The Tangerine Latrine's Shit Show

Man, this mess is worse than even I thought it would be.  The Tangerine Latrine, the Muskrat, and their merry mob of thugs aren't interested in just taking power.  They're intent on a full-on rape and run.  They're playing this as End Game, and at the rate they're going, they may make it happen.  We're about to live Game of Oligarchs, but with climate change looming in the background, so we may end up living Fallout.  But these goons don't care because they're all convinced they're Enclave.  I hope I live long enough to see them realize there isn't enough room for all of them and start picnicking on one another.

It's our own damned fault, really.  We didn't do the heavy lifting necessary to make the system work for us, certainly not since WWII.  We didn't replace the Constitution, even though it needed replacing from the start.  We acted like Mormons, pretending the thing was divinely inspired, rather than admitting it was just an ugly compromise between slave owners masquerading as farmers and land speculators masquerading as merchants to keep all real power in the hands of white, propertied, Christian men while pretending to share it.  And we never corrected this, the result being the 1% made sure we couldn't have nice things.  The barest in civil rights.  The minimum in employment, workplace, and personal autonomy laws.  Hells, even Obamacare barely passed muster under this Constitution according to the Extreme Court.  And they cemented it all with Citizens United, which opened the money gates.

And now even our vaunted rule of law is being exposed for what colonized peoples have always known it to be: a device to protect and preserve the position and power of the 1%.

Speaking of the Rule of Law

Magna is a peculiar institution.  For decades it has been run by two entities: the Town Council and the Community Council.  If you wanted to do something that required a land use decision, you needed the approval of both.

That's the problem.  While state law gives such authority to the Town Council, it gives no such authority to the Community Council.  The Community Council is simply a private entity that has been allowed to wield authority as if it were public.

I will readily admit that the Community Council has done a lot of good things for Magna.  That's not the point.  Suppose you wanted to develop some property or build a facility for your business, and you were told you would have to get the approval of the local Chamber of Commerce or Lions Club or Shriners or American Legion Auxiliary or whatever.  A group that can meet and decide in private.  Or not meet at all; a few, key members could simply get together at a church potluck and decide the fate of your proposal.

Why should any private group have that kind of power?  It shouldn't.  That's why such decisions need to be made by entities that are established and controlled by law.  The laws are there to protect you, and if you don't believe it, imagine the fate of your business hanging on the decision of the local ladies' book club after they've finished discussing Twilight.

Lowry vs. Rule of Law

As an attorney, I have a vested interest in the rule of law.  As a human being, I do too.  I believe that citizens are considerably better off if their lives are governed by a set of laws that remain set unless changed in certain, prescribed ways than they are if their lives are governed by the arbitrary edicts of a Great Leader.

Which is why Matt Lowry's take on the torture memos disturbs me.  He wants to characterize them as a shining example of a nation ruled by laws taking the time, in the midst of a national security crisis, to debate the legality of its response.  The memos may ultimately have been wrong, but the fact that we did not strike without first thinking through the legal issues means we remain a nation that respects the law.

There's a teeny-tiny problem with this argument, namely that the memos were condoning conduct the U.S. had tried and convicted people for after World War II, and the people "debating" the legal issues knew it.  They also knew that the laws against "enhanced interrogation techniques" had become more stringent over the intervening decades, not more lax, so the only reason to reverse our previous position was political expediency.  Which means those memos weren't part of a debate.  They were pre-ordained to justify an already decided upon course of action.  They were about as respectful of the rule of law as any of Hitler's or Stalin's show trials.

No, Mr. Lowry, the torture memos are not a shining example of our belief in the rule of law.  They are damning evidence of our readiness to abandon it.