Iowa Senators Charles Grassley & Joni Ernst on Filling the Vacant Supreme Court Seat Before the Next Inauguration

 Iowans & All:

We have at issue the idea of FAIR PLAY with the current vacancy on the Supreme Court. I hope to address the issues of politics, fair play, hypocrisy, virtue, & legitimacy in a separate post. But first I want to share what I know of the positions of Iowa's two senators about attempting to fill the vacancy before the next administration, whether it be Biden or Trump 2. I'm linking to a letter that I received from Senator Grassley dated 7 March 2016 about his refusal to consider President Obama's nomination of Merrick Garland to fill the seat of Justice Scalia. As you will see from reading the Senator's letter, he provides a response based on precedent and other not-outrageous contentions. As you can see if you read my response, I didn't find those arguments persuasive, but he did attempt to provide a principled argument for his position.

Does he still adhere to his principles? It appears that he may. The Washington Post (https://www.washingtonpost.com/.../gop-senators-who-will.../) states the following about Grassley in its article regarding the position of some Republican senators about filling the seat until after the next presidential inauguration:

"Charles E. Grassley

[Senator Lindsey] Graham’s predecessor as Judiciary Committee chairman has also staked out a principled stand that would seem to preclude supporting a nominee in an election year.

Grassley, in defending the Garland gambit in 2018, cited precedent, saying that “it was very legitimate that you can’t have one rule for Democratic presidents and another rule for Republican presidents.”

Grassley also told NBC News last month that he “couldn’t move forward with it” if he were in charge of the Judiciary Committee like he was for Trump’s first two Supreme Court nominees."

(Links embedded in the quote above: https://www.desmoinesregister.com/.../u-s-sen.../604730002/ & https://www.nbcnews.com/.../democrats-warn-gop-don-t-fill....)

Thus, it appears that Grassley is sticking by his principles and holds a position consistent with his actions in the Garland nomination, unlike, for instance, the blatant hypocrisy of Senator Lyndsey Graham, who offers only the tiniest figleaf of principle to in an attempt to cover his lack of manhood.

But here's the real issue: will @Grassley act on his principles? Principles look great framed on a wall or stated in a speech, but when push comes to shove, principles are worthless as tits on boar (I had to use a real Iowa farm simile) if they aren't ENACTED. One (me) always hope that Grassley, who's been in Congress since 1975 (and the Senate since 1980) and who's been held in some esteem by his colleagues, observers, and voters, would stand-up to the ire of Trump and McConnell that he will no doubt incur if acts upon his stated principles. This is my hope, my wish. I've been let down by Grassley many times, but at this stage of his career, maybe he'll start to consider his legacy, whether he acts to reduce the fever now raging in American politics or instead stand-by and watch the continued decline of American democracy.

As to

Senator Joni Ernst

the same Washington Post article I cited above about Grassley also makes note of Ernst. The article reports:

"Joni Ernst

The Iowa senator also faces a tough reelection battle this year, and despite in 2016 promoting the idea that the new president would make that pick, she said in July that she’d support voting on a nominee — even in a lame duck.

“[If] it is a lame-duck session, I would support going ahead with any hearings that we might have,” Ernst said. “And if it comes to an appointment prior to the end of the year, I would be supportive of that.”

SNG: This is not surprising. While hope springs eternal with me about Grassley, with Ernst it's perpetual winter. She speaks out both sides of her mouth on this, and she'd do cartwheels on the Senate floor if Trump and McConnell so much as gave her a stern look. She's locked in a death-match over her Senate seat currently and must do her master's bidding.

SNGTHOUGHTS.BLOGSPOT.COM

Senator Grassley Replies re Supreme Court Nomination & My Open Response

Thoughts for the Day: Sunday 20 September 2020

 

The Master and His Emissary

Iain McGilchrist

[W]e need metaphor or mythos in order to understand the world. Such myths or metaphors are not dispensable luxuries, or ‘optional extras’, still less the means of obfuscation: they are fundamental and essential to the process. We are not given the option not to choose one, and the myth we choose is important: in the absence of anything better, we revert to the metaphor or myth of the machine.

Political Order and Political Decay

Francis Fukuyama

China, as noted many times in these volumes, builds on a two-millennia-long tradition of strong centralized government and is one of the few state-level societies never to have developed an indigenous tradition of rule of law. China’s rich and complex tradition has substituted Confucian morality for formal procedural rules as a constraint on rulers.

The Culture Code

Clotaire Rapaille

Ask most people why they work and they’re likely to answer “To make money.” The Culture Code shows us that this isn’t actually true, but there is a very strong connection between work and money in this culture.

An Autobiography

R. G. Collingwood

When I speak of action, I shall be referring to that kind of action in which the agent does what he does not because he is in a certain situation, but because he knows or believes himself to be in a certain situation.

