Thursday, February 29, 2024

OUR SUPREME COURT - NOT FOR THE PEOPLE

By Ruth A. Sheets

On February 8, 2024, the Supreme Court heard the case that challenged Colorado’s right to keep Trump off the primary ballot of the state due to his being an insurrectionist.  I was pretty sure the SC would force Colorado to put Trump back on the ballot but was not sure exactly how it would be done. 

I knew the Colorado case was lost for sure when Justice Brown shared a reading of aspects of history related, she said, to the 14th amendment.  I didn’t get much from her argument, but since it sounded very lawyeresque, and Justice Kagan joined in opposing Colorado, also on some grounds I didn’t understand fully, it was clear Colorado had lost, even though no decision has been handed down yet.    When even the “liberal” justices took up the “conservative” cause,” there was no hope that Colorado, a state that had the right according to the Constitution to keep insurrectionists and those who aid and comfort insurrectionists off the ballot would be able to do it.

So, let’s see, states can gerrymander to their heart’s content, can make up all kinds of voter suppression laws despite the Constitution’s stated right of every citizen of this country age 18 and older has the right to vote, can decide that state legislatures can control women’s bodily autonomy, they can ban books and threaten to jail women for miscarriages or leaving their state for medical assistance, but can’t keep an insurrectionist off the ballot.  Uh-huh! 

Unfortunately, it seems our current Supreme Court (mostly the conservatives) has proven itself over and over that it likes the Constitution only when it agrees with their own beliefs, often religious ones even though most of our founders believed in a clear separation of church and state.  The “conservatives” claim to be "originalists," trying to pretend they know what the founders were thinking if they thought about the issue at all, then rejecting any of those supposed thoughts that don't agree with them.  On rare occasions, when little is at stake, they might rule in a way that helps someone other than themselves and their donors, like same-sex marriage, but not if it is a major decision with critical consequences for this nation.   

  • - They gave the presidency in 2000 to W. Bush who had not won the popular vote or the Florida vote, had the ballots been permitted by the court to be recounted. 
  • - They decided corporations are persons but not that they should be actually treated as persons, except when it comes to money, claiming those corporate "persons" should be able to donate as much money as they want to PACs and political campaigns and no one actually had to know to whom and how much, while actual citizens can't do that (Citizens United). 
  • - They gutted the Voting Rights Act even though it was confirming the rights of Black Americans to vote (15th amendment), wrongly declaring racism and its discrimination were a thing of the past (Shelby). 
  • - The Dobbs decision lied that abortion was not legal at the time of the founding so it was up to the states to decide a woman's fate on the grounds that a 17th century witch hunter knew anything about women or abortion.  The 14th Amendment gives everyone privacy, but to the SC conservatives and their state pseudo-christian supporters, not women. 
  • - Religious groups can discriminate against anyone they don’t like or who does not share their world view even when the case brought is a fiction (the case involving wedding websites).

Trump is an insurrectionist and even if he was not physically present at the Capitol on January 6th, he was the architect of the violence and would have been happier had there been more deaths, particularly that of Mike Pence.  Had any other American plotted or incited such an event, he/she would have been in jail for decades if not life.  Somehow the con artist, created TV star continues his Teflon status where everything just slides off him. 

Trump was recently declared by the DC Court to have no blanket immunity as president, so he and his “lawyers” has sent that decision to the Supreme Court.  The Court will be faced with the dilemma that if they give their Donnie immunity, Biden would have it too and could then legally arrest Trump for his significant crimes and hold him in jail without bail.  What one president is allowed to do the others may too, or that’s the way it should be if all things were equal.  Unfortunately nothing related to Trump is equal.

Trump should be disallowed from the ballots in every state, but our SC just can't manage that for fear of the Trump supporters that the Court has permitted to be armed and dangerous.  The Supreme Court justices might worry about violence done by Trumpers and Trumpettes, but they cared nothing for the suffering women would face if they passed off abortion rights to states.  Yep, the 6 will in this case, care what their donors and Trump supporters think.  After all, they are mostly white and a bunch of them have guns.  Those folks have regularly nearly with impunity, threatened anyone who dares to  publicly criticize their Don, their deity. 

