I Blame the Constitution

 

Not for everything and certainly not enough to attack the Capital but, yeah, I blame the Constitution. I blame it for being intentionally immutable. And for being the excuse for some of the most uncivil and preposterous behavior by our citizens in many generations. Most of all I blame it because it didn't preclude our government from becoming as corrupt and dysfunctional as the Founding Fathers worst fears.

I spent 28 years in the military defending it against enemies foreign and domestic and proud of my service so please bear with me.

The Constitution, like the Bible has a mythological aspect - unquestionable and perfect. Also like the Bible, therefore, many ideas need to be translated into the modern world and language. Whenever you interpret something, however, especially something created a long time ago, much can be lost – or added – in translation. (That’s one reason that Thomas Jefferson suggested that the Constitution be reviewed and updated about every twenty years.) Nonetheless, it has worked pretty well for over 200 years and, in fact, it helped us become the great country we are. It’s safe to say that we all knew, with the help every American history class ever taken, that it was the best darn governing document in the world! (Every country does have a constitution, you know, although they can’t possibly be as good as ours - American exceptionalism at work.)

Now there is very little doubt that our country is in trouble. It’s not a new phenomenon but it’s clear we’ve lost our way. We are split among various tribes, each of which has a totally different vision of what the country is supposed to be and where it should be going. (Or for some, going back to.) And sadly, we have already shed blood over this split.

Okay, so maybe blaming the Constitution isn't exactly what I mean. Sure much of the language doesn't make much sense today but we have trusted the Suprene Court since 1803 to decipher the meaning (not an easy task for mere mortals) and things have gone relatively smoothly. Then it seems something happened in the last 20 years; the Constitution has been weaponized.

I suspect that it started in earnest with the presidential election of 2000 when a SCOTUS ruling allowed George W Bush to get elected even though he lost the popular vote by 500,000, the first time since 1876 that had happened. I think that was a real eye opener for many of us about some peculiarities of the constitution, in this case the Electoral College system (Article II, sec.1) 

 Then the 2008 SCOTUS Heller decision on the 2nd amendment that said individuals had the unrestricted right to guns and basically eliminated any and all gun controls. At the time the famously liberal Justice Antonin Scalia said this about the ruling, "Nothing in our opiniion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms." Thank God for for the NRA, his words were soon ignored!

There's also the Citizens United decision in 2010 which said that corporations are "people" and thus entitled to free speech and can spend as much money as they want. Yahoo for citizenship. They now flood elections with dark money - more money, just what elections needed! (Must be that “originalist interpretation" stuff.)

Then in 2016 election it happened again, the “loser” had almost 3 MILLION more votes than the ‘winner.’ We realized that depending on where you live your individual vote might not be worth squat. Huh.

Now, it's to heck with the SCOTUS, let's all become constitutional experts! People now can use their (self-interpreted) first amendment freedoms of speech, religion, assembly and press for every selfish or petty behavior, behaviors that would never have occurred to our parents to inflict on their friends and neighbors. In addition, we are using those rights for book censoring, gay/trans bashing - notice the religious camel getting its nose under the tent? - and banning speech that "triggers" us and to riot, er, "assemble" to express our views.

Finally, there was the fiasco of 1/6/21 when some seditious cretins attempted to overturn the election by trying to game - you guessed it - our goofy Electoral College system (by "peaceful" assembly.) I never dreamed when I took my officer's oath that domestic enemies would be the first to assault the Capital. Frighteningly, if Trump had been even a mediocre president he possibly could have  won "fair and square" even while losing by 7 MILLION popular votes. (Now that might be worth invading the Capital!)

As an aside, not only is the EC a dumb idea, it actually hurts the people who generally love it the most, those from the smallest and largest states, red or blue. Because of the elector vote system, the only states of interest to the candidates are those that are possible swing states which boils down to 5 or 6 states. Don't believe me? Check out how much money and how many campaign events went to the other 44 states e.g. Wyoming, N. Dakota, S. Dakota, Montana, Indiana, Utah, California, New York or Texas - essentially nada; their votes are either taken for granted or just aren't worth the effort.

The Constitution is a brilliant document . . . for the 18^th century. Remember, the Founding Fathers were the wealthy elite of a country of 3 million people in 13 colonies. Obviously very dubious about democracy - thus the Electoral College - they had to make a lot of very unpleasant compromises to get this document done (think slavery and state’s rights.) Now many of those compromises are coming home to roost in the form of a breakdown of democratic norms. It’s also worth noting that it’s not just what’s in the Constitution but what isn’t. For example: election rules for federal elections, Congess and Supreme Court term limits, money in politics, the role of political parties and endless campaigning. These are among the many things they didn’t conceive of in 1787. (And never will be in this constitution because by design it's damn near impossible to change, especially today.)

There are other amendments being abused (although apparently only the 1st and 2nd amendments actually matter) but in the end, perhaps it's not the Constitution's fault. Instead, maybe the Founding Fathers were right in not trusting democracy and we really aren't capable of governing ourselves.

What to do? Beats me but if we don’t do something soon there is almost no hope that we will survive another 20 years let alone another 200 and certainly not as a democracy.