The year is coming to an end. Almost every year, if not every year that I’ve been writing this blog, I’ve written a year end post speculating about the coming year. For instance, at the end of 2019 I was both totally prescient so far as predicting that Joe Biden would be nominated and elected and the media would be pursuing the Hunter Biden non-story, and also absolutely wrong when I predicted that the Republicans would do the rational thing:
On January 21, 2020 Donald Trump will be consigned to the memory hole, like his most recent Republican predecessor, and the media will rush to proclaim that the Republican Party has been purged and is now, once again, the responsible party they knew and loved before the Trumpian aberration came along. Lindsay Graham won’t remember anything about the man. Both siderism, which has begun to be in a bit of a bad odor lately, will see a new rebirth.
I was even wrong about both siderism, because it a) never really went away, and b) didn’t need a rebirth because see a).
The difference between that year and this is that there was reason to hope. The thinking was that if we could get rid of Trump we could return to a sort of normalcy, though we would still be stuck with a Republican Party full of extremists, and it was fairly certain that we’d get rid of Trump. Who could have predicted (probably plenty of people did) that a majority of Republican politicians would go along with Trump’s lies about winning the election.
We now face the most important presidential election since that held in 1860. If the Democrats don’t win the presidency and capture both Houses of Congress, we will become, at best, an autocracy, and at worst, a fascist dictatorship.
The last few years have exposed, as never before, the flaws in our constitution and the form of government it created. It has become virtually impossible for the majority to get its way in this country, while, oddly enough, polls seem to show that the majority usually wants the right thing. There are obvious ways to fix things so that, for instance, the extreme gerrymandering that has handed this country to a whackjob minority could be abolished in favor of a representative legislature that truly reflects the nation as a whole. Unfortunately, the only way to get there under our present form of government is by a constitutional amendment process that itself is easily held hostage by a minority. While there may be ways to accomplish some reforms without a constitutional amendment, any attempt to do so would be struck down by a Supreme Court which no longer even pretends to follow established legal precedents or what were once settled rules of statutory and constitutional construction.
All this brings to mind the story about Kurt Gödel, the famed logician, who, when about to become a citizen, told his friends that the constitution was fatally flawed:
When Gödel was studying to take his American citizenship test in 1947, he came across what he described as an “inner contradiction” in the U.S. Constitution. At the time, he was at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, where he was good friends with Albert Einstein and Oskar Morgenstern. Gödel told Morgenstern about the flaw in the constitution, which, he said, would allow the United States to legally become a fascist state. Morgenstern tried to convince Gödel that this was very unlikely to happen, but Gödel remained very concerned about it. He was an Austrian by birth and, having lived through the 1933 coup d’état and escaped from Nazi Germany after the Anschluss, had reason to be concerned about living in a fascist dictatorship. Morgenstern had a number of discussions with Gödel about his concerns, and also told Einstein about them.
No one knows for sure what Gödel felt was this fatal flaw, but many, with good reason, share his fears today, and the nature of the Constitution’s many flaws is becoming ever clearer. Unfortunately, one never gets the impression that many of our politicians of either party share Godel’s fear. Perhaps they take their cues from the pundits, too many of whom spend their time trying to explain why Republican extremism is caused by Democrats. Whatever the reason, failing to appreciate or expound on the risk only makes a tragic outcome more likely.
To get to some specific predictions: I’m inclined to agree with those who think the Supreme Court will refuse to take up Trump’s immunity appeal once the DC Circuit rules against him. That saves Clarence the need to recuse himself, among other things. On the other hand, there’s not much question but that they’ll overrule the states that have declared that the insurrectionist can’t appear on their ballot. They’ll adopt one or more of the strained reasons that have been put forth about why the Amendment does not apply to the genius, or come up with one of their own. Maybe, for instance, a formal Declaration of Insurrection, is a condition precedent to applying the Amendment, unless, of course, the person charged is a Democrat.
Looking on the fairly dim bright side, if somehow Trump is denied the Republican nomination, he will undoubtedly urge his followers not to vote, which would hand the election to the Democrats, unless Joe Lieberman and RFK Jr., manage to achieve their goal of turning the nation toward fascism. No one should fool themselves into believing that a Republican other than Trump would respect democratic and constitutional norms. The party is now a full on fascist party and that won’t change unless they are decisively defeated at the polls while we still have somewhat fair elections.
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