american politics – Pike & Hurricane

Divided We Fall

Maya Diekmann — Thu, 15 Nov 2018 15:09:34 +0000

On November 21, 2013, Senate Democrats confirmed Brett Kavanaugh as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States of America. Not literally, of course, yet the essence of Kavanaugh’s successful confirmation to the highest federal court of the United States can be traced back to the elimination of the filibuster, which took place on said November day.

“Filibuster Out”

What actually happened that day in 2013 was a historic amendment of Senate rules by the Democrat majority. Democrats, under Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, eliminated the filibuster on executive and judicial nominations, with the exception of Supreme Court nominations, in response to a partisan gridlock caused by Senate Republicans repeatedly drawing on their right to indefinitely extend debate.

While filibustering itself is a long established tool in the Senate, its use has “skyrocketed to unprecedented levels during the Obama Administration” – 27 cloture votes have been invoked on executive appointments made by President Barack Obama. That is more than under the ten presidents before him. Combined.

Unsurprisingly, the move had caused great dissent among Republicans, who were convinced that “Democrats would ultimately reap what they sowed”. They eventually did: First, in 2017, with Republicans eliminating exceptions of the filibuster for Supreme Court nominations in order to move forward with the confirmation of President Trump’s appointee Neil Gorsuch.

And again, with the confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh just a few days ago.

An Impartial Supreme Court?

One can see why Democrats thought it necessary to put an end to the filibuster’s unproductive political repercussions. Yet, eliminating such a powerful political minority tool can be considered a bold move. Especially, when the Executive and Legislative Branches are controlled by the same political party, overreaching into the Judicial Branch is now much easier than before. And we may be witnessing this first hand.

With Kavanaugh – appointed and confirmed by the Republican Party – replacing swing vote Anthony Kennedy, the court is now dominated by conservative justices, aligning with Republican ideology. The great partisan animosity carried by Kavanaugh places the Supreme Court in an equivocal position. Created to offer checks on the Legislative and Executive Branches, the supposingly apolitical court has suddenly become a part of what New York Times author Charlie Savage accurately titles Senators’ “tit-for-tat escalation of partisan warfare”.

Legitimacy of the Supreme Court rests with the faith of the American people and a potential shift of the Supreme Court towards a more conservative interpretation of the law is not unlikely to result in a loss of said faith among liberals, which, according to a 2017 poll, make up 46% of the American people. For the Supreme Court, losing back-up from almost half of the American population will have consequences of inconceivable magnitude.

The Future of Justice

So where do we go from here? The filibuster is dead and the consequences of this are real. If there is one positive effect of the dissension around Kavanaugh’s appointment, it is the reignited call for reform of the Supreme Court.

A popular proposal is the abolition of lifetime tenure and its replacement with single, staggered 18-year-terms. Not only would a faster turnover de-intensify confirmation battles in the Senate, it would also allow every president to appoint two justices per term, with a minimized risk of one party appointing a majority of the court. Rather than Supreme Court openings being “lotteries to be won by lucky presidents”, a guaranteed set of appointments per president adds a more democratic character to the nomination of justices.

Another widespread idea revolves around “packing” of the court. Rather than trying to run from its fate, according to Jacob Hale Russel, the Supreme Court should embrace the inevitable: politicization. A larger judicial body would increase representation and diversity, and generally be more productive. Justices would be less likely to get stuck on a bloc-voting pattern and coalitions would form more easily regardless of partisan divide.

Yay or Nay?

How likely is an actual reform of the Supreme Court? In theory, the Supreme Court as we know it today can be – more or less easily – reformed. The number of judges on the court is not defined in the Constitution but rather by a congressional act, correspondingly simple would be a change in terms of membership – also through a congressional act. Somewhat more complicated, but by no means impossible, is the introduction of limited terms, since lifetime tenure is indirectly provided for in the Constitution. A change in tenure would require an amendment to the Constitution, which certainly is significantly more time-consuming than an Act of Congress.

In practice, however, a reform of the Supreme Court may alter the legal framework but the core issue of politicization is likely to remain untouched. Washington Post’s Robert Barnes reminds us that, by definition, only those issues most difficult to resolve end up before the Supreme Court. That includes hot-button issues like gun control, abortion rights, death penalty – issues that have done a great deal in separating the people along partisan lines. Barnes is convinced that an honest judge should not only separate interpretation of the law from his personal political views but moreover judges in accordance to what’s best for the country. A deeply divided population cannot be considered to be in anyone’s best interest, yet Kavanaugh’s confirmation itself has further entrenched the gap between Republicans and Democrats. It will be in the hands of the Supreme Court to reverse the crisis Kavanaugh may have triggered for the judicial branch. After all, according to Barnes, a happy ending is in everyone’s best interest. Let’s just hope he is right.

