There are eight days until the election and Iād like to invite a friend of mine to remark upon our current Presidentās Supreme Court appointment. Iāve struggled to pen my opinion on the transformation of our courts and I believe that Dheeraj Chandās words ring crystal clear on the topic.
Thank you for joining us at ARC.
Judge Barrett has just become Justice Barrett. The American right, regardless of faction, has achieved a big victory decades in the making and something that will unify them as a coalition again, maybe not necessarily behind Mr. Trump, but definitely behind Mr. McConnell.
Bracketing aside for a minute the oligarchs who stand to benefit from an anti-regulatory judiciary, I don't think that many of my Democratic or left friends have spent much time thinking about the first person perspective behind the Republican and conservative zeal to remake the courts. It's always just "racist", "sexist", etc., which is not particularly helpful.
For the sake of argument: power has at least two manifestations, the ability to determine the staff and actions of government, or electoral power, and the ability to determine and produce culture and norms, what Gramsci called hegemonic power. These people are aware that they currently have massive electoral power, but little hegemonic power. Nobody wants to grow up to be them and nobody wants to be like them.
Anything that they get in the future will be by compromise, negotiation or generosity from the other side, whom they correctly surmise have little incentive to be generous.
And so, all the anti-democratic measures and procedural horrors become easily justifiable, as this is the only way to protect themselves, by analogy, something like stealing a gun from a store during a riot. If your choices are to steal the gun and fire on your attacker or to let him beat you death, what fool won't steal the gun?
It's already difficult to point out to these people that the kind of society that they want to protect is unjust, based on an upwards distribution of wealth by government, special privileges for Christians and white people, etc., but what we're doing by merely stigmatizing and proscribing closes those doors entirely.
I think that whatever happens next, we have to both wield power as ruthlessly as they do, to thoroughly defeat the enemy and force a surrender, because otherwise, this shit is just going to keep happening over and over. These people have to learn that they are in minority and to live with it.
I've reached the end of my sufferance for what is to be done macroscopically while remaining endlessly patient for what is to be done microscopically, one-to-one, one-to-few, or few-to-few, for persuasion.
It's time to complete The Reconstruction. Should Mr. Biden win, I hope he does it, and if not, I hope whoever's next does.
š Some Good News
These Americans Tried to Listen to One Another. A Year Later, Hereās How Theyāre Voting.They believed their differences werenāt so vast. They believed they could talk to one another. They thought compromise might even come of it.ā Read in The New York Times
DonaldāI appreciate the free publicity for Borat! I admit, I donāt find you funny either. But yet the whole world laughs at you. Iām always looking for people to play racist buffoons, and youāll need a job after Jan. 20. Letās talk!
The United States has its best opportunity in 150 years to belatedly fulfill its promise as a multiracial democracy. The Atlantic contributor Adam Sewer walks us through how we got here, and what potentially lies ahead.
In 1989 a jogger was assaulted and raped in New York's Central Park, and five young people were subsequently charged with the crime. The quintet, labeled the Central Park Five, maintained its innocence and spent years fighting the convictions, hoping to be exonerated.
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