Why Some Voters Are Flipping Away From Trump

“One consequence of our reliance on old definitions is that the modern American does not look at democracy before he defines it; he defines it first and then is confused by what he sees. We become cynical about democracy because the public does not act the way the simplistic definition of democracy says it should act, or we try to whip the public into doing things it does not want to do, is unable to do, and has too much sense to do. The crisis here is not a crisis in democracy but a crisis in theory.” -- Democracy For Realists: Why Elections Do not Produce Responsive Governments, Christopher H. Achen and Larry M. Bartels, 2016)

One issue that has been of great personal interest is why some people are walking away from supporting the president in 2020. The New York Times has interviewed some more of these folks and reports:

“For many Democrats and independents who sat out 2016, voted for third-party candidates or backed Donald Trump, Mr. Biden is more acceptable to them in ways large and small than Mrs. Clinton was.

Samantha Kacmarik, a Latina college student in Las Vegas, said that four years ago, she had viewed Hillary Clinton as part of a corrupt political establishment.

Flowers Forever, a Black transgender music producer in Milwaukee, said she had thought Mrs. Clinton wouldn’t change anything for the better.

And Thomas Moline, a white retired garbageman in Minneapolis, said he simply hadn’t trusted her.

None of them voted for Mrs. Clinton. All of them plan to vote for Joseph R. Biden Jr.
“I knew early that Trump definitely wasn’t the guy for me,” recalled Mr. Moline, an independent. But when it came to Mrs. Clinton, “I guess I had a bad taste in my mouth from her husband’s eight years in office.” He voted for Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate, a decision he regrets, and he feels at ease backing Mr. Biden.

The point seems almost too obvious to note: Mr. Biden is not Mrs. Clinton. Yet for many Democrats and independents who sat out 2016, voted for third-party candidates or backed Mr. Trump, it is a rationale for their vote that comes up repeatedly: Mr. Biden is more acceptable to them than Mrs. Clinton was, in ways large and small, personal and political, sexist and not, and those differences help them feel more comfortable voting for the Democratic nominee this time around.

Even as Mr. Biden proposes a significantly bigger role for government than Mrs. Clinton did four years ago, some voters view the Democratic nominee as more moderate compared to how they saw her. And they don’t see him as being as divisive a political figure as they did Mrs. Clinton, despite Mr. Biden’s long record of legislative battles.

‘I didn’t like Hillary — I felt that she was a fraud, basically, lying and conniving,’ said Sarah Brown, 27, of Rhinelander, Wis., who regrets her 2016 vote for Mr. Trump and plans to vote for Mr. Biden. ‘I’m not a super big fan of him, either, but the two options — I guess it’s the lesser evil.’

Polling shows Mr. Biden scoring higher than Mrs. Clinton among a wide range of demographic groups — most notably older voters, white voters and suburbanites. But his advantage is stark among those who sat out the 2016 election or backed third-party candidates. 

Mr. Biden leads Mr. Trump, 49 percent to 19 percent, among likely voters who backed third-party candidates in 2016, according to recent polling of battleground states by The New York Times and Siena College. Among registered voters who sat out the 2016 election, Mr. Biden leads by nine percentage points, the polls found. 

Republicans, too, have found Mr. Biden to be a much tougher target. Even now, four years after she last ran for any office, Mrs. Clinton has appeared in more Republican ads attacking down-ballot Democratic candidates than has Mr. Biden, according to data compiled by Advertising Analytics. In the final weeks of his campaign, Mr. Trump has tried to reignite controversy over Mrs. Clinton’s emails, blasting out fund-raising requests with the subject line: ‘HILLARY CLINTON.’”

I have generally shied away from putting much weight on polls because they have been too far removed from Nov. 3. Now that Nov. 3 is about two weeks away, polls start to carry some more weight for me. They will carry more weight for me starting next week.

What worries people?

Once again, I cannot spot a unifying concern among people who are turning away from the president. The concerns that bother me the most center on matters of the his authoritarianism, incompetence, corruption, endless lies (immorality) and toxic demagoguery and social divisiveness (dark free speech or epistemic terrorism). In those things I saw the making of a cruel, corrupt, incompetent tyrant. His supporters see none of that, or are so concerned with their unjustified concerns about being under severe attack, that they continue to support this monster. 

