Month: October 2018

My good friend, Abigail Adams, showed me some of her letters recently. In a 1776 letter she reminds her husband, John, to “Remember the Ladies” as he and others embark on the great task of forming a new government and its “Code of Laws.”

Donald Trump remembers the ladies, all right, although they are called women now. He calls them “Horseface,” “loser,” “an extraordinarily low IQ person,” “unattractive both inside and out.” He has said, “I love her…upper body,” “You never get to the face because the body’s so good,” and “I moved on her actually and I failed…I did try and f-ck her.” Our President evidently looks upon a woman as a face and a body. Character and intellect are beside the point. Memory loss would be an improvement for this man.

Take note of Trump’s recent Supreme Court pick. The evidence of Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s abuse of women when he was young was simply overwhelming. In the October 20, 2018 Daily Hampshire Gazette, in an op-ed piece The Reverend Dr. Andrea Ayvazian wrote, “During the atrocity that was the Kavanaugh hearing, I found myself wishing that those questioning Dr. Blasey Ford could actually listen to her and believe her. Instead, the majority of [male] senators partially listened, rewrote the story and dismissed the truth…..Listen and believe is a tall order for white men.” Instead, Trump mocked Dr. Ford.

Abigail noted, “That your Sex are Naturally Tyrannical is a Truth so thoroughly established as to admit of no dispute, but such of you as wish to be happy willingly give up the hard title of Master for the more tender and endearing one of Friend. Why then, not put it out of the power of the vicious and the Lawless to use us with cruelty and indignity with impunity. Men of Sense in all Ages abhor those customs which treat us only as the vassals of your Sex.”

Among my own 18th century writings are the following: “The love of domination and an uncontrolled lust of arbitrary power have prevailed among all nations and perhaps in proportion to the degrees of civilization.” And, “Democratic principles are the result of equality of condition.”

President Trump, however, believes some of us are more equal than others.

Mercy Warren

Three years ago when world leaders met to negotiate an international agreement on confronting climate change one of the most difficult points upon which to reach agreement was what some have suggested calling the Doomsday Thermometer Reading. After much political jousting the number was set at 2 degrees Celsius above the level that existed prior to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, about 1800. Beyond this level it was concluded potential catastrophe lay. But small island states such as the Maldives and Mauritius as well as some developing countries such as Ethiopia and Columbia pushed back saying that their countries would be devastated—and some would be under water—well before 2 degrees of additional warming was reached. They wanted a lower level, 1.5 degrees Celsius. The compromise reached was to endorse both numbers. The Paris Agreement calls for “holding” warming below two degrees while “pursuing” efforts to limit it to 1.5 degrees.

Last week, the United Nations scientific advisory board (referred to as the I.P.C.C., the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) delivered an assessment of these numbers. It found that the effect of even 1.5 degrees worth of warming will probably be disastrous—as reported by an article in the New Yorker of October 22, 2018—with consequences including but not limited to: “the loss of most of the world’s coral reefs, the displacement of millions of people by sea- level rise, and a decline in global crop yields.” And which is now widely understood as the barest beginnings of the calamitous, disastrous, overpowering, crushing existential threat that uncontrolled climate change represents to humanity. But of course the Trump administration is going in the opposite direction thereby directly threatening this country, the world community and the future of humanity on this planet.

As the article continues: “Though the Administration often seems incapable of systematic action, it has spent the past eighteen months systematically targeting rules aimed at curbing greenhouse gas-emissions. One of these rules, which required greater fuel efficiency for cars and trucks, would have reduced CO₂ emissions by an estimated six billion tons over the lifetime of the affected vehicles. In a recent finding intended to justify the rollback, the Administration predicted that, by the end of this century, global temperatures will have risen by almost four degrees Celsius (nearly seven degrees Fahrenheit). In this context, the Administration argued, why would anyone care about a mere six billion tons? Come the apocalypse, it seems, we all want to be driving S.U.V.s.” This level, plus 4 degrees, is nearing possible extinction levels. This is not fiddling while Rome is burning; this is setting fire to your own fiddle and starting the fires yourself. It constitutes the Administration giving up and abandoning any hope of saving humanity. It is like saying let the grandchildren burn if they can’t save themselves—which by the end of the century would not be possible—let’s enjoy ourselves while we can and drive around in big S.U.V.s spewing even more poisonous carbon into the air.

