"Pro-Life" Texas Representative Threatens to Kill O’Rourke With an AR-15

I am not an advocate of abortion and believe it should be safe and rare,  That said, I have no use for most of the "pro-life" crowd which seemingly worships fetuses and loses all interest in children the moment they exit the birth canal.  How else to explain the manner in which these "conservatives" and right wing "Christians" routinely oppose funding for programs for the poor - often children - and support the Republican agenda that would shred the social safety net that many, including the elderly, need to survive.   These programs are assuredly "pro-life" in a different form but they are anathema to the "godly folk."  But the hypocrisy and ugliness goes goes even further:  these folks demonize those with differing views and are not adverse to using violence against their political and culture war opponents as was demonstrated by a self-style "pro-life" Texas Republican who threatened to use an AR-15 on Beto O'Rourke after he proposed a common sense confiscation of assault weapons in civilian hands.  Here are highlights of this disturbing but all too typical story:

It might seem surprising that Briscoe Cain, the Texas state representative who proudly told Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke that his automatic rifle was “waiting for” him, considers himself ardently “pro-life,” but of course it’s not.

Hopping on Twitter last night during the Democratic debate, after O’Rourke had given a stirring answer about seizing high-capacity weapons from citizens if he was elected president, Cain decided to threaten his fellow Texan with his own automatic rifle — also calling him “Robert Francis,” deliberately eschewing O’Rourke’s Spanish nickname “Beto.”

Per an O’Rourke spokesperson, Cain has been reported to the FBI for his violent speech, which you might think would fly in the face of the “sanctity of life”–type rhetoric he uses as an anti-choice legislator in the Texas legislature. Earlier this year, Cain was an architect of the draconian heartbeat bill, which failed in the Texas House in May, that sought to ban abortion at six weeks, before most women even realize they’re pregnant. When introducing it, he said in a statement, “When you have a heartbeat you have a life and we should honor that life at all cost.” So zealous is he in these views that, just this week, he took the bold stance of wanting to abolish the city of Austin, after it voted to provide $150,000 to help women retain access to abortion care.

The twin conservative principles of protecting both fetuses at the very moment of conception and the right to buy the kinds of guns that can (and have) murdered dozens of fully grown children in just a few minutes is a well-worn contradiction, a hypocrisy even older than the many Republican men who have been caught railing against abortion in public, then quietly paying for them in private. Restricting women’s autonomy over their own bodies is a cornerstone of the Republican Party’s ongoing national project, which is to consolidate power among the white and wealthy over the most vulnerable Americans.

People like Cain are disgusting not to mention complete hypocrites in their wailing about being "pro-life."  They are anything but pro-life and constitute a threat to the lives and well-being of countless Americans.

Paul Ryan Admits He Was a Fraud All Along

I have never liked former House Speaker Paul Ryan who I always saw as a liar and a fraud. While in office, Ryan cared about only two things - actually three, the third being staying in office - cutting taxes for the wealthy and slashing the social safety net for the less fortunate, all the while pretending to be a good Catholic despite all his actions contrary to the Church's social gospel. Before retiring, Ryan accomplished one thing: passage of the Trump/GOP tax cuts which have exploded the federal deficit - something Ryan supposedly cared about, but like all else with Ryan that story line was a lie.  A piece in Vanity Fair looks at Ryan's new and disingenuous book which tries to rewrite history and rehabilitate Ryan's abysmal record.  Here are article highlights:

After the release of the Access Hollywood tape, which featured the future president bragging to Billy Bush about how his celebrity entitled him to sexually assault women, Paul Ryan canceled a scheduled appearance with Donald Trump and announced he would not campaign on behalf of the Republican nominee. “I am not going to defend Donald Trump,” then-House Speaker Ryan reportedly told his party at the time. “Not now, not in the future.” Ryan probably assumed he wouldn’t need to defend Trump in the “future,” as the prevailing wisdom was that Hillary Clinton would send him back to the bowels of reality TV from whence he came. But it was still a notable disavowal even if, in true Ryan form, it made no move to rescind his tortured Trump endorsement.

Of course, Ryan would break his promise after Trump’s shock victory. The self-styled wonk would, again and again and again, defend the president, enable him, and respond to his daily outrages with feeble handwringing. But the Wisconsin Republican is now trying to rehabilitate his doormat reputation. . . . Ryan tees off on the president, depicting him as a narcissistic, divisive loon and “uneducated about the government”—revelations that only further highlight how Ryan was knowingly complicit in Trump’s nightmare government.

