Drop The Gloves
When they go low, we punch them in the mouth.
I learned of the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg as I sat down to the table with my parents and wife to celebrate my wife’s birthday. My parents, staunch conservatives, did not react to the news of Justice Ginsburg’s death at all. Shockingly, neither did my wife, who idolized the liberal lioness of the Supreme Court from the time before I knew her. Like many, I believe it was shock that led to the lack of a reaction.
I was not shocked, I was immediately panicked. I had to hide it. But this isn’t about me, and it’s not about my wife, and it’s not even about the election.
I normally sit with these feelings for hours or days, sometimes weeks or months, before I formulate the words for such a reaction. I try to remain calm and balanced before I sit down to type out something that I would classify as an important topic like this one. I am foregoing such a formality in this case. Why? One very specific reason. Mitch McConnell.
Before her body was cold, before the news had reached the ends of the country of her death, Mitch McConnell reversed his own precedent of not voting on judicial nominees in an election year. As suspected in 2016, McConnell’s bristling at Merrick Garland’s nomination by President Barack Obama was nothing more than a shiv in the side of bipartisanship and a last act to thwart any lasting legacy of the Obama administration. Even in his statement after the death of Justice Ginsburg, McConnell calls Obama’s appointment the work of “a lame-duck President” that needed to be blocked. In the same statement, McConnell ends by stating that President Trump’s nominee will get a vote.
In the kindest way I can put this, McConnell can go fuck himself.
I’m truly tired of waiting for November to voice my discontent. I’m tired of mincing my words simply not to be offensive, or to appear to respect “the other side.” I have no respect for “the other side” because they do not show any respect to us. First Lady Michelle Obama famously said “when they go low, we go high,” and she is often correct. But with respect to the First Lady, when their lows reach a dangerous level, “going high” can seem aloof or even ignorant of the consequences of allowing them to continue to sink to new depths.
“My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed.” -Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, on her deathbed.
In the game of hockey, there are written rules that send you to the penalty box if you break them. These rules are enforced by a referee that is appointed by the league to see them enforced. Then there are the unwritten rules. The rules that aren’t put to paper, but you just know they’re lines you don’t cross. These rules are enforced on the ice by players among themselves. It’s a matter of respect. When they go low, you beat them to hell. You might lose, and you’ll both go to the box, but a message gets sent. When they break the code, you drop the gloves. It’s not a rule, it’s an expectation.
With respect to Democrats hoping for a peaceful resolution in November, it’s time to drop the gloves. There is no bottom, no depth to which the GOP and the right-wing will not sink to defend their own power. Democratic checks mean nothing to them. The only thing they will respond to, at this point, are the threats of complete destruction and we must be ready to make good on those threats. What are those threats? I’m so glad you asked.
Impeachment Proceedings
Senate proceedings prioritize impeachment over nominations, so if the House stuffed the Senate with trial after trial for impeachments, they would need to deal with those prior to any potential replacements for Ginsburg’s seat. Some of these could be Attorney General William Barr, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, or even the President again.
Whoever is the target, however many targets there are, the House would need to pass impeachment papers to the Senate with enough interest to hold hearings for at least long enough to get to the November election when it would likely become clear that Trump is also a lame-duck President at the end of his term.
If they approve a nominee anyway, we move to threat number two.
Judicial Impeachments and Stuffing the Court
If Mitch McConnell wants to play this game, it’s his own undoing. The death of Justice Ginsburg, as impolite as it may seem to say, will become the rallying cry for women to vote in the name of defending Roe v Wade and women’s rights for the next generation. It is likely, though not certain, that Democrats will take the White House and the Senate in 2021. If Mitch McConnell decides to roll the dice on replacing Ginsburg with a conservative justice, one option the Democrats would have is to go nuclear. Eliminate the filibuster, impeach the conservative justices one by one, and expand the Supreme Court and fill the vacancies with progressive and liberal judges to create an insurmountable majority.
This would be the nuclear legislative option, and would likely rule out bipartisanship for the better part of a half-century at least, but at this point who cares about that? Are we really going to try and reason with a group of religious fanatics who would rather steal a woman’s uterus in a concentration camp than allow her to make the decision not to give birth if she had been pregnant? No, we can’t. There is no going back. The Republican Party already decided that bipartisanship was dead, it’s just going to take Democrats waking up and realizing that it will never come back until the Republican Party is destroyed and a new Party takes its place with hopefully a more reasonable outlook.
The bottom line?
It’s time to drop the gloves. If Mitch McConnell decides to create this double standard and install some hyper-partisan conservative in the seat of the icon of women’s rights in the Judiciary, then we need to punch back. We are on the track, barreling toward a theocratic ethno-fascist state, and the methods for conservatives to install and reinforce that state would be in place if Trump gets his third nominee on the Supreme Court. This must be stopped by any means necessary, using every opportunity and method at the disposal of everyone inside our government.
This isn’t to say that our actions to oppose Justice Ginsburg’s dying wish being violated won’t come without resistance. The militant, violent white supremacist supporters of Trump and his cronies have already inflicted violence upon those simply demanding equal treatment under the law. I can only imagine the vitriol and violence should we stand up and fight back, once again, against this on every level. All I can say is that we’re at a national crossroads, and if we decide to abide by non-violent maxims while guns are pointed at our heads to give up our civil liberties in the name of defending a President who simply wants power to dismantle our government for his own benefit then we will lose. At some point we must stand and fight back. We must pray that it remains peaceful, but we must be ready to fight back.
Peace is the privilege of a just society, and we are living in times that are not peaceful because our society is fundamentally unjust. Tonight, we lost one of the greatest warriors for justice that our nation has seen. She will be missed.
But it’s important to remember that our rights are not granted, they are taken. They are seized by us, and must be defended the same way. If the Trump Administration and Mitch McConnell’s Senate Republicans want to install a Justice who will continue to wither the rights of American citizens, then it will be up to us to rise to defend them. It will be up to us to write a furious dissent, and be willing to back it up with whatever price comes with it.
In the words of President Thomas Jefferson: the Tree of Liberty must be watered with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
Pray for peace, hope that this can be solved democratically, but be ready to drop the gloves and fight for the rights secured by our forefathers by any means necessary.