July 03, 2018
'A Jewel Thief Has No Right to His Jewels'
That is an argument I just heard on TV a few minutes ago.
A reasonable notion on its own, in the context it was said, it is troubling.
This involves politics so I'll discuss it further below the fold.
For those who are repelled by such things and heed that warning, here is something that is pleasant and completely, refreshingly unrelated...
... as long as one pays no mind to the lyrics.
So, this evening I was watching Tucker Carlson out the corner of my eye as I washed dishes and in the course of the show he had a guest who came on to defend the prospect of packing the Supreme Court.
It turned out to be Ian Samuel, the Harvard law lecturer who had made the proposal. In the course of the interview this exquisitely slippery fellow professed that the left adding 6 more justices would effectively de-politicize the court. Tucker gave him the Tucker Look...
...then laughed and made the obvious point that this would not de-politicize the court, it would just mean that the lefties would have around a 10-5 majority. Professor Samuel then said that "When you encounter a Jewel thief, you steal things back."
Allow me a moment of digression...
Now, I have not had an exciting or particularly successful existence. However, at certain points in the Walter Mitty LARP that my life seems to be, I've experienced fear.
I've witnessed the sky turn green and lived through what that portends, I've been on deck in a thunderstorm desperately pulling in the life buoy with my little brother clinging to it while a waterspout bore down on our boat, I've been upside down in a bilge throwing up seasick in a boat pitching like a rodeo horse while assembling and connecting a dewatering pump in the rapidly rising seawater. At 12, I jumped off a 30 foot embankment to escape a would be rapist. I've been a lost child in the swamp along the Blackwater river, and found myself clinging to a sheer rock face 300 feet in the air because I'm an idiot and a girl wanted a rose.
None of those experiences quite matched the dread I felt this evening when I heard a Law professor at Harvard say "When you encounter a Jewel thief, you steal things back." in reference to an election. The implication is that the smirking professor believes that anything that involves a win for his political opponents is not legitimate...it's theft, not of jewels but of power and that power must be taken from the "thieves" and given back to the rightful wielders of it.
These people believe that any victory by our side is not just unwelcome from their point of view. It is illegitimate. They seem to have fully embraced the Hegelian notion that history bends towards progress and in their arrogance assume that they are infallibly on the right side of it. To them, any victory for those who disagree with them, any defeat for them is more than a political issue, it's a crime against nature. The rules then must be put aside until the natural order is restored.
Professor Samuel went on to say that he hoped there would be a reconciliation after they had achieved total power and perhaps some compromise that would never allow the new status quo to be changed should be put in place because...bipartisanship. He kept coming back to the notion that the current court is dangerously out of whack (because Republicans exist?)
This court packing proposal has been getting a lot of buzz, much of it more positive than a sane society ought to give it.
Now in one sense, there is nothing new here, there are other, more tangible things along these lines like the notion that we lefties should harass public figures that have views we lefties disagree with, the religious tests and the violence, have all been a cause of worry.
But this struck me different.
The fear I felt when hearing Prof. Samuel liken political opposition to jewel thieves was not like the episodes of fear related above. It was not terror accentuated by adrenaline. Rather, it was a gut wrenching, helpless, sickening dread.
For the first time, I really think that there might be a civil war.
This is the point in the post where certain people point out that our side has most of the guns and there won't be any bag limit on soy boys.
So I'll just leave this here.
They've got the techweasels.
That aside, a civil war, even without AI, is a truly dreadful, despicable thing. It shatters countries. A full on, balls-out war with U.S Military units slugging it out is something I don't want to think about. Even a low grade civil war built around violent civil unrest could disrupt power, shipping, and water leading to mass starvation and disease.
And rest assured that if this comes to pass, while we deal with our domestic spat, the PRC, Russia, Iran ISIS and every other entity with aspirations will run amuck through the world.
One throwaway line from a smarmy lawprof ought not to cause such introspection when far more tangible things like the general discord are happening. But the idea that political opposition is by its nature, stolen and illegitimate really hit me wrong.
'The rules don't apply if we lose, they only exist to keep us in power.'
These are the "rules" an aristocracy enforces against peasants.
And that's why I am really beginning to fear that we may be on a really dark path.
Tomorrow is the 4th. May it pass peacefully and bring reconciliation.
UPDATE: Well, I'm not the only one who found the episode consequential, the whole thing is on You Tube,
UPDATE 2: Embed replaced and working again.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at
10:18 PM
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Post contains 978 words, total size 8 kb.
1
The kind of moron that would suggest a court-packing scheme while his party is out of power would deserve it if the court were packed before he gets back into power.
Not that I'm advocating court-packing.
Not that I'm advocating court-packing.
Posted by: Rick C at Wed Jul 4 14:43:32 2018 (ITnFO)
2
And they've taken the video down now.
Posted by: Mauser at Thu Jul 5 00:55:08 2018 (Ix1l6)
3
Fixed for now.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Thu Jul 5 02:05:22 2018 (3bBAK)
4
I ran across that shitweasel on Twitter. I was not polite. I wondered for a moment if he was putting forth a Swiftian "modest proposal", but no, he's just a complete fucking moron.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thu Jul 5 02:56:32 2018 (PiXy!)
5
I do agree with this moron that "pack the court" should be up there with "abolish ICE".
And it is, it's something that, really, only a moron and/or anti-American would say.
And it is, it's something that, really, only a moron and/or anti-American would say.
Posted by: Rick C at Thu Jul 5 14:21:50 2018 (Q/JG2)
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