Any Administration that truly thinks like this should not be allowed to hold office. If in office, they should be removed and they certainly under no circumstance should be continued in office.

Here follows a few thoughts from our Founders:

“Government is nothing more than the combined force of Society, or the united power of the multitude for peace, order, safety, good and happiness of the people.”

John Adams, 1772

“The essence of Government is power and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.”

James Madison, 1829

“Tyranny can scarcely be practiced upon a virtuous and wise people.”

John Adams, 1796

“I feel anxious for the fate of our monarchy, or democracy, or whatever is to take place. I soon get lost in a labyrinth of perplexities; but, whatever occurs, may justice and righteousness be the stability of our times, and order arise out of confusion. Great difficulties may be surmounted by patience and perseverance.”

Abigail Adams, 1775

John Jay

“To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis on which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle. The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.” Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, 2011

“…upon his appointment as chancellor, Hitler immediately created a new Ministry of People’s Enlightenment and propaganda under Joseph Goebbels, who remained one of his closest political advisors. In Trump’s presidency, those functions have effectively been privatized in the form of Fox News and Sean Hannity. Fox faithfully trumpets the “alternative facts” of the Trump version of events, and in turn Trump frequently finds inspiration for his tweets and fantasy-filled statements from his daily monitoring of Fox commentators and his late night calls with Hannity. The result is the creation of a ‘Trump bubble’ for his base to inhabit that is unrecognizable to viewers of PBS, CNN, and MSNBC and readers of the Washington Post and the New York Times. The highly critical free media not only provide no effective check on Trump’s ability to be a serial liar without political penalty; on the contrary they provide yet another enemy around which to mobilize the grievances and resentments of his base. A free press does not have to be repressed when it can be rendered irrelevant and even exploited for political gain.” Christopher R. Browning, The Suffocation of Democracy, The New York Review of Books, October 25, 2018, p. 16.

“Jeff Flake, who is retiring at the end of the year, … made a telling comment … a few days earlier. Scott Kelley, of ’60 Minutes’ asked him if he would have been willing to call for the postponement of the vote [on Judge Kavanaugh] if he was running for reelection. ‘No, not a chance,’ he said. ‘There’s no value to reaching across the aisle. There is no currency for that anymore.’” Amy Davidson Sorkin, The New Yorker, October 15, 2018.
“Why did people think that a voting system was protection against totalitarianism?” Souad Mekhennet, I Was Told to Come Alone: My Journey Behind the Lines of Jihad, 2018, p. 189.

As our Founders wrote below, democracy is fragile, and as is noted above if facts are abandoned freedom is lost. A free press, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and of movement are the core of a democratic society. And they all rest on truth which itself rests on an agreed set of facts. As John Adams once said “facts are stubborn things” but they can be suppressed as in Nazi Germany or they can be swamped by lies and distortion as is the case in the Trump administration. In saying this the famous lines by George Orwell in 1984 comes to mind: “War is peace, ignorance is strength, freedom is slavery.” But war is not peace and freedom is not slavery and even Fox News and Donald Trump cannot make it so. Some comments of our Founders on these issues follow.

“A lie stands on 1 leg, truth on 2.”
Benjamin Franklin, 1735

“Facts are stubborn things and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”
John Adams, 1770

“Let us neglect all party alliance and advert to facts. Let us believe no man to be infallible or impeccable in government, any more than in religion. Take no man’s word against evidence…”
John Adams, 1783

“But none of the means of information are more sacred, or have been cherished with more tenderness or care by the settlers of America than the press.”
John Adams, 1765

“The first of qualities for a great statesman is to be honest.”
John Adams, 1809
“I hate deception, even where the imagination only is concerned…”
George Washington, 1779

A lady asked Dr. Franklin, “Well Doctor, what have we got a republic or a monarchy?” “A republic replied the Doctor if you can keep it.”
John Jay

The Right Stuff

Alexander Hamilton arguing in 1788 in Federalist Paper Number 78 for lifetime appointments for judges on good behavior said the following:

“To avoid an arbitrary discretion in the courts, it is indispensable that they should be bound down by strict rules and precedents, which serve to define and point out their duty in every particular case that comes before them….the records of those precedents [which will reach] a very considerable bulk…must demand long and laborious study to acquire a competent knowledge of them. Hence it is, that there can be but few men in the society who will have sufficient skill in the laws to qualify them for the stations of judges. And making the proper deductions for the ordinary depravity of human nature, the number must be still smaller of those who unite the requisite integrity with the requisite knowledge. These considerations apprise us, that the government can have no great option between fit characters….”