Apparently, the people who have decided to oppose the president in this election also do not see what I see as the major flaws and worries about the president. His endless lies and deceit are never mentioned. The matter of democracy and the rule of law vs. Trump’s authoritarianism and contempt for the rule of law are also never mentioned. His gross incompetence and corruption are rarely mentioned. The only competence related concern is his failure to deal competently with the pandemic.

Clearly, the things I am  most concerned about with politics, most Americans are not. The world of concerns I have compared to people who have flipped on Trump overlap very little.

Once again, human cognitive biology and social behavior is controlling. The NYT article comments on this:

“The quality of Mrs. Clinton’s that emerged as the most appealing in 2016 groups was not her accomplishments but that she had set aside her own ambitions to serve in President Obama’s administration, according to people involved with the campaign.

Winning over female voters entailed walking a particularly tortured path, former campaign aides say.

‘She had to show more experience than they did, but not so much experience that they couldn’t relate to her,’ said Jennifer Palmieri, the communications director for Clinton’s campaign. ‘We kept running into those conflicts in people’s own heads.’

In focus groups conducted by the Biden campaign after he won the party nomination, voters were generally unfamiliar with his achievements but far less conflicted about him personally, strategists said. 

‘Biden didn’t have as much definition as I thought he would have had in the electorate,’ said Steve Schale, a veteran Florida Democratic operative who is chief executive of Unite the Country, a super PAC backing Mr. Biden. ‘They just see him as a nice guy.’”

What are they thinking?

There you have it: ‘We kept running into those conflicts in people’s own heads.’ Some or maybe most women see the role of women as women, not as national leaders. I imagine that some or most men take a dimmer view of women as political, military, social or religious leaders. The Catholic church is on exactly that same page in terms of religious leaders. People see Biden as a nice guy and Hillary as a woman with limits on her place in society. Why Trump supporters do not see him as a very nasty, vicious and/or grossly incompetent guy seems to be grounded in his gender, not his actual personal traits or qualities.

Trying to partially rationalize politics is definitely a very tough nut to crack. Maybe so tough that whatever tool is used to try to crack it will break because it isn't hard enough.

Or, maybe society will get to real equality sometime in the future, but just not now.

Hannah Arendt: Some Thoughts on Loneliness and Its Usefulness to Dictators

I hope this isn't too wonky for folks.

Samantha Rose Hill, the assistant director of the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities, wrote a fascinating essay on how Stalin and Hitler used loneliness to help build their totalitarian regimes. Although both regimes are gone, human loneliness remains a very useful tool that demagogues and dictators can still exploit to serve their immoral and evil ends. Loneliness can be fomented by propaganda or dark free speech. It tends to make people more susceptible to authoritarians and authoritarianism. The essay is posted online by aeon here. 

Hill writes:

“Writing on loneliness often falls into one of two camps: the overindulgent memoir, or the rational medicalisation that treats loneliness as something to be cured. Both approaches leave the reader a bit cold. One wallows in loneliness, while the other tries to do away with it altogether. .... Everybody experiences loneliness, but they experience it differently.

In the 19th century, amid modernity, loneliness lost its connection with religion and began to be associated with secular feelings of alienation. The use of the term began to increase sharply after 1800 with the arrival of the Industrial Revolution, and continued to climb until the 1990s until it levelled off, rising again during the first decades of the 21st century.

But in the middle of the 20th century, Arendt approached loneliness differently. For her, it was both something that could be done and something that was experienced. In the 1950s, as she was trying to write a book about Karl Marx at the height of McCarthyism, she came to think about loneliness in relationship to ideology and terror. Arendt thought the experience of loneliness itself had changed under conditions of totalitarianism: 

What prepares men for totalitarian domination in the non-totalitarian world is the fact that loneliness, once a borderline experience usually suffered in certain marginal social conditions like old age, has become an everyday experience of the ever-growing masses of our century. 

