WHAT AILS ACADEME IN AMERICA?

Many are the woes of academe.  To enumerate, much less discuss, all of them would take up more space than I allot to my longest blogs.  So I shall address the few which have manifested themselves in areas near to my studies and scholarship.  English language and literature is my general field, with Shakespeare my specialty.  After discovering and disclosing a grammatical error—isn’t that what you think English teachers do?—in one of my girlfriend’s favorite books, she, a little irritated, declared me “a fucking English PhD.”  We laughed about it then and laugh about it still, but her jibe does raise questions, among many others, about the field of English, the merits of humanities, and their purposes in colleges and universities.

 

Whatever lofty language describes the purpose of colleges and universities, the fact is that their purpose has been almost exclusively vocational.  From the beginning, in the tradition of England’s two oldest universities, Oxford (1096) and Cambridge (1209), Harvard (1636) and Yale (1701) educated men to be priests or ministers.  The later evolution of schools, up until about the mid-nineteenth century, expanded the curriculum to include law and medicine; then the humanities: philosophy, history, and (national) literature; then the sciences and engineering; then it was too late for Katy to bar the door.  The Morrill Act (1862), which established land-grant universities, marks the shift in America.  The founder of Cornell University (1865) declared, “I would found an institution where any person can find instruction in any study.”

 

As late as the mid-1970s, most non-sectarian colleges and universities subscribed to the concept of a well-rounded education, at least in colleges of arts and sciences and often in vocational colleges.  The concept was embodied in distribution requirements across major academic domains for the first two years of matriculation.  One reaction to the Vietnam War was the erosion of those requirements; they are weakened or non-existent today.  Ever since, with the emphasis on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and health, with their favorable reputation and higher salaries for graduates, the humanities have suffered, not only by scornful comparison, but also by shrinkage in enrollments, faculties, offerings, and budgets.  In how many movies in the 70s and 80s were the inept identified as English majors?

 

In large part, with the rise of technical or professional studies, the humanities came to be seen as increasingly remote from the concerns of their times and pathways to remunerative careers.  What could an English major contribute to questions of, say, foreign affairs or environmental policy?  My parents were appalled when, the day in 1958 when I arrived at Cornell and was then enrolled in engineering physics, I said that I intended to transfer to arts and sciences.  I did not want to make spaceships or nuclear weapons.  Ironically, after my graduate studies, I became a consultant doing lots of defense work, some of it concerning Reagan’s SDI and nuclear weapons.

 

Ten years later, the humanities found themselves on the outside looking in on the social turmoil created by the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights and Women’s Movements.  Students who sought deferments from the draft entered graduate schools, brought their politics with them, and imposed their politics on the subject matter of their fields to make the humanities relevant, so they thought.  But these politically motivated graduate students and their faculty sympathizers defeated themselves by a combination of arrogance and ignorance.  Their politics were ideological templates for analysis and, worst of all, for class discussion and student grades—the teacher’s way or the highway.  Yet they were not very good at politics.  One distinguished professor wrote that Macbeth, who became king by force and fraud, was nevertheless legitimate because he had been formally declared so by a council of thanes ignorant of his conduct.

 

The humanities departments, especially English departments, brought upon themselves what ails their departments by trying to be relevant to selected domestic issues of public concern.  Mission impossible.  Political approaches to such issues are contrary to the nature and purpose of the humanities.  Politics is about governance, its policies and practices, and the power to effect them; it seeks answers to public issues.  The humanities are about human nature and human experience; they seek insights into the human condition and learn to appreciate others without necessarily approving what is learned.  The idea, centuries old, is “that nothing human is alien to me.”  Yet, for half a century, humanities departments have dedicated themselves to exploring the distribution and deployment of power by race, gender, or class—the fashionable triad of leftist issues, more the stuff of culture wars than major community concerns—and weakened the study of what people have thought, felt, and done in different cultures, times, or places—and disappointed many students.

 

Despite this distinction, I offer an instance showing that study in the humanities can provide insights into issues requiring answers.  In 2003, almost no one doubted that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq had a nuclear weapons program.  The inference was that his refusal to let inspectors into the country meant that he had something to hide.  I knew that the only thing which he had to hide was that he had no program.  My reasoning: Hussein had domestic and foreign enemies; refusing inspectors created the impression that he had nuclear weapons; he used that impression to deter his enemies; he was bluffing.  How did I know?  I imagined myself in Hussein’s position as I had learned to do in analyzing characters in novels and plays.  This instance does not imply that reading in the humanities is a sure, not to mention the only, way to such insights, but it can help.  (Some CIA work assesses not only an enemy’s capabilities, but also its intentions, quasi-literary analysis of his decision-maker’s character and motives in the circumstances.)

 

The decline of English departments (and, I assume, other humanities departments) is not likely to be reversed simply by reforms in critical approaches and curriculum offerings; it will require help in promoting the idea of the humanities and the importance of educational well-roundedness.  C. P. Snow’s “two cultures” made the humanities and the sciences appear adversarial.  Snow was right to say that humanists need to know more about the sciences.  He failed to say that scientists need to know more about the humanities, though many in his time did.  In the early 40s of the Manhattan Project, scientists with a well-rounded education became increasingly alarmed about an atomic bomb as their work came closer to producing one, but, working in secret, they had no influence on decision-makers.  It took the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to alert humankind of the threat of nuclear weapons.  Today, a few computer scientists among thousands are warning that artificial intelligence might be dangerous by becoming capable of developing itself independently, perhaps without serving human interests or purposes.  Unlike nuclear weapons, it is proliferating without the restraint of a dramatic incident to prompt restrictions on its development and deployment; its danger might be realized only when it might be too late to take corrective action.  The humanities might contribute to public discussion of its possible threat to the stability, even the survival, of societies by the introduction of this and other, especially biomedical, technologies.  To put it too starkly, today’s scientists understand the technologies but not the consequences; humanists understand the consequences but not the technologies.  We need both and the ability of each to understand the other.

