It's all about having the will to do what the other guy won't do. That's the criminal world. The point of creating a civil society, through government, is to make that not be the case. We try to create a society of laws so that the Hungarians' approach in The Usual Suspects doesn't work. You try to do what the other guy won't do, and you get punished. Not by Keyser Soze, but by the legal system. OK, I'm not being original here. This is basically Hobbes. What do you want? All the cool stuff has been written before.
The problem comes, then, when one party decides to take the Hungarians' approach to government itself. You don't need numbers, you don't need anything but the will to do what the other party won't do. And, there's no Hobbesian "Leviathan" stopping you because you are doing it to vie for control of that leviathan. That's the point. You win, and you are the beastie from the depths.
The will to do what the other guys won't. Like put a fuckin' rapist on the Supreme Court just because you know that the rapist will side with your guy on executive power. Thank you for explaining that will-to-power gangster thing, Mr. Rapist, sir. (He really is a good actor, though. Shame about how so many great artists are shitbags, but I've written enough about that before.) Yes, "Brett" will probably be confirmed, and he will be confirmed for a few reasons: 1) the GOP doesn't care at all about rape, ever, 2) Trump can browbeat the party into nearly anything, 3) he hates losing, and 4) he wants someone who will take a maximalist interpretation of executive power. Is it certain that "Brett" gets confirmed? No, but McConnell is calling it a done deal. Gee, it's almost as though his mind had been made up long ago, and he doesn't care what Ford has to say because he doesn't think rape should even be a crime... Why would Ford ever think she isn't going to get a fair hearing? Hmmm...
And the Supreme Court leads to the broader observation of party tactics. One party would blockade a seat for an entire year and tell a president that he can't appoint anybody. They don't care how qualified or moderate. That would be the GOP. McConnell specifically. When Scalia croaked, the GOP decided that they would blockade his seat for a year, regardless of whom Obama nominated. The posterboy for hypocrisy, Orrin Hatch, even said that Obama would be able to confirm Merrick Garland specifically, predicting, though, that it wouldn't happen. Obama nominated Garland. Hatch did his Orrin Hatch thing, backtracked like the master-hypocrite he is, and followed Mitch McConnell's will-to-power approach to controlling the Supreme Court by having the will to do what the other guy won't do. Blockade the Supreme Court just 'cuz they can.
Let's be clear on this. Nobody had ever done what Mitch McConnell did. Nobody had ever really considered it. They just did it. Before Scalia's body was cold(er), McConnell said he didn't give a flying fuck whom Obama nominated, Obama alone in the history of presidents didn't get to fill Supreme Court vacancies 'cuz the GOP said so. Not even if he nominated the one specific guy Orrin Hatch said he could nominate.
This is the will-to-power that will put "Brett" on the Supreme Court because they don't care that he's probably a rapist. This is the will-to-power that eventually caved and backed Roy Moore. Yes, the voters of Alabama actually decided to back a Democrat over him, but remember that Mitch McConnell didn't, and nobody in Republican leadership did.
As this is happening, Rod Rosenstein is preparing himself to get fired. Why? There is a good chance that he said something about the 25th Amendment and/or wearing a wire around Donny. In jest or not, his job has been hanging by a thread for a while now, and once he's gone, along with Sessions, who gets fired right after the midterms, Mueller's investigation ain't long for this world. I've been writing since the beginning that the probability of Trump facing any real consequences for his actions is absolute, mathematical zero. Why? The will to power. Not just his-- the Republican Party's. If you have an entire political party, with an associated media apparatus, dedicated fully to the proposition that you are above the law, as Donald Trump does, then you are above the law. There is no leviathan above the Republican Party to impose the rule of law on them because they use the will-to-power to prevent the rule of law through the leviathan. That's the point.
So, here's how it works. Let's say the Democrats take the House. High probability of that. Right after the midterms, Trump fires Sessions and Rosenstein. Mueller is probably next. His investigation is effectively shut down. Democrats in the House try to take over. Committee chairs start hearings, issuing subpoenas, etc. What happens?