By Maya Diekmann

Photo Credits:

The End Of The Government Shutdown 2013, Stephen Melkisethian, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Justitia, Tim Reckmann, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Filibuster Gorsuch, Master Steve Rapport, CC BY 2.0

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Shadow Government: Paranoia and Lizard People

Anna Bernard — Mon, 05 Jun 2017 15:43:45 +0000

Blue bloods or serpent bloods?

Since time immemorial there seems to have been a common theme between royalty and serpent worship around the world, as for example in China, where the ancient emperors believed they had the divine right to rule because they
were connected to the “serpent gods”. Further evidence can be found in early images of ancient cultures such as the Hindus and Cambodians with their nāgas, Nordics with their Jörmungandr, and African and Native American cultures with their various serpent deities.

It is said that this connection between the nobility and the serpent creatures has never been forgotten, as the bloodlines of the serpents and the humans have converged over time, thus producing reptoids, or the lizard people.

The reptoid world order

According to David Icke, a new-age philosopher and one of the most outspoken proponents of the reptilian theory,these blood-thirsty, man-eating creatures have influenced the course of humankind since ancient times. Reptoids are a result of not only the mixing of human and reptilian bloodlines; these reptilians are actually an alien life-form that came to Earth from another dimension some 200,000 years ago to breed with people, thus creating our current world elite. Conspiracy poses that world leaders like Queen Elizabeth, George W. Bush and the Clintons, are all lizard people, belonging to secret societies like the Freemasons and Illuminati.

Conspiracy theories

Currently, an approximate 12 million US citizens believe that lizard people run the country. That is just a bit more than the population of Belgium, or a rough equivalent of the population of the state of Ohio. For an average person without inclinations towards conspiracy theories this might seem like an amusing piece of information providing a bit of distraction from the daily dose of gloomy news.

However, the lizard people conspiracy is only one of an untold multitude of conspiracy theories gaining credence. We shouldn’t be focusing on the lizard people, we should focus on the underlying political paranoia and distrust towards our current political regimes. This paranoia is not something obscurely afflicting only some individuals but a widespread condition of modern societies, possibly related to changing societal values. It is hypothesized that the rise of paranoia and conspiracy theories correlates with a rise in individualistic values and a feeling of loss of control. When the modern individualists have to try to reconcile with the lack of control over their lives, it is easier to transfer blame onto hidden forces controlling the distressing events.

In this globalized world where split-second events in one part of the world can have long-lasting repercussions on an international level, it is easy to understand where these feelings of powerlessness stem from. Governments fall, economies crash and somewhere in the rubble stands the individual gathering the scraps left behind, trying to make sense of it all. When it happens one too many times without anybody claiming responsibility, cognitive biases kick in with a tendency to see patterns where there are none. After all, it seems more plausible that it was the reptoid Illuminati who benefited from the 2008 market crash than trying to understand the interconnectedness of our world and the interplay of the seemingly insignificant incidents that led us to the economic meltdown?

As these distressing events happen and nobody can be held responsible, people start to question the status quo, since its incapacity to provide protection is apparent. In an interesting study in 2012, researchers found that only 10-12% of the American population trusts the national legislature. The election of Donald Trump is an excellent example displaying this loss of trust in Washington amongst the average Americans who are tired of corporations affecting the economy and decision-making.

If the mainstream parties and conventional politics cannot channel the voice and concern of the public nor offer a feeling of security to the masses, people will turn their gaze elsewhere to find explanations. For some this means protesting by voting for a political outsider like Trump, who found a way to manipulate the fears of the public. For others, it means interpreting current events from a perspective where the reptoid-Illuminati controls the world. They are both the symptoms of an individual feeling powerless while experiencing massive world events.

By Anna Bernard

Featured image: Bernard Spragg. NZ, “Brown anole, Maui” (CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0))

Image 1: Jim Winstead, “Dragon outside jumbo floating restaurant” (Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)

Image 2: Garry Knight, “Practicing Scales” (Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)

Image 3: Christopher Dombres, “Conspiracy theories” (CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0)

Image 4: Gage Skidmore, “Donald Trump supporter” (Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0)

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