“We’ve gotten so numbed by it all,” Ryan tells Tim Alberta in American Carnage, which examines how Republicans came to embrace Trump after an acrimonious 2016 race. “Not in government, but where we live our lives, we have a responsibility to try and rebuild. Don’t call a woman a ‘horse face.’ Don’t cheat on your wife. Don’t cheat on anything. Be a good person. Set a good example.”

Ryan, who tells Alberta that he viewed his retirement as an “escape hatch” to get away from Trump, plays up the “adults in the room” myth, suggesting his deference allowed him to steer Trump on a better course.

It’s a line Ryan has echoed before. . . . And of course, it’s intended to paint Ryan in the best possible light, similar to John Kelly, Rex Tillerson, and others who suggested they only stood by Trump out of some high-minded sense of duty to the country. Of course, none actually succeeded in serving as a real moderating influence. They may be better than the sycophants he’s surrounded himself with now, but Kelly, Tillerson, and Ryan consistently failed to keep the president’s impulses in check. Worse, they lent a veneer of normalcy to a president who was decidedly not.

That Ryan is now back to bashing Trump is, perhaps, a step above some of his former colleagues, who have turned into rabid, mindless supporters of the president. But it’s hardly courageous to point out Trump’s plainly obvious defects after the fact. So far, just one Republican—Justin Amash, who left the party earlier this month—has openly criticized the president. “These guys have all convinced themselves that to be successful and keep their jobs, they need to stand by Trump,” Amash tells Alberta in the book. “But Trump won’t stand with them as soon as he doesn’t need them. He’s not loyal. They’re very loyal to Trump, but the second he thinks it’s to his advantage to throw someone under the bus, he’ll be happy to do it.”

Hopefully, history will be very harsh to Paul Ryan.

Trump Budget: Slash Social Programs After $1.5 Trillion Gift to Wealthy

Trump message to seniors: just die. 

Once again demonstrating that He and the Republican Party want to bring back the Gilded Age when the wealthy lived in obscene extravagance which many Americans barely survived. After giving the very wealthy and large corporations $1.5 trillion in tax breaks - which has caused the federal deficit to balloon just as every sane commentator predicted - Trump and his enablers in the Republican Party seek to slash Medicare spending in Trump's just announced budget. Rest assured that Medicaid and other programs will be similarly targeted.  For those under 65, Medicare is NOT free.  Recipients pay quarterly premiums and, if they are smart, they purchase a supplement that entails monthly premiums as well.  And for those working past 65, you also continue to pay Medicare withholding tax (I now pay more in Medicare withholding that I did for many years in income tax) - which added to withholding over one's working career can total to a large number. Medicare is anything but an "entitlement."  The same holds true for Social Security.  Thus, Trump's proposal can be described as making working Americans - including the cretins who voted for Trump and the GOP - pay into the Medicare and Social Security systems and then reducing their benefits to give lavish tax cuts to the wealthy.  The Washington Post looks at Trump's budget and the gift it may constitute to Democrats.  Here are article excerpts:

A new proposal by President Trump to slash Medicare spending puts Republicans in a political bind ahead of the 2020 election as Democrats are pitching an expansion of the popular health-care program for all Americans.

Trump’s 10-year budget unveiled Monday calls for more than $845 billion in reductions for Medicare, aiming to cut “waste, fraud and abuse” in the federal program that gives insurance to older Americans. It’s part of a broader proposed belt-tightening effort after deficits soared during the president’s first two years in office in part due to massive tax cuts for the wealthy.

The move immediately tees up a potential messaging battle between Democratic proposals for Medicare-for-all — castigated by Republicans as a socialist boondoggle — and a kind of Medicare-for-less approach. focused on cutting back on spending, from the GOP.

Democrats, including some seeking to challenge Trump in 2020, seized on the proposed Medicare cuts Monday as an example of the GOP seeking to balance the budget on the backs of the elderly and the poor after giving broad tax breaks to the wealthy.

“Make no mistake about it: Trump’s budget is a massive transfer of wealth from the working class to the wealthiest people and most profitable corporations in America,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a Democratic presidential candidate, said in a Monday tweet that highlighted Medicare cuts.