Totalitarianism in power found a way to crystallize the occasional experience of loneliness into a permanent state of being. Through the use of isolation and terror, totalitarian regimes created the conditions for loneliness, and then appealed to people’s loneliness with ideological propaganda.

Before Arendt left to teach at Berkeley, she’d published an essay on ‘Ideology and Terror’ (1953) dealing with isolation, loneliness and solitude in a Festschrift for Jaspers’s 70th birthday. This essay, alongside her book The Origins of Totalitarianism, became the foundation for her oversubscribed course at Berkeley, ‘Totalitarianism’. The class was divided into four parts: the decay of political institutions, the growth of the masses, imperialism, and the emergence of political parties as interest-group ideologies. In her opening lecture, she framed the course by reflecting on how the relationship between political theory and politics has become doubtful in the modern age. She argued that there was an increasing, general willingness to do away with theory in favor of mere opinions and ideologies. ‘Many,’ she said, ‘think they can dispense with theory altogether, which of course only means that they want their own theory, underlying their own statements, to be accepted as gospel truth.’

The initial conclusion, published in 1951, reflected on the fact that, even if totalitarian regimes disappeared from the world, the elements of totalitarianism would remain. ‘Totalitarian solutions,’ she wrote, ‘may well survive the fall of totalitarian regimes in the form of strong temptations which will come up whenever it seems impossible to alleviate political, social, or economic misery in a manner worthy of man.’ When Arendt added ‘Ideology and Terror’ to Origins in 1958, the tenor of the work changed. The elements of totalitarianism were numerous, but in loneliness she found the essence of totalitarian government, and the common ground of terror.

Why loneliness is not obvious. 

Arendt’s answer was: because loneliness radically cuts people off from human connection. She defined loneliness as a kind of wilderness where a person feels deserted by all worldliness and human companionship, even when surrounded by others. The word she used in her mother tongue for loneliness was Verlassenheit – a state of being abandoned, or abandon-ness. Loneliness, she argued, is ‘among the most radical and desperate experiences of man’, because in loneliness we are unable to realize our full capacity for action as human beings. When we experience loneliness, we lose the ability to experience anything else; and, in loneliness, we are unable to make new beginnings. 
But in order to make individuals susceptible to ideology, you must first ruin their relationship to themselves and others by making them sceptical and cynical, so that they can no longer rely upon their own judgment: 

Just as terror, even in its pre-total, merely tyrannical form ruins all relationships between men, so the self-compulsion of ideological thinking ruins all relationship with reality. The preparation has succeeded when people have lost contact with their fellow men as well as the reality around them; for together with these contacts, men lose the capacity of both experience and thought. The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (ie, the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (ie, the standards of thought) no longer exist.  

Organised loneliness, bred from ideology, leads to tyrannical thought, and destroys a person’s ability to distinguish between fact and fiction – to make judgments. In loneliness, one is unable to carry on a conversation with oneself, because one’s ability to think is compromised. ....” (emphasis added)

Regarding ideology

Hill describes how Arendt believed that political, economic or religious ideology can create and then play on loneliness: 

“Arendt spends the first part of ‘Ideology and Terror’ breaking down the ‘recipes of ideologies’ into their basic ingredients to show how this is done:

• ideologies are divorced from the world of lived experience, and foreclose the possibility of new experience;
• ideologies are concerned with controlling and predicting the tide of history;
• ideologies do not explain what is, they explain what becomes;
• ideologies rely on logical procedures in thinking that are divorced from reality;
• ideological thinking insists upon a ‘truer reality’, that is concealed behind the world of perceptible things.”

Her assessment of ideology and ideological motivated reasoning being divorced from experience and sound reasoning seem to be spot on. Her assessment that ideologies are concerned with controlling and predicting the tide of history is partly true. It omits the fact that ideologies also tend to rewrite history in ways that favor the ideological fake reality vision. Ideological and authoritarian detachment from reality and sound reason covers the past, present and future.