 

Which implies that colleges and universities need to return themselves to the older tradition which promotes well-roundedness.  The concept is not hard to understand or difficult to implement; if there is a will, there will be a way.  The problem is that leaders of colleges and especially universities have surrendered to a corporate mentality, not sustained their academic orientation.  Too many regents or trustees are appointees with corporate backgrounds rewarded for campaign contributions and without experience in education and an appreciation of its unique nature.  Chancellors and presidents are expected to play the politics of funding and thus, as we have seen recently, making their colleges and universities vulnerable to financial extortion.  They have shown themselves submissive because they do not respect the distinctive role which colleges and universities play in the country’s welfare and thus lack the convictions required by courage to defend academic freedom, including the freedom to criticize the society in which they exist.  If colleges and universities were committed to a well-rounded education, the various departments of technical studies might be almost equally involved with departments of humanistic studies in addressing issues of public moment.

 

The passivity of college and university leaders contrasts with the activism of students, mostly from the humanities.  Indeed, the public’s perceptions of colleges and universities are largely shaped by the political activism more common in the humanities than in the sciences.  Student protests involve controversial subjects not widely shared by the public, but they can prevail, as they did during the Vietnam War.  Whatever else might be said about the protests about the Israeli-Hamas conflict, they constituted a threat to the Trump administration’s foreign policy in the Middle East.  Using antisemitism as a pretext but lacking funding leverage on the humanities, the Trump administration has attacked scientific research programs by withholding their funds in a roundabout way to attack the humanities.  It knows that the source of criticism of its policies, programs, and practices most commonly arise in departments promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and anything which appears to be “woke” (whatever they mean by the term).  So it seeks to control college and university policies and practices in enrollments, curriculums, and instruction, with the humanities being the primary targets.  If more of the public itself had received a well-rounded education, it might have a greater appreciation not only of the humanities, but their benign influence on thinking about current issues of public concern. 

SCOTUS CORRUPTS JUSTICE UNDER THE CONSTITUTION

      I am not a historian of the Supreme Court of the United States, but my less-informed but independently derived views of its character and conduct parallel the views of those who are expert in their opinions of its performance.  Their consensus is that the Roberts Supreme Court of the United States is the worst in American history.  Although I am in no position to affirm or deny this verdict, I am sure that, the worst or not, it will get worse.  In its coming term, it will decide impending cases in ways detrimental to, if not destructive of, the Constitution, the rule of law, and American democracy as we know it.

All six of its Catholic-raised, Republican-appointed, conservative justices—most recently, its Trump-appointed justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh—acquired their seats on the bench by misleading the Senate in their confirmation hearings.  Twenty years ago, John Roberts assured senators of his impartiality with a metaphor identifying a judge with an umpire calling balls and strikes, as if umpires are not sometimes biased against certain players or teams.  Trump’s appointees: Roe v. Wade settled law, sure; respect for precedent, sure; what else, sure.  Their dishonesty was a harbinger of the mendacious nature of their judicial practice.

 

The lying did not stop when they ascended to the bench.  Clarence Thomas claimed that he had not understood the requirements for reporting gifts and, despite generous benefactors, had been free of conflict of interest.  He wants us to believe that he has the intelligence and integrity for strict legal analysis of the facts and the law to reach his decisions.  Samuel Alito also lied about gifts from benefactors and about knowledge that a flag used on the Right to signify an anti-government sentiment flew over both his first and second houses.  Both bought and paid for.

 

Notwithstanding Thomas’s and Alito’s corrupt practices and dishonesty, and the fact that all other courts in the federal system have binding codes of ethics, Chief Justice John Roberts has successfully opposed the adoption of a code of ethics for SCOTUS.  So this court operates without effective oversight and on its arrogant assumption that its members require no code of ethics.  With Barrett, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh tolerating the corruption of Roberts, Thomas, and Alito, SCOTUS is corrupt from the bottom to the top.  Thus the character of these six judges.

 

Their conduct is hardly better.  Previously, SCOTUS heard cases in public sessions, with both sides making their arguments about the facts and the law, and issued decisions explaining the reasoning behind them.  Previously, SCOTUS made decisions on time-sensitive matters placed on the emergency docket, like a prisoner’s appeal for a stay of execution.  In most cases, the court’s decisions gave guidance to federal district or appellate courts for them to decide similar cases in the future, or were self-explanatory.  Currently, SCOTUS sometimes uses the emergency docket, often called the “shadow docket” because there is no public hearing and little or no explanation of a decision, to address situations which the Trump administration has labeled emergencies.  But the cases have been those in which lower courts paused implementation of administration plans, like workforce reductions in government agencies or the deportation of immigrants, with no urgency except the administration’s desire to act quickly.  Instead of pausing implementation until the cases can be adjudicated, SCOTUS has allowed the administration to proceed, with the stated intent to adjudicate the merits at a later date.  Clearly, if the workforce is reduced or the immigrants deported, the case is essentially mooted and the damage irreversibly done.  Without issuing explanations of its decisions, which often ignore or reject precedents, SCOTUS has reversed administration-restraining district and appellate court diktats in favor of the administration, and thus has left these courts without guidance to address similar matters.  This conduct is contrary to tradition jurisprudence.  (Warning: SCOTUS will soon extend its reckless disregard of the meaning of critical words like “emergency” to critical words like “insurrection” or “rebellion” to label peaceful protests.  Generally, it will tolerate other fact-free, pejorative labeling—for example, “war zone”—in Trump’s justifications of the abusive exercise of power.)

 

Worst of all, SCOTUS, in its willingness, if not zeal, to overturn some politically sensitive precedents, resorts to arguments lacking cogency to advance its political views.  Yet the Court’s legitimacy ultimately depends upon the cogency of its opinions—decisions reasoned on the basis of the facts and the law.  I detail what is perhaps the best—here, a lengthy—example of failed cogency, namely, Alito’s 2022 opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization.