In states with large senior populations, such as Florida, political attacks over Medicare cuts have proved so effective that both parties have used them. Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) won his seat after running ads last year accusing Democrat Bill Nelson of voting to cut Medicare.

Trump probably needs to win Florida, Arizona, Pennsylvania and other states with large numbers of seniors to secure reelection in 2020. Older Americans consistently vote at higher rates than younger Americans.

Trump’s proposed Medicare savings are more than three times as large as those in his previous budget, and industry lobbying groups said the reductions would hurt hospitals and seniors. “The impact on care for seniors would be devastating,” Chip Kahn, president and CEO of the Federation of American Hospitals, said in a statement. “Hospitals are less and less able to cover the cost of care for Medicare patients, it is no time to gut Medicare.” Democratic strategists and officials argued Monday that Trump’s budget proposal exposed how little credibility Republicans have in debating health care, and showed signs of confidence that it would sharpen the contrast Democrats are seeking to make in the run-up to the 2020 election.

“It totally eviscerates any integrity to their already pretty flimsy attack,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said. “This assault on Medicare lays bare the real Republican agenda, which is to destroy the health-care safety net. They have no shred of intellectual underpinning or integrity to their attack on Democrats if they make this kind of proposal.”

In last year’s midterm elections, Democrats campaigned aggressively on health care, attacking Republicans over their failed effort to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. The dynamic marked a shift from the two previous midterm elections, during which the GOP was the party mainly going on offense on health care, slamming Democrats over the creation of the ACA, also known as Obamacare. “This budget says a lot about the President’s priorities: cut $845 billion from Medicare, while spending billions on his vanity project, the wall,” Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) tweeted, referring to Trump’s request for border wall funding. “This would hurt our seniors and is yet another piece of evidence for why we need a new president.” “It’s a political fumble on the Republican part in the sense that this budget is going nowhere,” he said. “The argument prior to this was the Democrats’ plan versus the status quo. And now it’s the Democrats’ plan versus the Republican plan to cut Medicare.”

Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) said on Twitter: “One party wants to expand Medicare and Medicaid and the other wants to cut them. That’s the end of my tweet.”

The question will be whether the racism of Trump's base and that base's hatred of others outweigh their own economic/health care best interest.  If these folks continue to support Trump, they truly deserve to suffer every misfortune imaginable and should get no sympathy from others. 

Rural Whites Are Now The Largest Users of Food Stamps

click image to enlarge

Almost a year ago the Trump/GOP tax bill gave a $1.5 trillion tax break give away to the extremely wealthy and large corporations.  As everyone except Republicans predicted, the federal budget deficit ballooned - just as has occurred with every GOP tax cut since Reagan launched the trickle down voodoo economics so loved by the GOP.  In almost no time, the GOP mantra became that it was necessary to cut social safety net programs to address the budget deficit they deliberately created.  Despite this, in the 2018 midterm elections rural whites voted overwhelmingly for the GOP thanks to their embrace of the GOP's racist and religiously extreme messaging. The irony, of course, is that the largest number of social safety net programs, especially food stamps, are rural whites.  Talk about voting against one's own economic interest.  A piece in Iowa Public Radio looks at the statistics:

On a busy football Saturday, fans on both sides of the Iowa-Nebraska line streamed into a tiny grocery store to pick up hamburger, soda and chips.

More than 38,000 people in this congressional district receive assistance from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, what used to be called food stamps. Most are white and 40 percent live under the poverty level.

Since the late 1970s, congressional leaders have placed food programs in the farm bill to attract votes from cities, where food stamp use was highest. The hope was that rural and urban lawmakers would come together to get the big bill passed.

But the SNAP map has shifted. U.S. Department of Agriculture data shows that since 2012, SNAP participation is highest among households in rural areas and small towns under 2,500 people.

“It wasn't shocking or surprising,” said Ellen Vollinger, legal director of the Food Research & Action Center, or FRAC, “when you think about the degree to which SNAP is related to people being poor.”

FRAC analyzed the USDA data and found that nationally, 16 percent of households in rural areas use SNAP versus 13 percent in urban areas. The population of older people is larger in rural areas, which Vollinger said is driving the increase.

Other people in rural areas who need SNAP are low-wage workers who just don’t make enough or don’t get enough hours at work, Vollinger said, and many recipients are families with children.