The SC seems to be working hard to undermine our democracy on behalf of rich white “Christian” men and corporations, and I don't see any change in its direction.  Their idea of making America great again seems to be moving backward toward the 19th century courts that nearly exclusively gave rights to rich white men over everyone else. Well, it is important that we make it clear that those days are gone and our diverse society demands something different. 

It is not clear why our SC might stand with a former president whose behavior is regularly on the edge of illegal, crossing over now and then.  It is too bad so many people in our nation choose not to see that in reality, Trump is a whiney child-man who is an insurrectionist, and who, along with his congressional troop of insurrectionists, should not be permitted to hold any office ever again.  Our SC is expected to find a twisted way to force states to let their Donnie and the other insurrectionists stay on ballots and hold office if elected.  That shows us all that for our Supreme Court, following our Constitution is conditional, making them not very trustworthy.  To keep future and current presidents from becoming criminals, the SC may deny Trump immunity or just revert the case to the lower court.  They may take a long time to do it though to give their Donnie more time on the campaign trail.  

The SC needs to be reformed.  Term limits for the justices, a limit on the number of justices a president can appoint per term, expanding the SC to 13 or more members, a code of ethics that has real consequences, and limiting the scope of their rulings would be a good start.  Congress can according to the Constitution do all of those things.  The question, will they?  Not with the current make-up.  

Therefore, if we want a Supreme Court that is for the people and that will protect and defend our democracy, we had all better vote and get everyone we know to the polls or we will lose many more of our rights, possibly our democracy too.  This is no longer a hypothetical.   

 

Monday, February 26, 2024

WHAT ARE WE DOING?

By Ruth A. Sheets

Yesterday afternoon, a news brief came on the radio.  The voice of Donald Trump blurted out giving his assessment of NATO and a made-up conversation between (I am guessing) himself and a NATO member about paying their dues.  It was not exactly clear what he was suggesting, but it sounded as though if they don’t pay up, they deserve whatever they get from Russia or whomever and we won’t help.  It was a clear threat, but also a promise to his cult that he was still their guy, their playground bully who if allowed back in power, he would try to force everyone to accommodate his/their prejudices.  Of course, he focused on money, ironic considering how much he ignores paying for things.

I am currently reading a book entitled Becoming Mamma-san by Mary Matsuda Gruenewald.  The author was interned along with other Japanese and Japanese-Americans during World War II. 

These two things suddenly came together for me when Ms. Gruenewald talked about the “loyalty oath” all interned prisoners had to sign.  After depriving these persons of their homes, their livelihoods, their dignity, and their freedom, the United States Government was demanding a loyalty that could put their lives further at risk, requiring young men to go into the army and young women to serve in a women’s service branch.  If they refused to agree, the “no-nos, they were dumped into concentration camp, Tule Lake in California, a remote desert hell, and were considered pariahs by the people of this nation as well as by other interned Japanese people. 

The question that came to me was “what are we doing!  We the People seem to easily forget where we have been and we let people whose humanity is lacking, have power they should never have, then we believe that what they say should matter.  We buy into their “insanity” and pretend the damage done by them isn’t something we can do anything about. 

In one case above, with absolutely no evidence, people of Japanese descent were forced into concentration camps behind barbed wire and towers manned by soldiers with machine guns.  In the other case, with tremendous amounts of evidence that he is a serial liar, a tax cheat, and an insurrectionist who was legally voted out of office is still not behind barbed wire and is trying to get back into office by whatever means necessary.  The difference is pretty obvious it seems to me, no evidence is necessary if it is a group of people different from the majority and no matter how much evidence is presented, a rich white man can actually be disloyal to our nation and not only get away with it, but plans to do it again and take revenge, something the Japanese internees didn’t do, and they had cause where Trump has none.

