Debatable

 

Nothing can be said about last week’s presidential debate (debacle, more like) that hasn’t already been. So I will.

Trump lied with every word, avoided questions, made weird faces and no sense. Had President Biden performed as in years past, that would have been fatal for Trump. But he didn’t and it wasn’t. I wish the “moderators” had called out Trump’s lies and diversions; more, I wish President Biden had. But they didn’t and he didn’t.

I wish President Biden had announced, a year ago, that he wouldn’t run again. He didn’t and, so far, he is. I wish Trump had been asked about Project 2025 and said how he’d implement it. He wasn’t, so he didn’t. Because it’s the blueprint for enshrining the clear threat to democracy about which Democrats have been warning since Trump promised, “I am your retribution,” not asking was journalistic dereliction. By dismantling government, protective regulations, public education, separation of church and state, minority protections and making voting harder for them, and curtailing social programs, it’s an authoritarian manifesto that serves only the wealthy.

I wish I knew who has the best chance against Trumpism’s multifaceted threats. Whether the Democrats’ nominee will be President Biden or someone else, I’ll vote for that person without reservation. So should everyone who values democracy and competent, Constitutional governance, who’d rather not live in a far-right theocracy, who thinks science and quality public education are vital to our future. Who prefers safe water, food and consumer goods, breathable air, and a livable climate.

The deba-whatever-it-was didn’t change the stakes. Instead, it confirmed that Trump should never again be within wrecking distance of the Oval Office. No matter President Joe Biden’s acuity, we know he would continue to surround himself with the kinds of experts who helped him end the pandemic, create millions of jobs, begin rebuilding infrastructure, and lots more. And we know he’d respect the law.

Based on what he’s promised, openly, and on Projectile 2025, Trump would do the opposite. First time around he chose incompetents who ended up indicted. The few competents he let slip through ended up leaving and now warn against voting for him. This time he’d replace qualified government employees with people whose only qualification is willingness to help punish the people and entities he resents.

No matter his opponent, assuring Trump’s defeat is a patriotic duty. Don’t believe me? Listen to former MAGA, current conservative Joe Walsh’s NSFW declamation. Nothing is as important. Nothing. Dead people have won elections. We could do worse.

But Trump isn’t the only threat. SCOTUS’ decision about government agencies’ regulatory authority can be summarized in Chief Justice Roberts’ own words: “... [A]gencies have no special competence in resolving statutory ambiguities. Courts do.” Unless Congress spells out every regulation and future need in precise, specific detail, he ruled, experts in government agencies can’t be allowed to define them. Only judges can. They’ll decide which chemicals are dangerous, what medications you can take, whether pollution is bad or climate change is real. Time was, conservatives eschewed that kind of judicial legislating.

Another SCOTUS judgment enshrines government corruption. A bribe, they said, is an illegal gift given before the giftee takes action. The same transaction, completed after gifters get what they want, is a permitted gratuity; a tip. “I’ll do what you want. Just don’t hand me the cash until after.” By no coincidence, Trump has promised to end taxing tips. In the presidential immunity ruling, Alito and Thomas expressed their gratitude.

With no basis in the Constitution, the Roberts Court invented rules saying anything a president does is above the law if defined as an “official act.” Compare and contrast: in my surgical practice, if I made a correct diagnosis, chose the appropriate operation, and carried it out properly, if the patient had complications it’s not, to me, anyway, malpractice. If, however, I chose the wrong operation and did it carelessly, causing harm, it is, no matter how “official.”

If Trump were to accept a “gratuity” in exchange for a pardon, or one from Putin for outing embedded agents, is he “officially” immune from prosecution? Trying to overturn a legitimate, fraud-free election? Stealing critical documents and lying about it? Yes, say John Roberts and his accomplices, arrogating to themselves the power to distinguish official from non-official acts. “Total immunity,” brayed Donald the First, regally.

Could Biden have SCOTUS’ Slaughterous Six arrested now? Guess so. But they understood that’s not who he is, so, casting their gaze upon a man who’s promised dictatorial abuse of power, they told him, “Go forth and subtract.”

The only, and likely the last chance to thwart this double-team attack on democracy is to vote for every Democratic candidate everywhere, sweep both houses of Congress, and then, enlarge the Court with four honest and ethical people.

