Reading Material – September 23, 2018

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… A startling number of conservative figures have reacted as if they believe Ford, and have thus ended up in the peculiar position of defending the right of a Supreme Court Justice to have previously attempted to commit rape—a stance that at once faithfully corresponds to and defiantly refutes the current Zeitgeist. These defenders think that the seventeen-year-old Kavanaugh could easily, as Ford alleges, have gotten wasted at a party, pushed a younger girl into a bedroom, pinned her on a bed, and tried to pull off her clothes while covering her mouth to keep her from screaming. They think this, they say, because they know that plenty of men and boys do things like this. On these points, they are in perfect agreement with the women who have defined the #MeToo movement. And yet their conclusion is so diametrically opposed to the moral lessons of the past year that it seems almost deliberately petulant. We now mostly accept that lots of men have committed sexual assault, but one part of the country is saying, “Yes, this is precisely the problem,” and the other part is saying, “Yes, that is why it would obviously be a non-issue to have one of these men on the Supreme Court.”…

On CNN, [Carrie Severino, the policy director for the conservative Judicial Crisis Network,] said that Ford’s version of events could be describing anything from “boorishness to rough horseplay.” (In other words, it wasn’t attempted rape; it was a word that people use to cover up attempted rape.) It would appear that Severino, and those who have made similar comments, have no idea—and not much interest in understanding—what being on the other end of this sort of “horseplay” feels like.

Watching the machinery of elite power operate on behalf of Kavanaugh is both a lesson in who is entitled to second chances and absolution as well as an illustration of larger conflicts over the limits and boundaries of accountability. And read in that light, Kavanaugh is the perfect vessel for a view that puts the most privileged and powerful beyond the reach of public account.

Taliban insurgents killed so many Afghan security forces in 2016, an average of 22 a day, that by the following year the Afghan and American governments decided to keep battlefield death tolls secret.

It’s much worse now. The daily fatalities among Afghan soldiers and policemen were more than double that last week: roughly 57 a day.

Seventeen years after the United States went to war in Afghanistan, the Taliban is gaining momentum, seizing territory, and killing Afghan security forces in record numbers.

Should Read

Why is Kavanaugh here? It’s not in spite of his career advancing the most tendentious currents of right-wing zealotry; it’s because of it. He represents the interests of a tiny cadre of plutocrats; consistently ruling in their interests, warping the plain language of the Constitution and duly passed laws in the process. His is an ideology where the Fourth Amendment means not very much; the 14th Amendment (equal protection of the laws) so riddled with holes that it becomes worthless; a 2nd amendment so broadly and tortuously interpreted as to allow everything. Kavanaugh’s ode to William Rehnquist is particularly illuminating: With a phrase it shreds the notion that so-called strict constructionists are acting with any disinterested sense of fealty to pure language:

“It is fair to say that Justice Rehnquist was not successful in convincing a majority of justices in the context of abortion, either in Roe itself or in later cases such as Casey,” Kavanaugh said. “But he was successful in stemming the general tide of free-wheeling judicial creation of unenumerated rights that were not rooted in the nation’s history and tradition.”

“History and tradition”? What are the legitimate, canonical readings of “history and tradition” that should be recognized by the Court? And who decides what those are?…We needn’t humor the plutocracy’s demands for intellectual respect. The President can nominate a moderate, instead of a right-wing assassin — and one who isn’t credibly accused of sexual assault.

The choice between no longer driving and losing one’s personal freedom, or continuing to drive and risking one’s own life and the lives of others, isn’t a new one. The vast majority of older people have been living in the suburbs for decades now, and the mobility challenges for car-dependent older adults have been with us for decades.

What is unique about today’s moment, however, is the sheer number of Baby Boomers who will be getting old at the same time, the degree to which society is now auto-dependent (after decades of suburban sprawl), and the likelihood (based on what we’ve observed about their response to aging, thus far) that Boomers will be even less likely than previous generations to relinquish their keys.

On Wednesday afternoon, I traveled to the charming but unassuming neighborhood of Juniper Hill in White Plains to speak with a living legend too few people know about.

Her name is Olivia J. Hooker, and she is a sharp and glorious 103 years old. Not only was she the first African-American women to join the Coast Guard, not only was she a psychology professor and activist, but she is one of the last known survivors of the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921. During the riot, white residents destroyed the prosperous black neighborhood of Greenwood, which had come to be known as “Black Wall Street.” A report by the Oklahoma Commission to Study the Tulsa Race Riot said, “It is estimated that approximately 11,000 blacks resided in Tulsa in 1921, most living in the area of the Greenwood section.” As many as 300 people were killed and 8,000 left homeless.

At a time when the left is on the offensive in ideas and policies, political struggles are providing a compass for progressive jurisprudence. Progressives should not just resist the erosion of important legal gains, but say — starting today — what they believe the courts should do, and what they believe the Constitution means… Every political movement has its constitutional visions, from Great Society liberalism to Reaganite economic libertarianism and cultural conservatism. The work now is to define a jurisprudence of economic citizenship, strong democracy and inclusive justice that will help a resurgent left reclaim the Constitution.

The Constitution itself was understood by its framers as a machine, a precisely constructed instrument whose measures — its separation of powers, its checks and balances — were mechanical devices, as intricate as the gears of a clock, designed to thwart tyrants, mobs and demagogues, and to prevent the forming of factions. Once those factions began to appear, it became clear that other machines would be needed to establish stable parties. “The engine is the press,” Thomas Jefferson, an inveterate inventor, wrote in 1799…  The machine is no longer precisely constructed, its every action no longer measured. The machine is fix upon fix, hack after hack, its safety mechanisms sawed off. It has no brake, no fail-safe, no checks, no balances. It clatters. It thunders. It crushes the Constitution in its gears. The smell of smoke wafts out of the engine room. The machine is on fire.

Worth Reading

Ending on a Positive Note