After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, numerous investigations were conducted finding there was essentially no evidence of espionage by Japanese people in America.  Major Karl Bendetsen and Lieutenant General John L. DeWitt, two officers of the Western Defense Command ignored the FBI and other reports of no evidence and pumped out conspiracy theories that “the fact that nothing has happened so far is more or less . . . ominous.”  DeWitt claimed this indicated there was control being exercised within the Japanese community that would shortly fail and that control ended, the sabotage would be massive.  Gov. Earl Warren of California and President Franklin Roosevelt, again with no evidence, agreed, both responding to their own biases against Japanese people.  Roosevelt signed order 9066 which forced West Coast people of Japanese descent into concentration camps in the most inhospitable places they could find in this country.

Two of the men who perpetrated the crimes against the Japanese community have names few remember but two, Franklin Roosevelt and Earl Warren, are seen as heroes.  The conspiracy theories that Karl Bendetsen and John DeWitt perpetrated took 40+ years to even discuss as a nation.  I suspect the conspiracy theorist in chief of today, Donald Trump knows little or nothing about it and could not possibly care less.

How do conspiracy theories work?  They start with someone who has a bit of recognition, sometimes respect.  The person does not like reality because it does not fit with their biases about a specific person, group, event, or process.  The conspiracy theorist makes up stories about something that has happened and distorts it enough to make the change harmful to the target but still somewhat believable to those receiving the “message.”  The theorist has sufficient prestige to “credibly” pass on information only they know to individuals and groups who also want that special knowledge.  We do have free speech in this country, a critical right.  It permitted two military officers to lie about Japanese people living on the West Coast and for Governor Warren and President Roosevelt to lie to the American people, through the media, enhancing and feeding the public’s fear of Japan and people of color in general.  Trump passed to his cult the idea that the election was stolen from him encouraging them to believe a lie which was reinforced by media platforms and spokesmen tied through loyalty to Trump.  It is one thing when a regular citizen lies to friends and family but something quite different when a prominent person lies or incites hatred of or violence toward others. 

The ones who forced Japanese people into concentration camps were wrong but never held accountable for what they had done.  I believe all were dead by the time President Reagan finally stood up to acknowledge what had been done to Japanese people here in the United States.  We as a nation have not fully come to terms with what was done to somewhere around 120,000 men, women, and children.

Donald Trump has used wealth to promote him to a status where he can make statements that are lies or threats and people will not only listen, but also act on them.  His actions could have brought down our democracy and still could if We the People don’t stand up to him.  He has targeted NATO before, but things are a bit different now that Republicans are following Trump’s move toward favoring Russia’s Putin over our actual Ally Ukraine.  That seems to me as having some similarity to an American favoring Japan or Germany during WWII.  Many Americans did favor Hitler’s Germany over our democracy.  Had the Japanese not attacked Pearl Harbor and the US entered the war, those fascist Americans could have succeeded in seriously damaging our democracy, if not destroying it.  One wonders how Trump’s and Tucker Carlson’s fondness for Putin will impact our current situation.  What conspiracies are they planting among their cult? 

We are going to need a lot of help to counter the anti-democratic moves by Trump and his Republican Party.  It is pretty clear we will not get sufficient help from our courts.  Trump and his Senate appointed so many of his cult to the courts that they will protect  him regardless of the law (Judge Cannon and the Florida classified documents case).  The Supreme Court showed us on Thursday, Feb. 8th that they will force every state to have Trump on their ballots despite our Constitution because a Republican insurrectionist with enough influence can do pretty much whatever he wants and the SC will back him or at least not get in his way.  They did the same During WWII when Japanese-Americans brought a case against Japanese internment.  The Supreme Court declared it was legal, though without evidence that it should ever have happened.  They ended up protecting Roosevelt’s signature instead of doing the right thing for the incarcerated innocents. 

So, my question, what are we doing?  Why are we not protesting loudly in large numbers?  Why are we not demanding our media call lies what they are?  Why are “journalists” not challenging statements made by Trumpers and Trumpettes that are just plain wrong, and doing it on air?  When someone says he would prefer fascism to democracy, the interviewer needs to ask, WHY!  Do you have any idea what fascism is, what it would mean for you? 

