gracchusdixit

There were many anxious hours on the night of the 20018 midterm election and well into the next day, during which the outcome was still in question.  For a time, it seemed that the long-hoped-for “blue wave” would never arrive.  When the wave eventually came, however, it rolled in with a roar, as if driven on shore by a full moon, a high tide, and an even higher wind.  The wind soon proved to be a howling gale of resistance, rebuke, and rejection.

A decisive majority of Americans—by a margin of six million votes in each case—chose Democratic Congressional and Senatorial candidates.  More than 300 House districts moved sharply to the left.  In deep-red Georgia, the district once held by Newt Gingrich, the leader of the 1994 “Republican Revolution,” fell to a Democrat.  The Virginia district wrested from one-time House Majority Leader, Eric Cantor, by a tea party icon named Dave Brat, was lost to another Democrat.  The California district held by a 15-term Republican, Dana Rohrabacher, a staunch Trump ally called by some “Putin’s favorite congressman,” collapsed like a sandcastle as the “blue wave” rolled in.  Even in Iowa, where the only things more ubiquitous than corn stalks are evangelical churches, three out of four Congressional districts were won by Democrats.

If nothing else, the 2018 midterm election was a dramatic illustration of the old adage:  “Be careful what you ask for; you may get it.”  Convinced of his personal magnetism and political prowess, Donald Trump chose to put himself on the ballot.  In rally after rally, he proclaimed that a vote for whichever local Republican candidate was palpitating in the wings was a vote for the great man himself.  Given Trump’s shocking victory in 2016, which confounded the calculations of all the conventional political pundits, it was widely assumed that he could, and probably would, be able to work his magic again.

This time, however, the juju didn’t work, as Trump’s magic turned out to be less magical than toxic.  A few of the candidates he endorsed eked out wins, but most did not; and the ultimate outcome for Trump and his party was little short of disastrous.  That Trump himself understands this, while refusing to concede it, became instantly and painfully obvious.  The day after the election, he held a 90-minute press conference that was more than usually combative and incoherent, and he then promptly stalked off to Paris, where he spent most of the time hiding from the press, snubbing the country’s oldest allies, and grinning at Vladimir Putin.

It would be a mistake to imagine that this election was merely a rebuke of Donald Trump himself—of his low character, loathsome behavior, and limited intellectual capacity.  It was all that, of course.  But it was far more.  It was a rejection of nearly everything the Republican Party stands for.

To right-wing ideologues, who smear every attempt to achieve social or economic justice as socialism; who demonize government as they lionize private selfishness; who believe that fundamental public services like education and health care are commodities to be bought and sold like trinkets in a flea market; who think that Social Security and Medicare are extravagant “entitlements” that the richest country in the world cannot afford; who have persuaded themselves that the rich deserve tax cuts at the cost of bankrupting the very country that made them rich; to these people, I say:  You are not America.  

To the bigots and racists, who believe this should be a “whites only” country; who think that immigrants are either terrorists or disease-ridden vermin; who assert that anti-Semitic sloganeering is “free speech” and demand the right to beat their political opponents into a pulp; to these people, I say:  You are not America.

To evangelical zealots, whose closed minds and cold hearts confuse the ethical teachings of Christ with the control and condemnation of other human beings; who think that religious freedom gives them the right to impose their medieval moral code on the rest of us; who would deny to women the right to make their own decisions, to gay Americans the freedom to love whomever they choose, to transgender Americans the chance to live the lives they have chosen for themselves; to these people, I say:  You are not America.

To the NRA, whose cynical corporate donors believe they can go on forever profiting from death; whose gullible members parade around in their pick-up trucks with bumper stickers lauding a Second Amendment they have never read and do not even begin to understand; to craven politicians who have spent decades kowtowing to the gun lobby; to these people, I say:  You are not America.

To the right-wing judges rushed onto the federal courts by Trump and the Republicans, who exploit the Constitution as an instrument for suppressing democracy; who insist that property rights take precedence over human rights; who interpret “religious freedom” as the freedom to impose one religion on everyone else; who absurdly argue that corporations are persons and have a First Amendment right to buy elections and suborn politicians; to these people, I say:  You are not America.

To all these people, I say:  The damage you have done, the damage you hope still to do, will not stand.  If it takes decades, even if it takes generations, this country will claw back its freedoms, will reclaim its democracy, and will cast you out.  

In less than 72 hours, millions of Americans will go to the polls to vote in what will arguably be the most consequential election of my lifetime.  That is not hyperbole.  At stake in this election is nothing less than the future of our republic.  Will voters turn their backs on the national nightmare that is the presidency of Donald Trump?  Or will they turn a blind eye to his criminality and his pathological lying, not only allowing his authoritarian instincts to reign unchecked but unleashing them?  

If voters make the latter choice, the democratic institutions by which we have been governed for two and a half centuries will suffer unspeakable, perhaps irreparable, damage, from which we may never recover.

This may seem to some like a contradiction in terms or even an absurdity.  Surely, it is not possible that the citizens of a democracy might willingly vote to end their own democracy.  Precisely that, alas, has happened all too often in human history.  

Hitler and Mussolini were both “voted” into power by the mechanism of supposedly democratic elections, and once in power, they shut down those mechanisms and ended the power of the vote.  When such a political Rubicon has been crossed, there is no going back except through a river of blood.

I know what the polling says.  I know what the pundits are predicting.  I know what bets the odds-makers in Las Vegas and London are placing.  All the “smart money” says the Democrats will win a majority in the House of Representatives, pick up governorships and legislative seats in states across the country, and even have a chance, however slight, of eking out a majority in the Senate.  

None of this makes it any easier for me to sleep at night.  I am frightened to death.  I am frightened, not merely because so many of the same prognosticators got the 2016 presidential election so hopelessly wrong.  I am frightened, because of what a similar outcome this time would say about my country and my fellow citizens.  

The election of Donald Trump was nothing less than a political volcanic eruption.  It opened a yawning crack in the earth, unleashing a long-suppressed, sulfurous magma of poisonous hate and prejudice—against immigrants, against people of color, against women who dare to speak up for themselves, against anyone who isn’t white, Christian, or “straight”.  

