I will not be mansplained civics by a Trump enabler
The lead-up to this election is rough enough without a lecture on civics from a Silent Republican in the Trump Era.
Senator Sasse was at it again yesterday, and I’m stuck wondering why he gets under my skin in such a specific way that makes it impossible for me to focus on anything else. After his ill-considered op-ed last month in the Wall Street Journal, I wrote that he should not be allowed to wriggle away from the opprobrium that is his due as a Silent Republican in the Trump Era.
The Senate Judiciary Committee hearing for Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to the Supreme Court shouldn’t even be happening right now both on principle and for public health reasons. But, since it is happening and there’s nothing Democrats can do to stop it, let’s get into all the ways Senator Sasse managed to be so pompously wrong (again!).
He actually had the gall to frame his opening remarks as a civics lesson. His brand of deliberate misinformation gets me because not only does he manage to be condescending in his delivery, he’s also — in typical GOP fashion these days — incorrect, hypocritical, and deeply delusional.
He first dismisses Senator Klobuchar’s opening comments on COVID as not relevant to the conversation at hand, even though the judiciary hearing itself could be the next super-spreader event. Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) tested positive ten days ago and is participating in these indoor hearings without a mask, and without confirming a negative test. If all exposed senators had to quarantine for the recommended 14 days after exposure, it would jeopardize Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation before the election.
Senator Sasse lectures that “civics doesn’t change every 18 months” and yet if that were the case, Senator Sasse would’ve met with Merrick Garland, who would’ve been given a hearing. Mitch McConnell bragged about blocking Obama’s court nominees and considers his judicial obstruction his crowning career achievement. If civics doesn’t change every 18 months then why did Mitch McConnell block 105 federal court appointments, allowing Trump to fill them? Fun fact — Amy Coney Barrett got her seat on the 7th circuit because Mitch McConnell blocked Obama’s nominee (Black attorney Myra Selby) and refused to fill the open seat for a year. It is Senator Sasse’s party, led by Mitch McConnell who flouted norms and blew up conventions. It is they who make a mockery of US civics.
Senator Sasse also speaks of religious freedom as a fundamental tenet of civics, not politics which is laughable considering it’s a political ploy to pretend for the purposes of this hearing that senate Democrats are victimizing Amy Coney Barrett. It’s also wild that Senator Sasse can sit there with a straight face and claim religious freedom is sacrosanct when Trump instituted a Muslim ban and used the Bible as a literal prop. He also misquoted Second Corinthians when speaking at Liberty University and, if you believe Michael Cohen’s recently released memoir, after a meeting with prominent evangelicals in Trump tower said “Can you believe people believe that bulls — -?” It was also Trump’s wife who said “Who gives a fuck about Christmas?” Senator Sasse, the call is coming from inside the house!
There are larger truths about religion in this country that Senator Sasse will downplay and dismiss — that religious freedom is prioritized at the expense of human rights in America. Freedom to express your religion is marshaled as a justification to curtail marriage equality and reproductive rights. But Senator Sasse with his self-righteous blinders will claim religious freedom is simply civics, not politics.
It continues to astound me how the GOP, who enjoy control of all three branches of government have managed to find time — with the help of Fox news — to constantly play the victim. Although no senate Democrats have questioned Amy Coney Barrett’s faith, Republicans lean into this often successful strategy of self-victimization. They make a talking point and then it becomes part of the narrative, regardless of what Democrats have actually said. Today, Sasse played the religious victimization card and was joined by Republican Senators Graham, Grassley, Cruz, Cornyn, and Lee. They created their own reality and now we’re all forced to play defense by fact checking them all morning on Twitter.
Senator Sasse continues his delusional civics lesson by conflating “originalism” and “textualism” and speaking on the dangers of the philosophy of “judicial activism.” If we move past his careless definitional errors, it’s worth noting that nominating and confirming Amy Coney Barrett all but ensures the Supreme Court will overturn a major popular piece of legislation, the Affordable Care Act (ACA), passed by Congress & signed into law by President Obama and supported by 62% of the country. Amy Coney Barrett has been clear in her criticism of the Supreme Court decision preserving the ACA and she has been clear that she opposes abortion both personally and as a matter of precedent. Ominously, Altio and Thomas just authored a rant against Obergefell, signaling they’re eager to overturn the landmark 2015 case on marriage equality. Justices overturning popular legislation and long standing judicial precedent reflective of broad cultural and social progress is its own form of judicial activism.
Senator Sasse also complains of the spectre of “court packing” even though Mitch McConnell has been successfully court packing through obstruction and shortsighted partisan rule changes for the last six years. The judicial system is now weighted to favor conservatives at every level for a generation, and is poised to be vastly dissonant from the progressive majority of the country. The American judicial system is not stagnant, and we should never wish it to be so. The constitution has been amended many times to reflect a country growing and evolving into a better, more inclusive, more just and representative society. Any judicial reforms from the Biden administration will be in the service of righting wrongs, of rebalancing the court.
On a final note — in 8th grade my class learned US civics, but we also learned about the Holocaust. My teacher wrote the phrase “unconditional obedience” on the chalkboard for the entirety of the months-long unit. We didn’t just learn the facts of the Holocaust, we learned how an authoritarian regime can happen anywhere. We studied the Milgram experiment and watched La vita è bella (1997, d. Roberto Benigni). We learned about systematic dehumanization and the bystander effect, we read Hannah Arendt’s theory on the banality of evil. My teacher knew that an effective and impactful unit on the Holocaust must teach us how the atrocity happened, so we could learn the warning signs and ensure it never happened again.
We learned that when good people do nothing, when polite people do nothing, when generous people of faith do nothing, when dutiful career bureaucrats do nothing in the face of abuses of authority and unthinkable human rights atrocities — nationalism grows into tyranny, tyranny begets genocide. As 8th graders we learned how societies collapse into chaos…very gradually and then all at once. The frog in boiling water. 8th graders are smart, and will see through the toxic nonsense peddled by cowardly politicians who long ago bent the knee to Trumpism.
I hope the legacy of Senator Sasse and his ilk will backfire spectacularly in the years to come. If the Democrats beat the odds (gerrymandered districts, legalized voter suppression efforts, shady disinformation campaigns) and take back the executive and legislative branches, we will have the People’s mandate to rebalance power and shore up our democracy so that we never come this close to authoritarian rule again. We’ll have our work cut out for us, and at no point should we pause to entertain a lecture on civics from Senator Sasse or any other Silent Republican in the Trump Era.