Regarding pragmatic rationalism

Her point about ideologies not explaining what is, but instead explaining what will happen strikes me as very important but complicated. She goes into this idea in detail in her Origins book. This concept is one to the points I have been turning over in my head for several years. Can it somehow be used to evoke a reasonably realistic future that is sufficiently appealing to constitute a glue that can hold people of differing, even opposing, ideologies together? That is of personal interest because my own ideology, pragmatic rationalism, lacks a glue or secular spiritual component that might keep conservatives, centrists and liberals on the same page at least in terms of core political moral values.[1] Simply laying claim to trying to be more evidence-based and rational about politics and less ideological is probably weak glue at best, and at worst no glue at all or even an anti-glue.

Footnote: 

1. For wonks, it may be interesting to note that pragmatic rationalism, unlike authoritarian ideologies, does try to explain the present based on modern science, unspun history and moral philosophy. By definition, pragmatic rationalism is designed to be at least these three things: (i) anti-biasing (pro-reality and reason), (ii) anti-ideological (not liberal, conservative, capitalist, socialist, fascist, Christian, etc.) and (iii) anti-authoritarian and rule of the tyrant-demagogue, and pro-democracy and rule of law. 

Are you a quack?

 

psychosis /sīˈkōsəs/
noun (pl. psychoses |-ˌsēz| )

a severe mental disorder in which thought and emotions are so impaired that contact is lost with external reality.

 There is a fine line between sanity & insanity: A large portion of the public is in denial about evolution, global warming, vaccination, etc. Most of this can be attributed to distorted views of reality, as defined by personality type. But only a few are driven to egregiously contradict well-established science when doing so cannot have any direct effect on their everyday life.

This page is dedicated to the many people who have occasionally drifted into my office, or sent me e-mail, or even mailed me their books, eager to tell me about their new theory, which they know will turn all known physics on its head, even though they have only studied an infinitesimal fraction of the latter. Some of them are just ignorant or naive, but are willing to learn; this page is not about them.

There is a distinction between "artistic" scientists & true quacks. The former have some bold new hypotheses (i.e., educated guesses) that have not completely confronted reality. (A former advisor of mine had a bumper-sticker-like sign in his office that went something like, "Your new theory is beautiful and elegant. Too bad it's wrong.") The latter have old ideas that have been fudged to try to reproduce some of the results of new ideas. (For example, anyone sticking to Ptolemaic epicycles after the advent of Copernicus & Kepler would fall into this category. Fairy tales are also old ideas.) Real quacks would not even make good science fiction authors.

On the other hand, there are also "pessimistic" scientists. They do not reject proven science, but refuse to consider new conjectures until they have been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. Unfortunately, playing it safe seldom leads to new discoveries. ("Nothing ventured, nothing gained.") These also differ from quacks, who tend to reject proven science of much (if not all) of the 20th century.

Quacks (also known as "crackpots" or "cranks") have several well-known mental conditions in common with other conspiracy theorists:

• Paranoia: No one will listen to their self-contradictory claims; therefore there must be a world-wide web of conspiracy, lasting generations (apparently even between opposing sides through the World Wars & Cold War) to promote fantastic theories which, for some unexplained reason, seem sufficient for the design & operation of modern technology.
• Delusion/denial: For some unclear reason (religion? artistic taste? lack of ability or motivation?) they reject well-established science, & replace it with something of their own invention that they find more satisfying.
• Grandiosity: Their theory could never be wrong; therefore everyone else's must be. They want only to talk and not to listen. Their pride blinds them to their incompetence: They are not good con men; their arguments are unoriginal & transparently wrong to any expert.
• Projection: They accuse scientists of all of these obvious failings of their own, before their victims get a chance to respond. After all, it's only 1 person's word against another. (In common terms, this is known as, "He who smelt it, dealt it.") Thus, all established scientists are scientifically incompetent, ignorant, derisive, religious fanatics, mentally ill, etc.. It's a wonder that society has managed to advance @ all.

Quacks are dogmatists: Their point of view is a belief. A belief is something one assumes to be true because one wants it to be true. They only come up with "proofs" or "evidence" to sway non-believers to their belief. So you can waste your time disproving all their fallacies, but it won't matter to them, because they were invented only for you, & are totally irrelevant to their conviction.

