Why a Trump Presidency does not scare me.
A new law passed by the Republican-controlled state legislature of Texas mandates public universities to permit licensed individuals over 21 to carry concealed handguns into campus buildings. Within the past week or so, voting restrictions in North Carolina, Wisconsin, Kansas and Texas (restrictions the most of which were passed in the immediate aftermath of the Voting Rights Act's evisceration, see Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U.S. ___ (2013)), were struck down, the North Carolina provisions by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, the Texas voter ID law in a ruling from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, the Wisconsin regulations in a federal court ruling, with a district judge handling the matter in Kansas.
In Wisconsin, last month, a judge who equates affirmative action with slavery was appointed to that state's Supreme Court. By that state-elected governor. And Ohio has been leading the charge in the stealth war against reproductive rights for women, a war that has been waged largely under the radar in the laboratories of state legislatures.
Then there is the issue of vote-dilution through gerrymandering, an issue that will take on greater salience as the 2020 census nears.
As much as the highest court in the land impacts the exercise of our rights, it has little obvious control over the price of petrol at the pump.
I'm not entirely sure when it happened or if it has always been the case more or less, but the Presidency seems increasingly irrelevant to the lived realities of Americans. It is a distant, almost monarchical thing. Kids in SoCal been dying under Jacaranda trees under Democrat and Republican presidents. No American president is above killing brown people in faraway countries. Lack of accountability in police-involved killings is a staple of the black American experience. And the branch of lower class whites who do swarm to Trump have been shafted, laughed at, mocked relentlessly, and looked down upon for as long as there've been wealthy white Americans to do it. They are the most obvious cousins to the Brexiter who has lived through Major and Thatcher and Brown and Blair and Cameron and waited for that factory that vanished from their rustic Welsh town to return to no avail. Sure, the President will send us to war. And the President determines much of the tenor of our relationship with other countries. But she won't lessen my student loan burden. She won't determine what services get cut or what don't in the state budget. She won't keep the library open.
All of which is preamble to this: A Trump presidency is not apocalyptic to me. I don't think this is a me-coming-to-terms-with-the-possibility type of scenario. I'm 98% sure he will lose in the general election. But I think the true damage of a Trump presidency is the ever-present bigotry and race hatred and homophobia and rampant xenophobia that such an ascendancy would legitimize. Congress, even if it remains Republican-controlled, would likely try to thwart Trump at every bend in the road. And he lacks the administrative acumen of a Ted Cruz, who is intimately familiar with governmental functions even as he transgresses them. Only one of them has clerked for a Supreme Court Justice. With Obama, much of the backlash can be explained thusly: electing him was supposed to be a moment of national catharsis, our redemption; but to let him actually govern would be white America's supposed penance for past sin, and that could not possibly be borne. So the obstructionism. Content to elect him, not to let him govern. Trump has the nominal support of the Party, which may be enough to get him elected, but it won't be enough to let him govern, and it has never been clear that governance has been his goal. Like Ted Cruz, this whole enterprise seems driven by insecurity and vicious pathology. This run for President is revenge against some childhood slight or adolescent offense. At one point in his life, someone sneered at him or looked down at him or assumed to his face that he would not be better than his station, and this is the result.
Though the presidential election takes up nearly all the oxygen in the room, true political consequence comes from decisions made in state legislatures. The law that allows the carrying of concealed weapons on state university campuses. Restrictions on the type of identification that will permit one to vote. And that is where the real damage has been done over the past half century, certainly over the past thirty or so years. State legislatures, city councils, boards of education. In certain jurisdictions, judges are elected and not appointed, in a titanic distortion of democratic incentives. Prosecutors too.
The Republicans in Connecticut's state legislature are not even remotely the Trumpian kind, nor do they reek of Paul Ryan, nor do they wear Scott Walker's gasoline-scented cologne. Even the Senate challenger maintains liberal views, is pro-choice for example.
Trump's proposal to build a wall along our southern border would require approval of a budget from the House of Representatives, which would involve all types of in-fighting and could very well lead, if the Dems have at least if not more representation, a government shut-down, for which Trump could very well take the blame. The proposal for increased surveillance, that is not something that can be signed into being through an executive action, in part because of judicial precedent on the issue of surveillance. Would a Trump administration or the attendant (Republican-controlled) Congress wish for a protracted Supreme Court battle on the issue, even if a conservative ninth Justice makes it to the Bench? Embedded in that question is the quandary of whether there would be enough support for Trump in the Senate to confirm his judicial appointment for the Supreme Court. If the current totals hold up, there will, perhaps throughout his term, remain 8 Justices on the Court, bearing, for his initiatives, all sorts of risks.
A Trump presidency has become shorthand for the apocalypse. It evokes in wide swathes of his supporters a gleeful atavism. For many of them, they realize they've been treated like niggers by their "betters" and that was the Grand Bargain wherein dog-whistle politics and culture wars were the tincture that allowed them to more easily swallow the jagged little pill of trickle-down economics. The state sandbox, being smaller, is more easily contained and understood. It can more easily be changed. An elected official's constituents are more directly affected, more directly involved. Gun control laws can pass when the victims of a tragedy share a Governor with the survivors. With the legislators.