Thanks to this volcanic eruption, racists and would-be Nazis are now routinely excused or defended, not only by Trump himself, but also by his innumerable surrogates and supporters. Some of those supporters are brazen enough to sport t-shirts proclaiming, “I’d rather be a Russian than a Democrat,” a declaration that would have been considered treasonous before Trump’s election, by traditional Republicans most of all,  His defenders are now willing, even eager, to justify the use of judicial vengeance or physical violence to silence his critics.  The chant, “Lock her up!”, continues to punctuate his never-ending rallies, and has become, for his adoring and witless followers, the equivalent of the national anthem.  

Far worse than the t-shirts and the chants, however, is the actual violence that Trump has unleashed—violence that has led to the murder of black Americans worshipping in their churches; the attempted bombing of opposition politicians and critics; the slaughter of guiltless Jewish Americans in their house of prayer in Pittsburgh.  All this awfulness has unfolded without a convincing word of remorse or rebuke from the President of the United States.

All this is what keeps me up at night.  All this is what frightens me.

But then, my fears come face to face with other realities.

The reality that Americans have become more politically engaged than has been the case in decades.  Not only engaged, but outraged by Trump’s toxic rhetoric and scandalous behavior.  Not only outraged, but determined to stop him in his tracks.

The reality that millions of women have decided that they have finally had enough of being bullied by callous or clueless men, who dismiss them as “hysterics” and their peaceful protests as “mob violence”.  Republicans may revel in the boost they believe they got from the confirmation hearings that sent Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, but they also revealed their utter contempt for women, millions of whom will never forgive them.  

The reality that an overwhelming majority of Americans reject the demonization of immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers, are horrified by the spectacle of immigrant children being torn away from their parents, and see Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant harangues for what they are:  cynical and hateful demagoguery.  

The reality that most Americans no longer swallow the old canard that any form of progressive law-making—an equitable tax code, a decent minimum wage, health care that doesn’t drive ordinary people into bankruptcy, the protection of Social Security and Medicare—is a step on a slippery road toward godless “socialism”.

I do not pretend to know what will happen Tuesday.  I have no idea what my fellow citizens will decide.  All I can say is that I am simultaneously frightened to death and filled with hope.  Above all else, I am filled with the hope that hope will prevail.

In the summer of 1215, King John of England, was cornered by a group of rebellious barons in a meadow, not far from the banks of the River Thames, called Runnymede.  There, under a spreading oak tree, he was forced to sign one of the most famous political documents in history, the Magna Carta, or Great Charter.   Under intense pressure and against his will, John reluctantly promised that, in exercising his royal power, he would abide by the established customs and laws of the land, conceding that Englishmen had certain rights that even a king could not ignore.  

John, however, was a notoriously slippery character.  As soon as he was safely beyond the reach of his troublesome barons, he reneged on his promises.  This did him little good, since he died less than a year later, and the document he had disavowed long outlived him.  Indeed, the Great Charter was reissued under his successor,  Henry III, and in 1225, copies were nailed to the doors of hundreds of churches throughout the land.  Thus, the Magna Carta took its place as the foundational text of constitutional government, not only in the United Kingdom, but also in the United States, where it greatly influenced the men who gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 to fashion our own constitution.

The Magna Carta has assumed such iconic status that few people, apart from scholars, any longer bother to read it.  One reason is that it was written in Latin, which was the official legal and diplomatic language of Europe at the time, and the first English translation did not appear until 1534.   Even modern translations can still be forbiddingly arcane and archaic.

If you nevertheless take the trouble to read the Magna Carta, you may be surprised by what you find.  While it is true that some of Great Charter deals with fundamental liberties—the right to be judged by a jury of one’s “peers,” for example—the bulk of it addresses, not lofty ideals, but mundane and less-than-inspiring issues of property rights and taxes, dowries and estates.  It would seem that the barons of medieval England were more concerned about pounds and pence than about political principles.

Much the same can be said of our own constitution, another document that has assumed such mythical status that few any longer pay close attention to what it actually said when it was first promulgated.

As with the Magna Carta, one of the principal aims of the Constitution of the United States was to protect the privileges and property rights of the reigning colonial aristocracy.   We speak reverentially of the “checks and balances” embedded in our constitution, as if their only purpose were to prevent one branch of government from exercising too much power over the others, or to protect vulnerable minorities from the depredations of powerful majorities.  We pay scant attention, however, to the “minorities” the Founding Fathers were actually trying to protect.

James Madison made no secret of this in the Federalist Papers, which he coauthored with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay to persuade a skeptical body politic to accept the new constitution.  Madison and his colleagues not only took economic inequality for granted, they asserted that a divide between the privileged few and the impoverished many was part of the natural order of things.  They were convinced that economic inequality would inevitably produce political parties or “factions,” in which a property-owning minority would be confronted by a propertyless “overbearing majority”.  This was a development they abhorred above all else, because it might lead (God forbid!) to “a rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property, or for any other improper and wicked project”. 

There is no mistaking the intent underlying Madison’s argument.  To the Federalists who authored our constitution, the idea of a democratic majority pursuing even a dollop of economic equality was an “improper and wicked project”.  They accordingly created a constitution laden with anti-democratic “checks and balances”.  

These included: allowing slaves to be counted toward the apportionment of congressional districts, giving slave-owning states far more representation than their populations deserved; a deliberately undemocratic Senate, in which a sparsely populated state like Wyoming wields as much legislative influence as a state like California, with a population fifty times larger; treating states as if they are sovereign nations, a notion that was questionable in 1787, led to secession and civil war in 1860, and is utterly ludicrous today.  

We no longer need, if we ever did, Swiss-style “federalism” to unite historically different cultural and linguistic communities.  “States rights” do not unite us.  On the contrary, they divide us by allowing some states to deny fundamental rights to American citizens they deem to be unworthy.

When Republicans and the now predominant conservative majority on the Supreme Court invoke in lofty terms the “original intent” of the Founding Fathers as a guiding principle for interpreting the constitution, when they insist on reminding us that we live in a “constitutional republic,” they are not indulging in sly or scholarly obfuscations of their own intentions.  On the contrary, they are being shamefully obvious.  

