Etiquette



DP Etiquette

First rule: Don't be a jackass.

Other rules: Do not attack or insult people you disagree with. Engage with facts, logic and beliefs. Out of respect for others, please provide some sources for the facts and truths you rely on if you are asked for that. If emotion is getting out of hand, get it back in hand. To limit dehumanizing people, don't call people or whole groups of people disrespectful names, e.g., stupid, dumb or liar. Insulting people is counterproductive to rational discussion. Insult makes people angry and defensive. All points of view are welcome, right, center, left and elsewhere. Just disagree, but don't be belligerent or reject inconvenient facts, truths or defensible reasoning.

Friday, November 1, 2024

Law school: American radical right Authoritarianism hits democracy real hard, again

The title of this post at r/scotus, the subreddit devoted to US supreme court activities, instantly sent a major shot of deep fear right through me. This one really and truly scared the dickens out of me. The title of the post made clear that the Republican partisans who control the USSC were openly rewriting federal laws. Immediately after my emotional fear response, there was a surge of intense anger. 


OT comment: It is interesting that I am beginning to become much more aware of my own unconscious emotional reactions as they start to become conscious. There really are visceral responses that come just before feelings become consciousness. By golly, social science really does get some things right.

This is terrifying on several levels. First was an oddity, the link to the external source of the analysis was xcancel.com. I had never seen xcancel before. I clicked on this link and got an ominous warning message that the comment or account was canceled. I thought I had been tricked into clicking on a toxic link, so I immediately closed the window before reading the warning in the hope of avoiding a nasty case of digital herpes (malware, etc.). But my bad curiosity got the best of me. I clicked the link again to read the warning message, but it disappeared before I could read it. Instead, this popped up:



Then I understood what was going on. Norm Ornstein is a well-known legal analyst, previously with the formerly conservative but now-radical right authoritarian American Enterprise Institute. Ornstein posted on X and Elon Musk was trying to block his analysis of a new, blatantly authoritarian supreme court anti-democracy decision. A Perplexity search indicates that my assessment here that Musk or his minions blocked Ornstein is probably correct, see 2nd Q&A.

What was the USSC decision? Ornstein's 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th comments on X explain it:
2. Congress has superseding authority on federal elections. Actions like Youngkin took are expressly forbidden within the 90 day window before the election. Six justices decided that their partisan views are more significant than the law. This is not the first time.

3. Alito has led the way here. He has made it clear, with a majority of allies, that they will rewrite the law and impose their own views. It is an astonishing and deeply disturbing distortion of what the framers intended, and how the Court operated before Roberts took over.

4. This is a Court engaged in a hostile takeover of the Constitution and democracy. Justices, including the Chief, arrogant enough to believe that the ethic standards that apply to everybody else in government don’t matter for them.

5. Even if Trump loses, the Roberts court will do everything it can to undermine the Harris presidency and promote voting rules that enable Jim Crow-style actions in the states and undermine voting rights while giving enormously way to the rich and powerful who share its politics.
We are now at a point, and have been there for several years, where the USSC is a major American radical right authoritarian power willing to write laws as it sees fit. There is no other reasonable way to  explain this.

However, to be fair and balanced, the last comment in the Ornstein thread that I posted above was this:
They are "self-identified noncitizens" that came to the state's attention via their Bureau of Motor Vehicle paperwork according to CNN. Seems definitive.
That is true, but it does not mean two things. First, it does not mean that all of those people are illegally registered to vote. Most of them probably are legally registered at this time. They will have to re-register if they want to vote in this election. Most of them who want to vote, will probably be unable to do so. Most of the illegally registered people will probably not try to vote at all because it is a crime in Virginia. It is a felony to knowingly vote in Virginia when not qualified to do so. Illegal voting in the US is extremely rare, despite constant, outrageous lies to the contrary from the morally rotted elites who control the authoritarian, American radical right wealth and power movement.[1]

Second, and far more importantly, it does not mean the USSC has the power to rewrite federal laws it disagrees with. This is what scared the bejesus out of me. Federal law is explicit that states must make voter roll changes at least 90 days before an election. The reason for that is to stop states from engaging in partisan voter suppression before an election, which used to be a fairly common practice.


How much clearer does the gravity of the threat 
to democracy and civil liberties need to be?
The gravity of the authoritarian radical right Republican Party threat to democracy, fair elections and voting rights cannot be much clearer than this. This radical right Republican USSC is an unstoppable, partisan authoritarian power unto itself. What does it take to wake people up to this dire threat? Or, will unfounded fears, anger, resentments and false beliefs drive enough Americans (voters and non-voters) into killing democracy and civil liberties to put true, deeply corrupt, radical right authoritarianism in power? 

This country is in very deep trouble. About half of Americans are in a world of politics consisting of a lot of comforting lies, fantasies and flat out false beliefs. 

SCOTUSblog comments further about this unsigned, unexplained USSC 6-3 decision. All 6 Repubs voted in favor of purging a voter roll in Virginia. In essence, this decision appears to quietly overturn the federal law that required voter role chances to be done at least 90 days before an election. Think about that. What basis in the constitution gives the USSC to power to do this? That is not explained, nor is it likely to be explained, probably because there is no rational explanation.  



Footnote:
Q: How common is illegal voting by non-citizens in major US elections?

A: Illegal voting by non-citizens in major US elections is extremely rare, despite some claims to the contrary.

Non-citizen voting in federal and state elections is exceptionally uncommon: 
A study by the Brennan Center for Justice analyzing 23.5 million votes across 42 jurisdictions in the 2016 general election found only about 30 instances of potential non-citizens voting.

The Heritage Foundation's database, covering cases from 2002 to 2023, identified only 85 instances involving allegations of non-citizen voting over two decades.

In Georgia, only 20 non-citizens were found to be registered among 8.2 million voters in 2022. 

These numbers indicate that non-citizen voting occurs at a rate of less than 0.0001% of total votes cast.

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