It is easy to distinguish the quacks; although they may seem reasonable at first, they degenerate into absurdity progressively with any conversation. This is because quacks are organic forms of artificial intelligence: They would not pass the Turing test applied to a physics conversation. (This might be a good problem for a computer science student: Write a quack program, designed to sound as much like a true physicist as possible, then allow it to engage in a conversation with a real quack.) They simply copy and paste text & equations they have found in 19th century literature, introductory physics textbooks, or the web, none of which they understand well enough to pass a test in school. (A musical description of them can be found in the song "Swinging on a Star", especially the mule & fish parts.) Whenever questioned on any of their errors, they reply with repetition, non sequiturs, or insults. Eventually the true quacks make the same remarks, some version of almost all those listed below. Generally, their comments are of 3 types:

Attacks on established theories, based on distaste and fear

1. "I have proven that special relativity/quantum mechanics/... is wrong."
   You mean you did an experiment whose results disagree with the predictions of that theory? I didn't think so. You mean you proved it is self-contradictory? Not possible: Mathematically it's an elementary system, whose consistency is easy to check. You might as well claim that you can prove 2+2=5. (If you think you can do that, I'm willing to give you $2+$2 change for a $5 bill.) If you think you have found an inconsistency, you have probably made an assumption that is not implied by the theory. The fact is that these theories are not only well confirmed by experiment, but practical use is made of them every single day.

   Note: You will not dispell a quack's distaste for modern physics by relating it to classical physics, since they usually do not understand that either. This is an unusual example of "Familiarity breeds contempt."

   Quacks seem to dislike modern physics literally because of the word "relativity": In their attacks, they focus on what is relative, not on what is absolute. They know special relativity says time is relative, but don't understand (or care) that proper time is absolute. In rejecting relativity, they replace it with the ether, rejecting even Galilean relativity, because they refuse to accept that even velocity can be relative. They know general relativity says reference frames are arbitrary, but don't know that it's curvature that displays the physics. They've heard that the uncertainty principle says there are things you can't measure, but don't know what you can measure. Apparently they view modern physics as an attempt to limit their personal freedom. Their egotism does not allow them to accept any frame of reference as equal to their own.

   Consequently they are basically 19th century physicists, except for the fact that they don't understand even that. They focus on attacking the physics of the 1st quarter of the 20th century & its results, oblivious to the fact that it is backed up by all the dependent theories & results since then. They want to return to the "good old days", & constantly refer to archaic papers, as if history had anything to say about recent experimental results.

   Thus quacks are in perfect agreement with the alleged statement of the Commissioner of the US Patent Office in 1899, "Everything that can be invented has been invented." So it's not surprising they reject ideas developed by someone while working @ the Swiss Patent Office a good several years later.

   For those of you quacks who want to know what it's like trying to explain 20th century physics to someone like you, I suggest you go to this web site and try to explain 19th century physics to the people there.

1. "But it's obvious nonsense!"
   Then why does it work so well?

2. "You're wrong!"
   That's just contradiction, not an argument.

3. "BUT I HAVE PROVEN YOU WRONG!!"
   I already responded to that remark. And your caps lock key is stuck.
   (Maybe you should use a bigger font.)

   Update: I have already been yelled @ with a much bigger font --- another prediction confirmed.

The rest of the article:

http://insti.physics.sunysb.edu/~siegel/quack.html

Mental illness is common, but most of the afflicted can still function in today's society (although often this is because they are retired). Most people continue to use computers, even if some deny the science they are based upon. (Quacks are hypocrites as well as ingrates.) The situation is less serious in physics than biology: Some people pass laws to prohibit or restrict the teaching of evolution, but there have been no serious attempts to outlaw special relativity or quantum mechanics since the days of Hitler & Stalin (which failed because nuclear science required them). Fortunately, the world depends on the technology derived from modern physics for its economy, communication, leisure, etc.

