Parade of know-nothing judicial nominees marches on
Of recent Trump judicial nominees: two were yanked by the head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, conservative Charles Grassley, for lack of competence. A third (Matthew Petersen) withdrew after being grilled on basic points of the the law by Republican senator John Kennedy, during which the senator’s consternation over Petersen’s hedging and failure to answer was ill-disguised.
News organization such as the Washington Post bring to light the most flagrant cases of incompetence on the part of Trump nominees who are seeking lifetime judicial posts, but we can safely infer that many of those being confirmed, without our hearing of it, are likely to have only marginal credentials. They get confirmed because they are conservatives, and the committee is in a hurry to cram them in—so much of a hurry that committee Democrats are largely frozen out of the loop (as with the tax bill, although these judgeships may be more consequential in the long run; the tax bill can be undone by future legislation, but these federal judges’ positions are for life—ironically, that provision was meant to insulate the judges from politics, but these nominees are coming in with plenty of conservative political baggage from the get-go).
Part of the reason for the dearth of qualifications among Trump judicial nominees may be that Trump does not take their qualifications seriously, because he doesn’t understand what the rule of law and separation of powers mean under the U.S. Constitution. Or maybe he does understand and thinks it’s fine to trample on them. The latest sign of Trump’s disdain for these two fundamental principles was revealed Monday, when we learned that the president had considered nixing his own nominee for the Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch, because he had doubts about Gorsuch’s “loyalty.” What triggered this near-about-face was Gorsuch’s observation that Trump’s insulting federal judges was “disheartening” and “demoralizing,” back in May. (Much has been made of Gorsuch not mentioning Trump by name, but everyone knew whom he was referring to.)
Reconsidering Gorsuch on account of questionable “loyalty” (to Trump, that is) stems from Trump thinking of himself as a despot at the top of a pyramid of the U.S. government, with all other branches under his feet. But to give him an incongruous benefit of the doubt, maybe it’s as much sheer ignorance as the urge to dominate that color his thoughts about the judicial branch and the justice department. Maybe if he had understood more about how the U.S. government operates back in the spring of 2015, he might have aborted his run for president. Maybe if he had paid more attention in fifth grade social studies, he might not ever even thought of being president.
Now that he’s in, he is constantly frustrated and fuming and sometimes flying into rages because of the limitations of his office. It’s not what he expected! Similarly to what he said about the health care bill , “who would have thought health care could be so complicated?” he is finding out just how complicated it is to head a government that doesn’t operate by royal fiat.
Ladders of ignorance
Ignorance is a hallmark of the Trump administration, and it’s almost as if it is sought out. Perhaps so that Trump will feel more comfortable having underlings even more ignorant than he is. We remember the ignorance evident in Betsy DeVos’s awkward responses in the hearings on her nomination for Education Secretary. There was a similarly awkward episode in a recent committee hearing on the nomination of Kathleen Hartnett White to be EPA’s environmental quality council chair—in case you missed it, there’s a clip here.
Of course we have the climate change deniers (self-described “skeptics”) Scott Pruitt and Ryan Zinke put in leadership positions in the EPA and Interior Department. I’m not quite sure to what degree Zinke is scientifically challenged (he has a bachelor’s in geology), but everything Pruitt has said about climate change shows a dismaying lack of understanding of atmospheric science.
Pruitt falls back on the usual dodge: “there is uncertainty in the science.” Yes! Surprise! There’s uncertainty! There’s uncertainty as to how long it will take, if you repeatedly throw a pair of dice, to get snake eyes—but it will happen! It will happen approximately once every 36 throws. And it will happen sooner if you load the dice in favor of snake eyes. And climate change will happen, is happening, getting worse, and all the while we’re still loading the dice to come up snake eyes.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson displays a different type of ignorance. Like Trump, he conceives of himself as at the top of a pyramid, and he’s clearing deadwood out of the State Department bureaucracy by not nominating people to key positions. The narrower the pyramid below him, the more control he has. Problem for him and the department is, State is by its nature not much of a pyramid. The broader its functions, the broader is the organization. It’s a sprawling enterprise because of the number of countries, alliances, coalitions, factions, NGOs, trade agreements and treaties it deals with. Within any country at any time, there may be power struggles, coups, or worse, civil wars. (Not to mention wars between countries.) Many of these countries have their own foreign service bureaucracies with multiple levels, and the U.S. needs to engage with their bureaucracies at every one of those levels.
For Tillerson to see himself as something like the CEO he was at Exxon evinces both ignorance and arrogance. The combination of the two, and Trump’s desire for him to whittle down the department, means State is losing its institutional knowledge base as well as its best people, and those who remain are experiencing a loss of morale. New hires will have fewer, or less knowledgeable, mentors, and the qualifications of the hires themselves will sink along with the cuts in federal pay to be imposed by the Trump administration. The organization as a whole will become increasingly ignorant, top to bottom, as part of the ladder of ignorance that pervades the entire Trump administraton.
So the dumbing-down of the USA has a degrading impact on foreign diplomacy just as much as on domestic affairs.
Shrinking vocabularies
One way to promote ignorance and practice mind control is to banish certain words and phrases. Censorship is usually a feature of fictional dystopias, but it’s now happening in the Trump administration.
We already know that anyone seeking a grant from the EPA cannot couple these two fatal words: “climate change.” But it’s getting worse. . .
Recently the administration banned the use of certain words in the CDC, of all places (you don’t get a whole lot less political than the CDC): “diversity,” “transgender,” “fetus,” “vulnerable,” “entitlement,” “science-based,” and “evidence-based.”
Why would “vulnerable” become off limits? Answer: “vulnerable” is a word used to describe the powerless, the persecuted, the bullied, the sick, the handicapped, the marginalized—all segments of the population which Donald Trump, if he were actually king, would send to a prison colony for “losers.” In Trump terms, it is a Politically Correct adjective used to justify helping the weak—a waste of resources that could be better used building the Great Wall to separate us from the rapists and criminals flooding in from Mexico .
“Fetus,” is apparently under fire for referring to a stage of embryonic development—an overly scientific term which anti-abortion extremists might say dehumanizes the “unborn person.” Just how these extremists would like to classify the stages of development for medical purposes is unclear. Maybe they’d like to use a system of letters or numbers: Unborn Person Stage A, Unborn Person Stage B, etc.
But the choices of particular words and phrases themselves is not the most vital point. The vital point is that if the government can ban the use of certain words with no more justification than they don’t fit some ideological straitjacket, then we are headed in the direction of Russia, China, Vietnam, Saudi Arabia, etc., where language, independent thought, and freedom of expression, are all restricted by a small group of censors at the behest of oppressive autocrats. That this sort of thing has happened in the past does not make it any more acceptable now.
Thought Experiment: How to Torment the Man with the Best Words
It recently occurred to me that a suitable torture for Donald Trump (who has assured us he has “all the best words”) would be to lock him in a room with a parrot that knows only six terms: “Climate,” “change” “is real,” “Mueller,” and ” investigation.”
Sample parrot monologue:
Awk! Awk! Climate Change is real. Climate Change is real. Awk! Mueller Investigation. Awk! Climate Change is real. Is real. Mueller investigation. Climate. Awk! Change is real. Investigation. Awk! Mueller. Mueller. – [3 second pause] -Mueller. Awk! Investigation. Real. Awk! Climate change. Real. Awk! Climate Mueller is – [5 second pause] – Awk! real. Mueller is real. Climate investigation is real. Awk! Change is real. Awk! Investigation. Awk!
– for eternity –
On that pleasant note, I wish everyone the best of the holiday season.
And for a few traditionalists, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Good fortune to all.