EVIL!

We have seen evil this past month. We experienced evil each day of this past month. Evil is what Russia is doing to Ukraine. Evil is what the leader of Russia is ordering his armed forces to do to innocent people. The personification of evil is Putin, the President of Russia.

Russia, for no reasonable reason, invaded a free and independent nation. It claimed that all of Ukraine was really part of Russia, full of Nazis, and not really an independent country. This is the second time Russia invaded Ukraine in recent years. In 2014 it invaded and annexed Crimea, claiming that it was part of Russia. We stood by and let it happen. This time we galvanized democracies around the world and especially in Europe to oppose the Russian efforts. This really is a fight between autocracy and democracy.

After WWII the nations of the world agreed not to invade each other. Some of those mighty proclamations were on signed treaties and others were “gentlemen’s agreements.” The new world order made it unacceptable for one country to invade another.

Last month, however, overnight, Russia challenged and changed the world order that had been in place for over 80 years, four generations.  

Ukraine did not join NATO after the breakup of the Soviet Union as so many other Soviet Republics had done. Those who joined wanted protection from possible Russian invasion. As everyone knows by now, Article #5 of NATO’s charter states that if one nation is invaded, it is an attack on all thirty member states. NATO invoked Article #5 once, on September 11, 2001.

The atrocities are unacceptable, of course. Cities have been wiped off the face of the map. Millions of people were forced to flee their homes, families separated and exiled to other countries around the world. War crimes are in evidence across the country. The Geneva Conventions are treaties that relate to the treatment of “hors de combat,” people incapable of fighting: civilians, POWs.

Thomas Friedman, a NYT columnist, points out that Putin had no idea that his war would be a war watched in real-time by the rest of the world, with the exception of most of Russia itself. Elon Musk moved some of his “X” satellites over to Ukraine to help sustain the internet and cell phone capabilities of the nation. The smartphone enables us to see hospitals that have been bombed, a war crime, schools that have been bombed, a war crime, fleeing civilians who have been gunned down, a war crime; villages of people shot on sight on the streets, a war crime. President Biden has called for a war crimes trial for Putin.

The democracies of the world, fearing an actual war with Russia, are using economic sanctions in an effort to destabilize their economy. The results are mixed because some countries in Europe are unwilling to stop using Russian primary trading commodities, oil, and gas. If they did it would cripple the big bear. Meanwhile, billions of dollars of munitions are pouring into Ukraine and being put to good use as they push back and regain the land. The only good news is that the Russian ground forces are less capable than expected.

 So what is the free world doing? What can it do? We know that the autocratic world is watching. The recent reelection of Viktor Oban, a pro-Russian-pro Putin Hungarian Prime Minister tells us that autocrats can still be elected in some countries. Other countries are watching the response by democratic countries to this onslaught. China is watching, Ethiopia is watching, Taiwan is watching, Sudan is watching, Burkina Faso is watching. Guinea-Bissau is watching.

If Russia is allowed to get away with the invasion of a free country, and the changing of the world order, it will give a green light to those who want to destroy liberal governance and democracy. It will give credence to those in the U.S. who want to destroy the democratic ideals of our experiment in self-government by the people, those who want to limit the diversity of the nation, and those who want to suppress the right to vote.

Even as we see the results of the Russian barbarism exploding across the Ukraine cities and villages, we still have powerful talking heads on cable TV extolling the virtues of Russia, of Putin, and the downsides of the invaded nation. These same people constantly call for the diminution of the free state.

If Russia succeeds, European democracy will be put to the test and American democracy already balancing on the edge of failure might be pushed over the side. Russia cannot be allowed to win, and when she loses she must be punished.

First They Came!

We read First They Came back in our school days; we read it every so often after that. We think about it from time to time for a few minutes, and then move on. Life is busy!

Martin Niemoller, a German Lutheran Pastor wrote his “confessional prose” about his cowardice following the Nazi’s rise to power in Germany before and during WWII.

          “First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out –

          because I was not a socialist.