It is time that we recognized that the “original intent” of the founders was fundamentally anti-democratic.  It is also time that we recognize what Republicans actually mean when they invoke term, “original intent”.  It is their intention to suppress democracy.

When they talk about protecting the rights of minorities against tyrannical majorities, they aren’t talking about protecting the most vulnerable people in our society.  When they speak of “checks and balances,” it is not their purpose to check the overreach of one branch of government against the others.  When they talk about “freedom,” they aren’t talking about you and me.  

As we confront the malign intentions of today’s Republicans, we must not kid ourselves into thinking that the intentions of the men who created our “constitutional republic” were benign.  Behind their “original intent” was a malign purpose—to suppress the many in favor of the few.  Those who today invoke that “original intent,” as if it were holy writ, share the same purpose. 

Brett Kavanaugh’s inexorable march toward confirmation as the newest Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States was fueled, at least in part, by a backlash from the political right against accusations that he had, in a drunken stupor, attempted to rape Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, while the two of them were teenagers, attending elite Washington-area prep schools 36 years ago.

Kavanaugh did not himself ignite this backlash, but he poured plenty of gasoline on the fire.  By angrily decrying a fictional “left-wing conspiracy,” which he claimed was out to destroy his career, his reputation, his family, he sought to divert attention from his own bad behavior  to the bogeyman of “liberalism”.  The right-wing rant-o-sphere immediately joined in, leaping instantly to Kavanaugh’s defense.

Orrin Hatch, the octogenarian senior Senator from Utah, denounced the confirmation hearings as a “national disgrace” and, as he put it, “worse than Clarence Thomas”.  Hatch could care less that Clarence Thomas brazenly lied to the Senate when he was up for confirmation 27 years ago and was almost certainly guilty of the sexual misbehavior Anita Hill accused him of.  He won confirmation in the end, not because he was innocent, but, rather, because he shrewdly played a right-wing version of the “race card,” asserting that the accusations leveled against him were a “high-tech lynching”. 

Not to be outdone, Senator Lindsay Graham of South Carolina, unleashed what can only be described as an hysterical tirade, claiming that a “good man” was the target of baseless accusations cooked up by unethical Democrats. As Graham—quite literally—shrieked at Kavanaugh’s accusers, his lips flecked with foam, his pupils dilated, and the carotid artery in his throat throbbed like a firehose.  It was not entirely clear whether Graham’s rage was sincere or merely theatrical, but he has repeated the performance many times since.  Perhaps practice makes perfect.  

Outside the corridors of the Senate, the backlash was even more vitriolic.  Professional ideologues like Laura Ingraham, who screams for a living on Fox News Channel and right-wing talk radio, asserted that criticism of Kavanaugh threatened the very ideal of American manhood itself, which in her telling seems little different from a testosterone-crazed chimpanzee beating his hairy chest with an empty banana peel.  Although most Americans blessedly do not share Ingraham’s view of virility, there are enough on the right who do, including more than a few Republican women, whose self-esteem it little better than sludge in a gutter.

For his part, Donald Trump whined, “It’s a very scary time for young men in America.”  His point, I suppose, was that bad-behaving young men are now plagued by the fear that their bad behavior may someday be exposed.  Trump went on to complain that he and his friends have themselves been the targets of “very false” accusations because of their celebrity or wealth.  What actually irked him, of course, was that he and his brutish friends may no longer be able to get away with their sexual improprieties. 

Despite all that, thousands of Republicans across the country rose to Trump’s bait, rejecting the accounts of Christine Blasey Ford and countless other women, insisting that men like Kavanaugh and Trump are innocent victims, refusing to accept the proposition that men, particularly powerful men, could possibly be guilty of anything except “boys being boys”.  Indeed, they went further, rejecting the very idea of “white male privilege” as a baseless slur.

The phrase, “white male privilege” is not a cultural cliche´or a feminist trope, let alone a baseless slur.  It describes a deep-seated and troubling social reality—the stranglehold that continues to be exercised by privileged white men on the throttles of power, wealth, political influence, and social prestige.   This stranglehold is centuries-old and reinforced in ways both obvious and subtle—in exclusive fraternities and clubs, in elite colleges and universities, in professional societies and boardrooms, in media representations of “strong” men and suitably submissive women.  It amounts to an unspoken and unwritten pact that elevates white men above everyone else and silently justifies their privileged place in our society. 

This pact protects its beneficiaries by dismissing and demeaning anyone who dares to question their status or the privileges they enjoy.  Some of these beneficiaries are canny enough to pretend that no such pact exists.  Others, like Orrin Hatch, are too stupid and tone-deaf even to pretend.  Recently confronted by protestors in the halls of Congress, Hatch waved them away with a contemptuous “Grow up!”  To a moral dinosaur like Orrin Hatch, it would appear that being a “grown-up” means accepting the god-given right of men to bestride the world like the colossi they imagine themselves to be.

The dinosaurs got their way by confirming Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court—and we all will be living with the consequences for decades to come.  But history is nothing if not fickle.  As Kavanaugh himself said during his final and incendiary testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee:  “What goes around, comes around.”

To young men across America, who may find this to be the “scary” time that Donald Trump described, let me say this:   If you treat women with the respect they deserve; if you recognize them as the fully equal human beings they are; if you value them, not for their anatomies, but for their intellects, their accomplishments, and their humanity—then relax, for you have nothing to fear.

If, on the other hand, you believe that you are privileged; if you think that your bad behavior should be inoculated against challenge or inspection; if you choose to walk in the footsteps of sexual predators like Donald Trump and Brett Kavanaugh—then you should be more than scared.  You should be terrified.  

Like Medea, the enchantress of ancient Greek mythology, who was betrayed by the man she loved and for whom she sacrificed everything, the women of America have had enough.  They are no longer prepared to surrender their dignity or to have their stories dismissed.  They no longer willing to submit themselves to “white male privilege”.  And like Medea, they will have their just, terrible revenge.

One week ago, the nation was riveted by a spectacle we have not seen in decades: a televised political event so compelling that it shot straight to the top of the Nielsen ratings.  More than 20 million Americans watched the Senate hearing, in which Donald Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court, Brett Kavanaugh, squared off against Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, who had accused him of attempted rape when they were prep school students more than 30 years ago.  While Dr. Ford’s testimony seemed to many to be, not only credible, but heartfelt and humble, Kavanaugh’s riposte was angry, bitter, and ferocious.   

