"What a sad day for our great country". It would be simple to say, “I rest my case”, but that’s a cop out. Here are a few additional thoughts for Columbus Day...a day fittingly fraught with it’s own brand of controversy.
I posted that statement on Saturday and was intentionally vague...as in I didn't specify exactly what had happened that made me sad. Since Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed to the Supreme Court, that was the biggest news, all of my friends on both the left and the right assumed I didn't like the fact that we have a new ass-hat on the bench. Given my use of that term, ass-hat, my meaning is no longer vague. But my social media experiment proves that it is indeed a sad day for our great country. And so much more so than the selection of Kavanaugh. Why? You only need to read the comments that were posted to my page to understand why. I'll get back to the comments in a second.
First, why do I think Kavanaugh is an ass-hat and bad for the United States? It's not because he may have come close to date rape in college 35 long years ago. It's not because he may be a drunk. It's not because he may support challenges to Roe v Wade. He's undoubtedly an ass-hat simply because he believes that a sitting President is above the law. What are we--North Korea? Fuck me...there is no human being, orange haired tyrannical wannabe, or even a deity made flesh, that is above the law. It's troubling for me to believe that there is some sort of legal justification, constitutional or otherwise, that makes this matter so. It is so foreign to my sensibilities as to render the opinion of this man, on any subject, highly suspect. If he for a second thinks that the constitution holds this to be true he cannot be qualified as a keeper of our constitution. That, alone, is his disqualifying belief.
Kavanaugh believes, and using his legal writings as reference, that a sitting president is above the law. To indict as sitting president would be a distraction from his duties and thus cause a problem with National Security. Should he, the President, cross some imaginary line of abuse, Congress would reign in the executive power before it became a problem. That's his case. Therein lies the fallacy of his optimism. He believes that the checks and balances on the President will always right any wrong. I'm also optimistic in that regard believing we need only wait out the incompetence of any one administration. And I have some additional faith in the op/ed piece published in the Washington Post recently, that some adults are remaining on the bridge in case of trouble. Despite the cowardice of the essay and the subsequent witch hunt it’s semi-reassuring...perhaps that’s why it was written.
However, the trouble isn't just this one thing, an ass-hat on the Supreme Court. It's the tiny little victories that lean more and more in the direction of tyranny. The right sounds the klaxon that it is the left that will lead us into tyranny, when we know full well that all jackbooted thugs hail from the right. I stepped away from the Republican party during the Bush administration and became an independent when it was clear the new order of conservative thought believed in torturing, occupying foreign lands, and spewing forth all manner of imperial behavior on foreign populations in the name of democracy. I can name those four ass-hats should anyone forget...Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz. And beyond that neo-conservative bastion of stupidity, following the rise of the Tea-Party jackalopes, we now have a new conservatism, based on a populist ideology, that will, and has already brought forth, the very worst of our human tendencies. One might call these tendencies deplorable. Let me be clear, while the far right, and in particular the racist alt-right, have more than earned their moniker "deplorable", the left is not without their own spin on deplorable behavior. Two wrongs don't make a right. Yet common decency should be where we draw all lines. Sure, Kavanaugh is a decent human being and digging up dirt from the past and smearing him is arguably a deplorable tactic, but he was nominated to the court by someone who's deplorable nature has never been in question.
Anyone, and I mean anyone, who believes mocking a victim isn't deplorable behavior, behavior with no place in our society, I welcome you to the deplorables. That doesn't mean lying-Hillary isn't a liar. Of course she is a liar. All politicians stretch and bend the truth. Stretching and bending the truth, spinning the optics, is a political profession and typically involved lawyers deciding upon what can be legally defended. That just doesn't make her deplorable, that makes her a lawyer and a politician. Making things up whole cloth is not spinning the truth. Making things up is called fabrication and embodies or combines just about every other category of lying into one. All of us spin, stretch, embellish, or omit facets of the truth in our daily lives. Very few of us fabricate. Hillary and her husband could be conspiratorial murders. I highly doubt it given all the real evidence in those cases, but yet there is still some ugly conspiracy in all of that mess. I've never said she's the most qualified...in fact she fits the very definition of the elitist in Washington. The left has brought us another Clinton. Just like my argument against Kavanaugh...we've already got one graduate from Georgetown Prep on the Supreme Court, how is it statistically possible for us to have another? Elitist shenanigans are no doubt at play. And that’s the swamp. It's not just any swap. It's our swap. And it's the swamp that's been around at least since the founding our Country. It's a political swamp but it's a swamp traditionally run by the "Best and the Brightest" a term I’m intentionally stealing from the Watergate era. It’s an elitist swamp that helps our country survive. It’s why were are a Republic and not a true democracy for those who want to swoop in and point out why we have an electoral college.
By survive, I don’t mean survival as a country ala the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire. I mean as a country of liberty, freedom, the American values we were born into. We believe in our country and our very foundation that for my lifetime has been the envy of the world. The rest of the world does not envy a racist country. You can’t swing a dead cat and not hit a racist country. They envy us exactly because we are not a racist country and we hold dear certain truths. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness". Yes, that's not the Constitution, something a little less political but quite possibly more important. Those ideas are not deplorable. Those ideas are the antithesis of tyranny. In fact they were declared to cast off the bonds of tyranny. Yet those ideas are being usurped by selfish individuals with a deplorable ax to grind in favor of something less. Those under attack are those with progressive ideas. Perhaps the most damning of all the deplorable notions--more so than racism, since everyone has a tribe, more so than sexism, since everyone has some gender, and more so than social inequality, since everyone can be happy within their economic strata in America--is the notion that any American would rather be a Russia then a Democrat. What the fuck? This is a sad day for our Country indeed.
So let’s get back to my social media experiment. I could walk through all the comments. I invite you to read them. They are not vile, as I have read elsewhere on FaceBook. I thank you all for maintaining a certain degree of decorum. That said, I always feel we are one insult away from a shouting match and someone dropping the F-bomb. The comments are clearly divided into two lanes politically. Some are good, some are wrong, some are funny. But there is no compromise. One side is right, the other side is wrong...dead wrong. How can that be possible? How can both sides be dead wrong. It's not possible. Both sides, in reality, are right. We just fail to give an inch. We now refuse to give an inch. We can blame ourselves...and certainly that would be the right thing to do. But we seem to be beyond that. Prior to his election, everyone I knew, also knew, that Trump had “some issues”. They were going to vote for him anyway, for any number of reasons...but they all conceded it was a risky but an necessary step to drain the swamp, keep Hillary out of office, and return us to something else...greatness. One oft quoted phrase by those who couldn't conscience voting for Hillary, was that they were voting for Pence, expecting Trump to not last long. Of course most who cast votes for Trump also had the firm belief that he wasn't going to win. But now, in hindsight, continuing to support him despite his deplorability, either speaks volumes to one’s own deplorability, or has you, placing him, above our American values. With Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court, we are acknowledging, that it’s OK for an American President to be above all that. We are on slippery slope when the checks and balances that Kavanaugh constitutionally will depend on for checks and balances are being destroyed before our eyes. Congress does not intend to hold our President in check. They had one job. We now have a Supreme Court that will not hold our President in check. Well done!
Saturday was indeed the saddest day for our great country...tyranny has arrived...and we defend it.
