On The Brink

What a time for Congress to be impotent.

The outcome of the war in Ukraine will have enormous consequences for global democracy, and requires unflagging support that MAGA Republicans oppose. The war just launched by Hamas against Israel threatens to strengthen Netanyahu, a corrupt, anti-democratic autocrat embraced by Trump who has caused immense damage to Israel’s reputation, both at home and abroad, and to further destabilize one of the world’s most dangerous areas. Climate change is accelerating, while MAGA Republicans continue to deny its reality. The gap between the rich and the rest is accurately characterized as a new and massively unfair Gilded Age. American lifespans are declining…The list goes on.

And the Republicans in Congress are clowns, utterly unable to rise to any occasion, or to make even the most feeble efforts to do their jobs. The GOP has picked a very unfortunate time to disintegrate ala the Whigs.

As Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo has observed, McCarthy’s downfall is another symptom of the same underlying pathologies: a cultish GOP in thrall to a would-be autocrat, anti-majoritarian structural impediments, a surge in right-wing extremism, and White resentments and grievances channeled into a burn-it-all-down fever.

 Unfortunately, McCarthy’s ouster.doesn’t change those underlying systemic problems. Republicans in the House are deeply divided between an outdated and unrealistic Right wing and a full-blown lunatic Right. The two candidates who’ve emerged as frontrunners in the contest to succeed McCarthy would be unacceptable in any rational legislative body. (Jim Jordan is so unhinged that one Democratic strategist has been quoted for the observation that elevating him would give Democrats 14 additional House seats. Steve Scalise is best known for his claim to be “David Duke without the baggage.”)

All this would be bad enough in a saner, more peaceful world. Now, it’s terrifying–sort of like being stuck in place with a broken leg while watching an avalanche descending on you . 

Jennifer Rubin recently summed up where we are, and she echoed my own feelings: 

After Hamas is defeated, there will be a reckoning in Israel to match anything we have ever seen. Evidence of warnings to the Israeli government about insufficient deterrence, recriminations about putting a racist ideologue in the Defense Ministry post and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s misguided assault on democracy will all be reviewed. Careers will end. History will convict many of grotesque negligence.

Here in the United States, I have less patience than usual (which is often none) for inane right-wing rhetoric in the United States. No, there were no humanitarian funds released to Iran that might have put money in the mullahs’ pockets to be spent on Hamas. No, the Biden administration did not invite any of this. Republicans used to denounce the urge to “blame America first” for monstrous evil perpetrated by others. No more.

This should, but likely will not, inject some sobriety into the Republican Party, which has held up U.S. military promotions and confirmations and State Department postings; brought the House to a state of collapse under the weight of MAGA hysteria; carried water for Russia (an ally of Iran); and generally reminded us that adults are needed in government.

Voters need to wise up: We cannot tolerate the return to power of the egregiously unfit four-times indicted former president (who gleefully spread around intelligence information) nor allow MAGA nihilists to hold the country hostage. The stakes here and around the world are far too grave.

And those stakes are “around the world.” Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began the largest war in Europe since World War II. Meanwhile, China has become more bellicose toward Taiwan, India is experiencing an eruption of virulent nationalism, and Israel has formed the most extreme government in its history. Populism is growing in otherwise democratic countries like France and Spain.

If the chaos caused in large measure by the “stop the world, I want to get off” Republcans in Congress ends up adding fuel to a meltdown of civilization and stability across the globe, if the wars that keep breaking out engulf us in another worldwide conflict, a significant cause will be the fact that far too many Americans have reverted to an unthinking and reflexive tribalism while they wallow in an utter lack of interest in –or desire for–adult governance.

The only bright spot in any of this is the fact that we have a seasoned, wise and statesmanlike President at the helm, and not the preceding ignoramus.

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An Accurate Diagnosis

Last week, President Biden spoke at the opening of the John McCain library. In an impassioned address, he drew a bright line between the Republican Party of John McCain and others with whom he’d worked in a bipartisan fashion, and the MAGA crazies who now dominate the party. 

The entire speech was excellent, and if time permits, it’s worth clicking through and reading it all, but a couple of paragraphs really stood out to me–striking me as especially accurate diagnoses of where we find ourselves today.

