One has to ask, what's motivating these six judges? I can't believe that they are so naive as to think that this is just a theoretical exercise with no consideration for political consequences, and it's hard for me to believe that they admire Trump and want to protect him as an individual. I take them at their word that it's the future of the office of the President that they care about. They are thinking for the long run, and in the long run they think that a unitary-executive style, quasi-theocratic authoritarianism is necessary to save the nation from itself, and they are simply playing their role now in establishing the legal infrastructure for it. They are, in essence, rewriting the constitution in order to accomplish this.
They probably find Trump loathsome, but they can't let Biden win in November because whatever hope they have for implementing their agenda requires that the Dems don't get SCOTUS picks to dilute their majority. These judges are people on a mission and that mission requires that they tip the scales for Trump. I'm sure they have no illusions about Trump and how he will abuse the powers that they've just given to office of the president, but they see him as just a short-term problem that can be managed. The important thing is that they do their part now to implement the preliminary steps to accomplish their long-term agenda.
What is this agenda? Well, pretty much what I said above about having a unitary executive implementing a quasi-authoritarian, quasi-theocracy. I think the Chevron ruling last week and the Immunity ruling yesterday only make sense if you understand that, and it's laid out, at least in part, in Project 2025. Here's an excerpt from the Introduction where the authors tell us what they believe are the stakes:
America is now divided between two opposing forces: woke revolu-
tionaries and those who believe in the ideals of the American revolution. The former
believe that America is—and always has been—“systemically racist” and that it is not worth celebrating and must be fundamentally transformed, largely through a centralized administrative state. The latter believe in America’s history and heroes, its principles and promise, and in everyday Americans and the American way of life. They believe in the Constitution and republican government. Conservatives—the Americanists in this battle—must fight for the soul of America, which is very much at stake.Just two years after the death of the last surviving Constitutional Convention
delegate, James Madison, Abraham Lincoln warned that the greatest threat to
America would come not from without, but from within. This is evident today:
Whether it be mask and vaccine mandates, school and business closures, efforts
to keep Americans from driving gas cars or using gas stoves, or efforts to defund
the police, indoctrinate schoolchildren, alter beloved books, abridge free speech,
undermine the colorblind ideal, or deny the biological reality that there are only
two sexes, the Left’s steady stream of insanity appears to be never-ending. The
next Administration must stand up for American ideals, American families, and
American culture—all things in which, thankfully, most Americans still believe.Highlighting this need, former director of the Office of Management and Budget
Russ Vought writes in Chapter 2, “The modern conservative President’s task is to
limit, control, and direct the executive branch on behalf of the American people.”
At the core of this goal is the work of the White House and the central personnel
agencies. Article II of the Constitution vests all federal executive power in a Pres-
ident, made accountable to the citizenry through regular elections. Our Founders
wrote, “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States
of America.” Accordingly, Vought writes, “it is the President’s agenda that should
matter to the departments and agencies,” not their own.Yet the federal bureaucracy has a mind of its own. Federal employees are often
ideologically aligned—not with the majority of the American people—but with one
another, posing a profound problem for republican government, a government
“of, by, and for” the people. As Donald Devine, Dennis Kirk, and Paul Dans write
in Chapter 3, “An autonomous bureaucracy has neither independent constitu-
tional status nor separate moral legitimacy.” Byzantine personnel rules provide the
bureaucrats with their chief means of self-protection. What’s more, knowledge of
such rules is used to thwart the President’s appointees and agenda. As Devine, Kirk,and Dans write, “Managing the immense bureaucracy of the federal government is impossible without an understanding of the key central personnel agencies and their governing laws and regulations.”
There is so much to be said about this document, but let me focus on couple of glaring contradictions. First, the presumption that these radical conservatives represent the soul of America. They don't, and their agenda loses easily if people actually understood it and we had a majoritarian election system instead of the electoral college. I think that many of these so-called conservatives believe that those who resist their agenda now will be persuaded to support it once it is implemented because all decent Americans, whether they are aware of it or not, long for the return of the traditional social order these radicals seek to restore. Some might resist, and, alas, they will have to be "educated" in virtue. Do some of these radical rightists have the Maoist cultural revolution in the back of their minds? If that's what it takes–and if they get hold of the power to impose it–I don't doubt it. These folks are right-wing, radical Jacobins, not conservatives.
The second contradiction is their purported hatred of the centralized administrative state. Clearly they ony have a problem with it when Democrats are running it. Otherwise, the unitary executive should be give free rein to implement his radical agenda precisely through the use of the centralized administrative state once it's stripped of all the deep-state, career bureaucrats who, as we all know, hate America. That's the significance of both the Chevron and the Immunity rulings. Both give unfettered powers to the executive to do as he pleases to reshape the government in accordance with their radical agenda.
I think that the main reason Trump might win is because it's the nature of the Age of Whatever crisis that we're in that most people are cynical and disengaged. They don't understand how what happens in Washington has consequences for their lives because most people most of the time don't experience these consequences. If Trump wins in November, it will have far more immediately felt consequences for everyday Ukrainians than it will for everyday Americans.
Ask the Iraqis what the consequences of Bush/Cheney winning in 2000 were for them. For most Americans, the war in Iraq was like watching their favorite football team crush a hated rival. On the other hand, how many hundreds of thousands of ordinary, everyday Iraqis died? How many lost their homes? How many had their lives destroyed? Americans hardly ever feel the consequences of their political choices, and when they do, as in the 2008 financial crisis, they have no idea who's to blame. The Tea Party folks blamed Obama. Time after time Republican incompetence and delusional thinking have made a mess of things, and Democrats get the blame because, you know, they're so woke and so un-American and God hates them.
But if Trump wins this time, the consequences will be dramatic, and they will wake people up. And maybe everyday Americans need that kind of waking up. Trump and this metastasizing right-wing radicalism is only a possibility because the Liberal Order is so profoundly weak in that it does not deliver basic spiritual and material needs for most everyday Americans. The culture of consumerism and self-absorption created by the Liberal Order is indeed sickness, and that sickness has political consequences. But the remedy for a cultural ailment can never be politically imposed. It has to be inspired.
Biden provides no remedy, but he buys time. And despite the freak-out over his debate performance last week, I am still optimistic that he will win in November. He's still the Dems' best chance. But if Trump wins, I don't think it will take long for Americans to wake up. Most Americans know how bad Trump is, but they don't understand yet how truly awful the radical right braintrust backing him is, so they'll have to learn the hard way.
But he could very well win, and if he does, I suspect that we'll have a decade or so that will be very similar to England under Cromwell in the 1650s. Everybody will hate it, and there will be a restoration of sanity some time in the 2030s. Or perhaps the succession of republics in 19th centruy France offers a better analogy. If so perhaps such a restoration will involve a rewriting of the Constitution that represents realities in the 21st century rather than those of the 18th. I don't know. Just trying to stay positive.
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