"If you are not willing to risk the usual, you will have to settle for the ordinary." – Jim Rohn

And for the deeper dive from Hannah Arendt:

Essays in Understanding, 1930-1954

Hannah Arendt

Knowledge and understanding are not the same, but they are interrelated. Understanding is based on knowledge and knowledge cannot proceed without a preliminary, inarticulate understanding. Preliminary understanding denounces totalitarianism as tyranny and has decided that our fight against it is a fight for freedom.

. . . .

Understanding precedes and succeeds knowledge. Preliminary understanding, which is at the basis of all knowledge, and true understanding, which transcends it, have this in common: They make knowledge meaningful. Historical description and political analysis6 can never prove that there is such a thing as the nature or the essence of totalitarian government, simply because there is a nature to monarchical, republican, tyrannical, or despotic government.

Thoughts for the Day: Saturday 19 September 2020--In Memorium Justice Ginsberg

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg

Justice Louis Brandeis

“The greatest menace to freedom is an inert people,” and she [Ginsberg] advised people “to fight for the things you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.”  

--Justice Louis Brandeis & Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg

A Thousand Small Sanities

Adam Gopnik

These more extreme authoritarian attacks on liberalism come in three basic kinds. Let’s call their believers for simplicity’s sake—and with the obvious understanding that they cross over and hybridize in many intricate ways—triumphalist authoritarians, theological authoritarians, and tragic authoritarians. The first attack liberal weakness; the second, liberal materialism; the last, liberal hubris.

"Clichés, stock phrases, adherence to conventional, standardized codes of expression and conduct have the socially recognized function of protecting us against reality..." ― Hannah Arendt

The Caretakers of the Cosmos

Gary Lachman

Consciousness is the bottom line reality. It is, I accept, a mystery, but it is one I have an immediate, direct awareness of – I am, in fact, immersed in it – and it is one that is inseparable from my having any experience at all.

Animal Farm & 1984

George Orwell

Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.

And for the deeper dive, from "Understanding & Politics:"

Essays in Understanding, 1930-1954

Hannah Arendt

The originality of totalitarianism is horrible, not because some new “idea” came into the world, but because its very actions constitute a break with all our traditions; they have clearly exploded our categories of political thought and our standards for moral judgment.

Thoughts of the Day: Friday 18 September 2020

 

Man's Search for Himself

Rollo May

But another important reason for the feeling of loneliness arises from the fact that our society lays such a great emphasis on being socially accepted. It is our chief way of allaying anxiety, and our chief mark of prestige. Thus we always have to prove we are a “social success” by being forever sought after and by never being alone.

Why Liberalism Failed

Patrick J. Deneen

A succession of thinkers in subsequent decades and centuries were to build upon these three basic revolutions of thought, redefining liberty as the liberation of humans from established authority, emancipation from arbitrary culture and tradition, and the expansion of human power and dominion over nature through advancing scientific discovery and economic prosperity.

Principles

Ray Dalio

“Knowing that I could be painfully wrong and curiosity about why other smart people saw things differently prompted me to look at things through the eyes of others as well as my own. This allowed me to see many more dimensions than if I saw things just through my own eyes.”

And from the deeper look from "Understanding & Politics" from Hannah Arendt:

Essays in Understanding, 1930-1954

Hannah Arendt

The understanding of political and historical matters, since they are so profoundly and fundamentally human, has something in common with the understanding of people: who somebody essentially is, we know only after he is dead. This is the truth of the ancient nemo ante mortem beatus esse dici potest. For mortals, the final and eternal begins only after death.

(Location 6192)

Thoughts for the Day: Thursday 16 September 2020

 

The Post-American World

Fareed Zakaria

“This isolation has left Americans quite unaware of the world beyong their borders. Americans speak few languages, know little about foreign cultures, and remain unconvinced that they need to rectify this. Americans rarely benchmark to global standards because they are sure that their way must be the best and most advanced. There is a growing gap between America's worldly business elite and cosmopolitan class, on the one hand and the majority of the American people on the other. Without real efforts to bridge it, this divide could destroy America's competitive edge and its political future.”

"The deceivers started with self-deception. Probably because of their high station and their astounding self-assurance, they were so convinced of overwhelming success..." — Hannah Arendt

Hope is stubborn. It exists in us at the cellular level and works up from there, as part of the urge to live. So hope will persist. The question is, can we put it to use? \\

--KIM STANLEY ROBINSON (cited in Homer-Dixon, Thomas. Commanding Hope (p. v). Knopf Canada. Kindle Edition.

Standing by Words

Wendell Berry

A certain awesome futurity, then, is the inescapable condition of word-giving—as it is, in fact, of all speech—for we speak into no future that we know, much less into one that we desire, but into one that is unknown. But that it is unknown requires us to be generous toward it, and requires our generosity to be full and unconditional. The unknown is the mercy and it may be the redemption of the known. The given word may come to appear to be wrong, or wrongly given. But the unknown still lies ahead of it, and so who is finally to say? If time has apparently proved it wrong, more time may prove it right. As growth has called it into question, further growth may reaffirm it.