“[T]here is no question that today’s Republican Party is driven and intimidated by MAGA Republican extremists. Their extreme agenda, if carried out, would fundamentally alter the institutions of American democracy as we know it.”

The MAGA Republicans, Biden said, are openly “attacking the free press as the enemy of the people, attacking the rule of law as an impediment, fomenting voter suppression and election subversion.” They are “banning books and burying history.” “Extremists in Congress [are] more determined to shut down the government, to burn the place down than to let the people’s business be done.” They are attacking the military—the strongest military in the history of the world—as being “weak and ‘woke’.”

They are “pushing a notion the defeated former President expressed when he was in office and believes applies only to him: This president is above the law, with no limits on power. Trump says the Constitution gave him…’the right to do whatever he wants as President.’ I’ve never even heard a president say that in jest. Not guided by the Constitution or by common service and decency toward our fellow Americans but by vengeance and vindictiveness.”

Biden spoke at a time when rational Americans were facing the intransigence of MAGA House Republicans who were clearly enthusiastic about forcing a government shutdown (and later, furious with McCarthy for working with Democrats to avoid it.), Their  “impeachment hearing”–a hearing at which their own witnesses testified that they had no evidence of wrongdoing–was a pathetic attempt to distract the public from their refusal to do the jobs they were elected to do.

Those who read and comment on this blog probably share my reaction to the utter insanity of all this: disbelief. Who are the people who still support these extremists? How is it possible that any American citizen listens to Trump’s increasingly demented word salads and thinks, yep, that’s the guy who ought to have control of the nuclear codes?

How is it possible that roughly a third of Americans remain Trumpers?

The answer is pretty chilling.  It turns out that–in addition to racism– a lot of Americans are nuts.

Back in 2016, polling found  that twelve million Americans believed alien lizard people rule us.

According to a Public Policy Polling survey, around 12 million people in the US believe that interstellar lizards in people suits rule our country. We imported that particular belief from across the pond, where professional conspiracy theorist David Icke has long maintained that the Queen of England is a blood-drinking, shape-shifting alien.

That research was conducted in April. In November, Trump was elected…

As the article pointed out, there are a number of equally…let’s just say unsupported…beliefs endorsed by millions of Americans.

Around 66 million Americans believe that aliens landed at Roswell, New Mexico; around 22 million people believe that the government faked the moon landing; and around 160 million believe that there is a conspiracy surrounding the assassination of former US president John F Kennedy.

In the years since 2016, we’ve seen the growth of various QAnon conspiracy theories, Bill Gates’ chips in Covid vaccines, vaccines causing autism…etc. etc.

Who are the people most susceptible to these beliefs?

Researchers say feelings of powerlessness and uncertainty trigger a need to believe in conspiracies. Or, as one scholar is quoted,

Conspiracies are for losers … 

“I don’t mean it in the pejorative sense, but people who are out of power use conspiracy theories to strategically alert their side to danger, to close ranks, to salve their wounds,” Uscinski explains. 

According to another researcher, belief in a conspiracy theory–alien lizards, the existence of Q, the ‘real purpose’ of vaccination– is a strategy fearful people use to regain a sense of control, even if the conspiracy theory is unrelated to what caused the lack of control in the first place. Conspiracy theories allow  a person to make sense of what they see as otherwise senseless or unfair in the world they inhabit, and allow them to restore some sense of control.

Bottom line, there are millions of Americans for whom logic, evidence and demonstrable facts are irrelevant. And they vote.

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Women And Politics

“Housekeeping” note: My husband and I are departing today for a two-month cruise to Australia and New Zealand. I will have internet and plan to continue blogging, but I’m not sure when items will post, as time zones will change and we’ll cross the international date line a couple of times, so please bear with me!

Last week, a chapter of the Indianapolis Kiwanis invited me to discuss the book that Morton Marcus and I recently published. This is what I told them (sorry for the length…)

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As I know you are all aware, Morton Marcus and I recently co-authored “From Property to Partner: Women’s Progress and Political Resistance.” When we began working on it, neither of us expected the political tsunami that would be ushered in by the Supreme Court in Dobbs v. Jackson.

Morton and I have been friends for some 30+ years, and he initially approached me about collaborating on a book that would identify and document the scientific and technological changes that had facilitated women’s progress. Morton absolutely bathes in data, and he was determined to share reams of evidence about the effect of things like railroads, bikes, and household appliances on women’s emancipation.