 

          Then they came for the trade unionist, and I did not speak out –

          because I was not a trade unionist.

 

          Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out –

          because I was not a Jew.

 

          Then they came for me –

          and there was no one left to speak for me.”

 

I wondered if something written in 1936 could apply to our lives nearly 90 years later.

         First they came for the Ukrainians, and I did not speak out –

because I was not a Ukrainian.

 

Then they came for the journalist, and I did not speak out –

because I am not a journalist.

 

Then they came for …

 

 

 

 

From Tepid to Hot!

At the end of WWII, we went from hot wars to cold wars that ensued until the fall of the Berlin Wall, give or take a few years. We have been in a Tepid War ever since, well, until last week. We just went from Tepid to Hot! Just how hot it will get is anyone’s guess, but it doesn’t take much to make a limited war a world war. 

On July 28, 1914, Cavrilo Princip, a Serbian Nationalist, shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife. The fatal gunshots that rang out in Sarajevo that sunny day resulted in a world war in which 17 million people died and 25 million suffered injuries. It didn’t have to be!

Europe of that day was a conglomeration of empires with secret treaties propping them up, pledging mutual military support, with generally high regard for members of the nobility. Austria Hungary had to avenge the death of its next Emperor. Germany had to protect itself from Russia, The Ottoman Empire had to support its allies and Great Britain had to feign support for France. Historians still argue over the real causes of “the war to end all wars,” but Cavrilo gets most of the blame.

Russia invaded Ukraine last week. We now live under a new world order.

The NYT editorial, on February 24, 2022, may have said it best:

“The magnitude of the Russian gambit is staggering. Whatever Mr. Putin’s ideas on how Ukraine should relate to Russia, whatever his grievances over Western encroachment on what he perceives as Russia’s sphere of influence, whatever his views on Russia’s place in Europe and the world, an unprovoked invasion of a sovereign European state is an unprovoked declaration of war on a scale, on a continent and in a century when it was thought to be no longer possible...  There will be body bags.”

Putin signaled months ago that Ukraine was in the crosshairs and belonged to Russia, politically and culturally. Most Ukrainians disagreed.  Many didn’t believe him. Too many ignored his bluster, World leaders couldn’t imagine a European country invading another. It really hasn’t happened since WWII, when international law ruled out this sort of thing. Russia proclaimed international law null and void.

In a speech to the Russian people, Putin proclaimed two small sections of Ukraine, Donetsk, and Luhansk, to be independent states. True, they were centers of Russian resistance, but they were controlled by Ukraine. Putin declared that it was necessary to invade Ukraine to provide for the safety of Russian nationals in those two areas. Then he invaded from the north, the south, and the east. Tanks rolled, rockets flew, troops came ashore near Odessa, airfields were bombed, cyber attacks cut off communications, and women and children fled. Every man eighteen to sixty years old was ordered to stay and fight. And fight they did, slowing the Russian advance to the capital and other major cities. Russia had the missiles but Ukraine had the hearts of its people.

Ukraine isn’t a member of the EU or NATO, so it is on its own in this battle. The rest of Europe can provide it with arms and equipment, impose economic sanctions on Russia, and wring their hands in despair, but that might not help much in the end. Putin warned the west that if they interfered in Ukraine, they would face “such consequences that you have never encountered in your history,” a clear statement that he was prepared to retaliate with nuclear weapons. On Sunday, he put the nuclear forces in a “special regime of combat duty.”

The West has cut Russia out of SWIFT,[i] the international bank clearinghouse. Without access to SWIFT, Russians can’t trade in anything but rubles, and they can’t exchange them for any other currency. They can’t bring dollars or Euros into Russia or use foreign currency to live outside the country. Switzerland froze all Russian assets in its banks, an unheard-of reversal of its claim to neutrality that has reigned for many decades. On Sunday, Europe closed its air space to all Russian-controlled airplanes, including private planes. Ukraine looks like a donut hole on the map of planes in the air. Unless a Russian wants to go to China, they are pretty much forced to stay in the country.

