Part 2: The waking sleeping giant lurks not just in public places
The lion now is roaring, quite loudly.
Photo by Travis Jervey.
In the first part yesterday of this three part essay, I described how Americans are no longer the disinterested public that we have seen for more than a half century. No longer is the left the only group with passion. Ordinary Americans are now paying attention, and appear aggressively unwilling to allow leftist bad policy and slanderous blacklisting go unchallenged. The public might not be partisan Republicans or conservatives, but it is nonetheless finally aware and outraged by the leftist agenda that has dominated government policy for the past decade, including policies that encouraged the mutilation and castration of children, allowed the queer agenda in schools, promoted anti-Semitism and bigotry throughout the workforce, and fueled an out-of-control federal government that only serves itself even as it squashes the freedoms of ordinary people.
In today’s second part, I wish to dig deeper, because the public’s willing outrage has already caused unexpected major attitude changes in places where such changes have been impossible for decades.
Let us begin with a somewhat complex court decision that I reported on last week. In this court decision, a two-judge panel went beyond the specifics of the lawsuit before it to rule instead on the basic legal authority of the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), concluding that its decades-long requirement that all government agencies obey its environmental recommendations in writing regulations was illegal, that CEQ simply did not have the statutory authority to do this.
As I said, the case itself is very complex. It is not even clear this ruling will stand up, since in the end the CEQ’s recommendations essentially reflect those of the President, whose authority to determine how the agencies under him create regulations based on Congressional law is legal and quite final.
The point however is not whether this decision will stand up. The point is that the judges were quite willing to rule on the legal authority of a government entity, and rule against its authority, essentially invalidating its power.
Such decisions have been unheard of for many many decades. Judges would never do such things. Since the mid-1900s they would always assume, without question, that such government agencies had the power to do what they were doing, and would only rule to refine that power, either to expand it or limit it somewhat.
The U.S. Supreme Court. Click for original
image, taken by Kjetil Ree.
Yet what these judges did last week is now becoming the norm, not the exception. The most well known examples are of course two recent Supreme Court decisions. First, the court ruled that the Roe v Wade decision was unconstitutional, that the power to regulation abortions was never given to the courts or the federal government, that the Constitution is very clear, this issue should be regulated by the states, and the states only.
The outrage on the left was of course insane, claiming falsely that this decision banned abortion. The idea that a court would invalid such a long-standing previous ruling had become inconceivable to them. And yet, the Supreme Court did it in an act of courage not seen since the 1950s.
The second Supreme Court ruling was its decision in June to strike down a 1984 court ruling, dubbed “Chevron”, that for decades had given the federal bureaucracy enormous power to interpret the laws passed by Congress however it wished. Under Chevron, the courts had been required to accept the bureaucracy’s interpretations of the law. The Supreme Court’s new ruling threw this out, stating instead that it is “the responsibility of the court to decide whether the law means what the agency says.”
In both of these cases, like the CEQ decision above, the Supreme Court was invalidating some basic premises about the power of the federal government that had been accepted as normal for many decades.
These Supreme Court decisions are the most well known, but they are only two of many. In addition to the CEQ ruling above, the courts are also now considering invalidating the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) administrative enforcement procedures. This is on top of the Supreme Court’s earlier ruling that invalidated similar enforcement procedures at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
All these decisions suggest that the outrage of the public has clearly percolated into the unemotional and thoughtful legal reasoning of the court system. These decisions by judges indicate that they too feel that same outrage, but being judges they can only rule based on law and rational reasoning. Their response however has been to aggressively go back to fundamental principles and make unexpected but bold decisions against government power.
This same process can be seen in the difference between Trump’s cabinet appointments in 2016 versus now in 2024. In 2016 Trump picked people that mostly came out of the Washington swamp, based on advice from other people in that Washington swamp. His goal then was largely the same as now — to reduce the regulatory power of government — but then Trump was like the sleeping American public, unaware of how badly he was being manipulated by that swamp. The result was that Trump in his first term accomplished almost nothing in his effort to, as he put it, “to drain the swamp.” If anything, that swamp manipulated him into imposing the absurd and oppressive COVID lockdown policies that crushed what was then a thriving American economy.