Although he did not assail Dr. Ford directly—given the era in which we live, he did not dare—Kavanaugh turned his wrath against everyone else, proclaiming himself to be the innocent victim of a “left-wing conspiracy,” designed to derail his nomination and destroy his personal honor.  Whatever else you may think of Kavanaugh, you have to give him credit for putting on quite a show—a show that was promptly cheered by those on the political right, not only by the Republican Senators in the room, who promptly sprang to his defense, but also by the White House and Donald Trump.   

Several hours later, however, as the Senate Judiciary Committee was about to vote, Republican Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona had a change of heart.  He rose from his chair and began to leave the committee room, motioning for his friend and trusted colleague, Chris Coons, a Democratic Senator from Delaware, to join him.  They disappeared for the better part of an hour, during which the other Republican members of the Judiciary Committee sat stone-faced, twiddling their thumbs.  When the two eventually returned, Flake quietly but firmly stated that he was prepared to support Kavanaugh’s nomination, only if the FBI was allowed to conduct an investigation of the charges of sexual misconduct that had been leveled against him.  The silence in the room was, as the old cliché goes, deafening.

Flake and Coons were immediately heralded for their civility, their readiness to compromise, and their ability to “hear one another,” despite ideological differences.  One, rather hyperbolic cable news commentator even called them “heroic”.  This episode was held up as an iconic example of the sort of collegiality that once supposedly characterized our governing institutions but has been swept away by a whirlwind of corrosive partisanship.

There are two problems with this narrative.  

First, it ignores history.  Far from being unusual, political partisanship has been with us from the very beginning of our republic.  

Second, it treats the qualities of collegiality and compromise as ends that are noble in themselves rather than purely instrumental means to a greater end.  Compromise and conciliation are not “moral virtues”.  They are merely one way of achieving a moral result.  If they fail in that purpose, they have no more value than a hammer that cannot hit a nail.  

In the 1930s, Neville Chamberlain fervently believed that conciliation could appease Hitler and avert a second World War.  Events proved him wrong—tragically so. At the time, however, Chamberlain was heralded as a hero, until Hitler revealed himself to be the lying monster that everyone but Chamberlain knew he was.  Within a year, it wasn’t Chamberlain’s conciliation that drew the accolades; it was Winston Churchill’s defiant belligerence.

Compromise and conciliation work only when fundamental moral values are shared and underlying facts are commonly acknowledged.  Absent these conditions, they are worse than a waste of time, they are impediments to justice.  Indeed, the most consequential moral questions are simply too important to allow for compromise.  They are either-or propositions, which can only be resolved by partisan struggle, in which one moral vision prevails over the other.

Such was the case in 1860, when the American Civil War erupted after decades of craven compromise came to a bitter and bloody end.  Conciliation was no longer possible between those who believed that all men were created equal and those who insisted that some men were disposable property, to be exploited or abused for the profit or pleasure of their masters.  The only way to settle the matter was for one side of the partisan divide to compel the other to change its ways.

Such is also the case today in, for instance, the battle between those who believe that women have a right to decide their own reproductive fates and those who hold that embryos should be immunized against that right.  There is no middle ground here, no room for a conciliatory truce between two parties with mutual good will, because the opposing moral priorities can never be reconciled, and the indeterminate facts can never be settled.  To accept that the preservation of an embryo, or even of a fetus, takes moral precedence over a woman’s freedom of choice, one must also accept that an embryo or a fetus is as much a “person” as the woman whose body it inhabits.  This is not a factual question that can be answered by science.  It is a question of definition.  A caterpillar may eventually become a butterfly.  That does not mean that we must necessarily accept caterpillars and butterflies as being one and the same.

As much as we may admire what Jeff Flake and Chris Coons did last week, we should not confuse the comforting prospect of compromise with the uncomfortable reality that many of the most important moral issues are irreconcilable except through partisan struggle.  We also must resist the temptation to view past eras of political consensus through the misty eyes of nostalgia.  

Consensus usually comes, not when our political discourse is more elevated, but, rather, when the nation at large chooses to sweep truly important questions under the rug.  Such was the case in the decades of compromise preceding the Civil War, in the Jim Crow era that followed Reconstruction, in the intoxicated 1920s, and in the soporific 1950s, when it was taken for granted that women and minorities knew their place, that even a whiff of “socialism” was the devil’s work, and that anyone who dared to question capitalism was a communist or a traitor.  It was easy then to reach consensus, because the most fundamental social, cultural, and political contradictions were simply ignored.  

That is not the sort of time we live in now.  Women are no longer content to subordinate themselves to male privilege.  African-Americans are no longer willing to settle for second-class citizenship.  Hispanic and Asian immigrants are no longer ready to accept the proposition that they are somehow less American than the white evangelical Christians who inhabit the broad, bleak “heartland”.  We live in a time of fundamental moral conflicts, and the only way to resolve them is through partisan struggle, a struggle that will inevitably be unsettling and uncomfortable.  That is as it should be.  The stakes are too high for anything else.

Despite unprecedented popular opposition to his nomination as well as deplorable views on everything from the reproductive rights of women to the unfettered powers of the presidency, Brett Kavanaugh, Donald Trump’s latest pick for the Supreme Court,  was well on his way to confirmation, until he encountered what one tone-deaf Republican Senator called a “hiccup”.  That “hiccup” was a professor of psychology from Palo Alto, California, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, who stepped forward to accuse Kavanaugh of attempted rape, when they were students at two exclusive prep schools in Washington.  Ford was soon joined by another accuser, who alleged that Kavanaugh exposed himself in her presence at a drunken party during their undergraduate years at Yale.