 

Abortion has been probably the most contentious issue since the issue of slavery.  Alito’s opinion reversing a 49-year-old precedent establishing a Constitutional right, to abortion no less, coincides with a change in the political composition of SCOTUS.  Lacking a cogent opinion justifying this reversal, the court confirms doubts about both its judicial independence and its political legitimacy.  Indeed, Alito’s opinion is not cogent; it is sloppy, snide, and tendentious.

 

Alito says little about Justice Harry Blackmun’s much criticized opinion in Roe v. Wade.  I said much, all different from the criticism of many others.  After summarizing the history of different worldwide religious or philosophical beliefs about abortions, Blackmun dismissed them because they posed issues which he rightly said that SCOTUS did not need to decide.  But, in my view, he should have concluded that abortion is a religious matter which has the protections of the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” that is, that any law regulating abortions per se is an establishment of religion and a constraint on the free exercise of religion.

 

However defective Blackmun’s analysis, Alito’s is more so.  The first substantive paragraph of his opinion reveals its flawed reasoning.

 

Abortion presents a profound moral issue on which Americans hold sharply conflicting views. Some believe fervently that a human person comes into being at conception and that abortion ends an innocent life. Others feel just as strongly that any regulation of abortion invades a woman’s right to control her own body and prevents women from achieving full equality. Still others in a third group think that abortion should be allowed under some but not all circumstances, and those within this group hold a variety of views about the particular restrictions that should be imposed.

 

First, Alito’s division of those holding beliefs on abortion fails to divide them on the same principle—when life begins—; instead, he describes different groups on different grounds.  As a result, the three groups are not mutually exclusive.  A person can believe what “some believe,” “others feel,” and “still others think.”  In fact, many people are conflicted because they have more than one of these beliefs.  Alito’s muddled division reflects the complexity of the controversy over abortion but does not nothing to clarify the issues involved.  Alito muddles the issue by not addressing and defining it.

 

Second, Alito’s selection of his Catholic belief about when life begins biases his opinion by excluding different beliefs held by others.  Many Christians, and most or all Muslims believe life begins at quickening; some Christians and all Jews believe that it begins at breach.  Depending on one’s religion, abortion might or might not take a “life.”  Definition matters.  Notably, until mid-19^th century, the Catholic doctrine “ensoulment” did not define the fetus as human life until “quickening.”  So Alito’s opinion rests on a recent change in Catholic doctrinal definition and excludes others’ beliefs on his tacit presumption of Catholic doctrinal superiority to (or contempt for) non-Catholic beliefs—not the basis of an opinion having constitutional legitimacy.

 

Badly reasoned decisions are one thing; politically motivated decisions are another.  For years, SCOTUS has been constricting voting rights to favor Republicans and curtailing other civil rights to disfavor minorities, women, and members of the LGBTQ+ community.  Such decisions weaken the fundamental political principles of American democracy, especially the equality of all people under the law.  Example: SCOTUS’s reaction to a case opposing Trump’s executive order placing conditions on and thereby limiting birthright citizenship.  SCOTUS deferred a hearing on the merits of a case, but ruled in favor of a Trump request to limit the scope of a district court’s national injunction to the area served by that court.  The perversity of this ruling is clear.  In cases of local import, a district court’s injunction rightly remains local.  But in cases of constitutional import, a district court’s ruling is properly national because the constitution applies to all people, not only to those in the court’s district.  Otherwise, district courts might differ in their rulings in such cases and thus subvert the equality of people under the law—which this SCOTUS decision does.

 

In Trump’s second term, SCOTUS has been determined to advance legal positions with little or no constitutional basis.  One is the unitary executive, whereby the president has total control over the entire executive branch, which Trump claims includes Congressionally established independent agencies.  Another is presidential immunity for all official acts, apparently even those violating the law.  Results include the impoundment or selective distribution of authorized funds and the unrestricted (and locally unwanted) use of military forces in law enforcement in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act.  In short, SCOTUS itself is corrupting the rule of law by decisions which curtail democratic principles and practices, and which enable the Trump administration to act as it wishes, without accountability.  Under such a SCOTUS-defined regime, justice is impossible, only a pretextual cover for injustice.

WATCH YOUR MOUTH: TALKING OURSELVES INTO AND OUT OF TROUBLE

      I begin with a story published by CBS News (5 Oct) to end with a larger message about language in politics.

In 2022, Jay Jones, current Democratic candidate for Virginia’s attorney general wrote that “if he were presented with a hypothetical situation in which he had only two bullets and was faced with the choice of shooting [then-Republican Speaker of the House Todd] Gilbert, former Nazi leader Adolf Hitler or former Cambodia dictator Pol Pot, he'd shoot Gilbert ‘every time.’”  He added, “‘Gilbert gets two bullets to the head,’ Jones wrote. ‘Spoiler: put Gilbert in the crew with the two worst people you know and he receives both bullets every time’”

 

When The National Review disclosed his words, Jones apologized.  “‘I want to issue my deepest apology to Speaker Gilbert and his family. Reading back those words made me sick to my stomach. I am embarrassed, ashamed, and sorry… I have reached out to Speaker Gilbert to apologize directly to him, his wife Jennifer, and their children. I cannot take back what I said; I can only take full accountability and offer my sincere apology,’ Jones said.”

 

“Rep. Abigail Spanberger, Virginia's Democratic gubernatorial nominee, swiftly condemned Jones's comments. [¶] Spanberger's Republican opponent, Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, also denounced the remarks. [¶] “‘This is horrible to read and should be wholly disqualifying of someone running for an office that protects the people of Virginia,’ Earle-Sears said in a statement. ‘Jay Jones’ horrific comments are a symptom of the entire Democratic Party, and his running mate, Abigail Spanberger, needs to call on him to drop out.’”

 

In political campaigns, such stories have an importance lacking in daily life.  Everyone has a past of words and deeds which, if made known, would be embarrassing.  With the availability of the internet to all, indiscretions, especially at a youthful age, are commonplace.  But Jones was no youth in 2022, when he wrote these words at age 33.  He had served two terms in the House of Delegates, from 2018 to 2021; he left it to run for attorney general in 2021 and lost.

