"Nothing is more important to a democracy than a well-informed electorate"

"I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." - Thomas Jefferson

Aaron Sorkin's "The Newsroom" argued that our "news" covers hurricanes, shootings, and other sensational events while ignoring matters which would inform us how to vote wisely.(1) Once, Sorkin's show argues, national TV news anchors took a stand when called for:

Charlie joins in, encouraging Will to shed his safe centrist camouflage. "Anchors having an opinion isn't a new phenomenon," he says. "Murrow had one, and that was the end of McCarthy. Cronkite had one, and that was the end of Vietnam."

A recent article(2) by Dahlia Lithwick reveals a situation the news ought to be covering: The acts of the courts — including the Supreme Court — are often not about justice. Instead they are about corrupt, cynical partisan advantage. (Lithwick: "The 2016 term was meant to be the Supreme Court’s year to destroy Obama.") They usurp the function of those the people elect: the president and the members of Congress. (Emphasis added)

The unexpected strength of fringe candidates — Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump — testifies to massive public dissatisfaction with a political and economic sphere which has been hijacked by the obscenely rich. The news could be pointing out that while these extreme candidates don't represent a workable solution, popular action rising up against a corrupt politicized Court is one area where our democratic tradition could be effective.

Jamelle Bouie recently identified another area where the American people are being betrayed by their media and by the Democratic politicians they elected: the widespread disenfranchising "voter ID" movement. Why, Bouie asked, is there no Democratic uproar about this cynical subversion of democracy? Sorkin's TV series also asked, Why is the news silent about this travesty of the democratic process?(3) Here's how the august Court dismantled the preclearance section of the Voting Rights Act which prevented certain benighted states from enacting voter suppression laws:

 

On June 25, 2013, in Shelby v. Holder, the Court ruled by a 5-to-4 vote that Section 4(b), requiring preclearance of historically discriminatory states' changes in voting laws, is unconstitutional. Wikipedia:

The Court held that Section 4(b) exceeded Congress's power to enforce the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, reasoning that the coverage formula conflicts with the constitutional principles of federalism and "equal sovereignty of the states" because the disparate treatment of the states is "based on 40 year-old facts having no logical relationship to the present day" and thus is not responsive to current needs. (Emphasis added)

Since the ruling, several states once covered under preclearance have passed voter ID laws that removed provisions such as online voting registration, early voting, “Souls to the Polls” Sunday voting, same-day registration, and pre-registration for teens about to turn 18, which had expanded means of voter registration. The ruling has also resulted in some states implementing voter identification laws and becoming more aggressive in expunging ineligible voters from registration rolls. States that have changed their voting policies post-Shelby include both jurisdictions that were previously required to undergo federal preclearance, as well as some that were not covered, including Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, North Carolina, Ohio, Wisconsin and Texas. (Emphasis added)

If this red-handed anti-democratic conduct of the Court received the publicity which, for example, the latest rainstorm receives, the public would at least have a chance to know where its true interest lies.

And neither Bouie or Sorkin have so far addressed another unmistakable — and easily remedied — derailing of democracy: the pervasive gerrymandering which, in a majority-Democratic nation, inflicts on us a dangerously irrational Republican house. As Sorkin's Will McAvoy asked, "how come [liberals] lose so g** d*** always?"

Well, what was the last time the nightly news led with a gerrymander report rather than the latest flood or tornado? Or a voter suppression tally? Or an "Erosion of liberty: Supreme Court" documentary?

 

Imagine plain talk about the Religious Right:

It’s ironic because the biggest enemy of the phony Republican isn’t Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid or Hillary Clinton or Barak Obama. It’s this man. [image of Jesus Christ displays]. He said "Heal the sick. Feed the hungry. Care for the weakest among us. And always pray in private." (Emphasis added)

Or the courage to take down rabid ideological purity:

Compromise as weakness
A fundamentalist belief in scriptural literalism
Denying science
Unmoved by facts
Undeterred by new information
A hostile fear of progress
A demonization of education
A need to control women’s bodies
Severe xenophobia
Tribal mentality
Intolerance of dissent
A pathological hatred of the US government

[Will McAvoy]
They can call themselves the Tea Party. They can call themselves Conservatives. And they can even call themselves Republicans. Though Republicans certainly shouldn’t. But we should call them what they are: The American Taliban. And the American Taliban cannot survive if Dorothy Cooper is allowed to vote.