The Democratic Party seems to be spending more effort on begging for money than actually countering the Trump conspiracy theory and lying presentations.  Republicans have decided that racism, misogyny, xenophobia, homo/transphobia, and fascism are their modus operandi and along with their lies and misinformation, are what they will use to get power to do whatever.  They are not clear on exactly what, but they do have a plan for 2025 which is appalling.  In any case, a whole lot of people will suffer if they get their way.  The rising fascists somehow think it won’t be them, rich, white, straight men.  It will be those people.  What are we doing?  Why are we listening to a man every single day who respects no one, lies incessantly, threatens his fellow citizens and the nations of the world, who is losing his ability to think clearly while being led along by people who are as power-hungry and lacking in morality as he is?  Do we really want that crew back in power?  It seems our media thinks so.  Trump is covered in our media broadcasts more than our president and vice president who are competent and working hard on behalf of this nation.  Trump is working for no one but himself.  What are we doing?

Saturday, February 24, 2024

PERFECTING THE WHINE

By Ruth A. Sheets

 For some reason I have not yet figured out, this past few weeks,  I have felt myself whining frequently.  I don’t have these “spells” often, but when I do, it can be pretty pathetic.  In my head or aloud (since I live alone), I whined that the weather is not great, I keep knocking things over, I can’t stand what is on TV or the radio, or people on the threads I read online are being particularly mean to each other (OK, they were being mean, but I was whining about it instead of ignoring them as I usually do.  Then, I was even whining that the books I had chosen to read were terrible, and “why couldn’t I pick something good for a change.”  I am hoping this whining is seasonal since winter is my least favorite season for all the obvious reasons, or at least obvious to those of us who don’t like winter. 

 I stopped myself this morning from a whine that was coming on and asked, so what is a whine anyway and why is it so annoying when it happens.  I came up with the thought that a whine is a complaint about something we want to draw attention to, and even if it is unspoken, we want someone else to do something about it even though we know most of the time that either what we are complaining about is not a real problem, even a falsehood, or is frustration with something we may or may not be able to or just shouldn’t address.  It also involves a particular tone especially when the whine is spoken.

 Toddlers and kids just slightly older are the best whiners I know.  Parents, aunts, uncles, siblings, teachers, and others who work with kids know the exact tone.  It often begins with “why can’t I, you never let me, how come she can and I can’t, I don’t wanna go to bed, you made me do it, nobody cares about me, I want.  Parents and teachers who have learned how to manage the whine can limit it significantly.  Those who haven’t, teach children that the whine is how to get or do what they want or to make other people feel bad or scared, then do what the whiner wants.

 If whining stayed just with children, things in this world would be better.  Unfortunately, a bunch of adults have continued the practice and use it to promote sympathy from those tuned into whining and the need to oblige or comfort the whiner. 

 Adults who have been whining since childhood get really good at it.  They can add their greater knowledge of the world and experience to the whine, even change their tone of voice sufficiently to make their words sound almost unwhiney.  I have noted with my whines that they mostly occur when I am tired or frustrated, just like a toddler’s.  I do add a sigh or two trying to disguise the whine as just normal frustration or anger when it’s a whine.

 Lately, some politicians whine nearly incessantly, almost a genre of speech-making.  The Republican Party and conservatives in general have, if not invented the adult whine, they have mastered it.  Their speeches whine that We the People (not they, of course) have caused whatever is the problem of the day:  immigration on our southern border, Critical Race Theory to be taught to sensitive white kids, letting trans kids use bathrooms or play in school sports, denying people jobs by phasing out coal mining, women killing babies, deficit that is too high because of all the money we give those lazy poor people (notice how they start to insert insults into their whines), those people are taking down statues of our heroes, those judges are persecuting me, I should be able to do whatever I want when I’m president, and so much more.

 On Tuesday, I heard a woman whining that the independents in Nevada can’t vote in the state’s primary and that means no one knows who “we” support in the 2024 election.  (Can’t you just hear the whine?)  I wanted to yell (but didn’t this time), “the Nevada primary is not going to matter much for two reasons:  state size, and a Republican chaotic setup with a primary and a caucus.  Make your state legislature fix that.”  I wondered, was the whine supposed to elicit sympathy or just to release some of the anger about the insanity of the situation.  In either case, she was whining to the wrong audience.

