This Is Not Normal, Part 3
The inauguration of a convicted felon and adjudicated rapist raises some fundamental questions about our democracy.
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This series of posts examines a number of fundamental presumptions about the way the United States functions — presumptions which appear to be outdated or, at the very least, insufficient to deal with the current state of the nation.
In This Is Not Normal, Part 1, we looked at some of the ways the legal system does not seem to be up to the task of contending with the realities of life in the United States in the year 2025.
In This Is Not Normal, Part 2, we questioned whether our political and electoral systems can live up to modern day realities.
Next up: Questions about our society at large and whether our Constitution and our laws have fully responded to the drastic changes in our society since the nation’s founding.
Societal Questions
Are our Constitution and our laws nimble enough to address the technology that pervades our culture?
Listen, my children, and you shall hear: The Constitution was written in the era of the midnight ride of Paul Revere. Is it any wonder that our founders had no concept of mass communication, social media, instant messaging, or 24-hour cable news cycles? More importantly, is it any wonder that the founders made no provisions for the world that those technologies would create?
In the centuries and decades that have followed the writing of our Constitution, lawmakers haven’t exactly been on the cutting edge of technological changes. The faster our technology has advanced, the farther behind our laws have lagged.
Remember when Sen. Ted Stevens referred to the internet as “a series of tubes”? That may have been an extreme (and laughable) example of how out of touch many of our lawmakers are with the way technology works. But he certainly wasn’t (and isn’t) alone in his cluelessness. Yet these same governing bodies are left to make decisions about complex issues as net neutrality and TikTok bans.
Many of these lawmakers are also recipients of campaign contributions from technology companies and, whether they care to admit it or not, are swayed in their votes about technological issues.
We now find ourselves in an era in which tech billionaires have the ability to control the beliefs of huge swaths of the voting public. As a result, a candidate who seeks power through any means necessary is at the mercy of the tech billionaires.
It’s even more troubling when a candidate himself has a controlling interest in a social media platform. (It’s no coincidence that Felon47’s social media platform is called “Truth Social.” That’s the same name of the newspaper that the Soviet Union used to spread propaganda — Pravda, which means “truth” in Russian.)
Is it time for a comprehensive assessment of our media landscape, along with the commensurate updates to our laws and regulations to mitigate such outsized influence?
Should a media outlet that purports to be a news outlet have an obligation to report what is true and verifiable?
Should Freedom of Speech include the freedom to use mass media to lie, deceive, spread propaganda, with the potential of destroying the very democracy that enshrined that freedom of speech into law?
There have been laws in the past that provided at least some guardrails around the types of content that could be broadcast.
“The fairness doctrine had two basic elements: It required broadcasters to devote some of their airtime to discussing controversial matters of public interest, and to air contrasting views regarding those matters. Stations were given wide latitude as to how to provide contrasting views: It could be done through news segments, public affairs shows, or editorials. The doctrine did not require equal time for opposing views but required that contrasting viewpoints be presented. The demise of this FCC rule has been cited as a contributing factor in the rising level of party polarization in the United States.”
In 1987, Ronald Reagan’s FCC abolished the Fairness Doctrine and in 2011, the FCC removed the rule from the Federal Register that allowed the Fairness Doctrine to exist in the first place. There’s been a steady decline of our media ever since.
Our media have become more consolidated. Media corporations have snatched up different sources of information and have regularly put profits ahead of any journalistic standards. Add to that the ascent of cable news stations (which aren’t subject to FCC rules). An entire right-wing media infrastructure has grown up, with Fox News at the forefront and with several imitators, enticed by the profits that Fox News generated to get their piece of the pie. Lying for profit has become big business.
Augmented by an array of right-wing AM radio bloviators, organized online misinformation and disinformation campaigns, and even reinforcement of lies from the stages of Christian nationalist megachurches, there has evolved an entire media ecosystem built upon falsehoods and rumors.
Consequently, it’s possible — perhaps even probable — that voters can receive all of their political information within an infrastructure that only reinforces their pre-existing beliefs. It’s not that other viewpoints aren’t available; it’s just that consumers of news have to resist their own confirmation bias and proactively seek out opposing points of view.
In the interest of salvaging our democracy, should the Fairness Doctrine be restored? Should cable news outlets be held to the same standards as broadcast outlets?