Since the day the first of these allegations surfaced, there has been a mad scramble by Republicans to save Kavanaugh’s nomination, both by manipulating the approval process and by attempting to discredit his accusers.  Their opening gambit was to attack both the accusers and the Democrats who support them of a “last-minute”attempt to derail the nomination timetable for so-called “political” purposes.  This line of attack quickly collapsed, because it was so transparently hypocritical.  The timetable for confirming Brett Kavanaugh was itself entirely political and completely arbitrary.  Republicans are rushing to put Kavanaugh on the bench by the time the Supreme Court reconvenes in October, so that he can advance their hideous ideological agenda, which includes overturning Roe v. Wade, rolling back civil rights, and, above all else, protecting Donald Trump from the investigation into his nefarious Russian connections.

When this first line of attack didn’t work, Republicans tried to undermine the stories of the two accusers, arguing, in the case of Dr. Ford, that her allegation against Kavanaugh was a case of “mistaken identity”.  An elaborate theory was cobbled together by a Republican operative to pin the attempted rape on one of Kavanaugh’s prep school classmates.   This attack collapsed no less quickly than the first, and the operative who cooked it up has taken a “leave of absence” from bogus think-tank where he worked.  

Running out of other options, Republicans tried to make the case that Kavanaugh’s accusers are part of a left-wing conspiracy.  Unfortunately for them, the only “proof” they were able to offer was a donation made by one of the women to Bernie Sanders and the fact that the other woman is a registered Democrat.  According to this sort of logic, only Trump-supporting registered Republicans are capable of honest testimony, a notion that is both absurd and insulting.

Having failed to discredit the motives of Kavanaugh’s accusers or to undermine their stories, Republicans were left with their old stand-by’s:  to claim that these women are (if you will pardon the crude expressions) either “nuts” or “sluts”.   We have already heard rumblings of the “nut” argument from the octogenarian, increasingly dotty Senior Senator from Utah, Orrin Hatch, who, without having seen or heard from Christine Ford, pronounced her to be “mixed up”.  The “slut” argument may yet come, since it was deployed with such malicious effect against Anita Hill 27 years ago, during the confirmation hearings for Clarence Thomas.  During those hearings, it was suggested that Hill suffered from “erotomania,” a bogus psychological malady, which supposedly causes libidinous women to project their sexual fantasies onto innocent and unsuspecting men.

If Republicans propose to go down this dirty road once again, they will have to be far more careful, risking a backlash from female voters across the land, who are rightly sick and tired of having their most terrible personal experiences dismissed as hysterical fantasies or harmless pranks by “boys who will be boys”.  Several less-than-discreet Republicans have already stepped into this trap and have been pummeled in the press.

In the end, Republicans are left with only one, even remotely viable, stratagem to save the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh—the assertion that he is entitled to “due process” and must be “presumed innocent unless proved guilty”.  In theory at least, this allows Republicans to have their cake and eat it.  They can pretend to listen “respectfully” to Kavanaugh’s accusers and if their accusations cannot be “proved,” they can go on to confirm Trump’s nominee with unctuously sincere smiles on their faces, claiming that justice and “due process” were served.  

You can already hear how this is going to play out by listening to the duplicitous words of Lindsey Graham, the Senior Senator from South Carolina, who just hours ago said the following:  “What am I supposed to do, go ahead and ruin this guy’s life based on an accusation?”

Apart from the fact that Lindsey Graham seems already to have made up his mind, without having heard a word from the accusers, the rhetorical question he poses and the political calculations behind it are utterly specious.

To begin with, Brett Kavanaugh’s life is not about to be “ruined”.  He is no doubt feeling both frustration and pique, because what he assumed to be his birthright is now being questioned by two impertinent and contumacious women.  The fact remains that, if he is not confirmed, he will continue to serve as a high-ranking federal judge and will no doubt spend many well-lubricated evenings at his country club in the exclusive Washington enclave of Chevy Chase, grumbling about the injustices he has suffered to an appreciative audience of similarly disgruntled men.

More to the point, and far more consequentially, nomination hearings are not legal proceedings, let alone criminal or civil trials.  Nor is Brett Kavanaugh a defendant in a courtroom, entitled to due process.  He does not face conviction, imprisonment, or even a fine.  He and his accusers are not legal adversaries, bound by the rules of litigation.  Indeed, the concepts of “due process” and “the presumption of innocence” simply do not apply, and attempts by Republicans to suggest otherwise are little more than a political charade.

Brett Kavanaugh is nothing more than a job applicant, the only difference being that he is seeking one of the highest jobs in the land.  Just as employers are under no obligation to “presume” that would-be employees are qualified for the jobs they seek, so, too, neither the United States Senate nor the American people are under any obligation to “presume” that Brett Kavanaugh is entitled to sit on the Supreme Court.   It is not up to Kavanaugh’s accusers to “prove” their allegations.  It is up to Brett Kavanaugh to prove that, in the face of these allegations, he is worthy of the job he seeks.  Thus far, neither he nor his Republican sponsors have succeeded in making that case.

In 1992, Bill Clinton’s colorful, and mouthy, campaign manager, James Carville, coined the phrase “It’s the economy, stupid!” to describe his strategy for getting Clinton elected during a recession created by the conservative economic policies of George Herbert Walker Bush.  Since then, the proposition that the economy trumps all other electoral considerations has become totemic on both sides of the political divide.  

Even now, as Republicans face major headwinds going into the 2018 mid-term election, they are turning to a “booming economy,” supposedly produced by tax cuts and deregulation, as their salvation.  The one fear they willing to admit to is that the innumerable distractions emanating from the White House and Donald Trump’s increasingly manic “tweets” will prevent their message of economic success from getting through to the American people.  Whether Republicans actually believe this fairy tale or are merely grasping for some slender straw of hope, is anybody’s guess.  Whatever the reality, their purported faith in the power of what they see as a booming economy seems to be misplaced.

Despite all the usual metrics—the stock market, GDP, unemployment figures, and so on—most Americans seem unimpressed by the “booming economy” Republicans tout with such pride.  On the contrary, no matter what the economic statistics may say, a substantial majority believe the country is heading in the wrong direction; most have concluded that the Republican tax cuts were little more than a give-away to corporations and the rich; and Donald Trump’s approval numbers have sunk to new lows.  Adding rhetorical insult to ideological injury, a substantial number of voters say they want Democrats rather than Republicans to take control of Congress two months from now.  It may be that Republicans can still buck these headwinds and maintain control of the House of Representatives (one should never underestimate their guile and cunning), but if they do, it certainly won’t be because of the economy.