So what does this all mean for the future of Europe and the U.S.? It is too early to tell, but one can imagine, can’t one?

The best-case scenario has Russia realizing the error of Putin’s ways, going home, and paying for the damage it inflicted. Not likely!

Putin’s stated objective is to decapitate the government of Ukraine, take out the military, and install a puppet government that it can control. That would give Russia control over the vast mineral resources of Ukraine as well as the food production capability of the nation.[ii]

The worst-case scenario is that Russia sees how easy it is to take over one former soviet state and then it decides to take over another former member of the Soviet Union. That means an all-out war on the continent. China is watching how the U.S. responds to Russia. That will give Beijing a hint to how we would respond if it tried to take Taiwan by force.

NATO’s[iii] members are bound by Article #5 which calls for collective defense: if one country is attacked, it is considered an attack on all member states and that all members will come to the aid of other members. The only time Article #5 has been invoked was on 9/11/2001. An invasion of Poland, or the Baltic countries would put NATO at war with Russia. It would put the U.S. at war with Russia.

The rub, of course, is that you have another world war. Today’s military equipment is too sophisticated to allow for fighting like past wars. Simply knocking out a few satellites brings down the internet worldwide; a bit of computer hacking brings down the electric grid, a bit more shuts down the bank ATM machines. Rockets can still reach the U.S. mainland in less than thirty minutes. Are we ready for that?

Are we ready to send hundreds of thousands of troops and armament to the European continent? Are we ready to reinstitute the draft for both men and women? Are we ready to …?

I don’t like Hot!

[i] SWIFT is the Society of Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications located in Belgium.

[ii] Ukraine’s vast resources include large amounts of uranium and other minerals. Today 42.6% of Ukrainian exports go to the E.U.

[iii] NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) consists of 30 member states, most of Western Europe and  Canada, and the U.S. 

 It was meant to be a relaxing day: sunny, warm for the time of year, blue sky, nothing on the schedule. Then I read the morning readings: online newspapers, favored blogs, unfavorable musings just to “keep the enemy closer.”[i] What could go wrong?

I read about a former president’s Texas rally, where he called his base of supporters to march in the streets if prosecutors across the country tried to take him to court for felony crimes, including trying to overthrow the government, to which he admits involvement. At that same rally, he stated that he had encouraged the Vice President to alter the results of the Electoral College votes because he had the right to do that.  

Then, there was an article reporting efforts by legislators and ultra-conservatives to ban books by the hundreds from school libraries. And to add interest to the day, I read an in-depth review of a new book by Barbara Walter, How Civil Wars Start and How to Stop Them. It was not to be a relaxing day no matter the sunshine in mid-winter.

Walter is a professor at the University of California San Diego. She spent thirty years studying civil wars. She has the chops to help us understand the phenomena. Her research spans the globe’s uprisings over the centuries. She concludes that there are three early indicators of potential civil wars.[ii]

The first is when a country begins to trend away from democracy or moves away from autocracy. The Polity Index developed by the Political Instability Task Force measures those movements using a +10 to -10 scale. They place the U.S. smack dab in the middle with other countries defined as anocracies, neither democracies nor autocracies. We can argue about our place on the scale,[iii] but data, developed over several decades, shows us moving further away from a true democracy than more of us think we are.[iv] Anocracies are most vulnerable to civil uprisings.

The second indicator is factionalism, defined as when a political party is based on ethnicity, religion, or race instead of ideology. This is the point where politics goes from being about the good of the country and more toward the interest of their members and their group.[v]

The third indicator is when a dominant group senses a loss of status reversal. On a Washington Post Live broadcast with Jonathan Capehart, Walter said that a large segment of Americans is experiencing status issues. She says, interestingly, that it isn’t Republicans vs. Democrats or whites vs. blacks so much as it is whites vs. brown people and Christians vs. Muslims and Nones.