 

In this context, his apology now, 3 years later, at best mixes a teaspoon of personal sincerity with a gallon of political necessity.  Were I his opponent, I would, unlike Earle-Sears, ask Jones three questions.  One, why, as an adult and an elected official, did you not recognize the ugliness of these violent words and restrain yourself from publishing them?  Two, what does your failed judgment then say about your judgment now?  Three, why did it take you 3 years to apologize for them?  These questions would do more to discredit Jones than Earle-Sears’s comments.

 

Given no or inadequate answers from Jones, Earle-Sears would be justified in claiming that they are seriously discrediting, if not, as he says they are, disqualifying.  Then Earle-Sears goes way too far when he alleges that Jones’s remarks are “a symptom of the entire Democratic Party.”  The remark is, of course, a smear based on the fallacy that one person represents an entire group.  It thus enables him to drag in the Democratic candidate for governor.  But both are separately elected officials, and neither is responsible for the other.  Earle-Sears’s illogic would appall him if applied to his side.  He would have to grant that Dylann Roof, white supremacist, racist, and killer of nine black people praying in a Charleston church is symptomatic of all Lutherans or, enlarging the group, all Protestants or all Christians, and, assuming his political inclination, all Republicans.  Earle-Sears’s abuse of logic and his resort to smear suggests biased judgment and partisan views, neither of which credit or qualify Earle-Sears for attorney general.  Trump has endorsed this candidate, whose political tactics resemble his own.

 

Trump is the master of fallacious logic, pejorative labels, and hyperbole in executive orders justifying illegal or unconstitutional action by which he talks the country into trouble.  If a city has crime—of course, the city is a “blue” one with a Democratic-leaning citizenry, a Democratic mayor, and a low and dropping crime rate—, then he labels it a “war zone” requiring national guard or active military troops to combat disorder by opposition from the “enemy within.”  His words mean that Democrats are not members of an opposition political party; they are enemies of the state to be dealt with accordingly.  Recent violence in Chicago is one example: agents from an alphabet soup of federal agencies—CBP, FBI, ATF, and ICE—conducted a nighttime raid on an apartment house, rousted ill-clad or naked residents, cuffed adults and zip-tied children without regard to status, and held them for hours in the street or in vans while they ransacked their apartments.  Recent violence in Portland is another example: DHS agents not only pushed peaceful protesters away from an agency facility and tore down an anti-ICE banner hanging from a private building across the street, but also drove them for several blocks with tear gas, flash-bang grenades, and pepper balls.  Yet, as everyone has noted, DHS claims that every encounter begins with citizens attacking agents—most improbable claims, especially since the agents are fully armed for combat and initiate the action.

 

Illogic, labeling, and hyperbole have led to dangerous international actions.  Motivated by his dislike of Venezuelan President Maduro, Trump has ordered murderous attacks on Venezuelan boats in the Caribbean on the pretext that the occupants were gang members and drug smugglers intending to attack the United States about 1500 miles away.  Trump’s administration has offered no evidence supporting this claim; victims of these unprovoked attacks likely were fishermen.

 

An increasing danger closer to home is Trump’s use of “ insurrection” or “rebellion” to characterize protests, small or large, to justify his deployment of armed troops to suppress them.  Because Trump tailors his use of these terms to serve his political interests, he does not apply either of them to the 6 January 2021 attack on Congress.  It is inevitable that, if military violence and civilian casualties suppress legitimate protests, the Supreme Court will be called upon to make legal decisions weighing the conflicting meanings of these terms, Trump’s and those in the First Amendment which protect protests: freedom of speech, the right to peaceably assemble, and the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances.  SCOTUS is unlikely to uphold the Constitution.  It is responsive to Trump’s resentment that constitutional provisions limit his ego-enhancing, expansive view of his presidential powers.  Its “great deference” to Trump, is one thing; its obsequiousness, without regard to the consequences of his actions, for the public good or for democracy, is another.  The Constitution’s words can get us out of trouble, if SCOTUS and Trump do not choose, at some point, simply to obfuscate or ignore them.  But, at present, they are a clear and present danger to all.  As a wit said, things look darkest just before they go totally black.  He gave no assurance of light thereafter.

 

Trump’s fact-free, malleable words get us into trouble.  His characterizations of major cities in blue states as riot-torn, burning down, or ruined defy the facts on the ground.  One judge has noted that his claims bear no relationship to reality and, for that reason, refused to allow any federalized national guard troops into Portland.  But her opinion addresses only the legal, political, and military implications of Trump’s speech.  It only hints at the psychological underpinnings of his speech.  His repeated use of hyperbolic and inflammatory language detached from reality reflects at least episodic mental derangement; Trump is no longer a consistently rational actor.  I guess that his staff is doing as much as it can (as Biden’s staff did) to conceal his deteriorating condition reflected in reckless language and erratic conduct.

 

In any other administration, the Cabinet would have suspended a president in Trump’s condition under the 25^th Amendment.  But a Cabinet of Trump toadies will act out their servility throughout his term in office.  With his increasing use of military troops, even the promise—I think that it will be broken—of elections in 2026 and 2028 provides little assurance of correction, much less relief.  The only recourse of those wishing to preserve democracy is to continue to protest peacefully and use reality-based words, written or spoken, to support that cause.

SOME POLITICAL CONSIDERATIONS, LOCAL AND NATIONAL

      Not all ideas lend themselves to extended discussion, at least by me, and that truth applies to this blog.  I have been collecting just such ideas for some time, and now is the time to set them forth.  Some others reflect more recent developments.