What Republicans, as well as many pundits and prognosticators, fail to realize is that the economic metrics we have relied upon for decades say very little about the actual well-being of the nation, let alone most Americans.  Indeed, these metrics are fundamentally misleading, causing us to imagine things to be better than they actually are. 

The most fundamental economic metric of them all—GDP, or “gross domestic product”—is also one of the most misleading.  GDP is our principal measure of total economic activity.  In the last fiscal quarter, it grew by four percent, which prompted Donald Trump to claim personal responsibility for unprecedented prosperity, even though similar gains happened several times during the Obama years. 

GDP does not tell us anything about who benefits from growth, however, nor does it indicate which sectors of the economy contribute to, and therefore profit from, growth.  Most of the recent gains in GDP have gone to the top one percent of the population and to the financial industry, not to industries, like manufacturing and retail, that create most of the jobs in our economy.

The metrics that measure those jobs are themselves no less misleading. The official level of unemployment, for instance, is now less than four percent, and we are constantly told that some sectors of the economy are complaining about “labor shortages”.  Here again, Donald Trump has been quick to claim credit for what he has described—quite fictitiously—as “the lowest unemployment numbers in history”. 

The trouble is that our employment figures are notoriously dodgy, a problem that Trump himself once found it convenient to deplore when Barack Obama was president.  They do not, for instance, include those who have stopped looking for work, either because the jobs aren’t there or because the pay on offer isn’t worth the effort. Nor do they reflect the employment status of the prime working-age population, as opposed to teenagers and retirees who are willing to work part-time for low wages.  When it comes to the core working-age population—people who have families to support and mortgages to pay—the reality is that employment hasn’t yet recovered from the financial collapse of 2008. 

Much the same is true when it comes to measures of income.  Strictly speaking, average income is on the rise.  But the crucial word is “average”.  When one percent of the population is doing extravagantly well, and the rest of the population is doing poorly, averages are worse than misleading; they are meaningless.  Average household income in the United States, adjusted for inflation, recently returned to the level it was at 25 years ago.  That rebound occurred, not because most households are doing better, but, rather, because a few households are doing phenomenally better. 

The same is true when it comes to the metrics of wealth.  With the recovery of the stock market, which Trump touts on an almost daily basis, the average net worth of Americans has rebounded handsomely.  But that average is distorted by what can only be described as a grotesque level of economic inequality.  

Once upon a time, two out of three Americans owned stocks, either directly or by dint of various funds or retirement programs; today, the number is barely more than 50 percent.  The richest 20 percent of the population now own 80 percent of the country’s wealth, and the richest one percent owns more wealth than the bottom 90 percent combined.

The “booming economy” Republicans cling to as their electoral salvation therefore means next to nothing to most Americans.  Their economic prospects aren’t getting better.  Their jobs aren’t more secure.  Their standard of living isn’t improving.  Their debts and health insurance premiums aren’t declining.  Their hopes for a better future for their children are evaporating.

Swaddled as Republicans are in a cocoon of big-money donors and their blinkered ideology, they seem incapable of understanding the economy as it actually is.  Instead, they cling to the metrics of a mythical economy, one that is rigged by the rich for the rich.  If Republicans insist on making this myth the centerpiece of their electoral strategy, they will achieve the ultimate irony of disproving the mantra of their greatest political nemesis, James Carville.  If they go down in defeat in November, it will be because they failed to realize:  “It’s not your economy, stupid!”

In 1957, John F. Kennedy, then the Junior Senator from Massachusetts, wrote a best-selling book called Profiles in Courage, in which he told the stories of eight earlier members of the United States Senate, who had defied public opinion and fierce political opposition to uphold principles they staunchly believed in.  Some were rewarded for their courage in their lifetimes; others paid a price; all were eventually recognized by history.

If JFK were writing his book today, it is all but certain that he would add a ninth name to his honor roll of political heroes—the name of the late Senior Senator from Arizona, John Sidney McCain III, who was memorialized 24 hours ago in an extraordinary ceremony in the nation’s Capitol and will be buried today at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, from which he graduated more than 50 years ago.

It is possible to have disagreed with many of John McCain’s political views, because he was, for the most part, a conventional and doctrinaire Republican, who dutifully saluted the ideological flags of trickle-down economics, so-called “free trade,” and “entitlement reform”.  He was also unduly supportive of military spending, no matter how extravagant or unnecessary, and far too ready to advocate the use of military force as a solution to complex diplomatic and political problems. 

It is utterly impossible, however, to deny his personal integrity, physical courage, and principled independence.   Throughout his public life, he was determined to do the right thing as he saw it, and he was ever ready to work with political opponents to accomplish that result.  When he made mistakes, he admitted them.  When he saw something that was manifestly unjust, he opposed it.  When he encountered bullies on the public stage, he unflinchingly called them out and took the side of their powerless victims.  John McCain took the words, “duty, honor, country,” with utmost seriousness.  But he never took himself seriously.  Far more than most of us, he had a clear and unsparing understanding of his own flaws and failings.  

In John McCain’s death and Donald Trump’s reaction to that death, we are witnessing, not only a Profile in Courage, but Profiles in Contrast.  

On the one hand, there is the example of McCain himself—an imperfect man, like all of us, but a man who rose above his imperfections to serve this country with the utmost honor and decency; a true military hero, who endured a level of physical pain and suffering that few of us can imagine; a political leader who, whatever his failings, strove constantly to realize the best instincts of the country he served.

On the other hand, there is the small, petty, and pathetically insecure manikin who now calls himself “President of the United States”—a man so petulant and jealous that he cannot bring himself to utter John McCain’s name, let alone acknowledge him as the hero that he was; a man so mean in spirit and empty in heart that he had to be pressured by public outrage to lower the White House flag in honor of McCain’s death; a man whose self-regard is so immense and yet so fragile that he had to flee Washington for the safe, comforting cocoon of one of his private golf clubs, as the rest of the nation mourned the passing of a true public servant.  

The Profiles in Contrast we are witnessing go beyond invidious comparisons between two men, between John McCain and Donald Trump.  They extend to the nation itself, or rather, to the two, divided nations we have become.   