If Walter is correct, we should prepare for more insurrections, for more street fighting. The “Troubles” in Ireland[vi] might be the model rather than Gray and Blue armies marching toward the capitol.

Last week, speaking before a Federalist Society meeting in Florida, the former Vice President stated the issue saying, “I had no right to overturn the election … The truth is there’s more at stake than our party or our political fortunes. If we lose faith in the Constitution, we won’t just lose elections – we’ll lose our country.”

Mike Detmer, a candidate for the Michigan Senate told his followers that they needed to show up armed to ensure that they can observe vote counting in the next election.[vii] He went on to explain that the Second Amendment is there to let the government know that the people are armed and ready to “lock and load.”

Thirty-four states have bills before them designed to make it more difficult for people to vote. Most will pass into law, including possibly a bill or two that allows the legislature to overturn the results of elections; although that was a bridge too far for the Speaker of the Arizona House who ensured the bill would not see the light of day.

Last week the National Republican Committee censured two sitting members of the House because they are willing to serve on the committee investigating the January 6, 2021 insurrection. The RNC described the assault on the Capitol as “persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.” Generally, ordinary citizens visiting the Capitol don’t bring war-grade guns while dressed as trained militia.

Then, I read a news article about the ban-the-books movement that engrosses the nation, often promoted as moms and dads seeking input into what kind of books are in the school library. A political candidate in Texas asked the state school board to review over 850 books that he and his supporters find objectionable.[viii]

The books on the list include classics used in grade schools and high schools for years. MAUS, a graphic novel about the Holocaust is very popular for banning because it has one drawing of a semi-naked woman in a bathtub, never mind that the book won a Pulitzer Prize.  Within weeks of its banning in a school district in Tennessee, it rose to #1 on the Amazon best-seller list.

If you want a teenager to read a book, ban it!

So, what is the point?

The U.S. is in a period of severe flux to be sure. Iron-clad truths are questioned, long-established institutions tossed about, and millions are seemingly willing to accept political power struggles as the new norm. All of these are moves away from democracy. They are power plays, always in the name of preserving our way of life. Is it serious? Yes! Will we outlive it? I think we can but who knows? We can if the majority of people erect a firewall to prevent armed insurrections, tearing institutions asunder, and call for renewed adherence to traditional approaches to governance. At some point, someone has to say, “Enough is enough.”

For the republic to survive, political parties must focus on ideology and programs that move us toward a more perfect union. We must come to grips with the idea that this isn’t our grandparent’s country. It is a younger nation with younger ideas looking for younger leaders. This cohort wants the people to rule, not some party. We need to accept the migration to urban areas where high-skill jobs await. 

We must remember what happened in other countries when the party and the party leader became more important than the free exercise of democracy. Where shall we start – Hong Kong, China, Russia, the USSR, Sudan, Ethiopia, Congo, Eritrea, Rwanda, Argentina, Chile, Uganda, Myanmar, etc? It always started with a small group discontent with changing power cells, loss of influence, or unhappiness with immigrants and the economic system.

 

In our current state of affairs, we have a political party hell-bent on making it difficult for people to vote. The most popular talking heads on cable TV continually foment distrust of opponents and transform public health precautions into political actions that keep the pandemic going. It’s the Proud Boys spewing white nationalism and anti-Semitism, then being described as “good people” by our national leader. It's a political party's strategy to create distrust of the electoral process. Book banning and book burning limits education rather than encourage it.

Each action is one small step in our national journey away from democratic ideals.  

The point is we have always criticized other countries for these same misbehaviors. Are we no longer any better than them?

Are we no longer the shining city on the hill casting a bright beacon for democracy?

Are we no longer us?

 

 

 

 

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[i]The Prince, Nicole Machiavelli, “keep your friends close and your enemies closer,” “One who deceives will always find those who allow themselves to be deceived.”

[ii] New York Times, 01/18/2022, How Civil Wars Start and How to Stop Them, Barbara F. Walter, PhD

[iii] A group sponsored by the CIA originally maintained the Polity Index. Many political scientists question its approach but generally use it as a reference to track political movement in a country, trends if not absolute progress.

