The Long-Term Effects of Trump Judges

Since 2017, there has been no plausible basis to pretend that republican Supreme Court judges are impartial. All basis for that pretense is gone. GOP justices are politicians in black robes proclaiming radical right outcomes by whatever means works for them. Party loyalty and ideology trumps principle, reason and the public interest. Given that personal opinion, it is of some interest to try to gauge the situation from the point of view of how long a judge can affect the law and American society. 

Propublica analyzed the situation, and it looks like this for the Supreme Court. 

The situation is even more dire for federal appeals court judges, where Trump has also had a major impact.

ProPublica writes:

"President Donald Trump says he considers one of his greatest accomplishments to be appointing a record number of federal judges. But the tally doesn’t tell the full story. Trump’s appointees to the Supreme Court and appeals courts tend to be younger than appointees by presidents going back to Richard Nixon by about four years on average. As a result, because these are lifetime appointments, they’re poised to serve for decades to come, shaping American law and politics long after Trump leaves office. Of the current nine Supreme Court justices, Amy Coney Barrett, 48, just confirmed Monday, was the second-youngest when appointed."

It looks like Trump judges are going to be plaguing American society, democracy and the rule of law for a long time to come. Even if the president is not re-elected, it is hard to see how our democracy, which is under direct attack by the radical right, can survive mostly intact in view of this harsh reality.

Regarding How Social Media Works and What It Does to the Human Mind

This 27-minute video, A Real Doctor Watches "The Social Dilemma", summarizes the key points from the longer NetFlix program The Social Dilemma. A commentator, ZDoggMD, plays key passages from The Social Dilemma and then explains them to make the points clear to his audience. 

Four key points of about five or six:

1. The real customer: "If you are not paying for the product, you are the product." People who use social media are the product being sold. Specifically, people's time and attention is sold to advertisers. The customers of social media companies are advertisers, not the millions of people who use social media. 

2. You are not paranoid, you really are being watched and watched very carefully: Social media tracks everything that people do online in great detail. All of that data is used to profile you and package your profile for sale to advertisers. The algorithms that social media use are sophisticated, powerful and used to predict with you will do next online. In time, the software will improve to the point that it will know more about you than you do, e.g., it will be able predict if you are at risk for suicide before you even know you have a problem. 

3. Social media can damage people and whole societies: Social media is intentionally designed to be addictive and vacuous to better package customers for advertisers. The rise of social media in the hands of children correlates with the rise of various kinds of damage, e.g., increased suicide, especially in teenage girls. The rise of this kind of damage to children was observed in the ~2010-2011 time period. The damage to society includes the new political polarization and accompanying hate, distrust and belief in blatant disinformation. The point is this: Polarization sells and advertisers want it for profit. That also correlates with the rise of social media. In my experience, I believe that the way social media works on the human brain, as described in the video, it causes the polarization, hate, distrust and tribal belief in disinformation.

4. Social media can be designed to be less harmful to people and societies: The owners control the product. They know exactly how and why it works, e.g., little squirts of dopamine in the brain, etc. Social media works exactly the same way a slot machine works, i.e., little squirts of dopamine reward in the brain. The science of addiction and manipulation is sophisticated and getting better all the time as the software improves. The owners are 100% aware of the damage they are causing. But in our significantly unregulated capitalist economy, profit talks and social concerns walk.

Question:

Are me or Dissident Politics a personally or socially damaging or addictive social media source?

Radical Right Activist Judges and the Farce Called Originalism

A Washington Post editorial by Fareed Zakaria describes a bizarre theory called Originalism that the radical right Supreme Court sometimes relies on to get conservative outcomes in the law. According to the late radical right Justice Antonin Scalia, that the U.S. Constitution “means today not what current society, much less the court, thinks it ought to mean, but what it meant when it was adopted.” As pointed out here repeatedly, there is no way to discern “what it meant when it was adopted” because the Founders, the drafters of Constitutional Amendments, congress and the people were bitterly and hopelessly divided on what the much of the Constitution, Amendments and laws meant or should mean. The Founders were divided over whether there should even be a new constitution at all, instead of merely revised Articles of Confederation. 

