Month: October 2020

Categories
Commentary Opinion

Cancel, Cancel, Cancel

10/28/2020 was a big day for America’s history of free speech. It is a long and storied history, important enough to be first and foremost in the Bill of Rights. Alexis de Tocqueville dedicated an entire chapter to it when exploring the rough edges of our American democracy. The ACLU fought to defend it when the rights of Neo-Nazis to march in Skokie, Illinois were threatened. The free market of ideas is a core tenet of America and has endured its fair share of attacks over the past 200 years and today it its braced against two separate foes. One a dysfunctional body jockeying for political leverage. The other? Twitter.

The first is the Senate, packed full of partisans each looking for an edge in the upcoming election, looking to strike a blow to the foundation of our modern internet. Senators from both major parties spent 4 hours hurling talking points at the leaders of Google, Facebook, and Twitter in was was supposed to be a hearing regarding Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Democratic Senators spent their allotted time pushing for suppressing conservative viewpoints labeled Russian propaganda. Republican Senators railed against perceived blocking of conservative talking points, but really spent the time staging promotional videos for their base.

But the political circus in Washington is nothing new. The major threat to our hard fought right to freedom of speech, our freedom of thought, is Cancel Culture. A digital mob with its woke fingers wrapped around the larynx of America. On the very same day that the Senate was holding hearings on the law that allows for the free exchange of ideas across the breadth of humanity, Americans were using that amazing power of communication to force speech from public spaces.

The Twitter mob renewed its push to punish Joe Rogan for his uncompromising defence of free speech by attempting to spur a boycott of Spotify, who recently signed a licensing deal for the wildly popular podcast, following Rogan’s decision to have the highly controversial conspiracy-theorist Alex Jones return despite a prior ban on the Spotify platform. The outrage ranged from claims of the two spreading vaccine disinformation (Jones may have, Rogan certainly did not), Jones’ past denial of the Sandy Hook shooting (which Jones denied on the show, but seems like a cover for his legal troubles), to just a general desire to cancel anything involved with Jones in any way.

Now, is Alex Jones insane? Possibly. Does he hawk vitamins and supplements while making dubious claims as to their effects on human health? Absolutely. Does he believe that current events are the result of high level agreements between the leaders of our terrestrial governments and inter-dimensional entities? Does he also believe that these meetings take place through the use of powerful psychedelics that allow humans to access these aforementioned dimensions? Maybe, I’m not entirely sure, but let’s go with yes.

What Jones may or may not believe is irrelevant. He has a right to believe whatever he wants and if the Joe Rogan’s of the world want to have a 3 hour conversation exploring the depth of those beliefs, they have every right to do that too. Anyone offended as the right to not listen to those beliefs. Hell, they have a right to attempt a boycott if they want. The issue lies in the inability to tolerate an offensive viewpoint. Having the right to an action does not make the action right. Any attempt to silence an odious opinion is as offensive as the opinion itself.

A democracy depends on the free exchange of ideas. Does anyone really think that Alex Jones is so persuasive that the mere exposure to his lunacy will corrupt the minds of America? Of course not. It appears those pushing hard against Rogan believe the American population so stupid, so malleable, that any concerning viewpoint needs to be shielded from view. Stuffed away and forgotten. It also presupposes that their own viewpoint is so correct that it cannot be challenged. This is the truly frightening idea. The idea that one group has a monopoly on righteousness, on truth. These are the hallmarks of zealotry.

The greatest irony of #cancelspotify and the backlash against Rogan is that the following day saw the release of a multi-hour conversation with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glen Greenwald that touched upon this very tendency of the mob to suppress free speech. This is a man who broke news of the National Security Agency blatantly violating our collective 4th amendment protections through illegal . This is a man who intimately understands the true value of the rights enshrined in the United States Constitution. This is a man who was forced to flee, along with Edward Snowden, the country as a result of breaking this news.

Yet, despite the egregious nature of the N.S.A.’s transgressions against our enumerated freedoms, the Twitter mob cares more about canceling guy who believes U.S. leaders are dropping acid to hammer out intergalactic trade deals, than enacting justice for a whistleblower who sacrificed his freedom to bring these transgressions to light.

Perhaps Rogan is the one who has it right.

Categories
Commentary News

What Now?

To no one’s surprise, Amy Coney Barrett has been elevated by a 52-48 vote to be the nation’s 9th Supreme Court Justice, replacing the iconic Ruth Bader Ginsberg and entrenching what appears to be a firm 6-3 balance in favor of the court’s conservative wing.