[iv] We can argue that we are a republic, not a democracy, but that isn’t the point.

[v] NYT ibid

[vi] The Troubles lasted from 1960-to 1998. It began when Catholics demanded equal treatment from the Protestant ruling party, and it was a fight to free the country from England. 3,500 people died because of the conflict which included street fighting and assignations on a regular basis.

[vii] Detroit News, January 31, 2022

[viii] Matt Krause, a member of the Texas Legislature, who is running for Attorney General sent a letter to all school districts in the state asking them if they have any of the 850 books in their school libraries or in classrooms because the books might make students “feel discomfort, guilt, anguish … because of race or sex.”

Counting Votes!

 Conundrums present themselves when you least want them. The unexpected ones are the worst. Even worse are those whose answers are an enigma. It is frustrating to hear arguments against something when there shouldn’t be arguments against it.

Last week we saw Exhibit One of this thinking when the U.S. Senate voted against a bill to halt the destruction of voting rights that is sweeping the country. Free and fair elections are no longer the hallmark of the “greatest democracy on Earth.” Senators actually debated the idea and decided that we don’t need them anymore.

In States across the country, state legislatures are enacting laws to dampen the ability of citizens to cast their votes in an easy and orderly fashion. The argument goes something like this: the 2020 presidential election was stolen from the rightful winner for reasons unsupported by facts. In many states the “powers that be” adjusted voting practices to accommodate the vagaries of the COVID pandemic. Voting by mail was encouraged, early voting was encouraged, and ballot drop boxes were added to make voting easier. Even before voting began there was a drumbeat from the White House that voting by mail was a way to steal the election and that the only way the President could lose was if the voting system was rigged.

Some states counted their ballots as many as three times. State legislatures appointed partisan investigators (Cyber Ninja was one) to recount the ballots, to ensure that the voting machines were operating properly and that no foreign government was interfering with the voting process.

No voter fraud was identified, the ballot counting had been accurate, the machines operated properly, and foreign governments didn’t interfere with the elections. So, state legislatures are passing bills to ensure that what never happened never happens again. In addition, some states are enacting laws that let the legislature change the election results if they have the slightest inkling that there was a “steal.”

The belief in a stolen election ignited the fuse that rocketed people up the stairs of our temple of democracy on January 6, 2021. The percentage of Republicans who believe that the election was stolen is higher today than a year ago, 70%. The “Big Lie” has traction.

“That in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility: because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily, and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie … It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have  the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.”[i]

There was some fraud after the election, however. In five states people posing as Electors signed nearly identical certificates of election, naming Trump and Pence as the winners in their states and sent them to the national archives, insisting that they be counted by the Congress. Some senators even objected to counting the real certificates. The Vice President had to change the usual words of acceptance to ensure that the real certificates were counted.

Democracy, unlike other forms of government, relies on people believing in the concept and supporting the institutions that bind us. The concept of fair elections was a given, we took it for granted that it would always be there, that it is in our DNA. Maybe not so much anymore.

A wide divide between political parties is a risk to our way of life. When average citizens express a strong belief that the voting system is corrupt, we are on the verge of serious disunity and even breakup. There are a number of actions in the political arena that we can disagree about, some serious and some, well, just political. The one thing that bound us for more than two centuries was our belief that we could vote and that our vote would be counted and that would determine the winners and losers.

The idea of rigged elections is now a major strategy for creating doubt about the election process. In a mid-January special election in the Palm Beach, FL district, Ms. Cherfilus-McCormick, a Democrat, won 78% of the votes. The Republican candidate refused to concede because the vote may have been tainted.

Voting should be an easy four-step process: registration, voting, counting the votes and declaring a winner. Each of those steps should be easy steps. In our state, when a teenager applies for a driver's license they are automatically registered to vote when they turn 18 years old. When there is an election, each registered voter receives a ballot in the mail. When they have voted, they mail it back or drop it off at secure locations. On Election Day the votes are counted, the winners jubilate and the losers congratulate. Done.