-*--

(1) Newsroom Anchor Will McAvoy: I'm a leader in an industry that miscalled election results, hyped up terror scares, ginned up controversy, and failed to report on tectonic shifts in our country. From the collapse of the financial system to the truths about how strong we are to the dangers we actually face. I'm a leader in an industry that misdirected your attention with the dexterity of Harry Houdini while sending hundreds of thousands of our bravest young men and women off to war without due diligence. The reason we failed isn't a mystery. We took a dive for the ratings. ... Congress forgot to add that under no circumstances could there be paid advertising during informational broadcasting. They forgot to say that taxpayers will give you the airwaves for free and for 23 hours a day you should make a profit, but for one hour a night you work for us. ... From this moment on, we'll be deciding what goes on our air and how it's presented to you based on the simple truth that nothing is more important to a democracy than a well-informed electorate. ... We'll be the champion of facts and the mortal enemy of innuendo, speculation, hyperbole, and nonsense. We're not waiters in a restaurant serving you the stories you asked for just the way you like them prepared. ... I'm News Night's managing editor and make the final decision on everything seen and heard on this program. Who are we to make these decisions? We're the media elite. (Emphasis added)

(2) Lithwick: "The Supreme Court’s look at Obama’s executive action perfectly explains the Merrick Garland fight": One of the lessons of the new HBO film Confirmation, starring Kerry Washington and Wendell Pierce as Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas, is the extent to which fights about the Supreme Court are not simply about what is or what may be, but also about what could have been. Confirmation thus opens with the borking of Robert Bork for a seat at the high court, and the GOP outrage that engendered. This is important, because it explains the extent to which seating Judge Thomas—even if it meant destroying Professor Hill—became a Republican priority. In the party’s view, that seat belonged to Bork and it was stolen.

 

This same coulda, shoulda imperative is crucial for understanding the derangement that simmers beneath the GOP obstruction of hearings for Merrick Garland. You may think we are at war over what the court might become. But we are in fact at war over what should have been. And what should have been, for Senate Republicans, is quite simple: The 2016 term was meant to be the Supreme Court’s year to destroy Obama.

(3) Sorkin Anchor McAvoy: Tonight’s top story is a woman named Dorothy Cooper.

Dorothy Cooper is a 96 year old resident of Chattanooga Tennessee and has been voting for the last 75 years. This year, she has been told she can’t. A new law in Tennessee requires residents to show a government issued photo ID in order to vote. Dorothy Cooper doesn’t have a driver’s license, because Dorothy Cooper doesn’t have a car. Dorothy Cooper doesn’t have a passport; a vacation abroad was never in her future.

Tennessee isn’t alone. At this moment, 33 states have proposed or already adopted the same voter I.D. laws that have disqualified Dorothy Cooper from the one fundamental thing that we all do as Americans. It’s estimated that 11% or roughly 20 million people don’t have government issued voter I.D.’s and will be disenfranchised this November. Why? To crack down on the terrible problem of voter fraud. ... Because voter fraud is such a huge problem that during a five year period in the Bush Administration, when 196 million votes were cast, the number of cases of voter fraud reached 86. Not 86,000. 86. Here’s what that number looks like as a percentage of votes cast. .00004%. Four one hundred thousandths of a percent. This would be called a solution without a problem, but it’s not. It’s just a solution to a different problem.

Republican’s have a hard time getting certain people to vote for them. So life would be a lot easier if certain people just weren’t allowed to vote at all. I’m ashamed to say that 32 out of the 33 voter I.D. laws were proposed by Republican legislators, and passed by Republican controlled statehouses. And signed into law by Republican governors. 

