The stress test of democracy is over, for now. It remains to be seen how much lasting damage has been done. The greatest threat to our republic has been, perhaps always was, institutional inertia. An authoritarian system, once built, is hard to dismantle. The system thrives, relies upon, survives through institutional drift.

What now? This is both the elation of change and the fear of failure that comes with historic moments. The nullification strategy hatched in the aftermath of Obama’s historic victory of 2008, has been given its just reward of failure. The principle architect of this strategy, Mssr. MM, will be forced to yield the remainder of his time. It is time for those who believe Congress exists to accomplish goals, not obstruct, to step into this moment. Divided government has not gone away, but we cannot, must not continue to reward low-minded obstructionism.

What now? Govern again. This is the message clearly sent by the voters of Georgia. Govern again. A new energy has been handed to you. Get up. Move about. Flex and stretch your muscles. This sclerotic old body known as the Senate should feel rejuvenated once more. Think big, yes. But there is utility in the small, the targeted and the well-designed. What to do? That’s simple enough. We are facing a common enemy, the pandemic. The calculus to treat this enemy as a distraction, or weirdly (though not by American standards) as a badge of political identity, has left us weak and divided. Defeat this enemy, but do not lose sight of the need to fortify us against future threats.

And for the rest of us? The governed? Stay engaged. Stay attuned. Speak, listen, hear, consider, weigh, rework, rally, support, sympathize, mobilize. Do not seek perfection, for then you will surely abandon this great experiment in self-governance. Do not give into malaise, lethargy, and despair. Yes, there are so many problems to choose from. But make a choice, choose to act. And take pride in your choice.

Somewhere down the line, I would like to do a larger treatmeant on the works of Robert Nozick, Milton Friedman, et. al. I am struck by the curious tendency in a certain strand of Libertarian thought to start off on shaky ground. Perhaps it has something to do with the need for first assumptions. Whatever the reason, these arguments quickly break down when they confront that monster of all political doctrines known as reality.

Take the observation that individuals should be treated as autonomous, self directing, self reliant beings, capable of making decisions as consensual beings. At first blush, there seems nothing objectionable about this, although it is unclear what we are to do with this suggestion. For straightaway it is apparent that whole swathes of people do not fit this categorical definition – children, the mentally and physically incapacitated, the special care needs of the elderly, the infirm, the dying in need of hospice.  The ideal is forced to confront the undeniable realities of pre-existing social, economic and biological injustices built into a historic process. It is useless to try and make individual autonomy the metric by which political systems are built because it excludes and prejudices in a way that the blind justice of Rawl’s attempts to resolve.

Thus Nozick’s rather curious decision to redistribute and remedy injustices ex ante the social contract. One could be forgiven for suspecting Anarchy, State, and Utopia is just a clever joke on Liberalism itself. The assumption, unstated, is that the true arc of any political order (it’s natural state) will necessarily lead to inequality and injustice. Any attempt to remedy and address these are as useless as returning to the Garden of Eden. Worse, they involve the same sorts of cruelty and violence – impounding property, state coercion, the redistribution of wealth.

I remain unconvinced, or rather these arguments, convince me that individual autonomy, well intended, is a useless starting point precisely because it presumes a given distribution of power when the point, after all, is how power is distributed in the first place.

 

We create inhuman landscapes. We create inhuman landscapes and act surprised when people occupy them.

We do worse.

We blame them, condemn those to this sad fate of hopeless lives. We take the institutional, the economic, the historic, the million processes that go into making these inhuman landscapes either intentional or through neglect, and mask these obscenities by morality. You are the reason your life is terrible. There is no one to blame here but yourself.

I might agree with Bernie Sanders about the need for a political revolution. But how far are we willing to go? Setting aside whether this revolution could ever be brought about peacefully, I am thinking of something far more radical than what Bernie has in mind.

By all accounts, our political system is disintegrating. The inconceivable has become commonplace. Think for a moment how absurd is the idea of Congress authorizing deficit payments only to refuse to pay when the bill comes due? And yet this self-imposed crisis is now considered the new normal.

The latest crisis is the Republican-led Congress refusing to hold hearings and a confirmation vote even before the President makes his appointment.  Advice and Consent. Or not. The blatant partisanship on display should offend anyone who cares deeply about the legitimacy of the American experiment. Congress has effectively neutered the Supreme Court. Is this not a co-equal branch? What is to stop a runaway Congress from refusing its constitutional duty whenever an opposite party occupies the White House. Is this the new normal?

