Invoking Stalin over a U.S. court decision would seem as overheated as invoking Hitler (though the Left seems to do it nearly every hour on the hour) for some executive decision, but the Ninth Circuit’s ruling refusing to reinstate Trump’s temporary travel ban on seven states where terrorism is prevalent is bizarrely reminiscent of the general secretary’s show trials. The same disregard for the law was evident, the same iron hand of the state extinguishing reason or even common sense.
Yes, the Department of Justice’s attorney who pled the case — August Flentje — seemed like a last-minute replacement on a junior high school debate squad. But it’s doubtful all of O.J.’s dream team plus Clarence Darrow could have moved this trio of judges whose decision was never really justified (although a text was published) — because it couldn’t be. It had nothing to do with the law and everything to do with politics. In other words, a show trial.
The separation of powers meant nothing to these three, who arrogated to themselves the defense of the country, a duty the Constitution delegates to the commander-in-chief and Congress, not the judiciary. Heaven help us if we were fully engaged in a live shooting war like WWII and these jurists held sway over something of significance. Millions could die.
The justices’ real motivation was to rein in wild Donald Trump before he does something more dangerous in their eyes, to stick banderillas in him as if he were a bull, softening him up for the kill. (In a sense, this too is very much like the show trials, whose intent was to prepare the world’s citizenry for the Great Purge.)
But here’s a thought experiment. What if Barack Obama had done the exact same thing, temporarily restricting immigration from those seven countries for the safety of our people? What would those three eminent Ninth Circuit judges have done?
I’d bet my entire net worth and leverage it to the skies that they’d let him continue with a unanimous vote. Those phonies are just that disingenuous. Of course that assumes there would even have been a legal case brought in the first place, which there almost certainly would not have been.
Indeed that’s true of just about everything Trump has done or contemplated. If the other side — Hillary, Obama, even Bernie — had done identical things, there would barely be a peep.
It’s all about rage and vengeance, as if half of our country, probably more, were in sore need of anger-management training. And I’m not just talking about those violent pseudo-anarchist demonstrators whose arrested development attests to generations of parental failure. Or the absurdity of thousands of women parading around in giant vaginas to supposedly make a statement about Donald Trump. (Maybe they should have dressed up like cigars to make a statement about Bill Clinton.)
It’s far greater than that. The general state of public discussion in our society is the lowest I can remember. Most Democrats sound like bleating imbeciles and a good many Republicans aren’t much better. Nothing is debated seriously. Hatred is everywhere from the public sphere to our split families.
As Chris Cillizza notes, Marco Rubio is to be praised for putting his finger on this situation in a speech in the Senate the other day after they finally told Elizabeth Warren to sit down and shut up. Some key Rubio quotes:
“I don’t know of a civilization in the history of the world that’s been able to solve its problems when half the people in a country absolutely hate the other half of the people in that country.”
“We are becoming a society incapable of having debate anymore.”
“We are reaching a point in this republic where we are not going to be able to solve the simplest of issues because everyone is putting themselves in a corner where everyone hates everybody.”
“What’s at stake here tonight … is not simply some rule but the ability of the most important nation on earth to debate in a productive and respectful way the pressing issues before it.”
Now it’s easy to attack Marco because he’s a pol and, well, we all know about his ambitions and his failures. There’s no point in rehashing them. But what he said here is pretty indisputable. His eight-minute speech is very much worth a listen. Rubio argues brilliantly for democratic debate. The Ninth Circuit did their best to cut it off.
Roger L. Simon is an award-winning novelist, Academy Award-nominated screenwriter and co-founder of PJ Media. His latest book is I Know Best: How Moral Narcissism Is Destroying Our Republic, If It Hasn’t Already. You can find him on Twitter @rogerlsimon.
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