Author Archives: Susan Barsy

Day 42: Determined on Equality

22 Sep 2020 By in Candidates and Campaigns Tags: , , , ,

Underneath all the other issues of election 2020, is this essential choice: Will the US continue to advance toward becoming a fully equal society, or will its citizens turn from that, imagining that a nation of white privilege will mean happier times? To an unusual degree, this presidential contest boils down to whether the nation will resist change or realize its destiny as a place where people of all complexions can coexist, enjoy full equality, and thrive.

Our politics is unusually nasty because the nation is moving with some determination toward this goal. The election of the first black president, Barack Obama, was a 21st-century “fire bell” to white America. In response, whites who imagine themselves to be “patriots” have dusted off their rebel regalia and clustered around the monuments valorizing “the Lost Cause.” They have puffed up with pride, hearing president Trump call them “fine people.”

In the view of these “fine people,” much of what is wrong with the US has to do with the Democrats and their incomprehensible loyalty to the cause of black equality. Trump supporters can’t accept that Obama won office (twice!) on the basis of his merits. There must have been some trick, some fraud involved.

Trump is incapable of leading a nation experiencing a new birth of interracial solidarity. A majority of the US has grown accustomed to integration. Equality is the norm in our neighborhoods, workplaces, domiciles, universities, public institutions, regiments, and playing fields. Smart phones have shattered our innocence, making the reality of police brutality against blacks impossible to tolerate, ignore, or deny. Even as people of color fall ill and die of COVID disproportionately, Trump’s White House sees in their sad plight only political gain. He would rebrand as “terrorists” and “enemies” Americans who protest peacefully for equality.

Time and again, the prospect of black equality has triggered crises in our political system. When the black race stands to gain, presidential elections tend to get tumultuous, and federalism itself threatens to break under the strain. Slavery was perpetuated for decades because white Americans could not imagine coexisting with a free black population. Even radical Republicans of Abraham Lincoln’s generation balked at the idea that white and black people were equally capable of freedom, equally suited to being citizens of a republic, even as Republicans were certain that black slavery was wrong.

After the Civil War, blacks languished as an oppressed and segregated population, despite new Constitutional amendments supposedly securing their full civil rights. It was “nothing but freedom,” and in the more than one-hundred-and-fifty years since, Americans have struggled with all that becoming a truly fair and tolerant society involves. We’re getting closer!

The United States is getting nearer to accomplishing a rare feat, becoming a nation that is not tribal but abides by a color-blind code of equality. In the context of this determined movement, Trump’s reelection would be aberrant indeed.

Image: from this source.

Day 43: The Ginsburg Factor

21 Sep 2020 By in Candidates and Campaigns Tags: , , , 2 Comments

“So this is the little lady who made this big war!”
Abraham Lincoln to Harriet Beecher Stowe

Ruth Bader Ginsburg died Friday. The Supreme Court justice’s tiny body was barely cold before Democratic and Republican partisans began rattling their verbal sabers and licking their lips, perversely eager for a dangerous new battle to begin. Democrats envision catastrophe if Republicans put a new justice on the court, a response that’s like shooting up the badly ailing Republicans with adrenaline. Each side sees something terribly momentous at stake in the matter of a single judicial appointment. No matter that there will always be another vacancy, another justice who retires or dies.

Neither side acknowledges that what they are claiming with so much vehemence is harmful to the Court, disrespectful of the Constitution, or possibly untrue. Neither side admits that the justices on the Supreme Court are independent and that by and large (except for Clarence Thomas) they are extremely capable, well-meaning people who’ve been doing a good job. In just this last session, the justices declared Trump’s DACA order invalid and recognized the Native American Creeks’ right to judge certain crimes in the eastern half of Oklahoma–an unprecedented recognition of their historical tribal rights. The federal adjudication of abortion is no longer the same all-or-nothing issue it once was, yet Democrats and Republicans are beating that drum again. It’s one of our era’s most overused battle cries. The Supreme Court would matter less if the parties were more moderate and Congress were doing a better job of making law.

Democrats must tamp down their hysteria and focus on winning the White House and breaking the Republicans’ hold on power. Democrats who allow themselves to be cast as victims should instead ponder why their party has had so much trouble competing in the South and Great Plains. Most of the Democratic Party’s problems spring from its failure to devise a more bread-and-butter ideology that resonates with a broader swath of Americans.

Democrats who want to restore balance to the judiciary must first restore balance in the two branches of government that are no longer functioning. We must elect Joe Biden, and we must all work to restore Congress, which has become a place where national dreams go to die.

Image:
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg being sworn in by Chief Justice Rehnquist as her husband Martin and president Bill Clinton look on,
from this source.

Day 49: The People Without A Party

15 Sep 2020 By in Candidates and Campaigns Tags: , , , , , , 5 Comments

The national struggle to defeat Donald Trump in November is going forward amid an exodus from the Republican Party and a paradoxical crisis in the two-party system.  The paradox is that, even as the parties and their candidates raise more and more money and draw the battle lines between one another more sharply, they excite more animus and aversion in the population at large.  It’s hard to be mindful of the huge swath of the American population that is withdrawn and disenchanted, unaffiliated and uncertain, especially given the hype that keeps Democrats and Republicans ever before our eyes.

This hype inadvertently sustains Trump’s power, a president whose popularity ratings are shockingly low relative to every other modern president.  Trump’s “base”– the amoral and low-information voters who continue to approve of him–lacks the geographic spread to prevail.  Meanwhile, legions of prominent and rank-and-file Republicans have either left the party, gone silent, or endorsed Trump’s Democratic challenger, Joe Biden.

The pool of voters available to put Biden in the White House is unusually large.  Let’s remember this as we work to get out the vote against Trump.  Innumerable voters besides those who are Democrat want Trump to go.

The millions of people currently without a party are something like “a silent majority.”  They do not need to be convinced to join a party: they only need to be persuaded to vote once for Biden and, by ending Trump’s disastrous presidency, save what’s left of our Constitutional system.  For that matter, the Senate Republicans (with the exception of the noble Mitt Romney) have so failed in their duties to the Constitution and the nation that the voters must try to depose them, too.

Image: Albert Levering’s “Republican Voters Revolt” (1910),
from this source.