Today Trump is taking no advice from the old players in Washington. Instead, he is picking people well known to be hostile to that swamp, outsiders who have repeatedly argued, in public, that major and very shocking changes have to be imposed in Washington to clean things up — including the complete elimination of numerous government agencies. And he is pushing hard to have these outsiders confirmed by the Senate.
At the moment it is unclear if he will succeed, but I expect he will, because if the Senate tries to block him expect the now outraged and very awake American public to make its anger known. They elected Trump in a landslide, and they want Congress to give him a chance to do what he promised.
That public anger is thus feeding the push for radical change in Washington, and because we really are a down-up society, where the people are sovereign and the power really does come from the bottom, it is forcing those in “power” to change what they are doing.
Will we see things change quickly? Ah, there’s the rub, and thus the subject tomorrow of the last part of this three part essay.
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Related:
WHY TRUMP? WHY NOW? PAY ATTENTION
“The article states that this explains why Sweden, which joined NATO only this year, was the only country in Europe that adhered to a softer policy during the pandemic.”
https://www.sigma3ioc.com/post/why-trump-why-now-pay-attention
Interesting perspective to view the court verdicts as part of the zeitgeist. I had noticed them, but not connected the dots – if there are dots to connect. I’m inclined to think there are. Outside politics, the last few decades have shown the strength of distributed systems. Starlink is a well known example: Bunches of small, semi-disposable satellites working together instead of a behemoth in geostationary.
The big, centralized power paradigm is dying everywhere outside of government. That is slowly bubbling into our culture (e.g. YouTube vs Hollywood; blogs vs Facebook).
It’s interesting that our 18th century government structure is so well suited to the 21st century, for entirely different reasons.
Are we in the “all at once” part of how things change? (“slowly, then all at once”) One can hope.
Mark, well put. All at once, oh please, oh, please
“It’s interesting that our 18th century government structure is so well suited to the 21st century, for entirely different reasons.”
Our 18th century government structure is effective today because its foundation, the Constitution and associated documents, take into consideration fundamentally understanding human nature as it relates to government and the nature of man related to the abuse of power.
The Constitution is founded in rational thinking which is Objective thinking and not Subjective thinking. Kings, tyrants and governments think in Subjective terms. That is where their control lies.
The Founders were much like Albert Einstein in how he rationally boiled down the concept of matter to its fundamentals and fundamentally changed the thinking about what things are made of and from where it comes. These kinds of moments in history are where real paradigm shifting changes in thinking and action come from.
If you understand and begin at the foundation of anything and build up from there no one can tear down what you build upon it. And that is why the 18th century government structure is still today so valid and effective.
The Founders distillation and conclusions about what governance is and is not related to individual freedom, private property and equality before the law can only be changed at the point some other genius discovers some new fundamental countermanding nature of the human animal related to governance and the abuse of power.
And that is why the Globalists / Democrats / RINO’s / Governments 1. Despise the Constitution. And 2. Why they embrace transhumanism.
When the government can push a button and turn you on or off or control you in some other absolute manner and at its will then that new paradigm will dominate.
And that will be a sad day for humanity, freedom and the universe.
Cotour–
Which Constitution are we talking about?
The one that has a federal income tax and direct election of federal senators, or the one that doesn’t?
There’s no way the feds could engage in massive income-redistribution if they don’t steal the money from the people in the first place.
And there’s no way the feds could usurp State power to the degree they have, unless they got rid of the accountability of federal senators to the State legislature that appointed them.
Wayne, what you illustrate is the eternal struggle that governments and politicians will continuously do to constrain and manipulate the Constitution in order to test what the Founders built. Expand its meaning, reduce its meaning. All in the interests of their further acquiring and retaining power and control.
This is our system, this is our process.
The political warfare in America is eternal.
Cotour–
hate to be a buzz-kill, just sayin’ we have some deep structural-stuff that isn’t easily gotten rid-off.
