Saturday, September 19, 2020

RIP-Roaring RBG Coverage

I'll leave the "live updates" on Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death to the New York Times. Ditto for the overwrought canonization of a judicial bureaucrat marketed for the past decade or so as a "living icon" and a "rock star." Because if anybody was a beneficiary of liberal identity politics and the mass marketing of image, it was certainly "The Notorious RBG."
 
Therefore, in this Age of Marketed Wokeness, any mention of Ginsburg's Supreme Court decisions siding with the police over ordinary citizens likely will be buried right along with her. Admittedly, some bold obituary writers are ever so delicately tip-toeng around her whimsical friendship with the late rabid reactionary Justice Antonin Scalia. This is being breezily dismissed as comity among colleagues in an exclusive venue. It's similar to Bernie Sanders calling Joe Biden "a good friend of mine" despite their policy differences. You see, our rulers co-exist in an exalted realm. We mere mortals, on the other hand, are viciously and unreasonably divided against one another. Or so we are told by the ruling class's media propagandists, who rely upon fomenting divisions among the citizenry so that they may go about their exalted business of screwing the citizenry and redirecting the wealth of the citizenry to the oligarchs.

I suppose we should at least be grateful that unlike her Supreme Court colleague Elena Kagan, Ruth didn't also go on violent animal-hunting junkets with "Nino."

So before the accolades fade into the ether and before the warm body is even decently buried, the Narrative is of course all about RBG's replacement. Will Donald Trump be able to force through a nominee before the election or in a theoretical lame duck session?
 
If Trump does get his way, but then Joe Biden wins the presidency by virtue of being the designated negatively charged force to neutralize Trump, will he and a Democratic majority then proceed to pack the court by finally ending the filibuster? After all, his good friend Bernie did predict that the right-wing Biden will magically transform himself into FDR if  only we hold our noses and give the man who created the Prison-Industrial Complex one more chance. 

I'm not holding my breath. Both parties love the filibuster when they're in the majority, and pretend to hate it when they're in the minority. So, as Biden himself likes to say, "Nothing will fundamentally change."
 
You might remember that back in 2011, when the Dems still held the Senate majority, Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell were every bit as palsy-walsy as RBG and Nino were, even almost as tight as Bernie and Joe. They made a "gentleman's agreement" that neither one of them would ever abuse their filibuster privileges. And we all know how that worked out in the Republicans' favor, with the full wink-wink complicity of the feckless Dems.
 
 Reid, gentleman punk that he was, did the same thing a year later, but only after sternly threatening a few minor tweaks to prevent the GOP from flouting democracy in too impolite a manner. Of course, now that both he and Barack Obama are out of office, they're both falling all over themselves demanding that the filibuster be forever and permanently buried right along with Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whose own dying wish was not to be replaced by the current president. 

The most that Reid eventually accomplished was the imposition of the really scary-sounding "nuclear option" the following year, in order to prevent the filibustering of judicial nominees, allowing a simple up or down vote rather than the "super-majority" still required for the prevention of most legislation even remotely benefiting ordinary citizens. This feat by Harry Reid is what has allowed
for the confirmation of almost all Donald Trump's federal court nominees.  It was all part of the plan which allows Democrats to flail helplessly in public as they act out their designated role as the good cops and fundraise like mad for the #Resistance.

Filibustering, once glorified as the lone bravery of the principled Senator played by James Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, actually has a more sinister original meaning. When it comes to Republican filibusters, they really do adhere to the original definition of the term: "irregular soldiers who act without authority from their own government, and are generally motivated by financial gain, political ideology, or the thrill of adventure".The etymology is as tortuous as the Senate itself: from the Spanish "filibustero" to the Dutch "vrijbuiter" to the English "freebooter."
 
So why stop at abolishing the filibuster? Maybe it's time to abolish the whole senate, or at least pack it to the gills with representatives based upon the population of any given state. That way, low-density states won't have the undemocratic, outsized power over us that they do now. That way, the iron claw of the oligarchy might even start to lose its grip and we can finally wrest the wealth of a nation right out of their cold dead hands.



 
 Now, wouldn't that be a nuclear option of a change that we can all believe in! 
 

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

If Trump, McConnell & Co. get their nominee approved before the election, what will they have to offer the anti-abortionists and other reactionaries for the next term? This is their ace in the hole. They would be foolish to play it now. But that has not stopped them in the past.

Jay–Ottawa said...


If Judiciary Committee Democrats can’t hold up any Trump nominee between now and January 20, 2021, they are incompetent in a dazzling sort of way.

The question on all our minds should not be whom Trump nominates, but who Biden picks. My money’s on Obama who gravitates to the highest plum jobs and, once there, accomplishes nothing––a safe bet for the few who run things in the USA.

Remember that he outmaneuvered more studious law students to wangle election as editor of the Harvard Law Review, the highest checkoff in a law student’s record, then submitted no article of his own for publication in the HLR. Having left no trail of solid legal writing then (or since), he’ll be hard to pin down on hot button issues during confirmation hearings.

As POTUS for two terms, his legacy turned out to be a the ACA [cough]. That's it; the rest was Bush 2.0. As de facto head of the Democratic Party during that time, Obama presided over the loss of 1000 political jobs at all levels of government across the country. Meanwhile, the Republicans have continued deeply larding the executive, legislative and judicial branches with their kind for decades. These Republican appointees will serve as obstructive moles during Democratic years and emerge as roaring lions in Republican years.

Clarence Thomas has gone for years without orally questioning the lawyers arguing before him. Once confirmed, Obama could do the same on the writing side of the job, which would be consistent with his past. In other words, he could speechlessly side with whoever wrote the dissent among the Four and consistently get home early for dinner. But that would be a pity. Imagine the joy of reading Obama’s prose in decision after decision siding with Republicans colleagues on the bench. Five-4, move over for 6-3.

No, no, no, Obama should ease in as one of the Four Liberals, writing brilliant dissents that will thrill English majors and please identity warriors but add up to zero where it really counts in the unmentionable Class War.

Kat said...

Not sure where you got your information, but Biden did not create the prison-industrial complex.

Kat said...

Here's a really good interview with probably the preeminent scholar on the growth of the carceral state if you have any interest in the subject:https://theintercept.com/2020/06/10/ruth-wilson-gilmore-makes-the-case-for-abolition/

Mark Thomason said...

Bret Stephens' column in the NYT on this subject went on at length about how right Democrats are to oppose Trump nominating someone.

I wrote a comment quoting a passage from 2018, in which he just as strongly supported Obama's right to appoint Garland, and the duty of the Senate to consider that nomination before the election.

The NYT censored that. Can't post a comment that quotes with citation to a columnist saying the exact opposite of what he says now, just so long as it trashes Trump.

That is what this has become. Just trash Trump. I don't even like Trump, and I am sick of the extremes of hypocrisy and censorship of the conversation.