Meditations of a Buddhist Skeptic

B. Alan Wallace

Attentional balance, including the development of sustained, voluntary attention, is a crucial feature of mental health and optimal performance in any kind of meaningful activity.

And the deeper-dive quote for today, short but pungent, from Hannah Arendt:

Essays in Understanding, 1930-1954

Hannah Arendt

Indoctrination is dangerous because it springs primarily from a perversion, not of knowledge, but of understanding. The result of understanding is meaning, which we originate in the very process of living insofar as we try to reconcile ourselves to what we do and what we suffer.

Thoughts for the Day: Wednesday 16 September 2020

 

The Shape of Ancient Thought

Thomas McEvilley

Sextus’s [Sextus Empiricus] passage should be compared also with the Buddhist doctrine of the Four Noble Truths. In both cases the genesis of suffering is identified as the habit of discriminating between good and bad, which locks one into anxiety about avoiding what one dislikes and getting what one likes and, once one has got it, anxiety about holding on to it.

Every time man makes a new experiment he always learns more. He cannot learn less. 

--R. Buckminster Fuller

Demagogue

Michael Signer

[Hannah] Arendt cited President John Adams with approval: “a constitution is a standard, a pillar, and a bond when it is understood, approved and beloved. But without this intelligence and attachment, it might as well be a kite or balloon, flying in the air.”

And from Hannah Arendt's "Understanding & Politics," our feature deep quote source, the following:

Essays in Understanding, 1930-1954

Hannah Arendt

Words used for the purpose of fighting lose their quality of speech; they become clichés. The extent to which clichés have crept into our everyday language and discussions may well indicate the degree to which we not only have deprived ourselves of the faculty of speech, but are ready to use more effective means of violence than bad books (and only bad books can be good weapons) with which to settle our arguments.

SNG: Shades of Orwell, no?

Thoughts for the Day: Tuesday 15 September 2020

Speculum Mentis

R. G. Collingwood

To be a monad, as opposed to an atom; to be a world in itself unconnected with an indefinite number of other such worlds, each windowless and ignorant of a whole whose parts they nevertheless are—this is to be a work of art.

The Presence of the Infinite

Steve McIntosh

Comparing Aristotle’s three modes of persuasion with the premises of the evolutionary method, we can detect the influence of goodness, beauty, and truth on his overall categorical scheme. Specifically, ethos is most closely connected to the virtue or goodness of the speaker; pathos employs style or beauty to move the audience; and logos is about the actual message content or truth of the communication itself.

How to Think Like Leonardo Da Vinci

Michael J. Gelb

Long-term studies by Dr. Martin Seligman and many others show that the critical determinant of success in business and life is resilience in the face of adversity. Awareness, deep contemplation, and a sense of humor are your best friends in attempting to learn from difficult experiences.

A Thousand Small Sanities

Adam Gopnik

Burke’s horrified reaction to the killing of the French king and queen helps point us toward another, far fiercer right-wing critique of liberalism. That assault finds in liberalism a fatal overreliance on reason. It shares Burke’s sense of the chaos that could follow from the belief that society should be remade all at once on the basis of a big idea, with tradition and custom annihilated.

And for the finale:

Essays in Understanding, 1930-1954

Hannah Arendt

[W]eapons and fighting belong in the realm of violence, and violence, as distinguished from power, is mute; violence begins where speech ends.

Thoughts for the Day: Monday 14 September 2020

 

Amusing Ourselves to Death

Neil Postman

Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.

Recognize how you're feeling.
Acknowledge you are responsible for how you feel.
Allow yourself to feel without blame. Don't suppress how you feel. Don't feel guilty about feeling.
Take yourself out of your mind and into your body. Ask yourself where you're feeling it in your body?

You're not a prisoner of your feelings. When we suppress how we feel, our emotions become a negatively coiled spring waiting to pounce. The smallest disturbance can set the off without warning. When you rehash what happened, you only coil them more. When you blame other people for how you feel, you absolve yourself from something you are responsible for.

Instead feel without guilt or shame. It's ok to feel. Feel it in your body fully and it will pass quickly.

--Shane Parrish, Farnum Street

"It's only because of their stupidity that they're able to be so sure of themselves." ― Franz Kafka, The Trial  

"Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty." — Hannah Arendt

Speculum Mentis

R. G. Collingwood

To be a monad, as opposed to an atom; to be a world in itself unconnected with an indefinite number of other such worlds, each windowless and ignorant of a whole whose parts they nevertheless are—this is to be a work of art.

And from Hannah Arendt's Essays in Understanding, "Understanding & Politics:"

The fact that reconciliation is inherent in understanding has given rise to the popular misrepresentation tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner. Yet forgiving has so little to do with understanding that it is neither its condition nor its consequence. Forgiving (certainly one of the greatest human capacities and perhaps the boldest of human actions insofar as it tries the seemingly impossible, to undo what has been done, and succeeds in making a new beginning where everything seemed to have come to an end) is a single action and culminates in a single act. Understanding is unending and therefore cannot produce final results.

(Location 6167)