About a fifth of Johnson’s store’s annual revenue comes from SNAP, he said, which is about average.

“We get different percentages from different owners,” he said, “but anywhere from say 10 percent up to about 25 percent of their sales they tell us come from those federal food assistance programs.”

The revenue that federal food aid provides for grocery stores is also helping fuel small town economies, Procter said, providing work for the electricians, carpenters and refrigerator repairers the groceries use.

USDA data shows that every dollar spent in SNAP generates up to $1.80 in economic activity in that area.

The other big winner from SNAP dollars: chain stores that cater to rural areas, like Dollar General. The USDA reports that in 2017, big-box stores like Walmart took in more than half of the $63 billion set aside for SNAP.

If the GOP were to have its way, poverty and hunger would be much worse.  Thankfully, a Democrat controlled House will protect these rural whites who stupidly vote Republican. 

Nov. 6th: Last Exit Off the Road to Autocracy

It is election day and today's election results will determine many things.  First, as note in the previous post, whether or not America regains its moral compass and rejects Trumpism and the racist and discriminatory agenda of the Republican Party that is striving to restore the worse abuses of the Gilded Age.  Secondly, today may may well determine whether true democracy continues in America. If Republicans prevail today, expect voter disenfranchisement efforts to sky rocket - tactics employed in Georgia will go nationwide in GOP controlled states - and the social safety net will be shredded to pay for tax cuts for the most wealthy and privileged.  I'm not being overly dramatic in this latter issue.  One need only look at what has happened in other purported democracies where one party rule is now in place.  Even the early Roman emperors  maintained the trappings of the old Roman Republic  even though democracy had in fact died.  A column in the New York Times looks at this other key element of America that is at stack today.  Here are highlights:

Whatever happens in the midterms, the aftermath will be ugly. But the elections are nonetheless a fork in the road. If we take one path, it will offer at least a chance for political redemption, for recovering America’s democratic values. If we take the other, we’ll be on the road to autocracy, with no obvious way to get off.

It’s a near-certainty that Democrats will receive more votes than Republicans, with polling suggesting a margin in votes cast for the House of Representatives of seven or more percentage points — which would make it the biggest landslide of modern times. However, gerrymandering and other factors have severely tilted the playing field, so that even this might not be enough to bring control of the chamber.

And even if Democrats do climb that tilted slope, anyone expecting Republicans to accept the result with good grace hasn’t been paying attention. Remember, Donald Trump claimed — falsely, of course — that millions of immigrants voted illegally in an election he won. Imagine what he’ll say if he loses, and what his supporters will do in response. And if and when a Democratic House tries to exercise its powers, you can be sure it will be met with defiance, never mind what the Constitution says.

But ugly as the scene will be if Democrats win, it will be far worse if they lose. In fact, it’s not hyperbole to say that if the G.O.P. holds the line on Tuesday, it may be the last even halfway fair elections we’ll ever have.

Look at what’s happening in Georgia, where Brian Kemp — the Republican secretary of state, who oversees elections — is running for governor against Democrat Stacey Abrams. In any other democracy, letting a man supervise his own election would be inconceivable. But that’s how it is in Georgia, and Kemp is abusing his power to the max.

A political party with any kind of commitment to democracy and fair play would treat Kemp as a pariah. Instead, he has the full support of the national G.O.P.

And Georgia is far from unique. There have been similar if less spectacular attempts to rig the vote in Kansas and North Dakota, where would-be absentee voters were told that they had to use the right color ink — and were given conflicting information about what color was acceptable.

The lesson we learn from all these abuses of power is that today’s Republicans are just like their fellow white nationalists in Hungary and Poland, who have maintained a democratic facade but have in reality established one-party authoritarian regimes. Everything we’ve seen says that Republicans will do anything they can to take and hold power, and Tuesday’s elections may be the last chance to stop them from locking in permanent rule.

Oh, and in case you’re tempted to bothsides this: No, both sides don’t do it. Voting restrictions are almost entirely a Republican thing. As always, Democrats aren’t saints, but they appear to believe in democracy, while their opponents don’t.

