The Pursuit Of Happiness And Me

Point is, these right wingers really BELIEVE Trump's claims of grievance, because he has spent 8 years getting Republicans to believe his propaganda. He has ALREADY thoroughly dismantled rule of law for Republicans. It's just normies don't get that yet.

— emptywheel (blue dacnis) (@emptywheel) October 13, 2024

Trump didn’t start it. Trump is the apotheosis. This started in the Cold War, quite literally , with a “young” JFK taking the White House away from Nixon the Commie Hunter (who was tight with Roy Cohen). And also the demise of Joe McCarthy (Eisenhower was a weak sister, probably because of all the Commies in his State Department). But the real catalyst was the failure of Goldwater.  

Trump is just Goldwater who believes the bullshit the mossbacks with money have sold him. The fall of Goldwater spurred the grassroots, closed doors movement of Viguerrie and Norquist (somebody had to fund them), which finally made Newt the Speaker of the House, and Clinton a vilified President (and if you think the NYT is bad now, find a copy of Gene Lyons’ Fools For Scandal. Everything new is old again.)

From Gingrich comes the Tea Party (a completely Astro-turfed group the political press accepted as “grassroots” like the gullible rubes they are) which led directly to Trump.

The only mistake that’s been consistently made is that America would wake up and shake off these “fleas” and return to the liberal vision that started with Kennedy (LBJ passed the Civil Rights Act as Kennedy’s (Johnson beefed it up), and as a tribute to the murdered President).  The situation now is the rule; Kennedy-LBJ was the aberration.

This is where I remind you the Warren Court dismantled the “rule of law” with more decisions than I have time to catalogue. It was pretty much received that way by the people who started working to overturn Roe a decade before that decision was handed down. Because they’ve been working to reverse the Warren Court since Brown v Board, a landmark decision today more honored in the breach than in the keeping.

And gutting campaign finance regulations? The VRA? Warren Court church-state separation jurisprudence? All done in accordance with the “rule of law.”

In fact, Trump talked a lot about ruling like a dictator in his one term. He did it in D.C. so he could hold a Bible upside down in front of a church. But he never managed it nationwide. Not that he won’t keep trying. But the rule of law set by legislation, thwarted him. (There are two rules: the law written into statutes, easily altered when the courts grossly misread legislative intent; and constitutional interpretation, which under the Roberts Court is almost wholly unrestrained. Trump v US is as wholly invented ruling with no basis in anything except the votes of 6 people. One rule has more constitutional validity than the other.)

The problem is not Trump. The problem is the electorate. American grievance is not about “economic anxiety.” It’s about having everything “my way,” because that’s what “the pursuit of happiness” means. Maybe not to Jefferson; but certainly to us.