In my spare time I’ve been re-watching the first season of
“The West Wing” on Netflix. What better way to escape the reality of an
ignorant, narcissistic president who was created by television than to lose yourself in a brilliant, compassionate POTUS
who was created for television?
It’s not as crazy as it sounds.
Considering that “The West Wing” debuted in 1999, it seems
incredibly on point for the world we live in today. Already in just five
episodes, the show has featured wildlife advocates seeking to protect grizzly
bears and wolves (who knew?), the prospect of a terrorist unleashing a deadly
virus on the civilian population and a president who advocates affordable public
education for college students.
In Josiah Bartlet, “The West Wing” offers up a likeable president
with a wry sense of humor whose brain is chock full of international politics,
American historical facts and general everyday trivia, and he happens to be a
Nobel Laureate in economics.
In Donald J. Trump, we have an alternative president who
claims to have “a very good brain” but actually has no sense of humor and no world
view to speak of, thinks that Frederick Douglass may still be alive and started
a scam university that was supposed to teach economic principles to poor people
who probably couldn’t spell Nobel Laureate.
President Bartlet, according to Wikipedia, “is characterized
by manifest integrity, quick witticisms, a fierce intellect and compassionate
stoicism” and “is widely acclaimed by critics and political commentators alike
as the ‘most popular Democratic president in recent memory.’”
Donald Trump is a pathological liar who likes to grab…well…never
mind.
My wife says Aaron Sorkin was high on cocaine when he wrote
the 155 episodes of “The West Wing.” I don’t know if that’s true, but if
that’s what it takes to create the kind of White House we all deserve, then maybe
we should do a few lines. At this point, what could it hurt?
Internet Privacy
Every time Congress passes a bill or the president signs an
order, my first question is always, “Who benefits from this?” Usually, the
answer is either Big Pharma or some other lobbyist, but every now and then it’s
a complete mystery, and I find myself asking, “Who the hell thought this was a good idea?”
For example, I couldn’t figure out who would want to kill
sleeping bears and wolf cubs until I googled the Humane Society’s web site. I
asked some coal people I know how polluting streams with coal waste translated
into bringing back mining jobs. (They told me it doesn’t.) And most recently, I
wondered who could possibly think it was a good idea to allow internet
companies to sell my browsing history and other personal data to, well,
basically anyone.
Oh, I get it that major internet providers will be able to
make more money by selling the information – and making money always seems to
be at the heart of any rule or law implemented by a Republican administration –
but I wonder if members of Congress realize that their information can be sold to marketers the same as mine. From
what I hear, some of them might want to keep their browsing history to
themselves. Know what I mean? (Wink wink, nod nod.)
Of course, I did notice that Tennessee Republican
Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn is one of the key supporters of this rule, and that
explains a lot, considering that she is a complete idiot. I guess that means the
reasons behind this particular regulation don’t have to make any sense, because
I’ve seen her on TV several times and nothing
she ever said made sense.
The Supreme Court
 |
| Neil Gorsuch |
Finally, I heard a Republican strategist over the weekend say two things about the confirmation of new Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch:
(1) That Gorsuch is replacing another arch-conservative, Antonin
Scalia, whose death opened up the vacancy, so in effect the court is just
returning to the way it was when Scalia was alive.
I don’t usually agree with Republican strategists, but I
believe that this guy may be right on both points.
I’m sure you all remember that the ballot boxes were still
being dusted off for the 2010 mid-term election when then-Senate Minority
Leader Mitch McConnell famously declared on October 23, “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President
Obama to be a one-term president.”
Republicans went on to gain 63 seats in the House of
Representatives that year, recapturing the majority, and cut the Democrats’
advantage in the Senate to 51-47 with two independents. That enabled McConnell and
the rest of Congress to begin the process of obstructing President Obama at
nearly every turn, so that by all accounts, McConnell’s plan became a rousing
success.
By 2016, when Obama nominated Garland to the vacancy on the
bench, the Senate, too, had gone over to the Republicans by a 54-44-2 majority.
McConnell never allowed Garland to have a hearing in the Senate, but with 60
votes needed for confirmation at the time, he never would have stood a chance.
Gorsuch will assume his seat today and according to Reuters,
could be faced with some significant cases right off the bat. They include:
* Expanding gun rights to include carrying concealed firearms
in public.
* State voting restrictions aimed at reducing minority turnout.
* Allowing business owners to object on religious grounds to
serving gay couples – or in other words, legalized discrimination.
Regardless of whether the GOP strategist was correct in his
assessment, there is one overriding reason why all of this is being allowed to
happen. In the 2016 presidential election, voter turnout dipped to one of its lowest
points in two decades when slightly more than half the citizens of voting age even
bothered to cast a ballot.
By staying home, the other half made sure that Donald J.
Trump was elected as the least qualified president in U.S. history, Republicans
held onto both houses of Congress and Neil Gorsuch was added as the fifth
conservative vote on the nine-member Supreme Court of Appeals.
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