A Constitutional Tantrum

Donald Trump suggesting the Constitution should be tossed if it doesn’t give him what he wants proves that conservatives don’t really revere the document and never did. Ditto with history, liberty, and everything else they claim to venerate. Their patriotism is fraudulent. They just want power.

It's what they always do. They mythologize the past and then weaponize it against the present. It's just authoritarian propaganda without even a mote of honest history in it. I talked about that in my 2014 book.

But let's not try to beat conservatives at their own game by cynically playing the patriot card and calling the Constitution “sacrosanct" as the Biden White House has. Trying to out-right the right never works and it's invariably pathetic. Moreover, the founders themselves never saw that document as sacrosanct.

To the founders, the Constitution was a compromise that nobody was entirely happy with. It was a contract and everyone fought to make sure the parts of it they liked got enforced. It was later generations which made it holy writ. The founders not only made the Constitution amendable, they talked of the possibility of future generations jettisoning it entirely – just as they had done with the Articles of Confederation. We see this in the papers of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and other founders. This was their attitude toward constitutions in general, both federal and state: Everything is replaceable.

For example, in the Massachusetts state constitution, Adams proclaimed that, “[T]he people alone have an incontestable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to institute government; and to reform, alter, or totally change the same, when their protection, safety, prosperity and happiness require it."(1) 

Likewise, Jefferson felt, “no society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living generation." Accordingly, he believed, “Every constitution then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19 years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force, and not of right."

Elsewhere, Jefferson opined, “We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors."(2)

Therefore, original intent says “Forget original intent."

The Constitution has always had profound problems and it still does. It is saccharine historically illiterate gibberish to deny this. We need to fix these problems, the sooner the better. For example, we should abolish the Electoral College and the Senate for starters. Both are long overdue.

But allowing an orange authoritarian narcissist to stay in power after America had passed a mandate to remove him, is not among the legion of reasons we need to overhaul or perhaps replace the Constitution.

The proper response to Trump's comment is to point out that conservative love of the Constitution is either superficial or bullshit. It needs to be said. And it needs to be said for three different reasons: First, it's the truth and thus must told on principle. Second, it's politically smart because Democrats do not go on the offensive enough. And third, a functioning democracy needs citizens who think seriously about history.

Otherwise, we get to where we are now.

But bipartisanship-fetishizing centrists cannot see this. Their mythology obscures truth almost as much as conservative mythology does. Trump is the embodiment of conservatism, not an aberration from it. It's obvious in all his comments – including those on the Constitution.

We cannot afford to politely ignore this anymore.

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1) John Adams, Article VII, Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 1780.

2) Thomas Jefferson, Works of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Paul Leicester Ford (New York: Kickerbocker Press, 1904), 12:12.

Rockets Red Glare

Okay, I finally watched President Biden’s spooky-lit speech and of course I have some thoughts on it.

Long story short, Joe Biden said some profoundly true and long overdue things which were nevertheless still pretty weak tea and dishonestly polite. As I’ve noted often before, the right’s racism and hostility to democracy are nothing new. True, Donald Trump embodies both, but he definitely didn’t invent them. I know Biden was trying to throw vanishing moderate Republicans a lifeline, but it's pointless at this point.

After all, Barry Goldwater’s 1964 presidential campaign was the maiden voyage of the Southern Strategy, so Republicans have been stoking racist voters for longer than I’ve been alive and I’m now in my mid-fifties. Think about that. Roll it around in your head for a moment. And then ignore everyone calling Trump some kind of unprecedented aberration because they are historically illiterate imbeciles trying to ignore a half century of GOP bigotry. What is so often called “Trumpism” is just Republicans saying the quiet part out loud. I mean, you knew the Tea Party was racist, right? You recall the unhinged Militia Movement from the 1990s, right? Stop defending the indefensible. Consider your dignity – it's in danger.

And it's not just their love of racism. Conservatives have long loathed democracy too. In my 2014 book, Conservatism is Un-American, I argued that liberty, equality, and democracy are interdependent like the legs of a tripod – each leg supports the other two. Conservatives have always sought to shatter these three ideals. Usually, they concentrate their assault on equality, but they occasionally go after freedom or democracy too. “We are a republic, not a democracy” remains a favorite slogan of the racist John Birch Society which had opposed the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s and it has become a popular slogan with Republicans today. This incidentally illustrates how tightly equality and democracy are intertwined. 