Anything more complicated than that is an infringement on the democratic process.

 

 

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[i] Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf, 1925

So I Write!

Joan Didion died last week. The literary world mourned. Print media poured gallons of ink into obituaries. New critiques of her work sprouted in all the usual places and some not so usual. This will go on for a few more weeks. There was praise for the quality of her writing, for her sentence structure, and for her ability to capture a moment with words, without even one on-the-other-hand. What she saw formed a prescient vision of what would follow. A Sacramento native is among the pantheon of literary giants who saw the nation’s movement from one period to the next and then to another. She recorded it in brilliant essays and deep-thought novels.

Didion published River Run in 1963. I was well out of college by then and on to other things. I’ve read several of her essays. Her skill with the English language is notable; it isn’t an easy one to master. Hemingway told us in A Movable Feast that if he could write one good sentence, the rest would follow. He did it well. Didion said that she liked Hemingway’s writing, his sentence structure. She was as good.

In Why I Write she said, “I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means.” She noted that writing was, “Imposing oneself upon other people, of saying listen to me, see it my way, change your mind … there is no getting around the fact that setting words on paper is the tactic of a secret bully.”

Sometimes, writing something out is the only way to explain what you are seeing. Oral is easy; just say whatever comes out of your head. But that seldom has the power of a well-constructed sentence, written and rewritten. Churchill could do it but generally didn’t. He said he could talk for an hour with no preparation, but if he was limited to only a few minutes he might need a week to prepare.

Toni Morrison once told her neighbor, according to the neighbor, “If there is a book you want to read and it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.” I find that that’s true of not only stories but of daily goings-on. I started writing, commenting, about what I witnessed every day: a country seemingly in turmoil, perhaps unprepared for the throes of an extreme makeover. The only way to understand it was to write about it. I didn’t think that was being a bully, but then I’m not the reader of what I write. Then I put the thoughts into a blog, Comments, opinions about the current state of affairs.

Admittedly, Comments can edge toward strong opinions from time to time, a reflection of devilish things rippling across the land. But why not? I noted early on that it takes a certain amount of audaciousness to think that people might read my comments, and more importantly perhaps, come back a second time, and a third. I’ve been accused of enjoying a good argument. Not really, but there are times when you just have to keep talking until you convince people that you are right. The bit of the Francophile in my upbringing, sifted by way of Quebec, instills a natural penchant toward l’audace, toujours l’audace!”

At this point 138 blogs are on the site; this is number 139. The readers are mostly friends, acquaintances, and those forced to be either because they are on a mailing list. Other readers from across Europe, Canada, Australia, and Asia join a U.S. majority. Many of them send me their comments when they agree or disagree with my comments. They range from jovial “I wish I had said that” to volumes of curated articles designed to keep me reading until I change my mind. I seldom do.

The feedback mirrors the diversity of the country. Folks who went to grade school together sit at either end of the political spectrum. The young express different ambitions for the country than their elders. People who live in different regions see immigration through different lenses, depending on their experiences. It would be a boring world if we all thought the same about every issue, wouldn’t it?

There is no doubt that the nation and its people are in a serious age of disruption. What it means to be an American is morphing. In the name of democracy, state legislatures are limiting people’s right to vote, a unique oxymoron. Millions of people are ready to take up arms against …What exactly?                                            

I’m trying to figure out what I’m looking at, what I’m seeing, and what it means.

So, I write.

Roe v. Supremes

Abortion was front and center before the Supreme Court a couple of weeks ago: Dobbs v. Jackson Woman’s Health Organization. The case under consideration was a Mississippi law that bans abortions after the fifteenth week of pregnancy. The state legislature wrote it specifically in the hope that the Supreme Court would overturn Roe v. Wade.

Dobbs v. Jackson may not have been the most important issue on the December 1, 2021 docket. Democracy may have been on trial!