I begin locally.  At the suggestion of a friend, I attended a small gathering held on behalf of Michael Harris, a 37-year-old, District 3 candidate for Las Cruces City Council.  I was told that he is a very nice person, and so he appears to be, but “nice” to me means anodyne, manageable.  He has served on a number of committees and knows a great deal.  When he talks, however, his possession of the facts gets in the way of coherence and sometimes relevance; focus is a problem.  His website offers sensible positions, but his big concern is not the homeless, drugs, or crime—he does not even mention the police—, but vehicular traffic.

 

The police should be an issue.  LCPD Chief Jeremy Story favors limitations on cash bail relief, which would disproportionately affect the poor; stricter guidelines for sentencing minors; and no fewer than five military-style SWAT vehicles.  (Several elected officials—Cassie McClure, Joanne Ferrary, and Nathan Small—have said that they share my concerns about those vehicles and promised to inquire about them, as I have done, but I have heard nothing from them in months.  Someone or everyone is stonewalling—an ominous sign when protests might be labeled as insurrections.)  A recent recruitment film shows officers pursuing people—real he-man stuff to attract young machos to police our community.  Despite some sprinkling of friendly LCPD engagements, Story’s priorities favor methods of arrest and detention, not prevention.  If he has supported any police reform after the killings which have cost the city almost $25 million in settlements in the past half decade, he has not said so, much less said what those reforms are.

 

Eyes are, as always, on the Supreme Court and its activist decisions which affect the electorate, whether the matter is gerrymandering, mail-in ballots, or ID requirements, among others.  My guess is that most, if not all, election-related cases—the Louisiana redistricting case, for one—will be decided in favor of Republican interests.  An obvious reason is that SCOTUS has been increasingly tending to the right and conducting a reactionary coup undoing decades of bipartisan or nonpartisan precedents which respect the Constitution.  A less obvious but potent reason is that the conservative majority has a direct interest in the outcome of midterm elections.  If Democrats retake both chambers of Congress, they are likely to attempt difficult reforms of SCOTUS by enlarging the number of justices and thereby end reactionary rule on the court.

 

Another remedy is shorter terms.  The Constitution stipulates that Supreme Court justices serve for life, so an amendment has seemed to be the only way to effect shorter terms.  The current idea for such an amendment is staggered 18-year terms.  An alternative which avoids the delays, difficulties, and likely defeat of this proposed amendment is legislation setting a minimum age for the seat on the Court at, say, 65.  Current mortality rates suggest that justices would serve about 18 years before dying in their early 80s.  Minimum age would be no anomaly.  The Constitution itself applies age requirements to service in the House (25 years), the Senate (30 years), and the White House (35 years).  A minimum age for justices of the Supreme Court might ensure that nominees have a long record of judicial experience.  A minimum age for district (45 or 50 years) and appellate (55 or 60 years) court justices would also be desirable, but to limit their lifetime terms to, say, 18 years would require a constitutional amendment.

 

Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s recently published memoir, Listening to the Law,  justifies her middle name; a coney is a rabbit, a species not noted for intelligence or courage.  Addressing abortion in the Roe v. Wade/Dobbs v. Jackson decision, she writes “that the Court’s role is to respect the choices that the people have agreed upon, not to tell them what they should agree to.”  The statement is populist tripe.  Barrett seeks refuge in numbers, not principles, to enable her to avoid legal reasoning.  Even so, she is wrong on the facts.  The right to abortion had near-majority support in 1973 and more-than-majority support in 2022, when Barrett voted for Dobbs.  And she is wrong about the Court’s role.  It is to interpret the law, not conduct polls; determine what the law means and whether the facts of the case comport with it or not; and ignore what popular passions, whether majoritarian or minoritarian, “agree” on or not.  Having reached the Court by Senator Mitch McConnell’s political maneuvering, Barrett shows herself comparably manipulative in her political rationalizations of bankrupt legal decisions.  Her defenses of the Court’s decisions are partisan, distorted, and self-serving, and her defenses of her and its decisions between now and the midterm elections will be no better.

 

One factor explaining Trump’s power over politicians in Congress is the lack of term limits, which permits them to make a career of politics.  Such a career requires the likelihood of re-election every two (House) or six (Senate) years.  Incumbents tend to do whatever is possible to increase the likelihood of re-election.  For this reason, they support gerrymandering so that they can pick the voters most likely to re-elect them.  Then, the threats to incumbents in such districts are primary challengers more extreme than they or party leaders who can back challengers if incumbents do not comply with leaders’ wishes.  The results are not only polarization of officials in Congress, but also self-interested submission to leaders’ demands.  One corrective action to this situation is term limits—say, at most, four terms in the House and two terms in the Senate, for 20 years—, which would limit anyone’s chance of making a career of politics in Congress.  The Constitution is silent on the matter, so whether term limits would require an amendment or merely legislation is unclear.  However, since both chambers of Congress can set standards for admission to or expulsion from them, legislation would seem a feasible route.  Presumably, those interested in serving in Congress would have an interest in one or more particular issues and the hope of being able to get results during their time in office.  And a more frequent rotation of Representatives and Senators would mean fresher ideas and more responsive representation.

 

Pundits insist that Republicans in Congress, especially in the House, lack the courage of their convictions to resist Trump by insisting on their Constitutional prerogatives.  They assume that Republicans have convictions contrary to his policies and are squeamish about how he implements them.  Their assumptions are wrong or flawed.  Republicans have the courage of long-standing GOP convictions, which Trump is forcefully implementing: shrinking government; lowering taxes on the rich; reducing healthcare and social services; promoting fossil fuels and opposing “green” energy; undermining public education and favoring charter, private, and parochial schools; among others.  Republicans will let successful implementation override any squeamishness.  So they will not stand up to Trump; instead, they will continue to stand with him.  Republicans will not reverse course when they have political control of all three branches and have hopes of retaining that control by fair means or foul in the midterm elections scheduled for, but possibly disrupted or cancelled in, 2026.