A Failed Campaign of Reason and Civility Against Irrational GOP Fear, Rage and Hate

Republican online comment: “I bet if I put a gun to his face he’d cry like a baby.”

The Washington Post published a long, heartbreaking article on the failed 31-day campaign of self-described nice guy Kevin Van Ausdal against radical far right crackpot conspiracy theorist Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Republican candidate in Georgia’s 14th Congressional District. Greene now runs unopposed. The stress of trying to respond in anger against Greene cost Van Ausdal his marriage and his home. He describes himself as broken. This is what the new GOP is going to be like. 

The story described in detail Van Ausdal’s slow mental breakdown as he tried to shift his rhetoric and tone from civil and focused on issues, to harsh and focused on fighting back against a rage and hate-promoting GOP extremist. His marriage deteriorated as the pressure on him to be what he isn’t caused his wife to file for divorce and have him kicked out of their home. Van Ausdal had to withdraw from the race and move back to Indiana with his parents because he had no other place to stay in Georgia.

These portions of the article gives a sense of what slowly tore Van Ausdal apart. Ruth is Van Ausdal’s campaign adviser Ruth Demeter. ‘Upswing’ refers to Van Ausdal’s natural voice tendency to soften the tone of his speech to reduce emotion and conflict.

“So,” Ruth continued. “Talk to me about the things about Marjorie that are dangerous and embarrassing and appear to disregard the 14th District.”

“Okay, well, it’s really just the fearmongering?” Kevin said. There was the upswing, but Ruth let him go on. “It’s defining us. I don’t think I ever told you this, but I said to a preacher early on, you know, Jesus wants us to come together and love each other regardless of our beliefs. So when we’re fanning the flames of fear and violence — ”

“Okay,” Ruth interjected. “I love ‘fanning the flames of fear.’ But Kevin, I’m going to tell you something right now that’s really hard. This statement is about reaching people in the middle, and a lot of them are Republicans. For them, the language about love and peace is bad, or just not in their wheelhouse. … It’s got to be, ‘This has got to stop. I’m calling this out.’ ”

“Okay,” Kevin said.

“Try that ‘Enough is enough’ line,” Ruth said.

“Enough is enough — wait,” Kevin said, then tried again. “Enough is enough.”

“Oh, I love that,” Ruth said.

“I’m not going to act like this is a normal election,” he continued.

“Oh, that’s really good,” Ruth said.

“Enough is enough” Kevin repeated over and over, practicing the statement his team wanted to post as soon as possible to his 1,500 Facebook followers, and meanwhile, Greene had posted a new Facebook video for her 100,000 followers.  

“Do me a favor. Take a deep breath. Put your shoulders back,” Ruth said. “Read it angry. It’s this crazy situation. Read it mad.”

“Hi. I’m Kevin Van Aus-dal. ... Marjorie Taylor Greene does not represent us …”

“Again. Mad,” Ruth said.

“Marjorie Taylor Greene is not one of us …” Kevin said.

“Not one of us,” Ruth said.

“Not one of us …” Kevin said. “What’s the psychology behind this?”

“There’s psychology but I don’t have time to explain,” Ruth said. “Okay, go for it.”

“We are watching her use her platform to cheer violence against Democrats,” he continued, then stopped. “Be angry,” he reminded himself.

“Be angry,” Ruth said. “And you have to give it a little beat,” said Ruth. “So-ul.”

“For the so-ul of our nation,” Kevin said. “Like that?”

“Perfect,” Ruth said. “Remember. You’re angry.”

Kevin took a deep breath and closed his eyes for a moment.

WaPo writes: Her campaign adviser stated that “Greene had expressed support for the 17-year-old charged with killing two people during protests in Kenosha, Wis., calling the case the “first stage” of a new “Civil War.” And he said that while Greene was now distancing herself from QAnon, she had the support of QAnon social media groups as well as an array of local gun groups including one called the Georgia III % Martyrs.”

It is clear that people who support Greene are driven by irrational fear, rage and hate fomented by relentless radical conservative dark free speech, or epistemic terrorism if you will. Trying to reason with those people is pointless. They have been radicalized and whipped into a raging tribal frenzy that cannot be reasoned with or reasonable.

