Sunday, June 18, 2023
In bed at 10:40 after watching 2 old episodes of Veep, up at 6:15. Let Lilly out & listened to the morning songs of cardinal, wren, robin, mourning dove, chickadee, house finch, cowbird, and chimney swift. 58℉, sunny morning to be followed by a cloudy day, high of 70℉, the wind is SE at 5 mph, 2 to 10 mph today and gusts up to 16 mph. The sun rose at 5:11 and will set at 8:34, 15+23.
Am I really just too paranoid, pessimistic, and cynical or is the country truly in danger of becoming a Fascist, corporate, oligarchic plutocracy? Yesterday's WaPo carried a piece by Dan Balz, Ann E. Marimow, and Perry Stein entitled Trump’s indictment plus candidacy could endanger democracy and the Rule of Law.
Not since the Vietnam War in the 1960s or perhaps the mid-19th century before the Civil War has the country’s governing structure faced such disunity and peril, given the unprecedented nature of a federal criminal indictment of a former president compounded by the fact that Trump has been charged by the Justice Department in the administration of the Democrat who defeated him in 2020 and who is his likeliest general election opponent in 2024, if Trump is nominated again by the Republican Party.
Scholars, legal experts and political strategists agree that what lies ahead is ugly and unpredictable. Many fear that the 2024 election will not overcome the distrust of many Americans in their government and its pillars, almost no matter the outcome. “A constitutional democracy stands or falls with the effectiveness and trustworthiness of the systems through which laws are created and enforced,” said William Galston of the Brookings Institution. “If you have fundamental doubts raised about those institutions, then constitutional democracy as a whole is in trouble.”
Attacks on the legitimacy of government institutions are most virulent on the political right, led by Trump. But many on the left also have doubts, especially about a Supreme Court that now has a solid conservative majority and whose rulings in cases including Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which ended the constitutional right to abortion, have inflamed the political debate.
These are likely to be the conditions throughout the coming election year. By any measure, this represents a gloomy prospect for restoring a thriving democracy.
“At the level of national politics and presidential politics, things do feel quite fragile, and I don’t have much reason to think we’re about to turn the corner in 2024,” said Archon Fung, a professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government who studies issues of democracy. . . . A conviction and a decisive defeat at the ballot box might force Trump from the political scene and cause the Republican Party to move in a different direction, although in an era of close elections, the prospect of 2024 producing a blowout in either direction remains doubtful — and even that would not necessarily cleanse the system. “The country functioned after the Civil War,” Galston added, “but it was a long time before the system was drained of the political poisons of the Civil War.”
Quaere whether any informed, intelligent person can really believe the the 'system' has been 'drained of the political poisons of the Civil War.'
Quaere whether we are already reliving the 1850s and on our way into our new civil war.
Quaere whether many on the Left, like me, aren't disgusted by the anti-democratic constitutional structure of our government that vests seemingly almost permanent power in a non-urban, less educated, anti-democratic White minority.
I agree with Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and George Will? !?!? I am troubled by the 7-2 decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in the case upholding the Indian Child Welfare Act. It strikes me as validating a form of racism. Can it be that I am in league with three guys who usually give me the willies? George Will in this morning's WaPo:
The ICWA, which repellently calls children tribal “resources,” is about enhancing tribal power rather than protecting children’s welfare. It allocates group entitlements based on biology, as did Germany’s 1935 Nuremberg Laws, one of which was “The Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor.”
About the case decided Thursday: The biological mother of a Navajo child identified as A.L.M. and his sister, called Y.R.J., supported their being raised by Chad and Jennifer Brackeen, neither of them Indians, in Texas, far from the Navajo Nation. This nation, however, wanted the siblings separated, and the sister sent to another state to live either with a great-aunt or an unrelated Navajo couple.
The court, divided 7-2, chose not to strike down the ICWA. Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote: The ICWA “requires a state court to place an Indian child with an Indian caretaker … even if the child is already living with a non-Indian family and the state court thinks it in the child’s best interest to stay there.” That accurate description should have sufficed to dictate a different ruling.
Barrett writes unhelpfully that Congress has “plenary” but not “absolute” power to legislate regarding Indians. Otherwise, Congress could disregard the Constitution, including “equal protection of the laws,” concerning Indians. But the court now allows that. Could Congress forbid Indians from leaving their tribes, marrying outside the tribe, adopting non-Indian children, etc.? The seven justices might say yes. . . .
The ICWA was enacted to stop the wicked practice of forcing assimilation by removing Indian children from non-Indian families. Now it functions to yank even thriving Indian children from nurturing non-Indian families, in barbaric homage to Indian “blood.” This means that Declan Stewart and Laurynn Whiteshield and others died unremembered.
Declan was 5 when beaten to death in 2007 by his mother’s live-in boyfriend. Oklahoma, responding to his fractured skull and severe bruising between his testicles and rectum, had earlier removed him from his mother’s custody. The Cherokee Nation objected. The state, knowing the ICWA’s bias toward tribal rights, relented. Declan died of a beating a month after being returned to his mother.
Laurynn was 3 when living in foster care with a North Dakota minister, Jeanine Kersey-Russell, who tried to adopt her. The Spirit Lake Sioux tribe, invoking the ICWA, got Laurynn sent to a reservation in 2013 and the custody of her grandfather. Within six weeks she was dead, thrown down an embankment by the grandfather’s wife, who had a record of child abuse.
This was carnage from identity politics. More will come from the court’s decision allowing children to be treated like tiny trophies of tribal power
I find it hard to argue with the reasonng of Thomas, Alito, and Will. Egad.
White House Plumbers. We finished watching this series last night. The comedic acting by Woody Haeelson as Howard Hunt and Justin Thereoux as E. Gordon Liddy very good and the story is of course an interesting one, but for one who lived through the Watergate years, it was not so easy enjoying a spoof of the sandal. It did a lot of damage to the country, to the people of the country. We were living on Newberry Boulevard at the time and I remember saving Watergate newspapers in my basement office, waiting for Nixon to be impeached, convisted, and removed from office. Instead we got his resignation and then Gerry Ford's pardon.
Skype call from Sarah and Christian this morning. We had a good chat until I had to beg off for a pit stop.😩
Text from Andy who was at Road America for a big Formula One race with Peter. I told him how proud of him I am, what a great father he is.
America and the Holocaust. We watched the first episode of this Ken Burns documentary on the PBS streaming app. Although its focus is on overt anti-semitism in the U.S and broad-based indifference to the plight of European Jews seeking entry into the U.S. in the 1930s and 1840s, it's a reminder of the role racism in general has played in our history, including anti-Asian, anti-indigenous, and of course anti-Black. More generally, I suppose I should say the role that groupism, me and mine come first, plays in all our lives. How hard it is for all of us to 'welcome the stranger,' etc. Mt. 25. And throughout the Toruh " . . . . for you were strangers in the land of Egypt."
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