The historical record is clear. Originalism is irrational because there is no basis in fact for any claim that originalism is authoritative or real for most contested issues. It exists mostly in the minds of conservative authoritarian radicals who desperately need an excuse to do and get what they want using the courts. In general, advanced democracies believe that laws are interpreted based on a combination of changing societal standards, core democratic values and when it is clear, original understanding.[1]

What Originalism delivers is what radical authoritarian conservatives want, not principled law based on defensible sound reasoning (roughly logic) or core democratic values, e.g., the right to vote. In essence, even Originalism itself is beside the point. Radical conservative outcomes is the point, regardless of what the alleged controlling legal theory is. Zakaria writes: 

“And even in the United States, liberals and conservatives alike accept important deviations from originalism. Otherwise we would still have segregated schools, prohibitions against interracial marriage and laws outlawing homosexuality — all of which were deemed unconstitutional by judges who used the 14th Amendment of the Constitution to do so, even though it cannot be plausibly claimed that was the intent of Congress when it passed that amendment.

Many conservatives have argued that originalism is the only way to ensure that judges stay restrained and modest, not imposing their views on a society that did not elect them. (Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. refers to this as calling “balls and strikes.”) And perhaps the self-styled originalists would accomplish their goal if they actually practiced what they preach. But in fact, the new breed of judicial activists seems to be abandoning the restraint that Roberts prizes and is simply seeking conservative outcomes, using whatever means necessary.

The original sin was the 2000 Supreme Court Bush v. Gore decision, when conservative justices flagrantly violated their long-espoused principles to achieve their preferred political aim. The Constitution is crystal clear that states have final authority over the selection of their electors during a presidential election. Courts had long upheld that view.

And yet, in Bush v. Gore, the Supreme Court shut down Florida’s recount using a tortuous and novel interpretation of the 14th Amendment, which was ratified to give equal rights to Black people in 1868. The writers of that amendment could not possibly have meant that it prohibited different counties within a state from using their own approaches to counting ballots in an election — an utterly unrelated issue and something that was widespread in 1868 when the amendment was passed.

In a brilliant podcast, “Deep Background,” Harvard Law School professor Noah Feldman outlines this hypocrisy to Jeffrey Sutton, a federal appeals court judge who sees himself as a conservative originalist. Sutton’s response — to my ear — was that he believed Bush v. Gore had been wrongly decided.

And, in fact, after the ruling, judicial conservatives rarely cited or celebrated its rationale. Scalia’s response was usually three words: “Get over it” — not exactly an intellectual argument. Privately, according to Evan Thomas’s reporting, Scalia said he thought the decision was “a piece of s---.” In the most telling admission of its illogic, the majority opinion contains the remarkable guidance that the decision[2] should be viewed as a one-off and not cited as a precedent — contrary to the intended function of Supreme Court rulings.

Feldman’s podcast series — which is well worth listening to — highlights a growing divide between conservatives who viewed originalism as part of a philosophy of modesty and restraint and new activists who are untroubled by the hypocrisy and simply seek conservative outcomes. It is these activists who have been able to weaken Obamacare (clearly violating the original intent of the legislature that passed it) and invent new rights for corporations that had never before been found in the Constitution (as they did in the notorious Citizens United case).

All this might come to a head next week. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has ruled that ballots sent before the end of the election that arrive up to three days late should be counted. The Republican Party appealed the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, which still had a vacancy and deadlocked 4 to 4, with the new conservatives plus justices Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Clarence Thomas expressing willingness to intervene, and the liberals, plus Roberts, acting as the voices of judicial restraint. 

On Wednesday, if Trump is ahead in Pennsylvania, the Republicans will again ask the court to shut down the vote count. This time, the court cannot deadlock since there is now a ninth justice, Amy Coney Barrett. She will have to decide whether she actually believes in the ideas she and Scalia espoused — or whether, like her mentor, when the stakes are high, she will choose power over principle.”

My bet is that the new radical conservative court will choose power over principle. Those radical judges were put there to exercise power and remake America in the self-righteous, intolerant, radical right image. They are not there to be principled or concerned with what the American people want.

Footnotes: 

1. The practice in America is called American Legal Realism. I discussed it in this book review, which included this quote from the book: 

“This is an attempt to describe generally the process of legal reasoning in the field of case law, and in the interpretation of statutes and of the Constitution. It is important that the mechanism of legal reasoning should not be concealed by its pretense. The pretense is that the law is a system of known rules applied by a judge; the pretense has long been under attack. In an important sense legal rules are never clear, and, if a rule had to be clear before it could be imposed, society would be impossible. The mechanism accepts the differences of view and ambiguities of words. It provides for the participation of the community in resolving the ambiguity by providing a forum for the discussion of policy in the gap of ambiguity. On serious controversial questions it makes it possible to take the first step in the direction of what otherwise would be forbidden ends. The mechanism is indispensable to peace in a community.”