We both understood that genuine biological differences between men and women had shaped human cultures for thousands of years; and we both wanted to track how science and technology had minimized the social impact of those differences—how changes in the job market made physical strength less important and how various inventions reduced the time needed for housework, which is still considered “women’s work.” That sort of thing.

Morton did agree with me that the most important advances, by far, were the ones that allowed women—for the first time in history– to plan, defer or abstain from procreation without the necessity of remaining celibate. Birth control—especially the pill– allowed women to pursue educational and career choices that had formerly been available only to males.

Control of reproduction allowed women to participate fully in economic, civic and political life.  No other advance has been nearly that consequential.

But control of reproduction ran headlong into fundamentalist and paternalistic religious beliefs that continue to influence America’s politics and culture. Although religions and denominations within them vary considerably with respect to birth control, abortion and the role of women, fundamentalist theologies support a patriarchy that is deeply rooted in history, politics and privilege. In the book, we explored the teachings of different religious traditions about women—the very different beliefs held by different religions about women’s roles in general, and the very dramatic differences about decisions to terminate a pregnancy.

As some of us are old enough to remember, before the advent of reliable birth control, every sexual encounter carried the risk of pregnancy, and pregnancy generally meant the end of a woman’s economic independence. A pregnant woman was almost always unemployable; for that matter, a married woman in her childbearing years was similarly unemployable, since there was always the possibility of pregnancy and the resulting need to care for offspring, seen as a uniquely female responsibility.

Most women were therefore economically dependent upon the men to whom they were married. (Refusing to marry was no panacea: unmarried women were routinely labeled “old maids,” and were objects of pity.) If her marriage was unhappy, or worse, violent, a woman with children was literally enslaved; given the barriers she faced to participation in the workforce and her resulting inability to support herself and her offspring, she usually couldn’t leave. Absent charitable intervention or inherited wealth—or friends or relatives willing to house and feed her and her children—she was totally dependent on her husband’s earnings.

That reality is why access to reliable contraception –and in situations where that contraception failed, abortion—was thus absolutely essential to women’s independence. If women could plan when to procreate, they could also plan when not to procreate. They could choose to schedule or defer motherhood in order to pursue education and career opportunities. The availability of the birth control pill didn’t just liberate millions of women,  its availability and widespread use triggered enormous changes in social attitudes—some of which opened the door to legislation that advanced both females’ economic independence and their ability to more fully participate in the civic life of the nation.

The Dobbs decision, over-ruling Roe v Wade, came down when we had just begun our research for the book; it changed our focus and presented us with an obvious question: how would American women respond? What political consequences would we see to a decision that allowed states to deny women access to adequate healthcare during pregnancy– and also threatened to return them to second-class citizenship?

We knew we were about to see what happens when the dog finally catches the car…and you can probably guess our conclusion from the title of our final chapter: “When Mama Ain’t Happy, Ain’t Nobody Happy.”

So much for our book. I want to conclude with a point that is not widely understood. As politically consequential as the Dobbs decision has turned out to be, most non-lawyers really don’t understand how fundamentally it undermined constitutional rights that have absolutely nothing to do with abortion or the status of women.

For the past fifty years, Americans have relied upon a constitutional doctrine known as substantive due process, often called the “right to privacy.” That doctrine confirmed the American principle that certain “intimate” individual decisions—including one’s choice of sexual partners or the decision to use contraception– are none of government’s business.

Most constitutional scholars would argue that the right to personal autonomy has always been inherent in the Bill of Rights, but it was explicitly recognized in the 1965 case Griswold v. Connecticut. The Connecticut legislature had passed a law prohibiting the use of birth control by married couples. The law prohibited doctors from prescribing contraceptives and prohibiting pharmacists from filling those prescriptions.

The Supreme Court struck down the law, holding that whether a couple used contraceptives was not a decision government is entitled to make. The majority recognized that a right to personal autonomy—the right to self-government—was necessary to the enforcement of other provisions of the Bill of Rights, which would be difficult or impossible to respect without the recognition of such an underlying right.  Justices White and Harlan found explicit confirmation of it in the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment—which is where the title “substantive due process” comes from. Wherever it resided–in a “penumbra” or the 14th Amendment—the Justices agreed on both its presence and importance.