Should there be better checks and balances to prevent SCOTUS or any other federal court from becoming partisan?
Justice is supposed to be blind and our courts were intended to be non-partisan. Neither of those traits could be used to describe how our justice system functions today. A single inexperienced judge appointed by a sitting president has consistently and inexplicably ruled in favor of the president who appointed her in a case brought against that president — one of the most important and consequential cases in the history of the nation.
Aside from the hyperpartisan nature of the current SCOTUS, there have also been some severe violations of basic ethics that any justice in a lower court would have to take responsibility for. But this SCOTUS seems to believe it is above the law, failing to establish an enforceable code of ethics and refusing to take accountability for blatantly obvious breaches of ethics.
President Biden, ever the traditionalist, tiptoed around the pressing issue of Supreme Court reform. Even the most benign of reforms — such as adding justices to the court to match the number of federal judicial circuits — were left undone. That failure left an opening for the continued deterioration of our system of justice.
The current administration is likely to have an opportunity to nominate at least one more SCOTUS justice, possibly more, virtually guaranteeing decades of extreme conservative rulings that are completely out of touch with the beliefs and desires of the vast majority of the population.
It’s not a coincidence that the Supreme Court has the lowest approval ratings at any time in history and has markedly lower approval ratings than the other branches of government.
Is there any hope that the Supreme Court of the United States can be saved? Will it reach a breaking point when even conservatives will have had enough?
Should a religious sect feel free to exercise unrestrained influence on our government?
Call it Christian fundamentalism. Call it Christian nationalism. (I promise you I have much worse names for it.) There is a segment of Christianity that has had an outsized and increasing effect on our daily life and on our government. The extreme right flank of Christianity (if you can even call it Christianity anymore) has over the years put more and more pressure on our Supreme Court, our Judiciary as a whole, our Congress, and — with the rise of Felon47 — our Executive Branch. Yet they are in a distinct minority.
With these inroads, right-wing Christianity has managed to form the equivalent of a shadow government. They’ve infested school boards. They’ve gotten books banned from libraries. They’ve imposed their “religious” will on our health care system. They’ve worked toward turning into the United States into a white Christian nationalist country, in distinct contrast to the intent of the Constitution. It is the very first sentence in the First Amendment:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof …”
Despite that very clear statement, right-wing Christian organizations have done their damnedest for years to try to grab hold of the levers of political power.
“The Family” set up shop in Washington, DC, with the specific aim of intertwining their particular brand of religion with the federal government.
For years, the Heritage Foundation, through its lobbying efforts, has defined policy through the back door.
With a willing collaborator in Felon47, Project 2025 (a project of the Heritage Foundation) is now calling the shots in defining the policies of the presidential administration.
All of this has been occurring at a time when participation and belief in organized religion is on a sharp decline. Without some sort of intervention, the U.S. seems to be on a glide path toward the establishment of a state religion, despite what is so clearly stated in the Constitution.
Is there some way of minimizing wealth disparity and income inequality without impeding the so-called “American Dream”?
So much of the imbalance in our politics is a mirror of the imbalance of wealth in the United States and in the world.
The top 20 billionaires in the United States have a combined wealth of $2.7 trillion. (There’s a great visualization here.) Meanwhile, the wealthiest among us keep getting tax breaks while tax rates for lower and middle income people continue to rise.
There’s a similar disparity for corporations. Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich recently published a brief list of corporations and their tax rates before and after the 2017 Trump tax law:
Verizon
Before: 21% | After: 8%Walmart
Before: 31% | After: 17%AT&T
Before: 13% | After: 3%Walt Disney
Before: 26% | After: 8%FedEx
Before: 18% | After: 1%
You don’t have to be an economist to understand the disparity between what the wealthiest among us pay in taxes and what the least wealthy among us pay.
If we accept the premise that “corporations are people, my friend,” as Mitt Romney insisted in 2011, shouldn’t we also presume that those corporations should be taxed at the same rates as actual flesh-and-blood people?
This post turned out to be the lengthiest in this series, perhaps because there are so many things that are systemically out of balance in our culture.
I’ll publish a wrap-up in a couple of days with some additional thoughts.
A frightening, prescient list of questions that address the towering, nearly immovable forces currently blocking out the light of reason and progress.