THE FIRST THING in the first blog post I ever posted at 9:45 AM EDT on May 13th, 2006 * started this way:
To start with, there are two things about the Code of Liberal Ethics that bother me. One, that we are supposed to be entirely fair to everyone and especially in instances when that would put us at a disadvantage, will be dealt with later. The one I will deal with first is the assumption that liberals must get it right every time, not only right but correct. That liberals and leftists, such as myself, must be purer than pure or relegated to the tip, is something I'd better address right now in this first post.
Yesterday a Democratic Politician, for the first time of any significance, took a step out of the worse than futile, prissy, sanctimonious, liberalishy-laywerly scrupulosity that sacrifices everything, democracy and millions of lives to, as I heard one of the MSNBC type lawyers piously say it "the rules, the norms and the manuals." I'm talking, of course, of Gavin Newsom's plan to put it to the highest authority in any government, The Voters, to override the liberally-lawyerly reform to prevent that ubiquitous anti-democracy practice under our corrupt system, partisan gerrymandering which Republican-fascists never put into effect in the states they control, so as to rig the Republican minority into a majority in the House of Representatives. In doing so he not only FACES REALITY INSTEAD OF THE PIOUS CORRUPTION OF HEAD-IN-THE-SANDS THEORETICAL IDEALISM, HE DID SO IN A WAY THAT MAKES IT WHAT REPUBLICANS NEVER WILL MAKE IT WHEN IT'S NOT A SURE THING FOR THEM, A CHOICE OF THE VOTERS.
The corruption of the Federal system, dreamed up largely by John Adams, even more so than that baked-in corruption I noted in a post the other day, by rigging House districts began as soon as elections under the Constitution were held. The "Gerry" in gerrymander is Elbrige Gerry, one of the founders, VP under Madison and one of the drafters of the so-called Bill of Rights who rigged the Massachusetts Senate districts to keep his party in control of the Massachusetts Senate. A practice that has proved popular with incumbents bent on holding on to their seats but has been extremely popular with America's indigenous fascists, the white supremacists, both as the slave-power and today as Republican-fascists as a way to thwart equality and, so, any legitimate government in the United States. When I read that on Gerry's death John Adams praised him as an unusually moral politician it did a lot to open up my eyes, not about Gerry, but the real character of John Adams. And it wasn't in his favor.
I remember when the idea of "making things fair" through taking redistricting out of the hands of the so obviously interested politicians in state legislatures took hold in response to the scandal of ubiquitous gerrymandering to give more power to a party whose policies and actions in government were unpopular. As I recall it, it was one of those schemes dreamed up by politician-lawyers and the lawyerly types who tend to get control of so-called civil society non-profits. And it would have been a nice idea if it wasn't an idea guaranteed to never be put into effect by Republican-fascists in enough places to ensure that the anti-People, pro-billionaire-millionaire-white supremacist party would control things. Democrats in reliably Democratic majority places should always, ALWAYS, ALWAYS BE SUSPICIOUS OF "REFORMS" THAT THEY KNOW WILL NEVER BE PUT INTO EFFECT IN PLACES LIKE TEXAS or other white-supremacist majority states. Facing reality even when that means you don't adopt the piously advocated, purity asserted plans of the scrupulous and, especially, lawyerly should be the universal rule, the norm and even written in the manuals of Democratic Party politics.
Maine has suffered enormously through the idiotic scrupulosity of such "liberals" of the past and today., most of those I know of by name, yes, lawyers. But the United States as a whole has been put in danger by them. It's time to rip up the Code of Liberal Ethics and fight fascism without two hands tied behind our backs. I say any "reform" commission that ends up with the House in the hands of the Republican-fascists is no reform, it's sheer idiocy. I wonder if the reason Newsome is willing to do that is that he isn't a lawyer, a profession that, despite what you see in TV and movie fiction, makes big money through cowardice and surrender to evil I wonder if the reason that the governor of the third largest state, Kathy Hochul hasn't proposed that is because she's a lawyer.
I will pray every day that if Democrats win back control of the government that they don't let the lawyers talk them out of really, really taking power and doing what's necessary to defeat Republican-fascism, that they do what the lawyer and law school teacher Obama never would have done and which Joe Biden should have certainly known he had to do - BREAK THE RULES, THE NORMS AND WHAT IT SAID IN THE MANUALS BECAUSE EQUALITY AND DEMOCRACY ARE THE ONLY LEGITIMATE THINGS IN GOVERNING. As I've mentioned, my nightmare is that the next Democratic president will appoint another Merrick Garland who cares more about keeping his own lily white hands clean and not the breath of scandal away from his name, a goddamned "institutionalist" who cares more about the "DoJ" than he does democracy as Attorney General. And if that's not enough to keep me awake at night, the lawyers in the Senate and House will be there to surrender egalitarian democracy to the jaws of Republican-fascism. And then there's the Republican-fascist stacked judiciary. We need a rule-breaker, even more so a norms-breaker and someone who will order the manuals be rewritten to take reality and hard experience into account. If Gavin Newsom is that person, I now have fewer doubts than I did the day before yesterday. He did so as Mayor of San Francisco when he started issuing same-sex marriage licenses before the country, temporarily, caught up to him. I have some deep disagreements with him, none more so than over the homeless but I think he'd try to do something more effective to house them than the alternatives would. If he became the nominee, his first wife, the psycho-fascist Kimberly Gilfoyle would be a problem. But so far he's looking like our best chance to save democracy.
* I remember what motivated me to finally post something on that blog I'd set up but hadn't posted to was hearing the smarmy Scott Simon on NPR's Weekend Edition scolding about some Democrat not rolling over backward to be fair to some Republican-fascist, otherwise I'd have dealt with the first one first. I loathe Scott Simon.
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