As I’m sure you all know, procedural due process protects Americans’ right to a fair process—a fair trial or other government proceeding. Substantive due process distinguishes between decisions that government has the legitimate authority to make, and decisions which, in our system, must be left up to the individual. I used to tell my students that the Bill of Rights is essentially a list of things that government is forbidden to decide: what books you read, what opinions you form, what prayers you say (or don’t)—such matters are outside the legitimate role of government. The issue isn’t whether that book is dangerous or inappropriate, or that religion is false, or whether you should marry someone of the same sex, or whether you should procreate: the issue is who should get to make that decision.

Substantive due process draws a line between decisions government should make and those that must be made by the individual involved. Aside from its other logical and historical defects, the Dobbs decision ignored 50 years of precedents confirming that principle.

Dobbs also changed the focus of our little book, which became much more political than we had originally intended. That said, we had fun collaborating on it—and if you haven’t already bought it, I hope you will!!

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The More We Learn…

It’s a conundrum.

Any civilized society operates by creating and enforcing rules. Social tranquility depends upon choosing wise people to make the rules and fair-minded people to enforce them.Right now, America isn’t doing too well with either of those populations.

This blog spends an inordinate amount of time on the clown show that is the U.S. House of Representatives, but problems with enforcement–with policing–are equally thorny.

From the beating of Rodney King to the murder of George Floyd and the multitude of other unwarranted violent episodes, Americans have been inundated with video evidence of questionable police behavior.

And “questionable” is frequently the correct word. As public safety professionals will tell us, protecting the public often requires split-second decision-making in situations that are a lot more ambiguous than they appear after the fact. Given the difficulties they face, giving police the benefit of reasonable doubt is only fair.

But all doubt isn’t reasonable.

Reporters keep uncovering deeply disturbing evidence of a racist, anti-Semitic and thuggish culture that persists in a troubling number of police departments. A year or so ago, one such culture was exposed in Torrance ,California . Text messages that had circulated among current and former officers of the city’s Police Department “reveal a culture rife with racism, antisemitism, and homophobia going back at least a decade.”

The texts are extremely violent in nature and grotesquely racist, homophobic, and antisemitic.

According to reporting from the LA Times, one text shows a picture of a candy cane, a Christmas tree ornament, a star for the top of the tree, and an “enslaved person.”

“Which one doesn’t belong?” the caption asks.

“You don’t hang the star,” someone replies.

Another message reads “hanging with the homies,” attached was a photo of several Black men who had been lynched.

Another photo asks what someone would do if their girlfriend was having an affair with a Black man. The captioned response was to break “a tail light on his car so the police will stop him and shoot him.”

Prosecutors say the messages go back years and could jeopardize hundreds of criminal cases in which the officers either testified or made arrests.

The LA Times identified 13 current and former police officers and one Long Beach cop who are now under investigation. At least nine of the officers texted images or commentary advocating violence against Black people and LGBTQ community members and ridiculing racial profiling.

There was much more, and all horrific. Discovery of the texts was triggered by an investigation of two former Torrance police officers who had spray-painted a swastika inside a resident’s car.

If Torrance was an isolated instance, it would be troubling enough, but in the last few years, we’ve seen repeated evidence that these White Supremacy attitudes are widespread among both the police and the military.

As the linked article by an FBI agent now with the Brennan Center warns:

For decades, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has routinely warned its agents that the white supremacist and far-right militant groups it investigates often have links to law enforcement. Yet the justice department has no national strategy designed to protect the communities policed by these dangerously compromised law enforcers. As our nation grapples with how to reimagine public safety in the wake of the protests following the police killing of George Floyd, it is time to confront and resolve the persistent problem of explicit racism in law enforcement.

I know about these routine warnings because I received them as a young FBI agent preparing to accept an undercover assignment against neo-Nazi groups in Los Angeles, California, in 1992. But you don’t have to take my word for it. A redacted version of a 2006 FBI intelligence assessment, White Supremacist Infiltration of Law Enforcement, alerted agents to “both strategic infiltration by organized groups and self-initiated infiltration by law enforcement personnel sympathetic to white supremacist causes.”

As the officer who wrote the above article pointed out, If the U.S. government found out that al-Qaida or a similar foreign terrorist organization had infiltrated American law enforcement, it would immediately launch a nationwide effort to identify those individuals and neutralize the threat.

