We rethink the week with Dean Spiliotis, Civic Scholar and Presidential Scholar at Southern New Hampshire University; Steven Greene, professor of political science at North Carolina State University; and Ron Abramson, attorney at Shaheen &Gordon.
Today is “coming-out day,” established in 1988 to remind us of the times when a person who identified as anything other than straight cis sexuality was met with social stigma and possible danger or death. Despite this, courageous LGBTQ people “came out” of the shadows, proclaiming openly who they really were. Arnie reads a definition of marriage as set forth in the 2003 Goodrich decision from the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts. This decision – the precursor to the US Supreme Court’s same-sex marriage case twelve years later in 2015 – was written by Chief Justice Margaret Marshall (a classmate of Ken’s from law school). The principles underlying the decision were forged in Marshall’s childhood in apartheid South Africa, where she learned that discrimination against any human being is immoral.
We discuss some of the recent racist and violent threats to our democracy that are being incited by the hateful rhetoric of Pres Trump and his enablers. The Univ of NC Asheville was shut down recently because of a bomb threat, made by white supremacist extremists demanding that the university paint over a mural on campus supporting Black Lives Matter.
We note that our current problems did not begin with Donald Trump. Republicans and right-wing activists have been pushing a white supremacist agenda for a couple of decades. We wonder why the Democrats didn’t stop it. As Steven Greene put it, we ignored the simmering charcoal briquets, and then Trump came on the scene and dumped lighter fluid over them until the conflagration started burning down our house.
The problem extends beyond Trump to the entire Republican leadership. All they care about is lowering taxes for rich people and corporations. They make no efforts to reduce the suffering of poor and working-class people. These Republicans are completely out of touch with ordinary Americans: They have spent decades ignoring the ways in which Republican policies — cutting taxes for the rich and asserting that it will “trickle down” — are causing suffering for the vast majority of Americans who are out of jobs (or underemployed and underpaid), who have no health insurance, no money saved for retirement, and are struggling just to get through day-to-day life with their families.
We talked about the impending hard-right majority on the US Supreme Court, after the likely confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett. If that happens, what will moderate and progressive people (Democrats) do then? Should Biden expand (“pack”) the Court? Would that just open up a Pandora’s box, a spiral of one-upmanship? Or is it simply practical politics: The Republicans have so manipulated the process of judicial appointments, exerting their bare-knuckled power, that the only strategy left to Democrats is to respond in kind, applying any political power they can gain in the 2020 election to push the pendulum back to some position more to the center?
Or would term limits offer a better solution – for Justices and for Congress? If we had term limits, might it be harder for rich donors to control the government? Or do they have enough money to simply buy candidates every 8 or 12 years instead of every 20-30 years?