 Donald Trump is a master whiner.  I suspect he learned how to use the technique when a toddler.  He has kept it sharpened along with the toddler tantrums that often follow a whine not responded to as the whiner intends.  I understand Trump’s most violent tantrums are not in public (although his tantrum tweets are out there), but his public tantrums are often threats that if he gets power again, he could act on them (that is if he remembers).  If Trump’s memory isn’t there, his handlers will tell him, but also make up other things Trump can whine about and throw appropriate tantrums for just the right situations.  Then, Trump can blame his “opponents” or even his handlers and whine that what he does to them is their fault.  (That’s the adult addition. 

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson is learning quickly how to whine in the Republican style.  He may have thought of the whines before, but until he got the job he now has, he didn’t have to do the whining in public, just running things from backstage.  Now he does.  He is improving a bit.  His twist, he whines that something will not happen (bills DOA in the House from the Senate or that the impeachment of whoever he wants to target will go on).  He does not have to explain because the explanations, if honest would prove that he is a puppet of Trump and would have to acknowledge it.  I am awaiting the  whine “he made me do it!  They would have kicked me out of office if I hadn’t.”  It’s coming, possibly if he is ever under oath.  His current oath is just a formality for him.  Protecting and defending our Constitution is just a suggestion.  Were anyone to challenge him or Mitch McConnell, or Marjorie Greene, or the rest of the “Freedom Caucus,” if their bad behavior ever came under scrutiny, they would whine that they are being persecuted by those who can’t see the truth, or just how patriotic they are, or something equally ridiculous.  Their tantrums must be moving to some, at least or they wouldn’t continue.   

I can’t help but ponder what it is about toddlerhood that makes grown men and women want to cling to it.  Maybe it’s the ability to try to get people to do what you want without explanations.  It is putting on a show.  A whining jag can go on for more than an hour for Donald Trump.  I am guessing Ron DeSantis could whine for close to that long too.  Candidates like Ramaswamy, when pumping up some sludge that sounds a bit like economics, and Robert Kennedy, Jr. when pushing his ridiculous conspiracy theories whine rather unconvincingly.  I guess their message and whines aren’t good enough to capture the hearts of more than their closest friends.  Nikki Haley has not had to whine too much yet because she just keeps saying the same lines over and over as though on a loop:  “America is not a racist country,” we need change, Trump/Biden is too old.”

Maybe the reason Trump has been ahead in the polls is that Biden doesn’t whine and most Americans want to hear childish whining from their president, especially if it is very loud.  Is it possible that whining arouses our parental instincts and we want to either make it stop or  give comfort?  If that is what happens, maybe the correct response is what good parents and teachers do, give the whiner a gentle time out to help him calm down and restate what he is saying, even give him the opportunity for a nap with no tech.  People who whine too much are too wrapped up in their whining to do anything useful or helpful.  Now, if only We the People could successfully parent Trump and his puppets.  The Supreme Court could help with that process, but they are too involved with doing what their donors want. (Their employers are the American people, but we have learned they get more from the rich folks than We the People are able to pay)  Listening to the Supreme Court today, it is clear they are desperate to stop Colorado from removing Trump from their ballot, a right Colorado should have.  They are trying to use all kinds of ridiculous potential situations as though insurrection is not involved in this case, and states will just be about removing people from their ballots for any old reason.  It is sad, but the outcome is already known.  No quality parenting here.  

So, whining will continue among our politicians.  It has proven very successful lately.  Fox “News” fills its evenings with pundits who whine at least as well as the conservative politicians.  It stirs their viewer pot and will keep our nation in turmoil while global warming grows more and more serious and more and more people suffer.  Let’s face it, no whiner will be able to help us solve this one.  The people who care about this impending problem don’t whine very well.  The rich fossil fuelers are far better at it, nearly perfect.  Maybe it is going to have to be up to us to stop responding positively to the adult whining.  Now, how do we set up a plan . . .