Democrats haven’t made the clear and present danger to democracy a central theme of their campaigns; they’ve been running mainly on health care instead. And it’s hard to fault their judgment. After all, health care is indeed on the line in these elections: Millions of Americans, especially but not only those with pre-existing conditions, will lose coverage if Republicans hold the House, because they’ll finally repeal the Affordable Care Act and will soon go after Medicare and Medicaid.

[W]ith the crucial moment here, everyone should bear in mind what’s at stake. It’s not just tax cuts or health coverage, and anyone who votes based simply on those issues is missing the bigger story. For the survival of American democracy is on the ballot.

If you are registered to vote, be sure to do so and vote a straight Democrat ticket - even if you have to hold your nose to do so.  It really is that critical.

Seeing Through Republican Deceptions

One of the most disturbing aspects of politics over most of the last two decades is the manner in which working class whites have voted against their own economic interest and supported the Republican Party which offers them noting other than pandering to their prejudices and bigotry.  In short, these voters are played for fools as the GOP pushes policies and tax cuts that favor the wealthy and allow big corporations to cut corners on safety regulations.  With the 2018 midterms upon us, we are seeing past GOP deceptions taken to a whole new level of dishonesty and open racism.  The days of dog whistle messaging are gone and open white supremacists and Christian extremists (the two tend to overlap significantly, in my view) are embraced.  A column in the New York Times by a Nobel Prize winning economist looks at this latest round of GOP lies and deceit.  Here are column excerpts:

Until recently, it looked as if the midterm elections might be defined largely by an argument about health care. Over the past few days, however, the headlines have been dominated instead by hatred — hysteria over a caravan of migrants a thousand miles from the U.S. border, and now the attempted assassination of multiple prominent Democrats.

But whoever sent the bombs and why, the caravan hysteria is no accident: creating a climate of hatred is how Republicans avoid talking about health care. What we’re seeing in this election is a kind of culmination of the strategy the right has been using for decades: distract working-class voters from policies that hurt them by promoting culture war and, above all, racial antagonism.

When it comes to substance, the modern conservative policy agenda, which centers on cutting taxes and tearing up the social safety net, is consistently unpopular. By large margins, voters want to raise, not lower, taxes on corporations and the wealthy. They overwhelmingly oppose cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

So how do Republicans manage to win elections? Partly the answer is that gerrymandering, the Electoral College and other factors have rigged the system in their favor; Republicans have held the White House after three of the past six presidential elections, despite winning the popular vote only once. And they will probably hold the House unless Democrats win by at least 6 percent.One way they have traditionally gotten there is with red-baiting, portraying any and all progressive policies as the next thing to Communism. More than half a century ago, Ronald Reagan warned that Medicare would destroy American freedom. (It didn’t.) A few days ago, the Trump White House issued a report equating Medicare for All with Maoism.

Another key tactic involves lying about both their own positions and those of their opponents. During the administration of George W. Bush, the lies were relatively subtle by current standards, involving things like pretending that tax cuts favoring the rich were actually aimed at the middle class. These days, the lies are utterly shameless.

But lies about policy, while they may confuse some voters, aren’t enough. Hate has always been part of the package.  Let’s not romanticize the past. When Reagan talked about welfare queens driving Cadillacs, or a “strapping young buck” using food stamps to buy steaks, he knew exactly what he was doing.

Under Trump, however, the strategy of hatred has gone to a whole new level.  For one thing, after decades of cloaking its strategy in euphemisms, the G.O.P. is back to letting racists be racists.

At the same time, the mainstream G.O.P. has gone all in on the kind of conspiracy theorizing — tinged with anti-Semitism — that used to be restricted to the fringe.  And it’s hard to see calling the news media “enemies of the people” as anything other than an incitement to violence.

So will this ramped-up strategy of hate work? It might, in part because those same news media still dance to the haters’ tune. Take the story of the migrant caravan. The right’s hysteria is obviously insincere; it’s clear that it is hyping the story to take attention away from health care and other substantive issues: Never mind pre-existing conditions! Look at those scary brown people!

[I]f this strategy of hate works in the midterms, the right will pursue it even more avidly. Don’t expect anyone involved to experience any pangs of conscience. Indeed, after CNN and several prominent critics received bombs in the mail, Trump blamed … the media.

I have seen the future, and it’s full of menace.

Will Brett Kavanaugh Finally Wake Democrats Up to Reality?

