The death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg has meant that the United States Supreme Court now has a vacancy that needs to be filled. Had this happened in 1960 when Eisenhower was still President, or perhaps in 1968 when LBJ was President, then very few people would have given what should be a fairly boring and non-partisan appointment, any thought at all. Since about 1980 though, and especially since 2008 when US politics has fallen into an incandescent apoplectic rage about nearly everything, this appointment has become as much in the spirit of rage and vengeance as the rest of politics.
A great deal of this has to do with the weaponisation of identity politics in about 2008 and about ten seconds after Barack Obama became the nominee for the President. Since then we've seen the Tea Party movement morph into a weird kind of nativist nationalist movement with circus ringleader and showman Donald Trump as its media star. Mr Trump who is applauded for 'saying what he thinks', very often says things which are outright racist and look like the same kinds of things said by the fascists actions Europe in the 1920s.
The people who voted for Donald Trump certainly didn't vote for his ability to manage government and they have been duly rewarded by his complete inability to manage government. In fact, even though we are almost four years into his presidency, there are still more than 2000 positions within US Federal Government departments which should have been filled but still lie vacant. That means that people who should be running the day to day operations of those government departments are now required by law to make policy decisions and report to the various Secretaries. That explains why departments like the US Department of Health and Homeland Security have been woefully inside at doing basic functions that should have been vitally necessary in the face of a pandemic.
The people who like to cheer on small government have ultimately helped to cause unnecessary deaths in the United States due to COVID-19 and the election of Donald Trump, was a factor in that.
The overwhelming response as to why people voted for Donald Trump, wasn't his ability to run an administration but rather because he would be the who would get the Supreme Court nominations when they arose. Following the death Justice Antonin Scalia four years ago, Mitch McConnell as the Leader of the Senate, made it abundantly clear that he was not going to allow President Obama to get any of his nominations past the Senate and ran the line that that should be for the next President whoever that might be to get their nomination passed. That should be viewed in the light of political malice and given the tilt that we have seen by this current administration to almost outright racist fascism, that should have probably been expected.
McConnell:
“It’s clear that concern over confirming Supreme Court nominations made near the end of a presidential term is not new. Given that we are in the midst of the presidential election process, the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee and I believe that it is today the American people who are best-positioned to help make this important decision — rather than a lame-duck president whose priorities and policies they just rejected in the most-recent national election."
- McConnell Statement on the Passing of Justice Antonin Scalia, 22nd Feb 2016
This time around though, the rules that applied when prosecuting one's enemies simply do not apply to one's friends.
Normally this kind of thing would be the stuff of hypocrisy but if someone never had a moral compass to begin with, then it is a logical thing to suggest that they have defied it? Donald Trump appears to view everything through the lens of how much something benefits Donald Trump; Mitch McConnell as the defacto creator of policy, doesn't quite have that same purity of purpose but he does view things through the lens of how much something benefits his supporters, including if that thing causes harm and expense to normal people.
Also McConnell:
By contrast, Americans reelected our majority in 2016 and expanded it in 2018 because we pledged to work with President Trump and support his agenda, particularly his outstanding appointments to the federal judiciary. Once again, we will keep our promise.
President Trump’s nominee will receive a vote on the floor of the United States Senate.
- McConnell Statement on the Passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 18th Sep 2020
Four years and a change in circumstances might make this look like rank hypocrisy but when you consider that the underlying motivation here is pure malice which has been enabled and dare I say is part of the design of the way that the three ring circus of the United States Government is put together, it should be expected.
And yet this was the prize which people voted for. Article 2, Section 2 contains the following clauses:
https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/article-2/section-2/
He (the President) shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States
As only a third of the Senate is voted for in any two year phase, then the Senate in 2016 had an almost zero percent chance of flipping to a Democratic held house. Since it is the Senate who gets to confirm the choice of the President, and the President in this case had zero skill in running an administration, then the Senate could line up whoever they wanted to and the disinterested President would rubber stamp their decision. All that was needed to enable that situation, was to convince the American public to burn the White House to the ground in order to win the Supreme Court for a generation.
It is worth remembering that the United States as a nation was started in response to the punitive measures taken by the British Government against the 13 colonies, partly as a way of funding the loss making venture that was those 13 colonies and making them contribute to their own upkeep, and partly in response to wanting to retain the right to keep slavery (which was abolished at Common Law in England in 1777, and by statute in varying degrees in 1804 and 1830). The American Revolution was in part about selling a myth to the American people, with the underlying motivation of retaining private advantage. Arguably, the Constitution reflects that; hence why it has produced results retaining private advantage except for moments when the public consciousness has fought back. The 2016 election was also about selling a myth to the American people; some of whom have bought into it with a similar cult of personality for Mr Trump that followed Mr Washington.
The US Constitution is mostly the design of the architecture laid out by James Madison (who would himself later become President) and Alexander Hamilton, the latter of whom was a serial philander and who successfully managed to get himself killed in a duel after the Vice President Aaron Burr shot him. To be honest, I do not think that either Madison or Hamilton thought through the consequences of the form of government that they'd invented; after being captivated with a kind of reverence for George Washington. The whole design of the United States Constitution shows a tremendous amount of naivety about human nature; especially when the so-called checks and balances which were built into the system can be overcome entirely by gaming out the mechanics of how it works. Everyone since the beginning of time is to some degree terrible and designing the system to bake in that terribleness for longer than the term of someone's political career is in my not very well paid opinion, proof positive that the US Constitution in so many ways is fundamentally broken and idiotic.
At this point in time and even so late in the election cycle, Trump's pick for the next Justice of the Supreme Court is in fact what the people voted for, four years ago. In this case the system is working as intended; it's just that when you have a Senate which has gamed the system and a President who always had zero ability to run an administration, this is the expected outcome.
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