Friday, June 18, 2021
Minorities. No, Not Those Kind.
An important tenet of all representative forms of government has been an active concern for legislative and political minorities. The phrase we use and have used is : The tyranny of the majority. It’s a useful concept and needs consideration. It’s a concept that underlies our form of government. The idea of the Senate, even the original idea of Senators being appointed rather than chosen by election is a defense against the tyranny of the majority and was actually seen as a bulwark against raw democracy which we still don’t like.
Thirteen, fourteen colonies did run the risk of being dominated by the more populated, coastal areas. I don’t think the founders envisioned 50 states, with at least twenty of those states sparsely populated and naturally parochial. I’m sure they didn’t see how that block could be wielded as a kind of tyranny of the minority. We have that in the present day. There doesn’t seem to be a practical, structural solution. Open and fair elections with an informed electorate seems to be that fix. That takes time which our system is designed to provide.
Gawd, I’m boring myself. Are you still awake? I’ll try to do better.
Everyone hates the idea of a Member of Congress growing rich in office. I know I hate it. Don’t you? Well, we can rest easy. It just doesn’t happen that often. Usually, these guys have built fortunes in the private sector that allow them to go into politics. For the most part, it’s open and above board. By the way, my dentist makes more than my Congressperson. My father-in-law before he retired made 3 times what my Congressperson makes and he’s almost painfully honest. He would have considered politics as declasse and underemployment. On the other hand, I don’t think he ever had a job he enjoyed. That’s too bad.
That brings me to Mitch McConnell, behind my father-in-law and me, the third whitest man in American. I don’t know how honest the guy is but he was a millionaire or near to it, when he went to the Senate and his increase in wealth seems to have to do with marrying well. I don’t like the guy’s politics but I do think he’s doing his job well. Just like not understanding the idea of the tyranny of the majority, I don’t think people understand that the duty of the opposition is to oppose. Not only do I think people don’t get that, I don’t think people understand how important that duty is and that’s McConnell’s job and his duty. One thing he recently got jumped all over about was his statements that he thought Trump was responsible for the Insurrection. He then stated if Trump happened to be his party’s candidate in 2024, he’d support him. The first statement acknowledged an obligation to the truth. The next statement acknowledged his obligation to his party and his responsibility to his constituents. His constituents voted for him and they deserve representation. They have no fewer rights in their local majorities than those on the left.
One example my friends on the left might get. We love the New Deal but the positive things we love were the result of that tension between power and opposition. Here’s something people don’t get about opposition and majority during the New Deal. An awful lot of the New Dealers were, in fact, outright communists. The opposition tempered their goals and that benefited us all to this day. That’s incredibly simplistic but still true. In fact, the New Deal fights over the extent and form of public assistance, federal involvement in the economy, packing of the Court and the composition of the courts is a distant mirror of our current debates. It’s a useful reflection.
Joe McCarthy was a part of the Post- Roosevelt reaction and an idiot that bordered on criminality. I think he went well over the line into criminality but I’ll settle for ‘idiot’. There’s a recent effort to compare McCarthyism to the current rejection of Trumpism. It’s important to note that it is perfectly legal to be a communist and participate lawfully in our political system. It may not be popular but it certainly isn’t un-American. It was noted at the time and needs to be remembered that the most un-American thing about The Un-American Activities Committees were the activities of the committees themselves. So far, the objection to the Trumpers is they are demonstrably incompetent and an awful lot of them have committed crimes. That’s quite different from political naivete. In addition, the naivete involved with Trumpism is clothed in a distasteful kind of viciousness. MAGA.
It’s more than worthy of note we are doing something unique in our approach to the economy and to assistance. For the first time, we have provided broad financial assistance free of the filters of government involvement. There’s no bureaucratic or private layer imposed. No administered block grants or other such to interfere with individual discretion. The effects of that change need close monitoring. I, personally agree that it will speed and broaden the recovery. If it works, it opens the door for the idea of a universal basic income based on our productivity as a culture and society. We’ve been providing a universal basic income for decades but we set it round with bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo directing and limiting how that money can be spent. It’s a shame that’s so boring because it’s so important. If you consider how the majority of federal revenue has always been generated and look at how the Clinton Budget actually ended up balanced, the deficits generated by the current rescue and recovery should be much smaller than currently predicted. That remains to be seen. Is Biden right that the economy grows from the bottom up and the middle out? The minority has thought so for decades. We’ve just empowered those sectors. It’s time to watch this example of tension between majority and minority play out.
Here’s an interesting kinda factoid in that connection. The second-largest retail shopping season behind Christmas has always been income tax return time. So much so that the EITC, at least in part, is an effort to broaden that economic activity. Who among us hasn’t, at some point, waited on our tax return to buy a stereo or tv, a major appliance, a car or some other durable good? The stimulus payments are looking better and better, especially when you consider there has been a spike in savings associated with those universal payments.
I doubt if this next will get any better on the boring scale but it’ll probably start an argument. The idea of enslaved people as three-fifths of a person has been seen as a racist exercise. It was actually just a response to the tyranny of the majority. If you think about it, it was a major stride. African slavery was based on the idea the enslaved were sub-human. At that point, slavery had been in practice here and debated for at least 2 centuries. It was the first time Africans were acknowledged as something other than livestock. It could be seen as a first step in reforming a major economic and social wrong and I think it was so seen at the time by some. It takes a very long time to reform centuries of practice, perhaps it takes additional centuries. That concept always begs the question: If not now, when?
The tyranny of the majority. Here’s another of the Founder’s bulwarks against tyranny we don’t like much; the Electoral College. What we actually don’t like is the handful of times that idea has been turned on its head.
This is what’s good and perhaps indispensable in the concept of the Electoral College. It forces national candidates to leave the coasts and familiarize themselves with the concerns of the entire country. It doesn’t just give an added weight to those few electoral votes to be found in the hinterlands. It makes the concerns that motivate those votes essential. We like that. The same is true of the partisan primary system.
Well, that’s all a nice rehash of things most people who’ve read more than comic books already know. Snooze. There won’t be a quiz. We like that.
I don’t think we can conceive a social system that can’t be corrupted or at least manipulated to give an unintended result. I think that’s what we have fallen victim to in some of the recent electoral cycles. I think the republicans have been deliberately trying to subvert the Electoral College to give us minority results and thru chicanery impose a tyranny of a relatively unpleasant minority.
Here’s some more chicanery that needs addressed, now. When people think of the filibuster they think of Jimmy Stewart going hoarse defending the Boy Scouts. (About 7 of us know the word ‘filibuster’ refers to someone who makes a private, non-government sanctioned war.) Jimmy Stewart has been rendered bullshit by collective chicanery. No individual Senator need be willing to take and continuously hold the floor and halt the other business of the Senate in defense of some principle. The minority leader needn’t even designate a specific Don Quixote to demand a super-majority to advance the demonstrated will of the people. The rules have been corrupted to the point the Fillibuster has become an off-hand veto. A tool of a tyrannical minority too easily and too frequently used.
Obviously, the most sophisticated, detailed polling that takes into account every possible variation and eventuality is the election itself. That’s what renders the final result. Trump has never come within shouting distance of topping that poll. The attempts to subvert and shake confidence in that final public opinion poll are serious crimes against The United States and should be punished as such. In the end, meticulously considered rights or not, the minority is still the minority.
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