Getting What You Deserve

The Alito hearings have brought up the argument that there should be no questioning of Alito, and certainly no filibustering, because Bush "won" the elections and the wingnuts won and they can nominate whomever they want. The spoils of war. A country consisting of winners and losers. One of the worst aspects of the two-party system, I think.

Then there is the slightly different but ultimately the same argument that people wanted Alito on the bench because they voted for Bush who campaigned on these issues. It is the same argument in the sense of telling us "losers" to shut up and offer our necks for the victor, but it is also slightly different because it makes an argument that can actually be studied for relevancy, and that is the one about Bush running on the issues that Alito represents.

He did run on the anti-abortion issue, true. But he didn't really go around telling that blacks and women shouldn't have good jobs or that ten-year old girls should be stripped naked in front of police officers if they and their mothers happened to visit a suspected drug dealer's house at the time when the police had a warranty to strip-search the drug dealer only. Yet these are the kinds of things that Alito supports.

It can be argued that Bush ran for all oppressive and vile things and that his base knew this. He talked to them in code about this, but it was in code for the very reason that most Americans would have vomited if they had known what he was proposing. Thus, to argue that the voters who picked Bush wanted Alito is far-fetched and mostly wrong. What most of them probably voted for was the sitting president at a time of war. Traditionally war-presidents are not kicked out and does Bush know this. We are most likely to have eternal war from now on.

The war is also used to change the basic nature of democracy: the arguing. The most recent wingnut interpretation of political debate is that there should be no disagreement with the president on anything. Disagreement is treason. The winners take all. We have always been at war with Eurasia, and Alito hearings are boring.