Paraphrasing Pogo, we have met the remedy and it is us.

Saint Ronald And The Death Of Democracy

Other than Trump’s election lies, America’s most damaging, anti-democracy presidential utterance exited the face of Ronald Reagan on the occasion of his inauguration: "Government is not the solution to our problem; government IS the problem,” said he, thus igniting the incremental incineration of democracy that’s inflamed our country ever since.

But WE are the government. We choose it, we empower it, we -- when we’re dutiful -- direct and limit it. If government is the problem, therefore, the problem is us. 

JFK spoke, intimately, inspiringly, at my very small college only a month before his assassination. But one might question his inaugural admonition, “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” Because “doing for us” is what democracies are about. What we can do for our country is to put competent people in charge who are committed to good governance; rather than Trumpiloids, committed to big donors, big lies, and power for its own sake.

LBJ wanted his “Great Society” to promote “the desire for beauty and the hunger for community … a place where men are more concerned with the quality of their goals than the quantity of their goods… [T]he Great Society is … a challenge constantly renewed, beckoning us toward a destiny where the meaning of our lives matches the products of our labor.” That’s the “do for you.” Later, in a graduation speech, he defined “do for your country.” “Will you join in the battle,” he asked, “to give every citizen the full equality which God enjoins and the law requires, whatever his belief, or race, or the color of his skin? Will you join in the battle to give every citizen an escape from the crushing weight of poverty?” How unlike Reagan!

Therein is the immutable difference between Democrats and today’s Republicans. Democratic presidents and Congresses have aimed to help all Americans, while Republicans, echoing Saint Ronnie, have worked to keep it from happening. Convincing the convincible that a government that’s “here to help” is their enemy, they claim social programs create laziness, that regulations choke capitalism. Why? Because they cost money, which means higher taxes and safety constraints on their donors. So, instead of Democrats’ vision of government serving its people, we get Reaganite Republicans serving only the wealthy. And themselves.

We get Trump, whose “renegotiating” NAFTA was a major factor in the current baby formula shortage. We get 192 Republicans voting against a solution because they’d rather see babies go hungry than help President Biden fix it.  

We get every Republican voting against a bill cracking down on gasoline price-gouging, in order to hurt Biden (and us) and help their fossil-fuelers enrich themselves. Fifteen years ago, when a barrel of crude cost seventy-five dollars higher than it is now, gas cost about $1.50 less per gallon. But gouge away, say Republicans. You keep the donations coming and we’ll keep blaming Biden. (Fact: prices are higher in many other countries. President Biden’s fault, too?)

We get this year’s CPAC meeting in Hungary, home of Trumpists’ second-favorite tyrant, whose list of speakers featured hate-fomenting liar Tucker Carlson and a Hungarian journalist who’d called Jews “stinking excrement,” Gypsies “animals,” and Blacks even worse. And, completing the trifecta, Trump. It’s now who they are, and, through indifference by some voters and intent by others, that’s what we get.

We get a Republican party determined to reject healthcare for all Americans, spiking Democratic proposals while offering none. A party committed to creating distrust in our electoral system by perpetuating transparent lies about fraud, to justify disenfranchising voters most likely to vote against them; wanting to hand presidential choices to their state legislatures rather than voters. A party to blame for the anti-science beliefs, conspiracy theories, and distrust, as well as incompetent and inattentive management, that led to hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths from Covid-19.

We get Mitch McConnell’s 6-3 “pro-life” SCOTUS, ready to ban abortion, simultaneously ruling that innocence isn’t enough to keep a state from executing someone. 

We’ve gotten a party that chooses an evolution-denying, “Trump never said the election was stolen,” domestic-abusing, self-described mentally ill, unintelligible football player and a clueless coach as Senators, as long as they’ll beat qualified, honorable Democrats; and which is itching to remake America as a puritanical Christian theocracy. 

Whether or not it’d have prevented any of America’s almost daily, heartbreaking massacres, we get fifty, backboneless senators afraid of even the most minimal gun control legislation. Whose stars are still scheduled to speak at a NRA convention in Houston. But we do get thoughts and prayers.  

And, because enough people believed Reagan, we got January 6, too.