One of these nations, populated by a majority of Americans, sees in John McCain’s life and death inspiring examples of personal courage and public service, a man to be memorialized and honored, and in that man an ideal to be hoped-for and emulated.  This is the nation we saw on display in the National Cathedral yesterday, when three former Presidents of the United States, three former Vice Presidents, two former Secretaries of State, and countless other public leaders and luminaries came together to honor John McCain.  In so doing, they also rebuked and spurned the toxicity of Donald Trump.

The other nation, populated by a cult of sycophants and bigots who surround and support Trump, spent yesterday sitting mum in a metaphorical corner, smoldering with resentment and pent-up rage, and barely containing their urge to lash out.  Today, they could contain themselves no longer.  

One of Trump’s most slavish supporters carped:  “It was a very nice gesture by Jared and Ivanka to attend (the funeral).  I find it contemptible that the McCain family couldn’t seat them in a better, more respectable section.”

This whinging complaint epitomizes everything that is contemptible, not about the McCain family, but about the Trump phenomenon—not only about the man himself, but also about his family, his entourage, and that part of the nation that still clings to him as their savior.  

For Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump to have wheedled their way into the memorial services for John McCain wasn’t a “nice gesture;” it was a grotesque intrusion, the callous rudeness of which should have been apparent to anyone who isn’t politically tone-deaf or morally dead.

Having done absolutely nothing to express their respect for John McCain during his lifetime, no member of the Trump family, let alone faux “presidential advisers” like Trump’s daughter and son-in-law, had any claim to be seated in a “better, more respectable section.”  On the contrary, by inserting themselves into John McCain’s funeral, like gate-crashers at a wedding, Jared and Ivanka were lucky to have been seated at all. 

This episode, more than any other, casts into sharp relief the contrasting profiles between John McCain’s America and Donald Trump’s.  In McCain’s America, respect must be earned by public service and public scrutiny.  In Trump’s America, respect is taken for granted, demanded by those in power, simply because they are in power.  In Trump’s America, there is no place for decency, dignity, or honor. 

It is now up to us to decide which of these two Americas we wish to inhabit.  To quote the final, eloquent words of Henry Kissinger’s eulogy honoring John McCain:  “Henceforth, the country’s honor is ours to sustain.”  Which vision of America will we choose?  Will we choose John McCain’s Profile in Honor or Donald Trump’s Profile in Dishonor?   

One of the most unexpected consequences of the chaotic presidency of Donald Trump has been the emergence of our country’s principal intelligence agencies, the CIA, the NSA, and the FBI, as the institutional equivalents of national heroes.  Because Trump has attacked these agencies so viciously—either because he thinks they’re out to get him or because he fears they have evidence of his sleazy and crooking dealing—many Americans have come to idolize them as our last, best hope for containing Trump’s worst impulses.  It has therefore become de rigueur for journalists and commentators to laud these agencies and those who work for them as patriots beyond reproach.  

This crescendo of praise reached a peak just days ago, when the White House decided to strip former CIA Director, John Brennan, of his security clearance, solely because he has become a vociferous critic of Donald Trump. Several hundred former intelligence and diplomatic officials from across the political spectrum promptly sprang to Brennan’s defense, signing their names to public letters of protest.  One distinguished former military officer even went so far as to demand the “honor” of joining the ranks of those, whose security clearances may be withdrawn, because they have dared to criticize the president.

Let it be said that the officials who criticized Donald Trump’s attack on John Brennan were entirely right to do so.  Trump is a petty thug, whose his attack on Brennan was an act of pure political retaliation.  There is also no doubt that the vast majority of CIA officers, NSA analysts, and FBI agents are patriotic Americans, whose purpose it is to defend our country.  It would be foolish, however, to close our eyes to the checkered and often dark history of the agencies they serve.  And it would be worse than foolish to transfer our hopes from one false idol to another.

The FBI, being the oldest of our intelligence agencies, has the longest history of serious misdeeds.  It did everything it could to suppress labor unrest during the Great Depression; to aid and abet Joe McCarthy’s anti-communist witch hunt in the 1950s; to undermine the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s; to intimidate, compromise, and blackmail Martin Luther King; and to hound, harass, and criminalize those who exercised their First Amendment right to protest against the Vietnam War.  The founder and longest-serving Director of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, operated the agency as a personal fiefdom, conducting illegal surveillance and compiling secret dossiers on dozens of politicians, including presidents, to make sure they towed the line and did his bidding.

The CIA, which replaced the OSS after the Second World War, was responsible for engineering dozens of utterly illegal coups d’état, as well as assassinations and attempted assassinations, around the globe, the consequences of which bedevil our foreign policy to this day.  It was the CIA that armed the Taliban in Afghanistan in their war against the Russian invasion of their county in the 1980s, only to turn around and vilify the Taliban as enemies two decades later.  It was the CIA that operated—and for all we know, still operates—a host of off-shore “black sites,” where alleged terrorists were tortured in violation of both American and international law.  It was former CIA Director, George Tenet, who promised his boss, then President George W. Bush, that his agency had a “slam dunk” case, proving that Saddam Hussein was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction—a lie that precipitated the disastrous invasion of Iraq, for which we are still paying the price.  The long list of the CIA’s calamitous miscalculations and shameless falsehoods truly boggles the mind.  

Then, there is the National Security Agency, or NSA, which used to be so secret that it was nicknamed “No Such Agency,” because no one in government would even admit to its  existence.  It was only thanks to Edward Snowden—universally branded a “traitor” by the intelligence officials now rallying around John Brennan—that we learned of the NSA’s illegal surveillance of millions of Americans.  Indeed, one of most important of those officials, former Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, perjured himself before Congress, when he flat-out denied that such surveillance was taking place.  

Nor was that episode an aberration.  

Many of those defending John Brennan today, not to mention Brennan himself, also gathered ranks to support the nomination of Gina Haspel to head of the CIA.  This, despite the fact that she ordered, or at the very least did nothing to prevent, the destruction of videotapes documenting the illegal use of torture at a CIA “black site” in Thailand—a black site she was in charge of.

