House of Eratosthenes

James N. writes:

It is remarkable that Elena Kagan apparently plans to hear and judge the Obamacare lawsuits, although there is a documentary record of her acting as an advocate within the administration for strategies to get the bill through Congress.

Of course, many Republicans are calling for her recusal, which is absolutely required by the appropriate rules for judges.

It’s interesting that no Democrats agree. That they do not agree tells us much about who and what they are.

They don’t agree because they believe it would be wrong of her to follow the rules. They think it would be wrong because, for them, the purpose of Presidential appointment and Senate confirmation is to overthrow the republican system of a government with limited powers.

For the Democrats in Congress, it would make no more sense for Kagan to recuse herself that it would for her to appear in purple underwear and deliver her opinions in Norwegian.

The electoral system only works when both parties are playing the same game. That is, in our country, no longer the case.

LA replies:

Well put. The two parties are not playing the same game. They play different games, under different rules. What are these different rules? The Republicans more or less follow the laws and constitutional procedures, the Democrats deliberately and consciously break them. But the Republicans, while they complain incessantly about the Democrats, never identify this underlying fact. Why? Because that would show that the system is no longer legitimate. And the function of the Republicans, as “patriotic, conservative Americans,” is to uphold the goodness and legitimacy of the system, a legitimacy which rests on the belief that everyone in American politics shares the same basic principles and loyalties. So the Republicans, as defenders of the system and its presumed basic unity, cannot expose what the Democrats are. If they exposed it, politics would be replaced by open war between two radically incompatible parties and America as we know it would come to an end.

I have a long history of objecting to the term “not a dime’s worth of difference between the two parties.” When a cliche is allowed to calcify like that one has, it’s a sign of intellectual laziness and therefore of a process of atrophy. Nobody ever seems to say “no difference,” or “not a nickel’s worth of difference,” it’s always that damn dime. And, too often, people take the statement way too seriously and start to broadly infer that terms like “conservative” and “liberal” must be meaningless, any difference between the two must be an illusion.

I do have trouble criticizing it, though, when its offered as a critique against the Republican party establishment, that it isn’t fighting back hard enough. I notice this is very often true. As far as explanations for the inadequate resistance, this theory of being unable to admit to “different rules” makes good sense to me and explains a lot.

My teachers, and yours too, probably, said Republicans and democrats had the same goals in mind but different ways of getting there. Seen any signs that this is the case? Me neither.

Hat tip to Gerard.

“If they exposed it, politics would be replaced by open war between two radically incompatible parties and America as we know it would come to an end.”

Well how’s that working out for us? America as we know IS coming to an end by the R’s not exposing what the Democrats are.

Good grief, can we at least go down with a fucking fight!
- tim | 11/23/2011 @ 10:45
If they exposed it, politics would be replaced by open war between two radically incompatible parties and America as we know it would come to an end.

Didn’t something like that more-or-less happen in the early 1860s? It remains the bloodiest conflict in US history, including the one waged against Hitler and Tojo.

Or was “open war” meant in more of a rhetorical, figurative sense? In that case, how would it be much different from what we’re seeing now? Would it look like the verbal (and sometimes physical) brawling seen in the legislatures of some other countries?
- cylarz | 11/25/2011 @ 01:43

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Not Playing the Same GameWednesday, November 23rd, 2011

Not Playing the Same Game
Wednesday, November 23rd, 2011