A Flaw in Democracy and What a Good Lawyer can do for You

Important Announcement:   Between now and the next full posting on this blog, new items will continue to come up.  Rather than wait for the blog's next full posting, they will be added ... with the date they are added shown ... at the tail end of this posting.  Scroll down right now to read the ones already added to this particular posting, if any.  (And see recent prior postings as well.)  Come back and check out what's new on this blog every day!

Legal Advice

Here's an item I intended to mail in to the Palm Beach Post, but decided against doing so.  They have been ignoring my letters lately.  It pertains to local matters but really is true elsewhere as well.

“Sure, it’s probably against the law, but go ahead and do it anyway. Once it’s done, they’ll come after you but then, it’ll be too late and we can figure out some way of making it legal afterwards. Probably a lot cheaper than fighting it out in court beforehand, because what is done, is done.” That’s the kind of legal advice that results in a big lake being built out in western Boynton for waterskiing and a landmark house being demolished in Delray Beach, not to speak of a permanent resident being allowed to live in a Palm Beach mansion “as an employee,” where such residency was otherwise not allowed as one of the conditions for turning the place into a private club some years ago. Good lawyers know how to break laws with impunity."

A Bit of History

Back in 1854, Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act which said that residents of new States coming into the Union could decide by voting whether they wanted to allow slavery or not to allow slavery.  This passed a democratically elected Congress. 

Against the Expansion of Slavery and Finally, Against Slavery

Ultimately, it caused the demise of the Whig Party which was progressive on everything except slavery, about which it was fatally ambiguous, and the birth of the Republican Party leading to the election of Abraham Lincoln six years later ... and the Civil War.

On this key issue, the Republicans were merely against expansion of slavery into new States, not its abolition, but that was enough to prompt secession by the Southern States.  (Those who wanted to abolish slavery entirely were far to the left of the Republicans and were a scorned minority in Congress.)  What we must understand is that all of this took place as the result of actions by democratically elected legislators. 

Today, we have a Republican Party that recognizes that it cannot win elections in a nation where the majority of voters vote for Democrats.  Hence, its efforts on the State level, through democratically elected legislatures and Governors, which it controls in a majority of States, is to suppress voting and get as few people to vote as possible.  That is the only way they can get elected.  But this suppression is done by those elected through democratic processes.  (The gerrymandering which often makes this possible in some States is done by democratically elected State governments.)

The point I want to hammer home is that the actions which led to the Civil War and those engaged in voter suppression today were and are the result of democratically elected governments on the State level.  

Thomas Jefferson, who believed that people would ultimately do the "right" thing, was aware of this flaw in the democratic process and thought education would remedy it.  It has not.  Alexander Hamilton, on the other hand believed that people were likely to do the "wrong" thing and wanted a strong central government, not leaving these decisions to democratically elected State governments.  Well, the Federalists, led by Hamilton, lost out and our flawed democracy survived with the States calling the shots.  It was true in 1854, in 1877, when post-Civil War reconstruction ended, and today as State mandated voter suppression remains the platform of the Republican Party.

American Democracy is a work in progress.

(Republicans, when they have an agenda, have a backward-looking one, viewing the nation as it was 50 to 70 years ago as a goal to recapture.  (MAGA??)  Voters will reject this so that is why voter suppression is such a major G.O.P. program in the States it controls.  An exception to this is a State like Florida, where there are millions of older age retirees to which such "rear view mirror" images still appeal.  They will never change.)

JL  

Item Added - March 16, 2021

Republican Quandry

There’s a big disconnect between what Republicans say and what they do.  Senate minority leader McConnell strongly criticized the former president for inciting the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol but did not vote to impeach him.  Senator Wicker supported the American Rescue Plan, providing relief for damage done by the Covid19 pandemic as well as improving the lot of those harmed by it, when he praised its economic benefits but refused to vote to pass it.  

These scoundrels want to have their cake and eat it, and actually believe that Republican voters are ignorant or gullible enough to believe that all Biden is doing is taking credit for things actually achieved by the former president.  Republican voters, especially those who still have immense loyalty to the former president, still favor an agenda, knowingly or not, sympathetic to the wealthy, to business and the white supremacists who attacked the Capitol and which does little or nothing for them.

Despite Republic legislation at the State level to suppress voting which is the only way they can win elections (except in Florida where the voters are so dumb that suppression isn’t even necessary to assure Republican victories), I don’t believe their efforts will be enough for them in 2022.  Because of the benefits of Democratic sponsored programs, the growing popularity of President Biden, the prosecution of the January 6 insurrectionists and the stench which will arise as legal actions involving the former president occur, an overwhelming outpouring of Democratic voters nationwide ought to suffice to end the G.O.P.’s reactionary dreams, perhaps forever, and despite voter suppression.  

(That the former president is cutting off Republicans who refuse to pledge loyalty to him from using his name and picture in fund raising should further widen the split which is destroying the Republican Party and accrue to the benefit of the Democrats. This split will ultimately extend to the State and local level where a choice will be faced: Either give up trying to get support from more centrist voters or go broke. The few G.O.P. Senators who voted to impeach, for example, face this choice.  In future history textbooks, the Republicans will get about as much space as the Whigs do today.)

Item Added - March 17, 2021

If you read one book this year, it should be "Caste" by Isabel Wilkerson, with heavy documentation of how "caste" existed or still exists in India and the United States, and came to fruition in Nazi Germany.  Example:  Did it ever occur to you that we had concentration camps in the United States, even before the internment of Americans of Japanese heritage during World War Two?  We called them "plantations," a much more picturesque and polite designation.

Items Added - March 18, 2021

Hold your breath!  Here comes a favorable comment about the former president!  He is to be credited with fast-tracking the development and production of vaccines with which to fight Covid19 (Operation 'Warp Speed'). He did this despite a year of his minimizing the threat the virus posed to America, his dismantling of the existing estblished structure to battle epidemics and his failure to give a thought to how the fast-tracked vaccine would be distributed.  Many died because of this. Today, not departing from his career of hypocrisy and lies, he is not encouraging those who listen to him to become vaccinated. That might lose him support from the nut jobs who believe the lies about vaccination prevalent in right wing media.  Anyhow, here's credit, however minimal it might be, where it is due, Donald.

The Russians' "Useful Idiots" Among Us

Many Trumpublicans continue to be ignorant and gullible, and support racist policies as well as far-right conspiracy theories in an effort to undo everything good the United States has accomplished since FDR and create dissent among Americans. They even attacked the Capitol on January 6.

This saves the Russians the job of convincing the world that American democracy is a failure and their autocratic system is better. So long as the Republican Party does that job for them, they don't even need "Manchurian" candidates. Acclimated by the former president to accept lies, Republicans can't even identify Russian lies when they repeat them themselves. Yes, there are many idiots among us and the Russians are not reluctant to use them for their purposes. Their intelligence people refer to them as "useful idiots."  They are many in our Congress.

Item Added - March 20, 2021

Murder in Atlanta

The Atlanta murders should direct our thoughts in three directions: (1) the need for gun control legislation, (2) the growing need to identify and help the mentally ill and (3) more attention being paid to the “deeply religious,” as the Atlanta murderer was described, when their beliefs are transferred from a relationship to a Creator toward actions directed elsewhere, fueled by an ignorance and gullibility such as that which legitimatized our former president's words.

And speaking of gun control, For the past few years I have had a homemade sign visible through the rear window of my car reading "Want an Assault Rifle? Join the Army!" At first I was a little cautious, but thus far, nobody slashed my tires, possibly because I also have a veterans' cap visible back there too.