A Trump presidency does not scare me. A Scott Walker governorship does. A John Kasich governorship does. A Republican-controlled state legislature in North Carolina does.
We'll see how I feel when November is a month away.
In Wisconsin, last month, a judge who equates affirmative action with slavery was appointed to that state's Supreme Court. By that state-elected governor. And Ohio has been leading the charge in the stealth war against reproductive rights for women, a war that has been waged largely under the radar in the laboratories of state legislatures.
Then there is the issue of vote-dilution through gerrymandering, an issue that will take on greater salience as the 2020 census nears.
As much as the highest court in the land impacts the exercise of our rights, it has little obvious control over the price of petrol at the pump.
I'm not entirely sure when it happened or if it has always been the case more or less, but the Presidency seems increasingly irrelevant to the lived realities of Americans. It is a distant, almost monarchical thing. Kids in SoCal been dying under Jacaranda trees under Democrat and Republican presidents. No American president is above killing brown people in faraway countries. Lack of accountability in police-involved killings is a staple of the black American experience. And the branch of lower class whites who do swarm to Trump have been shafted, laughed at, mocked relentlessly, and looked down upon for as long as there've been wealthy white Americans to do it. They are the most obvious cousins to the Brexiter who has lived through Major and Thatcher and Brown and Blair and Cameron and waited for that factory that vanished from their rustic Welsh town to return to no avail. Sure, the President will send us to war. And the President determines much of the tenor of our relationship with other countries. But she won't lessen my student loan burden. She won't determine what services get cut or what don't in the state budget. She won't keep the library open.
All of which is preamble to this: A Trump presidency is not apocalyptic to me. I don't think this is a me-coming-to-terms-with-the-possibility type of scenario. I'm 98% sure he will lose in the general election. But I think the true damage of a Trump presidency is the ever-present bigotry and race hatred and homophobia and rampant xenophobia that such an ascendancy would legitimize. Congress, even if it remains Republican-controlled, would likely try to thwart Trump at every bend in the road. And he lacks the administrative acumen of a Ted Cruz, who is intimately familiar with governmental functions even as he transgresses them. Only one of them has clerked for a Supreme Court Justice. With Obama, much of the backlash can be explained thusly: electing him was supposed to be a moment of national catharsis, our redemption; but to let him actually govern would be white America's supposed penance for past sin, and that could not possibly be borne. So the obstructionism. Content to elect him, not to let him govern. Trump has the nominal support of the Party, which may be enough to get him elected, but it won't be enough to let him govern, and it has never been clear that governance has been his goal. Like Ted Cruz, this whole enterprise seems driven by insecurity and vicious pathology. This run for President is revenge against some childhood slight or adolescent offense. At one point in his life, someone sneered at him or looked down at him or assumed to his face that he would not be better than his station, and this is the result.
Though the presidential election takes up nearly all the oxygen in the room, true political consequence comes from decisions made in state legislatures. The law that allows the carrying of concealed weapons on state university campuses. Restrictions on the type of identification that will permit one to vote. And that is where the real damage has been done over the past half century, certainly over the past thirty or so years. State legislatures, city councils, boards of education. In certain jurisdictions, judges are elected and not appointed, in a titanic distortion of democratic incentives. Prosecutors too.
The Republicans in Connecticut's state legislature are not even remotely the Trumpian kind, nor do they reek of Paul Ryan, nor do they wear Scott Walker's gasoline-scented cologne. Even the Senate challenger maintains liberal views, is pro-choice for example.
Trump's proposal to build a wall along our southern border would require approval of a budget from the House of Representatives, which would involve all types of in-fighting and could very well lead, if the Dems have at least if not more representation, a government shut-down, for which Trump could very well take the blame. The proposal for increased surveillance, that is not something that can be signed into being through an executive action, in part because of judicial precedent on the issue of surveillance. Would a Trump administration or the attendant (Republican-controlled) Congress wish for a protracted Supreme Court battle on the issue, even if a conservative ninth Justice makes it to the Bench? Embedded in that question is the quandary of whether there would be enough support for Trump in the Senate to confirm his judicial appointment for the Supreme Court. If the current totals hold up, there will, perhaps throughout his term, remain 8 Justices on the Court, bearing, for his initiatives, all sorts of risks.
A Trump presidency has become shorthand for the apocalypse. It evokes in wide swathes of his supporters a gleeful atavism. For many of them, they realize they've been treated like niggers by their "betters" and that was the Grand Bargain wherein dog-whistle politics and culture wars were the tincture that allowed them to more easily swallow the jagged little pill of trickle-down economics. The state sandbox, being smaller, is more easily contained and understood. It can more easily be changed. An elected official's constituents are more directly affected, more directly involved. Gun control laws can pass when the victims of a tragedy share a Governor with the survivors. With the legislators.
A Trump presidency does not scare me. A Scott Walker governorship does. A John Kasich governorship does. A Republican-controlled state legislature in North Carolina does.
We'll see how I feel when November is a month away.