Today's Supreme Court ruling on gerrymandering--no harm, no foul; fix it yourselves, say the five Pontius Pilates--damages our checks and balances in ways that are quite possible, now, to foresee.
To wit: With a Congress that will always be polarized and helplessly knotted up with posturing but little legislating, presidential power to govern will become more vital, not less, piled onto a system that has, with remembrance of terrorism all too evident, become more reliant on it.
Thus: More executive orders, not fewer. The executive branch will become top-heavy with power, with true representative government being shunted into irrelevance.
Dictatorialism, much like that of Hungary and Turkey at present, will impress itself upon the land. It's just what the monster in the White House wants.
Worse: Impeachment, as even a political act in the name of the people, will now be rendered officially obsolete--a part of the Constitution as useless as, say, the 3/5 Clause, which arranged for the South to have an equivalent number of members of the House because it could now count 3/5 of its slaves as people, even though they weren't treated as such.
Polarization will now double down and get worse. Primaries will continue to be the real elections in more than half our districts. The competitions will be intra-party, with severe, extreme positions needed to create distance between those who run. Trying to navigate legislation through that hotbox will be difficult enough; performing the daunting task of impeachment will be hopeless.
Put that together with the nicely-arranged, Justice Department's philosophy/policy of not indicting a sitting president, and you have the makings of an imperial position that the Founders never wanted. Unless one political party simply decides to cave and deliver the 2/3 majority that conviction constitutionally demands, no president will be legally assailable under any circumstances--including proof that he committed a major crime, such as rape.
The nation will have to wait--be forced to wait--at least until a term has ended before organizing an effective campaign to take a president down. In the meantime, as is happening right under our noses, our prestige, governmental infrastructure, and rule of law will suffer serious damage, far more than the considerable amount it has already suffered. It is damage that will take perhaps decades to repair, and may lead to violence to settle passionate issues. Heaven knows, we have plenty of guns for that.
With Speaker Nancy Pelosi crying uncle over today's capitulation on the border wall bill, giving Senate Republicans pretty much what they wanted, it's clear that as feared, the Democrats are too divided between moderate and progressive wings to form a united front against this monster. It will be bad enough for the country to have a presidency swung out of balance; if 45 continues, we will be confronted with genuine tyranny with no way to counteract it.
Remember that photo of the drowned father and his infant daughter, futilely reaching for asylum through treacherous waters: There will be more. We will become numb to that, too. Having relinquished feelings for first graders gunned down, we will come to feel nothing at all. That is the doorway to chaos and anarchy. If nothing haunts, we cannot be haunted by anything.
Don't believe that the passage of 45, whenever it happens, will result in something close to a return to normal power balances, either. People who lust for that kind of power can now justify that lust and are eyeing the White House in new ways. The reliance on big money to fund campaigns will be even more necessary, and Citizens United has provided them with just the vehicle. If 45 is going to get away with foreign intervention to assist his victory (victories?), why should anyone else hold back from such strategies?
Democracy in this land has been thrown into the hurt locker by five Supreme Court justices who either don't get it, have retreated back into a very scarred ivory tower of separation of powers that they conveniently choose to respect, or have simply joined the glacial coup d'etat: huge, slow but impenetrable. Regardless, with this legal imprimatur of gross unfairness, we are now quite officially stuck without a compass, and the states will now accelerate the fierce struggle for power. It will bring home politics to all those who wish to hide behind social niceties. With polarization guaranteed, no one will play nice because no one has to.
Sorry for the grim forecast. I see none other.
Be well. I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
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