Timidity & Perfidy

The Supreme Court’s recent murder of Roe v. Wade re-revealed two ugly truths that most Democrats have long chosen to ignore: First, that the party’s centrist leadership has always been ambivalent about abortion. And second, that they see activists as pests to be patronized and stereotyped.

During the 2008 campaign, then Senator Barack Obama had promised Planned Parenthood that he would codify Roe v. Wade on day one. “The first thing I'll do as President is sign the Freedom of Choice Act." Of course, he didn’t. And when later asked why it had dropped by the wayside, he replied that it was “not the highest legislative priority" adding, “I think that the most important thing we can do to tamp down some of the anger surrounding this issue is to focus on those areas that we can agree on.”(1)

That sobering moment is the Rosetta Stone for understanding decades of self-sabotaging centrist politics. Obama was an enormous disappointment on a host of issues, but this is not about Obama: It’s about centrist ideology, it's hostility to the Democratic base, and the absurd political behavior it fosters.

Take House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's favorite slogan that there is “no litmus test" on abortion. She says that a lot, maybe even as often as she praises Ronald Reagan.(2) In May of 2017, Pelosi paradoxically said voicing alarm on abortion access was “hurting the party”(3) even though abortion was “fading as an issue." 

The key to reconciling that apparent contradiction is the centrist myth that activists are out of step with ordinary voters. Translation: It's only those whacko activists who care about it and they don't really count. Centrists have adopted a favorite conservative stereotype that ultimately insults nearly everyone else: It posits that caring is crazy and the public is lazy and/or conservative – and it's all pure projection.

It's also a tread worn excuse that polls routinely refute. Indeed, centrists seem allergic to doing anything popular whether its passing Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, free college, forgiving student debt, or in this instance defending abortion rights. Centrists project their own disinterest onto the electorate.

Just two months ago, Nancy Pelosi and Jim Clyburn supported anti-choice incumbent Henry Cuellar (D-TX) against pro-choice challenger Jessica Cisneros. The incumbent carbuncle is also anti-union and pro-NRA. As Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez pointed out, that later fact sort of stood out after two recent mass shootings. Pelosi may be ambivalent about issues her party cares about, but at least she’s consistently so.(4)

Pelosi's not alone. In 2019, Biden’s freshly-minted presidential campaign had to rapidly backtrack after the backlash to their confirming that he still supported the 1976 anti-choice Hyde Amendment. It was an awfully awkward reversal since it highlighted Biden’s lengthy anti-choice record in the Senate. In 1974, he said Roe v. Wade “went too far" adding, “I don’t think that a woman has the sole right to say what should happen to her body.” And in 1982, Biden backed a constitutional amendment that would allow states to ignore Roe v. Wade. Getting snippy with pro-choice voters in 2019 probably didn't help.

Deadly Ineptitude

Just what the fuck does it take already?

That’s the boiling question people are asking a lot lately about many different recent events.

For openers, two particularly horrific mass shootings had happened not too long ago.

The first shooting was in Buffalo, NY where a white supremacist massacred grocery store shoppers in an African American neighborhood. His racist manifesto was filled with stock conspiracy theories he had copy & pasted from 4chan and he had targeted an area with a high concentration of blacks for his attack.

The second was an elementary school shooting in Uvalde, TX where the local cops did absolutely nothing to stop the carnage going on inside the school for over an hour. Instead, they tased, pepper sprayed, and handcuffed desperate parents who begged the cops to do their jobs.

And there were two mass shootings just this Fourth of July – one in Highland Park, IL and another in Philadelphia, PA. But there have been very many other mass shootings in between Uvalde and these. Mass shootings are like roaches in that regard: For every one that gets press, there are many more that don’t.

Nearly everyone’s exasperation is palpable. And that’s fueled in large part by the knowledge that nothing is going to change as a result of these infuriatingly familiar tragedies. We’ve all been here too many times before to entertain the cruel fantasy that this will actually change anything.

Our cynical politics regard concrete goals as “unicorns” and “ponies” so only posturing is considered “realistic.” Political pantomime is “adult,” but advocating actual action is “childish.” You can apply this to any number of issues – abortion rights comes to mind right now, but that topic's for my next post.

So let's discuss mass shootings a little longer before going into our country's incompetent Covid response.