Epiphany

[trinityvixen]

I suppose I'm due for one.

moonlightalice e-mailed this link to me. I read it and it hit me like a freight train full of elephants:

The current administration--and by extension the McCain group that is virtually the same in tenor--runs itself like its participating in a global reality TV show, and it doesn't matter how bad it screws the other guys because they'll get kicked off the show and it won't have to worry about them.

It's brilliant, if I do say so myself. Think about it. It's there in the lousy moves we pull on our "allies," the way we squandered international goodwill in the first episode by doing really dickish things to the other players who didn't necessarily deserve it even if they had really annoying, incompatible with co-sharing the house habits. As a result, we, America, are the drunk, slutty saboteur contestant that's a huge joke to the audience and the other contestants. As soon as our antics cease to amuse, when it becomes clear that our self-destructive behavior and stubbornness are intractible, the other housemates are going to band together and kick our asses out.

The guy we used to sleep with (Britain) is finding excuses to be elsewhere when we're horny for some "assistance." The ones we used to mentor, no matter their objections (Southeast Asia, Iraq, Afghanistan), have finally learned the most important lesson: those who can't play, coach. Only, we didn't count on all the innocent bystanders who got hurt by our slapping them around coming back. We thought they were gone. But in a surprise twist, they get to come back for a final tribal council.

We are so screwed.

Comments

[edgehopper.livejournal.com]

I'm not quite sure how you're getting that from an article that (like pretty much everything the NYTimes posts on law) is thoroughly silly.

The rise of new and sophisticated constitutional courts elsewhere is one reason for the Supreme Court’s fading influence, legal experts said. The new courts are, moreover, generally more liberal that the Rehnquist and Roberts courts and for that reason more inclined to cite one another.

That's the key paragraph, and the correct one. Meanwhile, American law is extraordinarily different from most of the rest of the world. The entire world except for the Anglosphere follows a civil law system, as opposed to our (and Britain's, Australia's, etc.) common law system. No other country in the world even comes close to America's version of federalism, where 50 different states have 50 different versions of the most basic legal areas. America's Constitution is drastically different from most other nations' constitutions in that it's short. Our constitution provides very few rules, and most con law is really made by judges.

On basic principles of law, there's usually no need to cite foreign courts. The most egregious examples of citation to foreign courts has been in Kennedy's 8th & 9th amendment opinions, where he uses foreign courts' positions to find a consensus among Americans (e.g., Roper v. Simmons.) The only times it's appropriate to draw significant influence from foreign courts are when considering issues related to international law; laws of war or laws of trade. I care how the European Court of Human Rights judges treatment of POW's to some extent. I care a lot about what Japan's highest court thinks the Paris Convention on Intellectual Property means. I don't care at all if they think that employment is a fundamental human right.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

It's less a consequence directly of the events in the article than a general impression of the backing away from inclusiveness with American ideas that lead me to my epiphany. I showed the article only as interesting in itself and because it sparked my idea.

I still think it's entirely accurate. The bullying, devil-may-care attitude of the current administration is entirely within the subgenre of reality TV villainry.