Why I Hate The Senate

I watched all of the Chuck Grassley - Lindsay Graham production on Thursday, that after years of swearing I'd never watch another Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, the Alito hearings being the last straw for me.  The lying, the lies that everyone in the room knew were lies that came out of the mouths of Republican nominees,  Thomas, Roberts, Alito, . . .  was a big part of it.

But the thing that made me fear developing involuntary bulimia was the display of Senatorial comity between Democrats such as Joe Biden and and full blown fascist liars and sociopaths such as Orrin Hatch and Grassley.  That display of comity among Senators, such scum as Lindsay Graham even as they are spewing acid all over Christine Blasey Ford,  the rights of we common People and equal justice before the law, his full drama-queen mad scene drama on Thursday is one of the most revolting spectacles in modern life.   The old footage of the audience at Stalin's show trials who knew their cue to laugh derisively was only different in degree but not in kind from the insincere stage craft of the Senate.

Jeff Flake in explaining why he did his star turn of  blackmailing Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump into having a truncated FBI probe of Kavanaugh, while calling  Christine Blasey Ford a liar* by voting Brett Kavanaugh onto the full Senate was that he was so, so very, very concerned that no one could fault "the process".  That, as another Senator said, Flake only wanted "a process they could be proud of" even as every single thing about the process was a total and complete shame a criminal shame, a shame he hadn't called out when it really mattered.

And among the gentleman's club that still is the Senate, that is the paramount value in what they did.  Their first concern is that it look nice and they can claim that it was proper even as what they do kills people, cheats people, deprives people of their rights, does irreversible damage to people and the environment.  Jeff Flake and the rest of the dainty process concerned Senators can stuff it up their ass as far as I'm concerned.

The Senate, itself, designed by Madison and his fellow slaveholding-banker and merchant Founders to prevent democracy is only as decent as the members such as Mazie Hirono  AND THE TWO HEROIC WOMEN WHO CONORED FLAKE IN THE ELEVATORS IN FRONT OF A TV CAMERA insist that it be and there are far too few of them to go around.  I would put Sheldon Whitehouse in that all too small group who are concerned with more important things than the genteel comity of the gentleman's club because they take democracy seriously.  There are others who fall in between.  Corey Booker, good in is way,  is way, way too invested in looking nice when it's time to take out the brass knuckles.  He's too Obamaish for my taste as are most of the others on the Democratic side of that Committee. 

If, as could happen, there is new female membership in the Congress, especially in the Senate, I hope they are more like Hirono and Whitehouse.  That place needs to be knocked around because it is, in every way, the poison to democracy that the Founders intended when they structured it undemocratically and, originally, made sure its members were not elected by popular vote.  That one reform from the early 20th century was obviously not enough, it needs to be changed so that voters in some of our most regressive and privileged states, such as Wyoming, do not have more voting power than people in far more populous states, California, New York, . . . As a lifetime resident of a small state it is absurd that the small number who put Susan Collins in office have more power to decide things than someone from a far larger state.  She should not be in a position to get the attention she gets whenever there is one of these events due to the desire of Madison to thwart democracy for the benefit of himself and other rich men.

The anti-Democratic Senate is one of the Achilles heels of American democracy, another is the undemocratic Supreme Court, a third is the rigged anti-Democratic system of electing presidents and vice-presidents.  The Founders, not wanting there to ever be a possibility of democracy gave us as many bad heels as there are branches in the government.   If you want the United States to stand as a democracy, it's engineered to make sure it will fall into a slough of privilege and oligarchy.  If, like me, the Senate too often makes you want to puke, that's why.

*  There are only two meanings to a vote for Kavanaugh, one is that you are calling Dr. Ford and the other women who have come forward liars or you are saying you don't care that Kavanaugh assaulted or tried to rape them.  Flake, Collins, Murkowski, etc. in voting for Kavanaugh are saying one or the other.  I am inclined to think that they don't really care, they are Republicans for a reason.