TRUMP, HOMAN, AND KIRK (AGAIN)

Pundits continue to discuss quietly whether to take Trump lightly or seriously, literally or figuratively.  Their difficulty—our difficulty, too—is what to make of the off-hand remarks by a man without a moral compass or a political ideology, without principles or values, to guide him.  Everyone should expect both off-hand and prepared remarks (witness his speech to the UN) of an aging sociopath.  My rule of thumb is a pragmatic, preparatory one: take Trump seriously and literally because people do not talk the way in which he does without disclosing their wishes, however apparently implausible or even Constitutionally incorrect.

 

 

A question first asked 10 years ago, whether Trump is a Russian agent, is sometimes asked today.  If he were, with his sense of self-importance and lack of self-discipline, he would probably boast of that fact—which would immediately terminate him in that role.  To some, Trump’s recurrent complaints about the Russian investigations since 2015 might seem to be a tell, if not an implied answer, but I am not persuaded.  More likely, his criticisms of intelligence and counterintelligence agencies are his advance effort to discredit any discovery of links between him and his business interests, and Soviet, then Russian, governments.  Nevertheless, his attitude toward these agencies does not encourage them in their important and sometimes dangerous work.  (I ignore the possibility of blackmail suggested by salacious rumors about Trump’s engagement with more than one Moscow prostitute.  I anticipate that the Epstein papers will show his engagement in pedophilia right here in the good old U. S. of A.).

 

What underlies the question is, I think, an awareness of Trump’s relative indifference to and ineffectuality in advancing America’s interests vis-à-vis Russia’s.  Though MAGAistas might deny them, the facts, though they suggest an alignment of Trump’s and Russia’s interests, make merely a circumstantial case for Trump’s affinity for Russian interests, his sympathy for autocrats elsewhere, and his lack of sustained interest in foreign affairs otherwise.  Attention to Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas conflict comes and goes.

 

Still, Trump has done so much to weaken America’s defensive capabilities that suspicion is inevitable.  In Trump 1.0, at Helsinki, the President made clear that he believed Putin more than he believed American intelligence agencies; in Trump 2.0, he not only still gives little credit to their reports, but also has reduced or cut funding and personnel at counter-intelligence agencies dealing with Russian disinformation, hacking, and cyberwarfare activities.  Trump’s actions provide indirect aid to Putin’s regime whether Trump knows what he is doing or does not.  Either way, he is not acting in America’s self-defense interests.

 

Trump’s choice of leaders for America’s other defense-related departments has further weakened their capabilities.  Pete Hegseth, Trump pick for Secretary of Defense, is a man with neither defense nor management experience qualifying him for the tasks of his position.  Instead of trying to come up the learning curve of his position, he directs his efforts to developing what he calls “warriors” by waging culture wars against women, diversity, equity, inclusion (DEI) and LGBTQ+ personnel.  His actions not only distract him from DOD’s primary missions and strategies—he recklessly supports the use of military forces in domestic situations—, but also adversely affect both force readiness and unit morale.  The increase in DoD’s budget might or might not increase national defense; everything depends on whether the expenditures serve defense strategies to meet present and future threats as Russia becomes more aggressive in eastern Europe and the two polar caps, and China more so in the western Pacific and Antarctica.  Putin’s Russia must be pleased that Trump has found in Hegseth someone who brings nothing to the leadership cadre and would prove to be incapable of responding effectively to a serious international crisis.  The same can be said of Trump’s pick Kristi Noem for Secretary of Homeland Security.  She prefers wardrobe changes for photo ops and acts of performative callousness, now with people instead of dogs.  Meanwhile, Tulsi Gabbard, Director of National Intelligence, is best known for creating friction among the agencies which she supervises, most recently for cancelling thirty-seven security clearances of ranking officials or Congressional staff without consulting the White House.  In sum, Trump’s appointments to lead America’s intelligence and defense agencies are less focused on defending America from its foreign enemies than they are on fighting culture wars and on defending him from his perceived domestic enemies.

 

 

The media covered Tom Homan’s acceptance of $50,000 in return for promised contracts, the FBI investigation, and the DOJ decision to bring no charges and drop the case.  Yet, despite the famous advice of Deep Throat to follow the money in the Watergate scandal, the media did not follow the money in the Homan case for many days.  On 19 September, I asked on a number of nationwide podcasts whether Homan had returned the money.  “So where is the $50,000?  Homan took it before Trump's election; months later, the case was squelched.  Apparently, Homan had the money for months.  Does he still have it?”  Now the mainstream media are asking the question; they have added one about his taxes.  Epstein, Homan—so many scandals.

 

 

After a previous blog, a final word about Charlie Kirk, this one on the Right’s two reactions to the assassination of Charlie Kirk.  Paradoxically, though both reactions are very different, they are compatible with one another.  Both are extreme because the Right perceives his assassination as a symbolic threat to them.  For Kirk represented the Christian nationalism, a movement based on bigotry of all kinds, which the Right embraces.  Regarding Kirk as Jesus-lite (not Jesus-like) makes it possible to combine the two reactions, deification and assassination (i.e., crucifixion).

 

One reaction is to deify Kirk by extolling him as a family man and a crusader for civic virtues and by ignoring his civic vices.  His advocacy of free speech rights went together with his free speech bigotry.  He was much less saint than sinner.  The other is to avenge his assassination by targeting, not only the actual assassin, but also individuals and organizations on the Left for presumably creating the political environment or activist network which permitted or supported Kirk’s assassination.  The Right’s exploitation of Kirk’s assassination has an analogue in Nazis’ exploitation of the Reichstag fire about 90 years ago.  Nazis used the attack as a pretext to go after communists; Republicans mean to use the assassination as a pretext to go after Democrats.  (Query to Stephen Miller: will you hunt me down as a domestic terrorist for saying so?)

 

The Right’s reactions lend themselves to obvious criticism for its double standards, hypocrisy, false piety, violent language, violent threats, and more.  However, such criticism only preaches to the choir on the Left and annoys the cadres on the Right.  So I let what is obvious about that criticism speak for itself.

