SCARED WITLESS
[Skye’s posts on the Forum are among the most valuable assets to being a TTPer. His is the voice of calm reasoned argument. I have treasured his friendship for well over 40 years. As someone whose IQ could not be measured by MIT as it went so far beyond the upper measurable limit of 220, Skye’s words deserve our careful consideration. — JW]
Everyone is scared witless by the potential outcome of the upcoming election. Some more, some less – but there is more than enough reason for much of these fears.
Conservative, libertarian, and constitutionalist Republicans fear populist Republicans. Establishment Republicans fear all of the above and vice versa. Establishment Democrats fear populist/socialist Democrats and vice versa. Republicans fear Democrats, Democrats fear Republicans, and Independents fear both.
Unfortunately, these severe fears are not paranoid delusions. The central government has become so powerful, so out of control of both the Constitution and the electorates, so deeply wrapped around the roots of everyone’s everyday life, that the “other” truly has become an existential threat.
Back in the days when the Constitution could be relied on – or at least reasonably realistically hoped – to limit central government power, winning elections usually wasn’t a literal matter of life and death. It is now, and anyone who understands that single payer health care means VA neglect for all knows it.
On the other side of the aisle, there are millions of students with life crushing education debts (not dischargable by bankruptcy) who will vote for anyone who promises to make someone else pay their bills. Unfortunately, the number of very seriously threatening issues like these two examples is immense.
It has come to the point where all sides look upon the only possibility for resolution of these differences is a vote between the wolves and the lambs on what to eat for dinner, and each side is desperate to be a part of a majority of wolves.
The only hope that I can think of for escape from the onrushing Armageddon of Americans warring against Americans with the guns of the central government is restoration of constitutional restraints on the central government.
That is a distinctly minority position because it will break a lot of iron rice bowls, from those of Iowa corn farmers to wind turbine manufacturers to student debtors to the college professors whose income depends on those student debtors to…. The list literally extends to thousands of classes of hundreds of millions of Americans.
For those who hope for change from a strong leader who doesn’t seem to have restoration of constitutional limitations on the central government prominently on his policy list: if you win, you are certain to get someone who won’t attempt to restore those limitations.
True, those who promise to try to do so may not succeed, either. Yet the real issue is: who among the various candidates is the most determined to restore constitutional limitations on the central government?
With a dependence on executive will rather than constitutional limitations, the control system for the central government is likely to go into what engineers call a bang-bang mode. That is, one executive will force the control system as far and as quickly in his chosen direction as he can, to be followed by a desperate survival-driven electoral response which will bring to power an executive that will drive the control system as far as possible as quickly as possible in the other direction.
Think of an aircraft with defective rudder control software slamming the rudder from port limit to starboard limit back and forth as quickly as possible over and over again. Death will result.
I am not a moderate. I do not believe that compromise that results in a bad course will do more than delay the crash. But I do think that I understand the vitriolic acrimony that is overwhelming the TTP Forum – and most of America. I fear that my preferred solution is such a minority position that it is unlikely to be tried.
Scalia’s death greatly intensifies this problem. The next President will nominate at least 1 and possibly 4 or even 5 Supreme Court Justices. The effects of these nominations will continue for perhaps 30 years without considering the effects of anti-aging and regenerative medicine, and potentially far longer.
Trump, being a strong business executive (who has been operating under no Constitutional limitations), sincerely believes that the severe problems that America faces are the result of a bad executive making bad decisions and bad negotiations. His Supreme Court nominations will reflect that belief. They will not be judges devoted to chaining down the Executive and entire Executive branch with a restored Constitution.
Yes, Obama and his executive branch minions have made a lot of terrible executive decisions, at least from our point of view.
But that is not the fundamental problem!
The fundamental problem is that the courts have failed to restrain the Executive and his regulatory agencies.
If my memory serves me well, Congress passed and the President signed about 63 laws in 2014. The executive branch regulatory agencies by contrast created over 5,000 rules and regulations with the force of law, simply by publishing them in the 85,000 pages or so of the Federal Register. None of them were passed by the House or the Senate, and none were signed by the President.
Both Scalia and Thomas believed that there is no Constitutional authority for this administrative law. So do I. Restricting the power of the President and his executive branch minions is not likely to be a priority of Trump Supreme Court nominations, just as certainly as that will not be a priority of Clinton or Sanders nominations.
Would Clinton or Sanders nominations be worse than Trump’s? Of course, but we desperately need SCOTUS nominations who will correct the existing existentially and immediately threatening Constitutional control system failure, not just ones who aren’t horrible. I think that Cruz understands and appreciates this problem, which is why he has my support.
Nothing that we can do is likely to affect the outcome of this struggle of the titans. It is the illusion that we can affect the outcome that has made the TTP forums so bitter.
What we can do is to prepare ourselves and our families for an uncertain future. TTPers should not allow normalcy bias to lull themselves into inaction, America may be able to muddle through another off-target or bad presidency, but the Supreme Court is in the balance, and a Constitutional restoration is the only way that I see to save America from becoming the latest Argentina or Venezuela.
You don’t want to be living in a big city full of desperate takers when the governments run out of other peoples’ money. Don’t let the possibility of a severely bad outcome be unimaginable. Don’t count on your hopes for change being fulfilled, even if your choice wins.
Skye
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