Trump tells them to go fuck themselves. He refuses to comply, and tells everyone in the executive branch to refuse to comply. He fires everyone who even thinks of complying.
Lawsuits ensue. They make their way up through the courts. They get into the grabby, rape-y hands of "Brett." What does "Brett" say about this? He says Trump can do whatever he wants because he's President. On his side, "Brett" has Plagiarist-Gorsuch, Alito, Thomas, and they drag Roberts along.
What then? Impeachment? Sure, go ahead and move on articles of impeachment. Even if the Democrats took the Senate, there's no way to get 2/3. Mueller's findings probably get buried when Trump pulls his Saturday Night Massacre, and anything he can't bury, Fox News just lies about, following Donny's lead. Anyone want to challenge any of this? Guess where this goes, ultimately.
That's right. The US Supreme Court. Hi, "Brett." Neat and tidy, right?
And of course, I have to put in a little reminder about what a fucking moron your hero, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was for not stepping down when Obama could have named a replacement. She dies, and the wages of the Nietzschean approach to politics just expand and get locked in for that much longer. Ginsburg is a narcissistic moron, and you should stop liking her. Anthony Kennedy is smarter than she is, and that's why we are having this dust-up. Understand that.
So, what now? Um... Uh... Why would anyone ask me that? I'm just the peanut gallery. I write the occasional book with academic jargon, math 'n stuff, and rant on this pretentious, little blog, but I kind of think we're fucked. Why? Because one party has decided to adopt the approach of the Hungarians from The Usual Suspects. Democracy doesn't actually work based on rules. It works based on norms. When one party no longer abides by those norms, and instead decides to adopt the Nietzschean will-to-power approach, doing anything and everything to seize power, I don't know what the response is because the problem isn't a constitutional/structural problem. The problem is that party.
There is no legal, constitutional or structural solution to the problem of one party gone this far wrong. They can be defeated so badly that they fade out of existence, but a) that's hard to do intrinsically, b) that's really hard to do when that party has a powerful media apparatus supporting it, and c) that's really hard to do when the problem is that so many people supporting that party do so because they, themselves are evil. Yes, I will use the word, "evil."
Donald Trump is cartoonishly evil. And I do mean "cartoonish." The best demonstration, for those who never caught this, was Mark Hamill. His "Joker" was great, and it was amazing what happened when he started reading Trump's tweets, word for word, in his Joker voice.
If your words sound like something an actual, literal cartoon villain would say... dude. Somethin's wrong here. Donald Trump is a cartoon villain. The problem is that the Joker he most resembles is from The Killing Joke. If you are a comic book person, you know what I'm talking about here... The animated Batman show never went that far, but Alan Moore... um, well, you should read it. The Joker is supposed to be scary. Anyway, then there was that fun game from a while back: who said it? Trump or Mussolini? Trump is cartoonishly evil, and his appeal to his fans is based on racism and misogyny. Period.
So, overwhelm them in an election, right? Here's the problem with that. Too many voters are just stupid. They think that the economy is directly controlled by the president, so if the economy is doing well, then the president is a genius. I've written about this enough before that I won't elaborate again here, but it means that the country is subject to dumb luck. We could very well get to 2020 with an economy in decent enough shape that the collapse of democratic civil society and the rule of law doesn't stop the racists, misogynists and nincompoops from reelecting the most idiotic and cartoonishly evil politician in the history of this country. Remember, though, that Trump is just a symptom of the problem. As I have written many times before, he is the logical conclusion of trends that began decades before, and the party that tolerates him does so because they will accept anything for the sake of victory. That is what the will to power means.
So, yes, "Brett" is probably going to be confirmed to the Supreme Court. That is both a demonstration of what Keyser told Agent Kujan about the Hungarian strategy, and a furtherance of the goal of locking in power.
The rule of law is supposed to prevent the Hungarian approach of getting your way by having the will to do what the other guy won't do. However, if you take that approach to the control of government, who's gonna stop you? If one party has the will to do what the other party doesn't, guess who wins?
A few weeks ago, at the APSA, one of my grad school colleagues accused me of being a nihilist. I'm not a nihilist. I'm a fatalist.