Praise be to Thomas Jefferson and Jesus and Richard Dobbs Spaight, Sr. of North Carolina and Batman and all the rest of the American heroes for giving us these unimpeachable laws of the land three hundred years ago. Laws that somehow managed to foresee every possible scenario that might arise over centuries of progress. It's truly an all encompassing document that really means a lot for average Americans on a day to day basis. Without it we might have ended up in a pyramid structured society where the wealthy land owners have all the power and regular people scrape by in a mirage of freedom.
But, all that being said, excuse me for a moment if a take a giant metaphorical dump on this anachronistic instruction manual for keeping the people free from the King of England's tax policy.
In case you don't, you know, "read," you might be surprised to hear that the supreme court of the land decided recently that corporations can pour unlimited amounts of money into fucking with elections. It's called freedom of speech, apparently. Although in this case speech means spending a billion dollars to elect retards who believe in government by magic and bombing brown people into sawdust. Apparently that's all in the CONSTITUTION somewhere. I'm no legal scholar though, so I wasn't able to find it.
From the NYT: The court overturned two earlier decisions and threw out parts of a 63-year-old law that said companies and unions can be prohibited from using money from their general treasuries to produce and run their own campaign ads urging the election or defeat of particular candidates by name. The decision, which applies to independent spending that is not coordinated with candidates, threatens similar limits imposed by 24 states. The justices also struck down part of the landmark McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill that barred union- and corporate-paid issue ads in the closing days of election campaigns.
There are some very learned scholars who are more qualified than me that seem to think that this outcome, while not exactly ideal, is nonetheless CONSTITUTIONAL. My boy Glenn Greenwald, for example. He argues here that our personal preference of any given decision should not be based on whether or not we prefer the consequences of that outcome, but whether or not it can be argued to fall within the bounds of the CONSTITUTION!!
Greenwald is brilliant, and almost always right. Still, I'm not necessarily persuaded by his argument here. I am, as I may have mentioned, not a legal scholar, I'm just a regular guy who drives a truck to work and puts his boots on one pant leg at a time in the hunting nest outside my rural anti-abortion cabin, but the CONSTITUTIONAL!!! peculiarities of one law or another mean very little to me. I am indifferent to whether or not something can be argued to fall within the archaic, narrow boundaries of the CONSTITUTION!!!
Granted, it was a nice starting point, back when 1% of people's lives were worth more than a bucket of horse jizz, but it's not practical to filter every imaginable scenario for the entirety of the country's remaining history through it. It would be like playing basketball with the rule book from 1880, or trying to fly a spaceship with the original Wright brothers design, or asking my grandfather for tips on how to impress girls on Facebook. Same rules do not apply anymore.
My friend Paul and I had a pretty interesting discussion about this today. And by interesting I mean it should probably fill up some space on a blog post.
Paul: I guess I don't understand what you're saying. There are two questions: was the supreme court correct, and will the outcome be good/bad? They are entirely unrelated. That process -- our still endeavoring to adhere to the rule of law -- is literally all that separates us from having an absolutist authoritarian dictatorship.
Me: I don't think every law that is passed, in this day and age, by elected officials chosen by the people to represent them, needs to pass the standard of a non-comprehensive, non-future predicting document written 300 years ago.
Paul: Yes they absolutely must, because that is the law. By definition, if you think the government should not be constrained by that (law), then you are arguing that we should have a government bound by no law at all -- an autocracy.
Me: It is not the law. It is an anchor. If a law is deemed to be needed at some point in the future that contradicts something in the CONSTITUTION, then so be it.
Paul: The CONSTITUTION is the law -- the supreme law of the land. If they want to change it, they can.
Me: Right. Therefor the argument that something is UNCONSTITUTIONAL is meaningless. If something should justly and democratically be deemed a necessary law, it should become one regardless of whether or not you can make arcane arguments about why they didn't think of providing for it centuries ago.
Paul: They are laws we have democratically elected not to change. You are literally advocating giving congress absolute power. Lindsay Graham, Joe Lieberman. I don't see how that doesn't immediately kill that train of thought.
I wonder if I managed to make you understand and accept the magnitude and profundity of your error here, you wouldn't end up with a political position more closer to mine. There is something you're not getting. Laws are laws, and until we revoke them we are bound by them. And we can revoke them, but we don't want to. The danger we would face from powerful corporations and sinister politicians and their guns and spies if we lost the protection of the 1st Amendment would be exponentially greater -- literally -- than the danger we face due to being bound by it. Abandoning those laws would benefit these corporations and their minions over good and honest Americans by a magnitude impossible to exaggerate. Those "arcane" relics you disparage say things like "The government can't snatch any American off the street and torture them without trial". If you think that isn't the reason that doesn't happen as a matter of policy then you are just mistaken Aargh!
Me: [fart joke]
So, in conclusion, I don't think either of us exactly learned anything from that, unless you count uncovering the fact that I don't know what the hell I'm talking about learning something. Pretty sure we all already knew that.
The good news is, we all were just given a real representative voice in our democracy by the supreme court, that wizened institution who have thoughtfully and justly kept our interest as a people at heart with this decision. You might call this the most important day in American history since the beginning of the revolution. Truly, we are all free now, and we have this perfect document to thank for it. All we have to do now is start a multi-billion dollar corporation to exercise those rights in the playing field of ideas in order to begin experiencing true democracy. I think I know now what John Adams and all those other cheap fucks trying to move down into a lower tax bracket must have felt like when they invented the concept that a decent proportion of people shouldn't necessarily live a life in slavery -- but ha ha, let's not go over board on that percentage there!! someone's got to do the shit work, amirite? -- I feel truly free. And stupid. Stupid and free. American, you might say.