PARANOIA AND PERSECUTION TARGET TRANSGENDER PEOPLE

      I am a cis male.  I was not, am not, and shall not be anything else.  I am happy with my foreskin.  I have no experience with non-cis people.  The only people whom I know to have varied sexually from the statistical norm are a bisexual mother, a lesbian sister, and a number of gay or lesbian friends of theirs or mine.  I have lived a pretty sheltered life when it comes to matters of diverse sexual proclivities and relationships.

To listen to any number of politicians or political pundits on the Right, perhaps I should be terrified.  Apparently, transgender people are a clear and present danger to the American people and their way of life.

 

Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina, famous for her efforts to ban the first transgender congresswoman Sarah McBride of Delaware from the bathroom in Congress, quickly called for the institutionalization of transgender people….[R]epresentative Ronny Jackson of Texas advocated for the same, saying: ‘We have to treat these people … we have to get them off the streets and we have to get them off the internet and we can’t let them communicate with one another. I’m all about free speech, but this is a virus. This is a cancer that is spreading across this country’ (Erin Reed, “Transgender Americans are seeing a wave of hate unleashed by Charlie Kirk’s killing,” The Guardian, 25 Sep 2025, 7:00 EDT).

 

[Charlie] Kirk opposed transgender rights and his organization sponsored rallies against transgender medical care. In April 2024, he likened doctors who perform gender-affirming care to Nazis committing atrocities. [¶] ‘One issue I think that is so against our senses, so against the natural law and dare I say a throbbing middle finger to God, is the transgender thing happening in America right now,’ he said during a speech posted in 2023 by Right Wing Watch. [¶] In the same speech, he cited a Bible verse [Deuteronomy 22:5] saying that a woman who puts on men’s clothes or a man who puts on a woman’s garment is an ‘abomination.’ (Helen Coster and Maria Tsvetkova, Reuters, “Charlie Kirk’s rhetoric inspired supporters, enraged foes,” Reuters, 13 Sep 2025, 4:06 MDT; updated 15 Sep)

 

Despite my naïveté, I am puzzled by Kirk’s mingling of transgenderism and crossdressing.  I am even more puzzled by what is it about transgender people which prompts such violent ravings.  I can think of no reason for institutionalizing transgender people, and Mace, Jackson, and Kirk offer none.  The medical profession—I still believe that trained personnel are more knowledgeable and more sensible in their field than elected officials or partisan orators—knows no reason for institutionalizing or isolating transgender people (Mace, Jackson) or denying them medical care (Kirk).  I quote from Wikipedia:

 

The major medical opinion of transgender people from prominent health organizations is that being transgender is a normal human variation, and gender-affirming care (including hormones and surgery) is medically necessary to improve physical and mental well-being. While transgender people share many health needs with the general population, they often experience disproportionately high rates of mental health issues, substance use, and chronic conditions due to the chronic stress of stigma, discrimination, and violence they face. Therefore, access to safe, evidence-based, comprehensive care is crucial to their health.

 

In other words, transgender people are people with an internal mismatch between their sex and their gender.  Ironically, Kirk’s “natural law” is against what nature itself creates, namely, some people who are biologically, physiologically, and psychologically misaligned.  Hormones, surgery, and therapy are medical means to realign them.  Kirk’s equating Nazi atrocities with medical relief is an obscenity revealing his moral obtuseness or rhetorical malpractice.  Nazis acted on people against their will; American doctors operate on people requesting their services.

 

And the “chronic conditions” which transgender people suffer, people like Mace, Jackson, and Kirk have caused.  Their means: insulting, stigmatizing, snubbing, shunning, threatening, bullying, and violence.  Jackson’s approach promises, not appropriate treatment, but cruel punishment.  He would “treat” transgender people by isolating them from all others—“off the streets,” “off the internet,” and incommunicado even from other transgender people.  Jackson favors “free speech, but.”  His metaphors—to him, the transgender condition is a “virus” or a “cancer”; non-metaphorically, it is none of the above—reveals that his ignorance fuels his fear of contagion and that his fear of contagion fuels his vitriol.  Such are the primitive responses to the unfamiliar by pre- or non-scientific people.  Such is the way people used to treat “lunatics” or lepers until science learned how to deal with their conditions.  A notable exception is Jesus, famous for showing compassion to lepers, and touching and curing them.  Like “free speech but,” Mace, Jackson, Kirk, and many like them profess a “Christian faith, but,” one devoid of compassion for transgender people who face both personal struggles and social pressures.

 

Their fear of a medically unfamiliar condition—unfamiliarity probably resulting from self-repression—leads to these metaphors of diseases and fears of contagion.  Such is their paranoia.  It seems strange.  I assume that transgender people look so much like people that it is hard to tell the difference.  I quip, of course, but to make a point.  Every transgender person is a person and, if born or naturalized in the United States, a citizen thereof.  So there is no basis whatsoever for treating them otherwise, particularly depriving them of the rights enjoyed by others.  I suppose the response by transgender paranoids is to claim a belief in “due process, but.”

 

The exploitation of this widespread paranoia makes for divisive and dangerous politics.  Of course, Trump takes the lead in denigrating transgender people and depriving them of their constitutional rights.  A successful attack on this group might lead to attacks on other groups.  That threat is heightened by his attack on birthright citizenship.  If his challenge to the Fourteenth Amendment were successful, Trump might be able to jeopardize the rights of any disfavored group because alternative definitions of citizenship would require the stipulation of approved or disapproved characteristics of race, sex, gender, religion, ethnicity, ancestry, or geographic origins.  By paring off first this, then that, minority group, he would be able to purify America of the groups of people who he deems pollute its white Christian population.  Thus, the attack on transgender people is more than an assault on a disfavored group; it is also a part of a campaign in a larger war by Christian nationalists against constitutional democracy.