It is not my intention to vilify our intelligence agencies or to denigrate the thousands of decent Americans who work for those agencies with the patriotic purpose of defending our country.  Nor is it my intention to deny the obvious reality that these agencies serve a necessary purpose.  We live in a dangerous world, and like it or not, somebody has to do the sometimes dirty work of dealing with the dangers.

But we shouldn’t kid ourselves about the nature of the bargain we have struck with the Devil. The work done by our intelligence agencies is fundamentally incompatible with democratic freedoms.  Those agencies operate secretly, in the dark, where the temptation to bend the rules and break the law in the name of some “greater good” inevitably beckons.  All powerful institutions are subject to corruption, not in the common and trivial sense of bribes or kick-backs, but in the far more consequential sense of the moral disequilibrium which occurs when those on the “inside” begin to think they know better than those on the “outside”.  Those who operate in the dark are especially susceptible to this kind of corruption.

By all means, let us respect the work of our intelligence agencies…when they play by the rules and abide by the law.  But let us also be ever wary and watchful.  As we deplore the idolizing of Donald Trump by racist bigots and whining white people who worry that their centuries of privilege may be nearing an end, it would be a fatal mistake to replace one form of idolatry with another.  The FBI, CIA, and NSA aren’t going to save us.  Our salvation is up to us.

For nearly 20 years, Paul Ryan has represented Wisconsin’s First Congressional District, one of the safest Republican seats in the country, even in this parlous year, when Democrats have a real chance of retaking control of the House of Representatives.  Nevertheless, Ryan decided several months ago not to run for reelection.  As a result, he will not only give up his seat in Congress at the end of the year but will surrender his office as Speaker of the House, the third most consequential constitutional position in the land.  

Ryan’s decision came as a shock, not only to the Republicans, but to the broader Washington political establishment, and immediately sparked a flurry of speculation.  Did his decision reflect a calculation that his party’s electoral prospects are dismal?  Was it designed to salvage a tattered public reputation?  Or was it, as Ryan himself contends, a purely personal choice, reflecting a desire to “spend more time with his family”?  

Fairly or not, almost no one believes the last explanation, because it is the default excuse of virtually every politician who folds his tent and withdraws from public life before the walls of scandal or electoral defeat come crashing down.

The truth is, we will probably never know what Ryan’s personal motivations actually were.  In the end, however, that doesn’t really matter.  What does matter is Ryan’s public behavior, which, since the election of Donald Trump, has been shameful.  

Like so many of his Republican colleagues in both the House and the Senate, Paul Ryan has done absolutely nothing to rein in the misconduct of a president who behaves like an absolute monarch, trampling on the rule of law, abusing his authority to punish political enemies, and lying non-stop about his crimes.  Ryan has occasionally talked a good game, tut-tutting about Trump’s most offensive vulgarities, but as a practical matter, he has turned a blind eye to the worst of his actions and has actively supported those of his Republican colleagues who have become Trump’s stooges and most vociferous defenders.

Accordingly, the following letter was just sent to Speaker Ryan by registered mail.  I very much doubt that he will condescend to reply.  But if he does, rest assured that I will publish his reply in full.

August 17, 2018

The Honorable Paul Ryan                                                                                                             Speaker of the United States House of Representatives                                                                 H-232 The Capitol                                                                                                                   Washington, D.C. 20515

Dear Speaker Ryan:

I am not one of your constituents or a member of your political party, and there are few of your political opinions with which I agree. Nevertheless, you occupy the third highest office in the land and are bound by duty, honor, and your Constitutional obligations to represent the interests of all Americans, including those of us who may disagree with you  Above all else, you are obligated to defend our democratic institutions against assault from any quarter, foreign or domestic.  In fulfilling these obligations, I regret to say, you have failed.

You are by all accounts a decent man, and I have no reason to think otherwise.  But personal decency is not enough to make up for a dereliction of public duty.

You have stayed largely mute in the face of Donald Trump’s abominable conduct, and when not mute, you have hemmed and hawed, declining to condemn a man who is manifestly unfit for office, has consorted with criminals throughout his life, daily tramples on the rule of law, and may well have betrayed our country.

Even worse, you have abetted the corrupt actions of members of your own political party, of men like Bob Goodlatte, Jim Jordan, Trey Gowdy, and Devin Nunes, who have abused their authority and violated their oaths of office for the sole purpose of protecting Donald Trump from the consequences of an entirely legitimate investigation into his misconduct.

You yourself once condemned this man, citing your principles, but somewhere along the way, you appear to have abandoned those principles for reasons that you and you alone must reconcile.  

It is certainly not my place or purpose to judge you.  How you square your behavior with your conscience is your business, not mine.  All I can say is that your publicly stated excuses make no sense.  When you talk, as you recently did, of “avoiding tragedies” and “advancing goals,” the only person you are fooling with such talk is yourself. 

Which unnamed tragedies did you help to avoid?  Did you avoid the tragedy of Muslims being banned from entering the United States because of their religious beliefs?  Did you avoid the tragedy of refugees and asylum seekers being criminalized?  Did you avoid the tragedy of thousands of children being ripped away from their immigrant parents?  Did you avoid the tragedy of our country turning its back on climate science, all the while the planet bakes and burns?  Did you avoid the tragedy of Donald Trump vilifying our staunchest allies, all the while he abased himself and our nation by paying homage to Vladimir Putin?

And which unspoken goals did you advance by condoning, through your silence, the monstrous behavior of the man who now occupies the oval office?  Was one of those goals a tax cut for corporations and the wealthiest of Americans?  Was another the evisceration of health care for the most vulnerable people in our society?  Was still another the privatizing of public education, which has been the crucible of our democracy for more than century?  

Do you truly place so much stock in the libertarian fantasies of Ayn Rand that, in order to realize those fantasies, you are willing to sacrifice the future of our country on the altar of a demented demagogue?

I wish you no personal ill will, Speaker Ryan.  On the contrary, I pity you.  You still have time to save your reputation.  You still have a chance to do the right thing.  If you squander this chance, you will go down in history as the most craven and feckless Speaker of the House in living memory.  You will leave Washington in ignominy and dishonor.  

When you next look into the mirror, Speaker Ryan, ask yourself:  Is this the way I wish to be remembered?