For many Democrats and progressive, the nomination - and likely successful confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court is a nightmare come true.  Sadly, however, back in the run up to the 2016 presidential election, far too many Democrats and progressives stayed home or voted for candidates with no chance of winning either as a protest vote or to not sully their alleged principles. Had these individuals been pragmatic and voted for a candidate that could win - Hillary received 3 million more votes than Trump -  as opposed to Jill Stein (a possible Putin asset, in my view) or gotten off their ass and gone to the polls and voted against Trump rather than pouting at home, the nation would not be suffering the ongoing nightmare that has no end in sight.  In 2016, other than Russian interference, the biggest problems for Democrats is far too many Democrats themselves.  A piece in Vanity Fair ask the questions of whether the Trump/Pence/Gorsuch/Kavanaugh nightmare will be enough to get Democrats going forward focused on winning - even if it isn't one's dream candidate - rather than defeating their own long term interest.  Here re article excepts:

For Republicans, moments like this are, for the most part, unifying. Senators who fight about everything else can usually agree on supporting a Supreme Court nominee from a fellow Republican or Democrat. For Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who likes to do most things quietly (ideally sneakily), occasions like this are regrettably high-profile, and a candidate who can be screened and seated quickly would be preferable to one who advances ambitious ideological goals. So it must be a disappointment to him that Trump picked Kavanaugh, a forceful partisan with a long paper trail. As strong as feelings within the conservative movement run, however, the differences among Republicans will be hard to spot when it comes to Kavanaugh’s confirmation fight.

For Democrats, Kavanaugh is enough of a partisan knife fighter to unify them easily in opposition, however futile it might be. They know they’re in the minority, with no power to thwart a united majority, but they see three possible outcomes: a fluke of good fortune (their dream), a battle that backfires on Democrats (their nightmare), or a battle that costs Republicans (their aim).

The fluke of good fortune would be for Kavanaugh to turn out, over the course of hearings, to be such a fiasco of a choice that even Republicans would defect.

The battle that backfired on Democrats would be one that caused them to look so obnoxious in their attacks on Kavanaugh that they lost more support among voters than they gained. Nominees, even the extreme ones, are usually pretty sympathetic, especially when they bring their spouses and children to watch, and Kavanaugh has two young daughters. Raising your voice at daddy and accusing him of all sorts of –isms can look ungracious. While the odds of Democrats overplaying their hand so egregiously is low, those who come from the red states might still be concerned.

A battle that costs Republicans a lot of capital—and this is what Democrats are aiming for—is one that results in a confirmation of Kavanaugh (because it’s unavoidable) but a loss in the great war of public opinion. This is the sweet spot of political combat: the place where your enemy, to appease the base, alienates the majority.

When the president picks a Supreme Court Justice, pressures of simple party loyalty are extreme. For Democrats, therefore, the aim is to accept that senators from less-red states will vote for Kavanaugh but to make them hate every minute of it. They achieve that by winning the narrative—in this case, to go by Chuck Schumer’s groundwork on Twitter, that Kavanaugh will overturn Roe v. Wade and undo all protections for the little guy—and everyone associated with him or her emerges weakened.

These are merely partisan stakes, however. More important to the rest of us is whether the confirmation of Kavanaugh will change American life dramatically. The New Yorker’s Jeffrey Toobin has speculated that Trump’s nominee, whoever it was, would overturn Roe v. Wade and cause abortion to become “illegal in 20 states in 18 months.” Civil libertarians have worried that the president will have more power to detain people without charges, as happened under George W. Bush after 9/11, or that ordinary citizens will have fewer protections against police misconduct or prison abuse.

The trouble is that our bitterest divides are cultural, not economic, and our political system is poorly equipped to manage them. . . . . what does a compromise on abortion or same-sex marriage look like? It’s not the sort of thing that lends itself to the horse-trading of Congress. (If you believe abortion is evil, you don’t want to permit just a little bit of it.) Almost by default, therefore, we throw our social questions to the Supreme Court, as if to unburden ourselves of the mess.

So the fight commences. Already, we can read that Kavanaugh is an extremist and a partisan and a fanatic. Will that narrative work? We’ll see. Meanwhile, Kavanaugh can brace himself for weeks of pummeling. The spectacle will surely be ugly as ever. Given Kavanaugh’s own role in the partisan trenches, he probably deserves it. Maybe the rest of us do, too.