How should the opposition to this raging insanity respond? The GOP leadership is mostly silent. Clearly the reasoned and reasonable approach that Van Ausdal wanted to take would have been a failure, but he could not transition to an all-out war footing mindset. His attempt to harden himself broke him mentally.

Does the democratic party owe something to Van Ausdal for what he tried to do?

WaPo writes: “Onstage, a guest speaker was talking about “a time when you will be asked to shed another man’s blood because he is a threat to your very way of life.” Another talked about “the communist Democrats.” Another said that vice-presidential candidate Kamala D. Harris “wants to come to your house and take your guns away.” Another began his speech by yelling into the microphone, “FREEDOM!!!!” and out in the audience, a man wearing a hat with a ‘Q Army’ patch was listening. ‘I think people are waking up’, said the man, Butch Lapp. ---- Greene supporters commenting online about Van Ausdal: ‘the only good Democrat is a dead Democrat’ and one that read ‘I bet if I put a gun to his face he’d cry like a baby.’”

Jurisdiction Stripping to Limit Court Power

US Constitution, Article 3, Clause 2: In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be a Party, the Supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all other Cases before mentioned, the Supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.

The US Constitution includes a short clause that allows congress to exempt a law it passes from judicial review. Federal courts have jurisdiction to review laws that congress passes with “with such Exceptions and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.” [1]

Unless I misunderstand because there is a legal authority that defines ‘Exceptions’ and/or ‘Regulations’ in a way I am not aware of, that clause seems to give the president and congress the power to write and pass a law with a provision that states that courts do not have the power to review the law. Thus, for example, congress could write a law that codifies the Roe v. Wade abortion decision and/or the Obergefell v. Hodges same-sex marriage decision as a federal law that is not subject to judicial review for its constitutionality. This tactic is called jurisdiction stripping.

If that is how this can work, one can instantly see the havoc this could wreak on American society and the operation of the federal government. A radical conservative president and congress congress could write and pass laws to restrict voting rights or to expand gun rights and that law could be shielded from judicial review. A liberal president and congress congress could write and pass laws they wanted.

In 1982, a young lawyer and now chief justice of the US supreme court, John Roberts wrote a detailed legal analysis as part of an evolving radical conservative legal strategy to try to undo Roe v. Wade, public school desegregation and other social trends that conservatives hated then and still hate today. Roberts wrote that the constitution contains “clear and unequivocal” language that gives congress the power to shield laws from Supreme Court review. One can now understand why George W. Bush nominated Roberts to be the chief justice on the Supreme Court.

Now that radical conservatives dominate the Supreme Court, liberals are considering using this constitutional clause to shield laws that liberals would like to see passed and protected from endless court battles. Liberal are also considering expanding the supreme court and packing it with liberal judges and imposing term limits on Supreme Court justices, both of which seem to be problematic and will likely further polarize American politics. 

What seems to be happening now

The decades-long radicalism of powerful conservatives and their rigid unwillingness to accept demographic and social change they hate and reject runs deep and powerful. Their desperate, slowly losing fight against modernity and social change has led them to the malicious and deeply immoral political space they now occupy. Many radical conservatives have come to realize that reliance on facts, truth, sound reasoning and reasonable compromise, an honest clean fight of ideas, will not stop the changes they what stopped. They will lose if they play politics fairly, respectfully and transparently. In the process of protecting their version of America, radical conservatism has become dishonest, immoral, authoritarian and opaque. Authoritarianism and opacity is discussed here. 

In reaction to how dirty and nasty the right has played to get us here, the left is now considering some of the same authoritarian tactics the right has considered or used. The difference between the two sides today is that the radical right is mostly an exclusive white minority trying to impose its will on an unwilling majority, while the left is generally trying to rule in the name of the majority. The years of RINO hunts in the GOP has drained that party of ideological diversity and at the same time, racial diversity. In one sense, the GOP is a spent force that is cornered, enraged and extremely dangerous. Its willingness to resort to authoritarianism, immorality, lies, deceit and so forth seem to be provoking at least some similar responses on the left.

