The Death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg Heralds the End of Progressivism
Make no mistake; the very idea of a progressive moment, one that ironically is approved by over sixty percent of the American electorate, regarding sensible gun laws, environmental conservation, corporate checkpoints, the ACA, gay and gender rights, voting rights, and, most notably women’s reproductive and healthcare rights ended the moment Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg stopped breathing. Ginsburg, a staunch feminist and defender of voting and gender rights, was the liberal lynchpin of the Court, the way Justice Antonin Scalia was on the conservative side. When Scalia died with nearly a year left in the Barack Obama presidency, the Republican-controlled Senate, led by Mitch McConnell and many who preside there today, argued that the election should decide the next lifetime appointee to the highest court. There would be no vote on Obama’s pick, Merrick Garland for ten long months. That pick went to Donald J. Trump, who, as we know won in 2016, and is conservative Neil Gorsuch. Now, with less than six weeks to decide the next president, the same GOP members are trying to ram through another conservative Donald Trump pick, essentially making a 6-3 Court, a one-third of the federal government weapon to kill any progressive legislation for generations.
Of course, on the surface, for people unfamiliar with politics, who believe politicians when they pontificate about fairness and law and freedom and all the other head-patting verbal opiates that keep your conscience satiated, this is a horrible example of anti-American hypocrisy. And really, all I can say to that is “Tell it to the judge.” And it is likely that judge will side with them.
This has been a long-standing vision for Republicans for four decades-plus. And it is now in front of them. Silly things like hypocrisy and looking like lying sacks of pigeon shit is small potatoes. This is politics. This is power. They wield it, and realize, as has been written here for months, that Donald Trump is toast in a few weeks, and this is their last chance to make it happen. If you were wondering why the same Republicans, many of whom previously warned that candidate Trump would destroy the party and America, have stood silent while the president tramples on all of their purported principles of geo-political strength, free trade, small government, rising deficits, and formally abhorrent behavior that used to be the foundation of conservatism, then this is it. In one term, Trump will have remade the highest court, along with over one-hundred federal judges, to make it nearly impossible for laws pertaining to the above list to survive conservative legal review.
Days after Ginsberg’s death, Trump began floating the possibility that he may sue his way to combat the inevitable election results that should send him packing in January of 2021. To make that happen he needs to send this to a friendly Supreme Court, of which one-third he will have appointed. He doesn’t believe in free elections that has him ending up on the losing side. He says this every day, calling our election a fraud before it even happens. Being down by seven points nationally will do that. He knows, as again, I have written here for four months, that is he going to lose, and he is laying the groundwork for an excuse, “I was cheated!” to make the election, in his half-assed analogy, illegitimate.
The president of these United States, last I checked not run as an authoritarian state, when asked about a peaceful transfer of power should he lose the election, said this week; “The ballots are a disaster. You’ll have a very peaceful (transition of power)… there won’t be a transfer frankly. There’ll be a continuation.”
In other more coherent words, if the president wins, it is legitimate, like in 2016, when he started calling the general election fixed. Then after he won and digested the data that he lost the popular vote by a whopping three-million votes outside of his miniscule electoral college victory, he falsely claimed that there was widespread voter fraud. Trump even commissioned an investigation that fell apart under the weight of his fantasies. This is what Trump does. When a business of his, in this America, goes belly-up, he lawyers up. This will be one of those. And if so, it will result in a constitutional crisis. And everyone on Capitol Hill knows it.
And the Supreme Court will be sitting there for Trump in November. Texas Senator Ted Cruz, constitutional lawyer, whose father Trump accused of plotting to murder JFK and called his wife a dog and repeatedly diminished as “Lyin’ Ted” during the 2016 GOP Primaries defends this nonsense. Why? Because even Cruz knows, as he barely hung on for re-election in Texas in 2018, that the state and the country is beginning to lean to the left. This is the Last Chance Hotel. Of course, he has bowed to Trump, eaten his pride and self-respect, showed zero spine or personal self-esteem by backing him. That kind of thing is for the movies or fairytales. America is about power. And money. But you know, the Scarface thing; First you get the money, then you get the power, and then… well, you know… you get the women.”
And soon conservatism, as it has been set up for decades, is coming for the women. Their rights. Their bodies. Their sovereignty. Believe it.
Eating Trump’s shit has been the way the Republicans have gotten what they wanted – corporate tax cuts, deregulation, a bloated military budget, and on and on. And before liberals whine, try and remember that there would have never been any candidate Hillary Clinton losing to Donald Trump had she not eaten her husband’s shit; a man who continually cheated on her and lied to her in public and made her sit on the Today Show and claim a Right Wing conspiracy was hunting her husband, when it was just his uncontrollable libido. She ignored it, even enabled it, because she wanted the power Bill Clinton’s presidency enabled; and like Cruz, subjugated her self-worth, her good name. She became a senator, secretary of state and the first woman candidate for president by chowing down the dung. This is how it works in politics.
Power corrupts, completely. And this is what this column has been about now for these past seventeen years. No matter which way you look at it, politics is not to serve the people, it is to engender an ideology, no matter how rank or out of touch it is with evolution of the electorate And for all those women who voted for Trump and all those kids who stayed home because they loved some ultra-progressive dreamscape or Bernie Sanders in 2016, I say, it is time you eat the shit and understand the ramifications of losing elections. And this one is going to hurt. And hurt for a long time.
March all you want. Boo Donald Trump on the Supreme Court steps. Bitch and moan and listen to the MSNBC crew tell you that is outrageous! But know this, the people with the hammer get to wield it in your direction. Make sure those people have your interest at heart, not lobbyists or religious groups, but you. That is a lesson learned too late for most of us.
It is true, that I found the 2016 election to be a somewhat surreal, dumbfounding and at times a humorous mockery of America. I reveled in it because never in a million years did I think this country stupid enough to actually elect a morally corrupt conman game show host. But it did. And now it gets this. And for that I apologize to the people who will die at the hands of a military-grade weapon and the women who are raped or have the tough choice to make whether to die or have a child, because the government now will decide what happens to your body. And to those whose alternative lifestyles don’t jibe with ancient voodoo made-up of religious lunatics trying to hang onto their own patriarchal powers, my condolences. Voting rights? Sensible gun laws? Millions with pre-existing conditions? Sorry.
RIP Progressivism.
