A Musing About Perspective, Kavanaugh, Summits, And Normality

It may be a week for the history books. On Monday, President Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh to to be the next justice on the Supreme Court. Today, he's at the NATO Summit, and later this week he'll meet with Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

The following tweets may provide some prospective on Kavanaugh and provide some guidance for what promises to be a week and summer of sturm und drang.

First, there's this portion of a Susan Hennessey thread.

It can be hard for me to disentangle Trump as a true threat to the Republic from the Republican party with which I often strenuously disagree. I try to ask myself what Jeb or Mitt would do. If answer is same, then it’s just politics. /1

— Susan Hennessey (@Susan_Hennessey) July 10, 2018

Any ordinary Republican president would be nominating Kavanaugh or Hardiman (or someone similar). Both are decent people who respect the rule of law. Both are significantly right of Kennedy and will reshape the court, I believe for the worse. /2

— Susan Hennessey (@Susan_Hennessey) July 10, 2018

I wish a different president were picking someone else. I think what happened to Garland is deeply unjust. But I think it’s worth acknowledging—absurd Trumpian pageantry aside—tonight is politics as usual. /3

— Susan Hennessey (@Susan_Hennessey) July 10, 2018

Second, there's this Leon Wood tweet

Any one of the republicans realistically running for president would have made two equally good picks for SCOTUS, without all the crap that makes Trump and Trumpism a cancer. https://t.co/tTYHuZNOHb

— Leon Wolf (@LeonHWolf) July 10, 2018

While Hennessey and Wood disagree about whether Kavanaugh is a good pick, they agree that Trump is a deleterious influence on the Republic. They also agree that Kavanaugh is a pick any Republican President would have made. As Hennessy succinctly puts it, the Kavanaugh nomination "is politics as usual."

What's not politically usual, however is a President strongly criticizing allies on the eve of a summit, praising a dictator NATO was designed to confront, and imposing tariffs at a whim. It is also highly unusual to randomly pardon people for arson and occupying government property so soon after they have been sentenced.

I don't know if Republicans in the House and Senate will ever develop a spine let alone the adamantium infused one necessary to confront Trump, a juvenile, stubborn, vile man who has the hubris of a tragic hero. I know the Democrats want to pick up every gauntlet Trump throws down. There may be some political genius who knows how to fight all of these fights at once, but he or she is remaining quiet. Absent expert leadership, it might be best to fight to keep the abnormal from becoming normal and allowing the normal, no matter how bad, to remain a fight for another time.

During this week and the rest of the summer Putin may well back the United States into a corner as the American and world's economies begin a dangerous downward spiral because of Trump's foolish trade war. Returning to normal may not be possible if those events transpire; normality may be possible if the worst event of the summer is Kavanaugh's confirmation.

Paper, Flesh And Blood, And The Supreme Court

A little over a year ago many conservatives were contending that the Supreme Court was an agent of hell out to destroy religious liberty for all. In fact the same-sex marriage rulings were enabling the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse to give their steeds  free rein in the land of the free and the home of the brave. The stock price of sackcloth and ashes shot through the roof. Supporters of same-sex marriage, on the other hand, hailed the Supreme Court as a bastion of liberty and the guarantor of freedom to pursue happiness and live the American Dream to be married, have a family along with a car in every garage and a chicken in every pot.

Today, if my Twitter feed is any indication, conservatives believe the Supreme Court's decision in the Hobby Lobby case is a victory for religious liberty sure to usher in the next Great Awakening or a 21st Century miracle equivalent to that recorded in the second chapter of Acts. Liberals on the other hand seem to see today's decision as proof that the majority of the Supreme Court justices are the equivalent of  cheap streetwalkers providing sordid favors for corporations. (Hyperbole is the best way to deal with blessings and curses coming out the same mouths in such rapid order.)

Enough comments will be made about the how the rulings constrain or enable sexual and religious practices. I have no problems with either sex or religion. Those so inclined can insert their own joke about being naked in the public square here.

I am more interested in the status of flesh and blood persons as they relate to corporations. Today's ruling applies to "closely held corporations." The Wall Street Journal notes that closely held corporations have a limited number of stockholders and that the vast majority of corporations in the United States could be considered closely held corporations.

Closely held companies are owned by a relatively small number of investors, typically including their founding families and management. Roughly 90% of all companies in the U.S. are closely held, according to a 2000 study by the Copenhagen Business School.

If I understand today's ruling correctly, corporations, which are pieces of paper,  have the status of persons that are immortal and can act on their conscience with limited legal liability.  Flesh and blood humans die and are generally fully liable for their acts of conscience.

This ruling seems to create two classes of separate and unequal persons with the corporate persons having more rights and privileges than the flesh and blood persons. Today conservatives are cheering today's ruling because they view it as the victory of a corporate conscience over acts of individual licence.

I suspect today's blessings will turn to curses when this decision becomes a precedent that allows a future court to privilege the religious rights of a piece of paper over those of a devout flesh and blood Christian. When that happens, I expect many sermons to begin with Lamentations 3:15-18:

15 He has filled me with bitter herbs
    and given me gall to drink.
16 He has broken my teeth with gravel;
    he has trampled me in the dust.
17 I have been deprived of peace;
    I have forgotten what prosperity is.
18 So I say, “My splendor is gone
    and all that I had hoped from the Lord.” 

The Little Guys Don't Stand A Chance: Quotation of the Day

Writing in Slate, Dahlia Lithwick offers a stinging indictment of the recent Supreme Court term.

Depending on how you count "big cases," the Supreme Court has just finished off either a great (according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce) or spectacularly great (according to a new study by the Constitutional Accountability Center) term for big business. The measure of success here isn't just the win-loss record of the Chamber of Commerce, although that's certainly part of the story. Nor is it news that—in keeping with a recent trend—the court is systematically closing the courthouse doors to everyday litigants, though that's a tale that always bears retelling. The reason the Roberts Court has proven to be Christmas in July for big business is this: Slowly but surely, the Supreme Court is giving corporate America a handbook on how to engage in misconduct. In case after case, it seems big companies are being given the playbook on how to win even bigger the next time.

Lithwick concludes her column, "when you teach big business precisely how to screw over the little guy, and how to do it faster, cheaper, and without detection … well, that's not even an illusion of justice anymore. It's enabling."