Yet white supremacists and far-right militants have committed far more attacks and killed more people in the U.S. over the last 10 years than any foreign terrorist movement. The FBI regards them as the most lethal domestic terror threat. The need for national action is even more critical.

We the People need the police. But we need the right kind of police. That requires hiring practices capable of weeding out thuggish, bigoted applicants, and training that emphasizes service to all parts of the communities they will be hired to protect.

We have a problem, and public safety requires that we fix it.

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The Wages Of Cowardice

What explains the chaos/civil war in the GOP?

I’ll admit that I haven’t always been a Mit Romney fan–I really didn’t pay much attention to him until his infamous “47% “takers” remark, and that gave me a very negative opinion of him. (I’m also not a fan of the “makers versus takers” view of the world.)

That said, he has steadily risen in my opinion, thanks to his vote to impeach Trump, and–along with his announcement that he will not run for a second Senate term– his willingness to be honest about the current GOP.

Romney has said publicly what most observers have long surmised–that the more rational members of the Senate’s Republican caucus share his disdain for Trump. They recognize Trump’s profound ignorance. They laugh at his ungrammatical pronouncements. They shake their heads over his “policy” choices.

But not in public.

Rarely have We the People been treated to a display of utter cowardice equal to that we are currently experiencing. As David French has written in the New York Times, the Republican Senators who refused to do their constitutional duty and vote to impeach

punted their responsibilities to the American legal system. As Mitch McConnell said when he voted to acquit Trump, “We have a criminal justice system in this country.” Yet not even a successful prosecution and felony conviction — on any of the charges against him, in any of the multiple venues — can disqualify Trump from serving as president. Because of G.O.P. cowardice, our nation is genuinely facing the possibility of a president’s taking the oath of office while also appealing one or more substantial prison sentences.

The GOP appears to be stuck with Trump, a candidate recently–and accurately– described by Jennifer Rubin as “unhinged, vengeful, incoherent, dangerous and neo-fascist.”)

French began his column by agreeing with a recent, densely-argued law review article concluding that the clear language of the 14th Amendment–if applied–disqualifies Trump (or any other traitor) from holding further public office. He then acknowledged the realities of trying to enforce that disqualification–and the likelihood that the current Supreme Court would refuse to intervene if the attempt were to be made.

While I believe the court should intervene even if the hour is late, it’s worth remembering that it would face this decision only because of the comprehensive failure of congressional Republicans. Let me be specific. There was never any way to remove Trump from American politics through the Democratic Party alone. Ending Trump’s political career required Republican cooperation, and Republicans have shirked their constitutional duties, sometimes through sheer cowardice. They have punted their responsibilities to other branches of government or simply shrunk back in fear of the consequences…

And then, of course, there’s Congress, where GOP members are in thrall to their crazy caucus.

For many of them, the answer lies in raw fear. First, there is the simple political fear of losing a House or Senate seat. In polarized, gerrymandered America, all too many Republican politicians face political risk only from their right…

Mitt Romney has pointed to a different fear: physical harm to a lawmaker’s person or family. The Trumpist cult that now controls what was once a political party is capable of real violence, and several elected officials are reacting to explicit threats from members of that cult.

The problem is, appeasement never works, as Kevin McCarthy now understands. Cowardice simply encourages the mob mentality that animates today’s GOP. As French reminds readers,

A fundamental reality of human existence is that vice often leaves virtue with few good options. Evil men can attach catastrophic risks to virtually any course of action, however admirable. But we can and should learn lessons from history. George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, two of our greatest presidents, both faced insurrectionary movements, and their example should teach us today.

As French says, people of character and conviction once inhabited the American political class, and those people gave us the tools to defend the American experiment. He says that “All we need is the will.”

We won’t have “the will,” however, until and unless we elevate better people to office. In Indiana, we have empowered a number of people whose intellectual and moral deficits and lack of concern for the Constitution and the public good make them utterly unfit for any public office.

We have our smarmy, “me myself and I” actors (Rokita, Braun), our looney-tunes, bigoted far-Right culture warriors (Banks) and the cowards who appear to know better but have thus far been unwilling to act on what they know (Young). There are many others. None of them will step up to the plate and impose accountability.

Bottom line: we have to replace them.

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