The ACLU is announcing that it is going to court to try to shut the barn door after they helped open it up. I wish them luck while pointing out that there is hardly any reason to expect that the politicized, Republican judiciary and the Supreme Court which will, again be completely dominated by the same Republican-fascist majority which has played such a role in establishing Republicanfascist government is more likely to clean their clocks than agree with their Constitutional arguments. If there is one thing Republicanfascists who have been to Ivy League law schools know how to do it is to twist words to permit Republicanfascists to do what they want to and what will cement their federalist-fascist idea of good government into place.
The problem with the ACLU approach is that it depends on things which aren't dependable and they have had an enormous role in preventing the necessary conditions under which egalitarian democracy can happen from being here. Worse, their basic theories, advocacy and action have played a huge role in undermining the necessary prerequisites for their approach working to produce egalitarian democracy. That depends on a line of dependent causation which you would think the legal minds of the ACLU over its existence would have understood, but their actions show that they couldn't predict the entirely predictable results of what they advanced.
- It depends on honest Supreme Court justices with a full belief in egalitarian democracy and their primary responsibility to protect it - something which is certainly not dependable on considering its history. That ideal court has seldom been the court we have, it has not existed in the United States for decades and the court in recent years has been one of the worst we've ever had and the one Trump will produce will certainly be worse.
- Honest Supreme Courts don't just happen, they have to be appointed by a president who also appoints federal judges. The federal courts have, if anything, an even shadier history in their protection and defense of egalitarian democracy than the high-priesthood of the Supreme Court. If the Supreme Courts have corrupted the law even good lower court judges, honest and of good will, will not be able to protect and defend democracy. All of which boils down to the need for the President to be honest, to honestly follow democratic principles on an equal basis. No one with more than a My Picture Book of American Presidents* view of history would claim with a straight face we can count on presidents doing that. The list of those who have been more of a danger to egalitarian democracy is a long one, about to have another one, the very one addressed in the ACLU pdf document.
- Having honest Supreme Court justices also depends on them being confirmed by an honest Senate with a majority if not a super majority of the Senators being honest, faithful to their oath of office and with a sufficient devotion to egalitarian democracy to override party identity and interest and the wishes of their large donors and, often, the prejudice of a majority of their constituents. Anyone who claims history gives reason to feel confident in that happening is too simple minded or addled to take seriously. The history of the United States Senate is full to the top of such things as even being unable to pass laws making lynching a federal crime.
- We have, so far, come to the point where we see having a Supreme Court which will reliably protect and defend egalitarian democracy depends on the people elected to the presidency and the Senate. We now come to the most serious point that it is The Voters who have to put them into office and as Barney Frank pointed out a while back, "sometimes the voters are no bargain either". Frank didn't go as far in his criticism as I'm going to because voters are not and no one should expect they're going to be fully engaged, full time on public policy, carefully gathering facts and analyzing them. If anyone in this discussion, politicians, ACLU lawyers, etc. don't take the bother to understand that you MUST FULLY UNDERSTAND AND TAKE INTO ACCOUNT THE REAL LIFE LIVES OF THE PEOPLE YOU ARE AS WILLFULLY IGNORANT AND IRRESPONSIBLE AS HE, RIGHTFULLY, ACCUSES TOO MANY VOTERS OF BEING.
- The People have to rely on others to present the facts to them, they are entirely dependent on the media which dominates whatever is going to constitute the life of the mind of most of them. And I include all of media, the alleged news, the alleged entertainment, the shouting and screaming of opinion as entertainment. That is a fact, that is what is going to inform most people either completely or enough to make them decide who they are going to vote for. It is exactly at this point that the ACLU has played a fatal role in reliving the media from their role in this line, at the very foundation on which the line producing egalitarian democracy and a decent life depends.
The ACLU, using the language that the amateur and aristocratic and, not infrequently, anti-democratic, slave-holding WHITE MEN wrote into the First Amendment have talked the Supreme Court into letting them lie with impunity for their own profit, for the benefit of their largely white-male-oligarchic owners. A class which has never been comprised of people who put egalitarian democracy over their own wealth and power, except in a very few instances and those instances are often people whose background and education seldom leave them with more than a stereotypical conception of the lives of the large majority of people.
We have had two presidents who are products of the media the ACLU freed to lie to voters within the past forty years, Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump. The Reagan administration and the judges and justices he appointed have done enormous damage to egalitarian democracy, they have undermined and attacked it and their decisions have had no small role in producing the fascist Trump phenomenon and the likely final destruction of democracy. Donald Trump's campaign promises are, as the ACLU is too polite to say, a program of fascism, using racism, gaming the worst superstitions and resentments of a very large number of people, whipping them up into racist fury to get elected but his intention of being in office, that of Pence and the rest of his crew is to steal as much as they can and to prevent democracy from stopping their crime spree this time. The media which created him, gave him billions of dollars worth of free air time, which constantly covered him as it disappeared most of Hillary Clinton's campaign and went with every attempt to destroy her, including the clear violation of law by James Comey and the criminals at the FBI. The ACLU gave us the media that did that through their "free speech - free press" advocacy. That they and their colleagues did it on behalf of media organizations which had a huge financial interest in being free to lie only further demonstrates that their advertised and displayed ideals are empty and refuted by a half century of their actions.
I don't have any confidence in the ACLU, I won't be joining in with those donating to it - the document is issued as part of a fund-raising campaign. I am as not going to be sending them money as I am not going to be sending money to National Public Radio or any of the other institutions who acted to give us Donald Trump. That it may be an unintended consequence of the ACLU dogma of "free speech-free press" changes nothing about the fact that it was an obvious consequence of it and it has been an obvious consequence of it for as long as the media has been using its freedom to lie to defeat liberals and Democrats.
*A title I just invented if it doesn't exist.
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