While the court’s ideological split is often discussed as mirroring the political concepts of “conservatism” and “liberalism” that currently dominate our current national discourse, in reality the divide is one of jurisprudence and judicial philosophy. It is not uncommon for “conservative” Justices to rule on a given case in a way that favors a politically liberal outcome ( such as newly appointed Neil Gorsuch ruling in Bostock vs. Clayton County that the 1964 Civil Rights Act protections against discrimination rooted in “sex” also extend to LGBTQ Americans) or for “liberal” members of the court to similarly reach decisions that run contrary to their perceived ideologies. This has not stopped the usual suspects from running to their battle stations (although, to be honest, they really never left) to fire off Twitter salvos decrying pre-ordained legal rulings.

Of course, Mr. Blumenthal is in the thick of things and slinging emotional bombs in all directions.

Now it is clearly not a surprise that Democratic lawmakers are up in arms and decrying the impending death of American society. In their narrative Amy Coney Barrett and the Supreme Court are gearing up, as we speak, to turn America into A Handmaid’s Tale by the end of the next court term.

This is not to say that the country does not stand on the precipice of monumental change, some likely to be brought forth by the new dynamics on the court. It does. But the reason we are on edge is not simply because Donald Trump got lucky or the fact that Mitch McConnell would sell his soul for this very result (he would). It is again a direct result of what has not happened over the last several decades. It is a direct result of the slow atrophy of the Legislative branch, which is quickly becoming the gallbladder of our American democracy.

The Supreme Court is one, of three, coequal branches. It does not lord over our society, crafting America as it sees fit. Does the court wield monumental influence? Yes. Yet the influence of the court can be tempered by a robust Congress. The members of both chambers do themselves, their offices, and America a disservice with everyday spent fundraising in lieu of legislating. Everyday spent turning the gears of the partisan spin machine in lieu of meaningful debate, is a day spent allowing America slip farther from being a functioning democratic Republic by choice and closer to a Kritarchy by necessity.

The Legislative branch needs to make a deliberate effort to turn away from the temptations of partisanship and work to legislate in a comprehensive, bi-partisan manner to keep “Kritarchy” a form of government that requires a Google search, not the reality in America.

Categories
Commentary News Opinion

Posturing, Pandering, and The Supremes

The SCOTUS confirmation hearing exposes just how broken our political institutions have become.

For one week in October Amy Comey Barret took center stage in the ongoing Kabuki theater that grips the nation. We heard gloom, we heard doom. We heard plaudits and praise. And we heard it all in alternating 20 minute soapbox speeches.

The hearings to consider the elevation of Judge Barrett to the Supreme Court are over and gone, receding into the rear view mirror and out of the social consciousness. Yet we have learned absolutely nothing of substance in regards to Judge Barrett’s judicial philosophy. We learned nothing about her suitability to assume a position to the court. We did learn, however, how many different ways one human being can decline to speculate on the same succession of hypothetical legal scenarios.

We have reached a point in this nation in which our descent into hyper-partisanship has rendered the political process almost impossible. Although it would be wonderful to have a series of hearings in which Senators could ask probing legal questions and receive a candid answer from a nominee, the political environment makes this impossible. Any utterance is subject to extreme vetting. Any opinion rendered would be quickly subjected to the Right/Left spin cycle and plastered across the social media landscape. These were not hearings, they were depositions.

Any vacancy to the highest court in the land has now become an existential battle. The Supreme Court was not envisioned as an omnipotent council of elders set in place to rule on and sway policy in the United States. Yet, due to the slow and steady abdication of responsibility by the Legislative branch, this is exactly the position we find ourselves in. The legislative process no longer exists for the most contentious policy questions facing the nation. Gun control, healthcare, immigration. All of these issues have become partisan weapons, issues to stir the base and drive fundraising for the next election cycle. There can be no compromise because there is no reasoned debate. Neither side can be seen to even acknowledge the feasibility of a rival policy proposal so we are left with an endless cycle of political brinksmanship where policy poison pills are tacked on the budgets, or defense authorization acts.

Now, while the legislative process has ground to a halt, the problems facing America do not simply disappear. They linger. So now, in lieu of a robust and collaborative legislative process, the most feasible way to address policy questions is to force a tailored lawsuit through the Judicial system to the Supreme Court. Chief Justice John Roberts, to his credit, has bent himself into legal knots to avoid the court being used as a blunt instrument to circumvent the proper legislative process but this balancing act becomes more and more perilous with each successive vacancy.

In theory, any given ruling by the Supreme Court is not the final verdict on any given policy. The court rules on legality. In a properly functioning legislative body a Supreme Court ruling would be seen as a impetus to craft a law that would pass judicial challenge. Compromise would be made, legal issues resolved. The hearings show just how far we are from that utopian reality.