Pseudo-Conservatism and Tonight's News

Writing during the presidency of George W. Bush, Ethan Fishman recalled Richard Hofstadter's article on “The Pseudo-Conservative Revolt.” It was "'more than ordinarily incoherent' about political issues." "A politics," Fishman continued, "that emphasized unarticulated psychological impulses over reasonable analysis—a politics of the gut, in other words, rather than of the mind." Pseudo-Conservatives were "those who discount reason to practice a politics of largely inchoate sentiments." 

Fishman added:

Pseudo-conservatives are suspicious of reasonable analysis and often rely on knee-jerk reactions to reach policy decisions.

Fishman saw a resemblance between today's pseudo-conservatives and the ideologues of the French Revolution:

In the context of Iraqi history, therefore, the administration’s vision of a democratic Iraq is reminiscent of the mistakes made by the French revolutionaries. Both acted as if dreams can easily be translated into political reality. Both upheld the ideal of freedom, but neither was able to adapt that ideal to the specific circumstances they encountered. Both were unable to appreciate the staggering costs in human lives and property that are unavoidable when radical change is pursued over a very short period of time.

Donald Trump's politics are those of W. taken to an extreme. He is "'more than ordinarily incoherent' about political issues." We gave an example in a recent article:

Trump, in his recent interviews with the Washington Post and the New York Times, showed that he does not comprehend the system of global alliances the United States has developed, does not understand international trade, is unaware of the importance of the military bases the US has around the world, and is ignorant of nuclear protocols.

The pseudo-conservative as the person who is "suspicious of reasonable analysis and often rel[ies] on knee-jerk reactions to reach policy decisions" is exemplified in another recent article:

Trump, with his daring, will save us from our unresponsive elected leaders.

Pseudo-conservatism is thus a form of romanticism. "Romanticism," as Professor Ian Johnston argued [PDF]:

celebrated, above all, the figure of the heroic visionary artist, struggling over time against a hostile or uncaring world, never giving up until death, living life as an unending series of self-affirmations, moments of collision in which the power of the individual's mind and his or her faith in the imagination, imposed a sense of order and gave value to his or her life against insuperable odds.

Such heroic vitalism, characteristic of Central European thought in the first half of the last century, contributed to the aura of such authoritarian figures as Lenin, Stalin, Mussolini, and Hitler, as it now constitutes part of the charisma of Donald Trump. Such icons, symptomatically, are believed to represent "the power of the will."

The attractiveness of such wilful political figures as Trump to youth is part of the pattern. The glamor of the romantic, larger-than-life authoritarian politician has an appeal, Johnston continues, to an anarchic youthful spirit:

At this level the Romantic spirit is a relatively uncomplicated celebration of the anarchic, optimistic, youthful spirit of sheer potentiality, an unfocussed affirmation of energy, motion, and good feelings. And if this were all there was to the Romantic ethic, it would never be much more than a pleasant but ultimately rather adolescent yearning for a spirit of total freedom (a good deal of popular Romanticism is little more than that).

"What happens," Johnston asks, "to this youthful creative spirit when it encounters the real world?" As we noted in Trump Reveals What's Wrong with Conservatism, it could "result in the selection of a dissimulating, bigoted, immature, bully":

In Trump, Republican voters have found their anti-Obama. Trump spurns not just political correctness, but correctness of any kind. He lies about Muslims and 9/11, insults women and people with disabilities, accuses a judge of bias for being Hispanic, and hurls profanities. ... Republicans are [at risk of] nominating a child.

Writing during the previous Republican administration, Fishman accurately predicted:

Just as McCarthyism was followed by the presidential campaigns of Barry Goldwater and George Wallace, Richard Nixon’s “Silent Majority,” the Reagan presidency, and the current administration, it is inevitable that another version of pseudo-conservatism will appear on the American political scene.

The current state of the Republican party is a catastrophe decades in the making. Since at least the Goldwater era, Republicans have leveraged cheap, doctrinaire, simplistic politics to distort the deliberative character of American democracy. They sowed the wind, and now reap the whirlwind. We are all the losers.