In essence, modern mainstream radical conservatism is dragging American society and governance down into dark, immoral places. We may not be able to save civil society, democracy, civil lib or the rule of law.

Information source: Bloomberg Businessweek

Footnote: 

1. Caveat: The preceding phrase,  In all other Cases before mentioned, may somehow limit the kinds of laws that are subject to jurisdiction stripping. 

A Russian October Surprise Has Arrived!

Peek-a-boo!

We all knew it was coming. Well, here it is. Well, at least here is one. The Russians appear to have fabricated evidence about the illegal Biden activity in Ukraine. The Russians used the clueless, corrupt Rudy Giuliani as the conduit to help inject the Russian poison into American politics. The radical right propaganda and lies source, the New York Post ate it up and published the lies.[1] 

Now, the president, and his enablers and supporters can smear Biden with fabricated evidence. It was only a matter of time before the radical right could no longer contain itself and would resort to faked evidence to attack and smear political opposition, especially Joe Biden.  

The Washington Post writes: 

"The intelligence agencies warned the White House late last year that Russian intelligence officers were using President Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani as a conduit for disinformation aimed at undermining Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s presidential run, according to four current and former American officials.

The agencies imparted the warning months before disclosing publicly in August that Moscow was trying to interfere in the election by taking aim at Mr. Biden’s campaign, the officials said. Mr. Trump and Mr. Giuliani have promoted unsubstantiated claims about Mr. Biden that have aligned with Russian disinformation efforts, and Mr. Giuliani has met with a Ukrainian lawmaker whom American officials believe is a Russian agent.

The warning, the second former official said, was prompted by a meeting on Dec. 5 between Mr. Giuliani and Andriy Derkach, a Ukrainian member of Parliament who takes pro-Kremlin positions. The Treasury Department recently labeled him “an active Russian agent for over a decade,” disclosing that he maintained ties to Moscow’s intelligence services as it imposed sanctions on him in September.

Mr. Derkach has been releasing tapes of the former vice president’s conversations with Ukrainian officials. American officials said those tapes had been edited in misleading ways.

Mr. Giuliani has made multiple trips to Ukraine to gather material that is damaging to the Biden campaign, and his December visit came as he tried to shift the political conversation from impeachment proceedings against Mr. Trump to unsubstantiated claims about Mr. Biden’s wrongdoing.

Mr. Giuliani’s work seized attention in the presidential race again this week when The New York Post published articles about Mr. Biden and his son based on material Mr. Giuliani provided. The Biden campaign rejected the reports, and Facebook and Twitter deemed them so dubious that they limited access to them.

The New York Times has not been able to verify the information that Mr. Giuliani furnished to The Post, which he said came from a laptop left at a Delaware repair shop. The owner of the shop has given conflicting accounts to reporters, and Mr. Giuliani’s acquisition of the laptop has raised questions about the material on it.

In August, the Office of the Director of National intelligence said in a statement that Mr. Derkach was spreading disinformation about Mr. Biden. The C.I.A. later issued a more detailed classified warning in its Worldwide Intelligence Review, a secret document read by members of Congress and the administration."

Time will tell if this attack on Biden is based on real or fake evidence. Given the disregard for truth that Giuliani has shown in his loyalty to the president, it is reasonable to think that (i) this is a Russian disinformation ploy, and (ii) Giuliani is a stooge the Russians are using to undermine Biden's campaign.

Footnote: 

1. The NYP article includes this sleaze: 

"Other material extracted from the computer includes a raunchy, 12-minute video that appears to show Hunter, who’s admitted struggling with addiction problems, smoking crack while engaged in a sex act with an unidentified woman, as well as numerous other sexually explicit images.

The customer who brought in the water-damaged MacBook Pro for repair never paid for the service or retrieved it or a hard drive on which its contents were stored, according to the shop owner, who said he tried repeatedly to contact the client.

The shop owner couldn’t positively identify the customer as Hunter Biden, but said the laptop bore a sticker from the Beau Biden Foundation, named after Hunter’s late brother and former Delaware attorney general."