But, all that being said, excuse me for a moment if a take a giant metaphorical dump on this anachronistic instruction manual for keeping the people free from the King of England's tax policy.
In case you don't, you know, "read," you might be surprised to hear that the supreme court of the land decided recently that corporations can pour unlimited amounts of money into fucking with elections. It's called freedom of speech, apparently. Although in this case speech means spending a billion dollars to elect retards who believe in government by magic and bombing brown people into sawdust. Apparently that's all in the CONSTITUTION somewhere. I'm no legal scholar though, so I wasn't able to find it.
From the NYT: The court overturned two earlier decisions and threw out parts of a 63-year-old law that said companies and unions can be prohibited from using money from their general treasuries to produce and run their own campaign ads urging the election or defeat of particular candidates by name. The decision, which applies to independent spending that is not coordinated with candidates, threatens similar limits imposed by 24 states. The justices also struck down part of the landmark McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill that barred union- and corporate-paid issue ads in the closing days of election campaigns.
There are some very learned scholars who are more qualified than me that seem to think that this outcome, while not exactly ideal, is nonetheless CONSTITUTIONAL. My boy Glenn Greenwald, for example. He argues here that our personal preference of any given decision should not be based on whether or not we prefer the consequences of that outcome, but whether or not it can be argued to fall within the bounds of the CONSTITUTION!!
Greenwald is brilliant, and almost always right. Still, I'm not necessarily persuaded by his argument here. I am, as I may have mentioned, not a legal scholar, I'm just a regular guy who drives a truck to work and puts his boots on one pant leg at a time in the hunting nest outside my rural anti-abortion cabin, but the CONSTITUTIONAL!!! peculiarities of one law or another mean very little to me. I am indifferent to whether or not something can be argued to fall within the archaic, narrow boundaries of the CONSTITUTION!!!
Granted, it was a nice starting point, back when 1% of people's lives were worth more than a bucket of horse jizz, but it's not practical to filter every imaginable scenario for the entirety of the country's remaining history through it. It would be like playing basketball with the rule book from 1880, or trying to fly a spaceship with the original Wright brothers design, or asking my grandfather for tips on how to impress girls on Facebook. Same rules do not apply anymore.
My friend Paul and I had a pretty interesting discussion about this today. And by interesting I mean it should probably fill up some space on a blog post.
Paul: I guess I don't understand what you're saying. There are two questions: was the supreme court correct, and will the outcome be good/bad? They are entirely unrelated. That process -- our still endeavoring to adhere to the rule of law -- is literally all that separates us from having an absolutist authoritarian dictatorship.
Me: I don't think every law that is passed, in this day and age, by elected officials chosen by the people to represent them, needs to pass the standard of a non-comprehensive, non-future predicting document written 300 years ago.
Paul: Yes they absolutely must, because that is the law. By definition, if you think the government should not be constrained by that (law), then you are arguing that we should have a government bound by no law at all -- an autocracy.
Me: It is not the law. It is an anchor. If a law is deemed to be needed at some point in the future that contradicts something in the CONSTITUTION, then so be it.
Paul: The CONSTITUTION is the law -- the supreme law of the land. If they want to change it, they can.
Me: Right. Therefor the argument that something is UNCONSTITUTIONAL is meaningless. If something should justly and democratically be deemed a necessary law, it should become one regardless of whether or not you can make arcane arguments about why they didn't think of providing for it centuries ago.
Paul: They are laws we have democratically elected not to change. You are literally advocating giving congress absolute power. Lindsay Graham, Joe Lieberman. I don't see how that doesn't immediately kill that train of thought.
I wonder if I managed to make you understand and accept the magnitude and profundity of your error here, you wouldn't end up with a political position more closer to mine. There is something you're not getting. Laws are laws, and until we revoke them we are bound by them. And we can revoke them, but we don't want to. The danger we would face from powerful corporations and sinister politicians and their guns and spies if we lost the protection of the 1st Amendment would be exponentially greater -- literally -- than the danger we face due to being bound by it. Abandoning those laws would benefit these corporations and their minions over good and honest Americans by a magnitude impossible to exaggerate. Those "arcane" relics you disparage say things like "The government can't snatch any American off the street and torture them without trial". If you think that isn't the reason that doesn't happen as a matter of policy then you are just mistaken Aargh!
Me: [fart joke]
So, in conclusion, I don't think either of us exactly learned anything from that, unless you count uncovering the fact that I don't know what the hell I'm talking about learning something. Pretty sure we all already knew that.
The good news is, we all were just given a real representative voice in our democracy by the supreme court, that wizened institution who have thoughtfully and justly kept our interest as a people at heart with this decision. You might call this the most important day in American history since the beginning of the revolution. Truly, we are all free now, and we have this perfect document to thank for it. All we have to do now is start a multi-billion dollar corporation to exercise those rights in the playing field of ideas in order to begin experiencing true democracy. I think I know now what John Adams and all those other cheap fucks trying to move down into a lower tax bracket must have felt like when they invented the concept that a decent proportion of people shouldn't necessarily live a life in slavery -- but ha ha, let's not go over board on that percentage there!! someone's got to do the shit work, amirite? -- I feel truly free. And stupid. Stupid and free. American, you might say.
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8 comments:
WRONG!
Yeah, I don't even know if I believe any of that.
I mean I'm all for limiting corporate influence but the way to do it is through decentralization and if you weren't such a goddamn commie you'd a agree with me.
You've been in New York too long, you're starting to talk like an Italian
Great blog, I clearly recall you saying that anyone who used more than one exclamation point is on the list. You my friend just made it, congrats.
I've been on the list the whole time.
I hate that picture too much.
look at that little fucking miserable fish.
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