THE WAR WITHIN CHRISTIANITY: JESUS FOLLOWERS VERSUS CHRISTIANS IN NAME ONLY

      Every so often, I read something about a war against Christians in America.  Since this generic label applies to a majority—about 62%—of Americans, such a war is an incomplete, improbable fiction.  The attackers are never identified.  Could they be Jews, all 2.4% of them?  What about Muslims, all 1.2% of them?  The location of the combat zones, the sites of attacks, and the weapons used go unnamed.  The contested issues are unstated.  Some war.

I know perfectly well that Bible-thumpers, allied podcasters, and some politicians use the word “war” metaphorically and hyperbolically.  Still, their use of the word betrays paranoia or opportunism.  They have good reason to be paranoid.  The number of people identifying as Christians has lately dropped dramatically, about 16% in 18 years.  The drop reflects an increase in “nones” and lower rates of Christian identification by younger people.  Yet these various drop-outs or never-dropped-ins hardly constitute a hostile force opposing Christianity in a 21^st-century religious war.  More likely, they do not care enough about Christianity to spend time and energy thinking about it or, for that matter, any other religion.  Christian fulminators wage “war” against a nonexistent enemy on a battlefield between their ears.

 

Paranoia has its uses.  Blaming secular influences for the decline in Christian identification, not to mention affiliation, is more comfortable than introspection scrutinizing one’s beliefs and behavior.  One influence is the growing influence of science and technology; their mechanistic assumptions on and approaches to the world and human experience have a corrosive effect on theological beliefs.  Increasingly, they make centuries-old Christian mysteries of the Eucharist and the Trinity seem weird, not wonderful.  Anyone exploring these mysteries might learn that they have pagan origins and were kluges for purposes of proselytizing of Jews and pagans.  The idea that wine and bread partaken to celebrate the Eucharist become (Catholic transubstantiation) or coexist with (Protestant consubstantiation) Jesus’ blood and body is strange.  Though the Last Supper purports to be a Passover celebration, nothing in Judaism involves eating a god literally or symbolically, as was common practice in pagan religions.  The Trinity, the mystery of three persons constituting one god, a compromise between Jewish monotheism and pagan polytheism, is even stranger.  I have no idea whether the pagan origins of these mysteries would appeal to or repel someone exploring them.

 

An uncomfortable truth explaining this decline is the debased or hypocritical example set by so many self-proclaiming Christians.  The disparity between Jesus’s central teaching—love for the poor, the dispossessed, the stranger, the enemy—and what these Christians loudly preach and practice—hostility to the impoverished, the homeless, immigrants, the sexually unconventional, minorities—does little to make Christianity morally appealing.  Churches trying to retain or gain members, not by Jesus-like service, but by rocking church with music, emphasizing emotional worship, promising worldly success, or rousing prejudices might appeal to some but would likely repel even more, as religiously vacuous or morally vicious.  Antithetical to his teachings are bigotry of any kind, pretenses of moral superiority, and Christian nationalism.

 

Almost all Christian denominations accept either the Nicene or Apostles Creed, which offer statements of theological dogma, and about Jesus’ miraculous birth and miserable death, with nothing about his life or teachings.  To this gap in the creeds between his birth and death, denominations respond similarly by filling it but differently by using different messages, which all call Christian.  Mainline churches fill it with Jesus’ teachings of tolerance and love of others; fundamentalist churches stuff it with current moral or political issues which are used to rationalize the opposite, intolerance or hate.  The Catholic Church straddles this divide.

 

Fundamentalists use such stuffing inspired less by texts in the New Testament than by texts in the Old Testament (not identical to Holy Scriptures).  Their readings of Jewish law, though repudiated by Paul and many church leaders, naïvely misinterpret or perversely misrepresent what they cherry-pick to serve their modern moral or political purposes.

 

Take, for example, fundamentalists who invoke Leviticus 18:22 to revile those who deviate from heterosexual behavior.  To serve their purposes, they misrepresent this proof-text as a strong condemnation of the sin of same-sex behavior.  The King James Version reads, “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is an abomination.”  The Jewish Tanakh translation reads, “Do not lie with a male as one lies with a woman; it is an abhorrence.”  The meaning of “abomination” is a thing disgusting or hateful; of “abhorrence,” a thing repulsive or disgusting.  What fundamentalists interpret as a prohibition of homosexual acts—the text makes no mention of lesbian acts—is really guidance reflecting moral revulsion.  As such, it lacks the status of a commandment; the acts are not sins but matters of distaste—which opens the door to considering unconventional sexual acts matters of taste.  Moreover, fundamentalists ignore that the text exists in a cultural context; it intends to differentiate between what neighboring pagans do and what Jews should not do.  That is, it has the status and purpose similar to those of Jewish dietary laws—cultural and social distancing from non-Jews more than religious prohibition.

 

Jesus was a man of works and faith—his was Judaism—which, in Christianity, led to a problematic relationship between them.  Catholics believe justification is by works and faith; Protestants, that it is by faith alone.  Works are demonstrable; faith is not, only believed or professed.  Anyone can profess a faith, whether sincere or not—which makes it easy to claim a Christian identity.  Christians proclaiming their faith without performing works are Christians in name only, or CINOs.  I unreasonably suspect that those who conspicuously wear crucifixes—“On her white Breast a sparkling Cross she wore, / Which Jews might kiss, and Infidels adore” (Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock, II, 8)—are CINOs.  I reasonably believe that those who accept or express prejudices against others, withhold personal and oppose societal assistance to the disadvantaged, oppose equal rights for individuals or groups of different backgrounds or persuasions, or deplore other peoples’ choices in life or of lifestyles different from their own are CINOs.  An example is the late and presidentially lamented Charlie Kirk.

 

No earthly referee decides between those who differently claim to be Christians, both Jesus followers, Christians of good works and faith, and CINOs, Christians professing faith but opposing the public good and general welfare of the state.  Here, to discredit CINO posturing and advance the Christianity of Jesus’ works and faith, Jesus followers, whether Democrats or Republicans, must bear witness to works and faith by calling out the hypocrisy of CINOs and by making greater public efforts to do good works and by casting votes to serve the unfortunate.