Forbidden ends include legalized abortion, legalized same-sex marriage, legal interracial marriage and voting rights (to avoid ‘mob rule’), all of which most Americans now support. What used to be a mostly peaceful process of social progress, is now now being reversed by legal, legislative and executive coercion by the radical right. We are on the road to tyranny, kleptocracy and loss of civil liberties.

2. That source summarised the limiting of the scope of its opinion in one sentence. “Loathe to make broad precedents, the per curiam opinion limited its holding to the present case.” In other words, the Supreme Court knew its decision was, as Scalia put it, ‘a piece of s---’. Nonetheless, it did get the job done and Bush got to be president thanks to radical conservative judicial activism pretending to be authoritative and principled in the guise of originalism. 

The Meat and Potatoes of Life: Appreciating the Art of Baloney

 Lisa Smith Molinari

https://hanfordsentinel.com/community/lemoorenavynews/the-meat-and-potatoes-of-life-appreciating-the-art-of-baloney/article_fee722d8-4ef2-54ec-a673-f58332b1a1e9.html

Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, people have sought information to quell fear. Over the last five months, the advice given by “experts” has fluctuated wildly, despite having been given with seemingly well-informed confidence.

By now, I think we all realize that it’s all baloney, bunk, BS. No one really knows, “Is it safe for kids to go back to school?” “Can people contract COVID-19 twice?” “Will a vaccine be ready by the end of the year?” “Will this pandemic ever end?” But when the public demands answers, experts must deliver.

In the military community, baloney is not generally tolerated. We respect clear communication, pinpoint accuracy and straight talk. However, months of widespread pontificating about the pandemic has shown that BSing actually requires skill and chutzpah.

Anyone who has ever been to a golf course has undoubtedly been in the midst of a talented BSer. Or two. Or twenty-seven.

Ex: “Now, unless you want to chili dip that thing into the frog hair and risk army-putting another triple bogey, you oughta milk the grip and let the big dog eat,” Chaz quips between swigs of Bloody Mary, leaning heavily on his Cobra driver after duffing two balls into the pond.

The Golf BSer may not be good at the sport, but his commitment to the craft of baloney-slinging is undeniable. Imagine the hours spent perusing Golf Digest in the proctologist’s waiting room to memorize golf terminology? The thousands spent on trendy golf equipment and over-priced, insignia-embroidered, moisture-wicking golf apparel to overcompensate for his lack of skills? The sunburns he endures while secretly tanning in his backyard wearing his golf glove, so he can sport a characteristic golfer’s pale left hand? Now that’s dedication.

Of course, lawyers, politicians, car salesmen, stockbrokers and their ilk are branded, sometimes unfairly, as BSers, because they are paid to have all the answers whether they do or not.

 Ex: “You see, George, your mutual funds tanked last quarter due to the unprecedented negative rumors of predicted speculations, so I’d be inclined to take the long view here,” a financial advisor might hedge to keep his client confused enough to continue forking over his life savings.

But this questionable style of communication is not reserved for fast-talking professions alone. Even the well-intentioned must sometimes BS. Unable to say, “I don’t know” to her incessantly curious first grade students, my mother mastered the skill of bluffing as a first grade teacher, making stuff up on the fly to answer questions like, “Why is the ocean blue?” and “Why does Mrs. Fletcher have a mustache?”

Graduate students must also maintain their reputation for knowing everything there is to know about everything. Take a stroll through any campus quad across this nation, and you will see them with their longish hair, graded term papers in hand, leaning against ivy covered walls, arguing over whether or not the international relations theory of holistic constructivism is a useful tool in analyzing the efficacy of post-war US foreign policy.

And all those people in Starbucks deserve some recognition here, too, from the employee with the nose piercing who steams the non-fat milk for your double espresso macchiato, to the metrosexual with the European scarf who ordered a chai tea, to the yoga-pant wearing mom in her SUV yelling into the drive-thru window. Essentially, anyone who has uttered the word “Vente” or referred to something with 20 grams of sugar as “skinny” is a card-carrying BSer, whether she likes it or not.

Surprisingly enough, even parents are masterful BSers. Think about it – what does Dad say when his six-year-old daughter looks adoringly into his eyes and asks, “Daddy, where do babies come from?” And what baloney must Mom come up with to explain what happened to Gus the Guppy who was last seen napping on the bottom of the tank?

Let’s face it – we are a nation of baloney-slingers, and it’s about time we wake up and smell the Grande iced latte. Let’s finally give BSing the respect it deserves!

And if you believed that, I’ve got some really nice swampland in Florida to sell you.