Unidealized

The recent death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg has resulted in exactly what many people suspected would happen; partisan bickering over whether President Trump should appoint a new Justice to fill the seat, and if Congress should move to confirm before the November election.

In the end, it doesn't matter. I suspect that very few people, looking at the process from outside, see anything other than the naked use of political power at play here. Judge Merrick Garland wasn't given a hearing by the Republican-held Senate of the 114th Congress. Not because there was something untoward about President Obama appointing a Justice to fill a vacancy during his term, but because the Republican Party was holding out for a chance to have "one of their own" (although one can debate how well President Trump fits that description) make the nomination. Remember that even the otherwise "maverick" Senator John McCain floated the idea that if Hillary Clinton had been elected, that the Senate may have simply refused to confirm any nominee while she remained in office. And with the 116th Congress having a Republican-held Senate of its own, the same logic is in play. Fill the seat with a Republican loyalist, who can (hopefully) be counted on to be a partisan obstruction to Democratic legislative initiatives. The process and the rationale aren't important here. The specific outcomes are.

As politics becomes more and more about seeking answers to questions of Right and Wrong, as opposed to social preferences, the system is going to become more and more broken. If there can be said to have been a fundamental problem with "The American Experiment" it was the assumption that an entire nation was always going to be in the same boat, but not always need to be on the same page.

That was a remarkably clunky metaphor... let me try again. Democracy is good for, say, everyone in the office (one people are back in the office, anyway) deciding where to eat for lunch, even if there are strong opinions and/or food allergies. A number of restaurants these days have expansive enough menus that people can get something that works for them. It might not always work for everyone, but if the group as a whole understands the limitations, it should do well enough. But Democracy isn't such a good option for deciding what to eat for lunch, if everyone must have the same meal. A dedicated vegan with a love of deep-dish and a gluten-intolerant carnivore are likely to have mutually-exclusive ideas of what makes for a good pizza. And a gluten-free, no-cheese, vegetarian pie might not strike anyone in the group as appetizing.

To the degree that the American political system, driven (intentionally or not) by voters, is attempting to legislate to the nation as a whole what everyone will have on their pizza, one understands why specific interest groups are attempting to lock the process into always being in line with their needs and wants. The pro-life voters who have flip-flopped on the propriety of last-minute Supreme Court nominations between the last election and this one aren't being directly hypocritical now such much as they were being dishonest about their priorities then. The process of appointing justices was never important. A solid majority that would, at some point, open the door for a nationwide ban on abortions was. And has always been. But it's always been considered somehow between impolite and openly criminal to simply own that. And it's the same on the pro-choice side of the ledger.

I suspect that Americans are not cynical about politics because of some inarticulately conspiratorial mindset. Rather, they know what time it is. They understand that the people pulling the levers of power have interests, and that when their stated rationales appear to conflict with those interests, that those rationales are fake. And when they share the interest in question, they're okay with that. Because they, too, buy into the idea that nations are supposed to be about ideals, rather than interests. In the end, however, ideals tend to take a back seat. Because eating is good, and ideals are inedible.