The Revolution I have in mind is long past due. Our Constiution, a stroke of insight and genius for its day, is ineffective at handling an ideologically entrenched two party system. Madison well understood the corrosive effects partisanship would have on his grand creation. It presents a unique threat to our presidential system.

Presidential systems fail or become undemocratic in due time. So it is for us. Other countries abandoned the presidential system in favor of a parliamentarian one.  This is the real Revolution we need. The Constitution has long served its original purpose. We need a new one, dealing with the country as it is today.

Guantanamo is a pointless, self-inflicted tragedy without end. The point at which tragedy transforms into comedy has long since passed when human rights groups are petitioning the government to keep Guantanamo open. It is an amazing turnaround. Seven years ago when the President announced the closing of Guantanamo, it was lauded as a return to moral decency, the better angels of our nature. Today, the same promise is seen as a perpetuation of the status quo.

How did we get so far down this road? By failing to act. Fear and cowardice have reingned supreme in our ineffective political classes. Everywhere down the line from a militant Congress that refuses to declare war, to the Court’s inability to offer clear constitutional guidance on the tribunals, to the President’s absurd insistence about taking his time out of need to get it right when there was no way that would happen because the whole sordid mess was wrong to begin with. There are too many casualties to count. Crimes compound more crimes leading to more victims.

In the end, though, the facts will prove to be the greatest casualty. The Courts exist to pass judgement upon the accused. Judgement implies truth. Truth demands evidence. Evidence implies facts. But the facts cannot be allowed to take front and center because of the incontrovertible evidence that we acted in a stupid, brutal, criminal, cavalier, unjust, and incompetent manner.

We put the blame for this everywhere but ourselves. The Geneva Conventions, it is argued, were not up to the special circumstances of non state belligerents captured in the “theater of war”. That’s up for debate, but it’s also a red herring. On this matter, the Constitution too was silent. But it need not speak. It has bequeathed the three branches with all the authority and power to act with deliberative haste. Instead, the problem was allowed to fester. Every attempt to solve it seemed designed to fail. Ignore it. Delay it. Justify it. Civilian courts, military commissions. No matter. It would not go away.

Even now, it seems passé to dredge up the past. In 14 years, 800 men passed through the prision. Fewer then a hundred are there today. Long since are the days when Guantanamo seemed to serve as a hot button in our political battles or a “marketing tool” for terrorists. The old saw is right. Tragedy does not age well. A plane crashing into the ground holds our rapt attention. Imagine the same crash strung out over a period of days, months, years and decades. People can’t help but lose interest. It’s not in our nature. It’s not who we are. We find it impossible to care that long. So no one cares anymore. Not enough to put an end to this slow moving plane crash.

Sad, when the obvious answer has been staring us in the face all this time. Charge them. Charge them, or release them and be done with it. Charge them and let the chips fall where they may. Charge them, but only in civilian courts. Close the tribunals. They are failing precisely because they exist only to try and cover up our shame. And if evidence is excluded, so be it. Let it serve as a textbook example about the value of due process. There is no manner of justification to hold but not accuse. It goes against everything we are. Those we cannot charge we should release immediately to their home of origin, or any country willing to accept them. And if they turn back to fight us, then common sense says to fight them back.

What does not make sense are the absurd claims that our system of indefinite detention somehow benefits our interests or protects us from future harm. It neither serves as an effective deterrent nor applies to circumstances of perpetual undeclared war.

There’s only one fact you need to know to tell you everything that is going on in the Republican Party. Donald Trump received more votes than “establishment” candidates of Rubio and Bush combined.

The Trump Revolution is not unique in its brand of conservative populism. It illuminates a process that has been underway for years. The tone, ideology, and rhetoric are the same; only the degree of emphasis stands out. His political success has less to do with tapping into a deep, simmering mistrust of outsiders and foreigners, than his naked appeal to strong-arm tactics. We have lost the world. So let us reconquer it.

We fail to understand this at our own risk. After every highly publicized feud, the long-awaited hope in his demise is dashed by a tidal wave of support. This should not surprise us in a world where politics is portrayed as a contest of wills. His strength is promised as a cure for our castrated, hopeless, powerless lives. Trump promises to fight for us, then proceeds to do so by picking any number of silly, juvenile public fights. The tough talk is not bluster. He means it. The establishment never has.

And if he survives, if he carves out enough territory that he can’t be denied the party nomination, then none of this war matters. Everyone else will fall in line, because falling in line is what soldiers do. And the best and brightest of us will defend the indefensible.