And John Adams noted in a commentary in 1776:

“Judges Should always be Men of learning and Experience in the Laws, of exemplary Morals, great Patience, Calmness, Coolness and Attention. Should not have their Minds distracted with complicated jarring Interests, or be Subservient to any Man or Body of Men, or more complaisant to one than another.”

It is clear from this, the type of men to serve as judges in the Federal Judiciary our Founders anticipated—and especially judges or rather justices of the Supreme Court.  Temperament and character were all important; “integrity” says Hamilton, “exemplary morals, great patience, calmness, coolness,” says Adams.  There is little doubt of the type of person they would have in mind for a seat on the Supreme Court.  Judge Kavanaugh would not appear to meet this standard.  He does not seem to have enough of the “right stuff” to make a Supreme Court Justice.

Dana Milbank in his article on September 30, 2018 in the Washington Post has noted that Judge Kavanaugh has proved himself “unfit to serve on the Supreme Court.  It has little to do with his treatment of women.”  In his statement to the Committee following the testimony of Christine Blasey Ford in which she castigated his alleged sexual assault on her decades ago, Judge Kavanaugh cast aside all pretense of objectivity, judicial restraint and even rational argument, succumbing to partisan fury, relying on ridicule and fantasy.  As Milbank reports, Kavanaugh denounced the entire proceeding before the Committee as a “national disgrace, “a circus,” “a grotesque and coordinated character assassination” and “a search and destroy mission.”  He attacked the Democratic Party for threats against his family with the intent “to blow me up and take me down.”

He went on to say that the entire confirmation process has been “a calculated political hit” motivated by anger over President Trump’s election in 2016 and “…revenge on behalf of the Clintons and millions of dollars in money from outside left-wing opposition groups.”  And he mocked two Senators on the Committee who asked questions about his history of drinking, thereby impugning the entire US Senate.

And as Tom Friedman pointed out in his column in the New York Times on October 3, 2018, “…And nothing is sacred. Brett Kavanaugh defended himself the other day with the kind of nasty partisan attacks and ugly conspiracy theories that you’d expect only from a talk radio host—never from a would-be justice of the Supreme Court. Who can expect fairness from him now?”  We should have expected such behavior suggested sociologist Shamus Khan in his column in the Outlook section of the Washington Post on September 30, 2018 in which he asserted that Judge Kavanagh in his 2018 confirmation testimony told the Senate Judiciary Committee several important mistruths under oath and had done the same thing in confirmation proceedings for his current position in 2006.

Judge Kavanaugh may be a good lawyer and good family man but he publically demonstrated that he is not the kind of man that our Founders expected would be selected for service on the Supreme Court if we want our system of government to work properly.  His leader, the President, consistently makes clear that he has no regard for American principles and values—on October 3, 2018 he mocked Ms. Ford’s testimony in a rally—but that doesn’t mean it is acceptable for Supreme Court justices to behave the same way.  It most assuredly is not.

“Nothing is more important to the establishment of manners in a State than that all persons employed in places of power and trust be men of exceptional character.”

–Samuel Adams, 1775

“If ever the Time should come, when vain & aspiring Men shall possess the highest Seats in Government, our Country will stand in Need of its experienced Patriots to prevent its Ruin.”

–Samuel Adams, 1780

“The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil constitution, are worth defending against all hazards: And it is our duty to defend them against all attacks.”

–Samuel Adams, 1771

Sam Adams, co-founder of the Sons of Liberty; leader of the Boston Tea Party; signer of the Declaration of Independence and later long-time Governor of Massachusetts says it well.  All citizens should take heed.

John Jay