One side of the argument believes that life begins at conception and therefore abortion is murder. The other side believes a woman should have the right to terminate a pregnancy with few if any exceptions. Roe v. Wade 1973 upheld a woman’s right to an abortion. So much for context.  

One never knows what the Court will rule until it does, but based on the oral arguments, many believe Roe will be overturned. U.S. law relies heavily on stare decisis, (to stand by things decided). Lower courts rely on Supreme Court decisions for their rulings. It explains why SCOTUS rarely overturns its previous rulings. It has done so only 300 times in its history.  Few of those changed decisions changed the country, but there were some big ones!

We learned about those rulings in high-school history or civics classes; Plessy v. Ferguson 1896, and Brown v. Board of Education 1954 come to mind. How is Roe different?

Remember Marbury v. Madison 1803, when the Court said, “It is explicitly the province and duty of the Judicial Department to say what the law is,” so it was, and so it has been for over 200 years. The Supreme Court has no army to marshal adherence to its decisions or a police force to enforce its rulings. All it has is the respect of the people for the institution, faith in the Constitution, and an insistence on being a nation of laws.  If the populous believes the court is making unfair decisions, or that it is making political-based decisions, it loses its power.

 Change may be in the air.

For several decades some people played a long-game strategy to overthrow Roe. To do that they relentlessly convinced voters to elect them to state legislatures, to governorships, and to Congress. If they got enough control over government ruling bodies, they could elect a president who supported their efforts. It wasn’t hard to do. The pro-choice population didn’t see it coming until it was too late or they didn’t believe that anyone would seriously attack a ruling in effect for over fifty years.                 

Presidential candidate Trump vowed to appoint judges who were loyal to him and who would overturn Roe. In one term, fate allowed him to appoint three justices who were admittedly anti-Roe. Trump referred to them as “his” judges. And that is a problem, irrespective of which political party claims that “his” judges will rule for them.

Justices traditionally try to position themselves as non-political. The truth is that presidents nominate justices who are consistent with their political party’s positions and usually avowed party loyalists. Nominees pledge to congressional committees, however, that they can’t talk about cases that might come before them and they won’t commit to how they might vote in any case, except that they always say that stare decisis will be their north star; they won’t overturn precedent. Once seated on bench most adhere to that oath. The oral arguments in Dobbs, however, suggest that a fifty-year ruling will be thrown out the window.

 “Will this institution survive the stench that this creates in the public perception that the Constitution and its reading are just political acts?”[i]

Justice Sotomayor identified the issue from the bench; pundits sounded the alarm across the political divides. Another institution that holds the nation together, that promises us a democracy, could be relegated to the trash heap of unbridled partisanship. Without at least the perception of non-partisanship, will the justices simply be mouthpieces for whichever party nominated them?  Will the court simply resemble the political systems of Peron, Pinochet, Amin, Stalin, or Honecker? In each case, “his” courts all ruled in favor of whatever the dictator wanted. We can’t afford the loss of this institution.

The Harvard University Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics survey of young adults released a couple of weeks ago, found that 52% of 18-30-year-olds already believe our democracy is in trouble or has failed. Seventy percent of Republican young adults believe the democracy has failed. Rather frightening is that nearly 50% of young adults seriously believe that there is a greater than 50% chance of a second civil war in their lifetime. Survey participants who lived in rural areas were more likely to feel that democracy is failing. Depending on which poll you read, between 50-64% of this age group opposes overturning Roe.

Civil rights cases argued before the Court always deal with increasing people’s rights, not taking them away. If Roe is overturned it will send shock waves through the nation. If one doesn’t think that democracy is working, if they disagree with government programs and rulings, taking up arms doesn’t seem that farfetched.

They tried it on January 6, 2021.

If the Supreme Court uses Dobbs v. Jackson to overturn Roe, rescinding an established civil-right of long-standing, it might well determine if we will be a democracy ten years from now.  

 

 

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[i] Justice Sotomayor’s comment toward the end of oral arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson, December 1, 2021