Malaise: Of Course It’s Like This
There’s not much similarity between the news of the (lack of) criminal charges against Breonna Taylor’s killers and the news of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death. But both events have given me the same feeling: a hopeless malaise. I wish the feeling was anger. Instead, it’s the post-anger feeling, when you’re worn out from anger, when you know there was never any hope in the first place. I didn’t believe for a second that Senate Republicans would stand by the principles they proclaimed in 2016. I didn’t believe for a second that Breonna Taylor’s killers would receive justice. Because I know how broken our systems are.
The only thing I dared to hope for in Breonna Taylor’s case is that there would be a trial. Maybe they’d dig into the officer’s history to find evidence of racism, or specific animus toward the victim. Maybe the circumstances leading to the issuance of a no-knock warrant would be revealed, and more people would be found culpable. There was no chance that an officer who killed a Black woman when returning fire would be found guilty of murder; her life was in danger the moment the warrant was signed. I hoped a trial would shine more light on why that warrant was signed - it’s great for the safety of citizens and officers alike that no-knock warrants are getting banned in lots of places; a thorough inquest may have revealed more structural deficiencies that could be addressed to save future lives. That’s a pretty dim best-case scenario, so I didn’t have much hope to extinguish. The most scapegoat-able of the officers has lost his job and will face the most minor charge possible from his actions. The injustice is predictable, and I feel malaise.
Few things make me irate like hypocrisy. But even the bald-faced hypocrisy of the Republican members of the Senate fails to move my feelings anymore. They’ve been playing a long power-grab game for at least as long as I’ve been paying attention to politics. First, they obstructed everything Obama wanted to do, including his political appointments, then claimed he was a failure, repeating the phrase “failed policies of Obama” every time someone put a mic in their face. They were in the minority, so they had to do this through the filibuster. Democrats responded by changing the cloture rules, so that other than the Supreme Court, presidential appointments merely needed majority support. Republicans did away with the Supreme Court exception as soon as they had a President. Their strategy has been to seize power in the chambers of government that did not require the consent of the majority of the people, no matter the cost.
The Senate is easy - whichever party rural voters prefer will have a huge advantage, because every state gets the same number—even though California has seventy times more people than Wyoming, each state gets two.
Through the Senate, the party can control the courts. No one gets through without Senate approval.
With control over the lifetime appointments of the Supreme Court, as well as the higher federal courts, they can put a stop to the will of the majority any time they want.
If we assume this has been the strategy all along, the hypocrisy makes sense. All that matters is power. You don’t need to be a principled leader if what the people think doesn’t impact your position. You don’t need to pretend to care about right and wrong. So of course what they said in 2016 doesn’t matter. Of course they’re going to push Trump’s nominee through, without paying any attention to due diligence. If they get a 6-3 Supreme Court, they’re set. They can lose the Presidency and still hold power. They could even weather losing the Senate for a few years; they’ll get it back, and they’ll find a way to stop any progressive legislation in the meantime. It’s a good strategy, if you’re a power-hungry sociopath.
And all the feeling I can muster about it is malaise. I suspect that’s part of the strategy too.