I would totally agree however the overall Mood has improved, but cleaning the Rats out of the Barn, is a nasty business and it’s going to take persistence, time, and eternal vigilance.
Javier Milei: President of Argentina
Freedom, Economics, and Corruption
Lex Fridman Podcast #453 (Nov. 19, 2024)
https://youtu.be/8NLzc9kobDk
1:57:09
Buzz kill?
I am not on a “Buzz”, I am just stating plainly what is and why it is.
It is what the Constitution structures whether those who structured it fully understood just how corrupt and perverted it could get or not.
But I suspect that they had a pretty good idea.
If not it, then what?
Ask Klause Schwab and George Soros, they would be happy to lay it all out for you.
Cotour,
(wasn’t implying you were anything…..)
I, Robot
Whose Revolution?
https://youtu.be/hrGco_ztJkw
(2:16)
I see the federal (that is such an awful word; it’s hard to know if it means “big centralized national” or “semi-independent states” – much as “liberal” has changed) structure of These United States as more a practical acknowledgement of the limits of technology (information flow time and travel time) at the time than a prescient peek at Hayk’s limits of centralized knowledge.
The fact that local problems require local solutions would probably not be novel to the founders is true enough, but while they were incredibly smart, I don’t think they were that smart. I could be wrong as they were smart enough to say “arms”, not “muskets” and they were very much aware that Rome and Britannia were a geographically distributed states with centralized control. Either way, it does work out nicely. The Democrats fought for 100 years to centralize with very mixed results.
We have _status quo ante_ on our side, which is not nothing, especially given the rose colored spectacles through which most people view the “ante”. IF things can be framed as “we tried this; it didn’t work; we’re going back” significant progress (retrogress?) may be made.
I reject your counter to the transhumanist idea. Much like home automation and self-driving cars, there is nothing inherent in the idea that requires government control. Just because I have a computer in my head does not mean that computer can be controlled by anyone.
Is it an insane risk with our current technology? Oh yes! Is it inherent in the concept? Definitely not.
There are many reasons to be leery of (or outright reject) transhumanism, but “the government will have the power to shut off my brain” is not one of them.
For background: I desperately want the Star Trek computer in my home, but I will not touch Alexa (or her counterparts) because all the processing is done remotely, which _is_ subject to the “third parties can shut off my house” problem. That doesn’t mean the concept of an automated, voice-controlled home is flawed. It’s just the current implementation that has issues.
Consider these two statements:
#1 “Just because I have a computer in my head does not mean that computer can be controlled by anyone.”
#2 “For background: I desperately want the Star Trek computer in my home, but I will not touch Alexa (or her counterparts) because all the processing is done remotely, which _is_ subject to the “third parties can shut off my house” problem. That doesn’t mean the concept of an automated, voice-controlled home is flawed. It’s just the current implementation that has issues.”
Two countermanding counter intuitive self-canceling thoughts in one paragraph.
I scratcheth my head.
It’s “how it is/would be done, today” versus “how it could be done”.
Right now, it’s a bit much to ask to have a non-networked yet useful computer system. For example, I have a dedicated network for my home automation stuff that does not connect to the internet (a Raspberry Pi runs it; it will not route between the device wifi and the wired connection to everything else). The boring stuff (lightbulbs, etc…) works fine. The Roomba will not function if it cannot “phone home”. There is no voice control.
I don’t want Alexa in my house or in my head. That doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t put a 100GHz computer with 100 petabytes of crystal lattice memory and no network connection the size of a pea in my head (assuming my blood is enough to “water” cool it).
There’s also biological transhumanism. If I could get an injection that would reactivate the genes to grow a prehensile tail, I would totally do that – despite the danger posed by car doors. Personally, I have no desire for webbed fingers and/or toes, but I could see water enthusiasts doing it.
” If I could get an injection that would reactivate the genes to grow a prehensile tail”
Probably just get you a good case of multi organ cancer.
And think of what the ladies would think, not to mention what they would say.