any vision whatsoever - better.

I would have said, "but it's up to us to elect representatives who will actually put the pedal to the metal and work for meaningful change and environmental protection, who will be there for those most at risk, and so on and so forth." Now? The ship seems to pulling out of the harbor.

So what to do?

First, people need to recognize that rulings like SCOTUS's recent "partial immunity" are wrong and they need to be able to identify why they're wrong. Hint: no one is above the law (oddly, Alito, Kavanaugh, and Roberts all said as much in the past) but now a precedent has been such that a sitting president could, in theory, do just about anything including, oh, I don't know, assassinate a Supreme Court Justice he didn't like? The point is that it isn't hyperbole to say that owing to decades of defanging the fifth estate, assaults on public education, and capitalizing on the sense of powerlessness among voters has brought us to a pretty dire point. Simply recognizing this would be a big first step.

Then what? Honestly, I'm at a loss. Unlike other posts, justices on the Supreme Court are appointees. You can't just "vote the bums out." They can be impeached, but someone needs to convince the Senate to bring charges against a justice to do so and sadly, that's not going to happen anytime soon, though to my mind, with this Court, it should happen now.

But local and district judges are elected and it's at this level that changes need to happen. Again, it falls to local politics and communities to change the face of the country. The electorate needs to know their judges, as well as their reps; in some cases, even more so. It might be argued that even if the lower courts were stacked with paragons of human virtue and impeccable legal credentials, it wouldn't matter if the Supreme Court is held in check by a majority with a distinct political agenda as we have now. I'm not so sure. The idea of expanding the court has been floated before but that's only part of the battle. There really does need to be a third party, non-partisan watchdog. This latter needs to be serious and consequences for violating ethics or attempting to undermine the foundations of this country's democracy should require immediate dismissal from the court. 

Well, all of this is in Johnny's Ideal World aka his head. However, it does mean that there are ways to fight this that would require education, understanding, and commitment over a period of decades and generations.

I don't really think a truly participatory democracy has ever existed in this country.  Maybe it's too late, but maybe it's also never too late?