July 1, 2025: Comeuppance, LazyFare, and Dimocracy

Putting procedures above protections is pennywise and pound-foolish. Hoo-nōs

You can’t become a dictator through checks and balances.  Tommy Chong

We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. Edward R. Murrow

What follows is not about throwing any one person under the bus.  In our form of democracy, the biggest block of folks by far are not those voted into power or those who have accumulated great wealth, it is simply the voters at large.  When things go wrong like they recently have, it is up to us to fix the problem.  It is up to us to stop being lazy, to stop seeking the comeuppance of others, and to stop the dimming of democracy.

Any judicial, congressional, executive, economic, social, or personal decision that stays Constitutional and legal protections provided to citizens (visitors are also accorded the protections of due process and the law) while putting the merits of an issue off, is itself a violation of the Constitution.  Think about the protection of having a speedy trial if nothing else.  To move protections to a back burner amounts to putting the cart before the horse. It is the dimming of democracy.  At best, it’s a lazy devotion to the minutiae while ignoring justice.  At worst, it is an exploitive attempt to put a personal judgment on the necks of others.  Neither approach is judicious or justice—it’s sanctimonious.

I shall pause here to say two things. The first is that sometimes procedures and protections go together. However, I view protections as a bedrock of our charter—procedures are designed to ensure protections, not to tangle them up.  

The second point is that the latest SCOTUS decision to not allow a federal judge to issue nationwide sanctions about what might be a justified individual complaint, is a correct decision, though it was a brutally attacked. However, SCOTUS did not only avoid the Constitutional issue and the harm and confusion the recent Executive Order seeking to end birthright citizenship would cause, but they also punted, allowing the order to remain in play until the Court takes it up in a few months. The problem as I understand it is that birthright citizenship is a Constitutional right.  It would require another amendment to do away with it. An Executive order by a President is way out of bounds. Allowing the order to stand by saying groups or States can take up the issue and thus be protected is simply a dodge of the Constitutionality issue in play.

There is no imperial body in our democracy, not any branch of the government, not capitalism, not private ownership, not even the voters, not even the law, including the Constitution. We have principles and covenants that form the bedrock of our system (the law, private ownership, a form of social capitalism, individualism, social consent, separation of powers, checks and balances, and due process), all of which are potential reviewable. Any branch of government, any vote, any law—including the Constitution (think amendments as in the Bill of Rights, which constitute the first ten amendments to the Constitution), is subject to scrutiny.  However, scrutiny of our protections are only in improving them.

I am not a conspiracy-first fan. I am not even a bad-player as a first thought.  I do observe that chaos keeps us off-balance. No balance, no power. Keeping people guessing is to steal their power. Don’t get me wrong, being off-balance could be fun as in a carnival ride or when love touches us, but as a way of life, it throws due process and checks and balances out the window. Chaos is used to screw with each other.  It has been that way forever.  Getting one’s balance back tends to quiet chaos.

I think we do not know enough about how to be still (I know I’m still learning). We tend to think one fights chaos by creating more chaos.  Everybody being off balance is a mess. Those who quiet chaos are the ones who gain power back.

I think we worship comeuppance more than God or money or truth—pick any alter. But cheering comeuppance is about the chaos of mobs. When escalation is the vision du jour, there will be a division into conquerors and subjects. The trick exploiters use in gaining ownership of any fountainhead is to make subjects think they are the conquerors. For instance, the notion of demons vs angels (so many forms each can take) reflects comeuppance disguised as a worthy battle. We seem to be stuck there and that makes us quite vulnerable to those who seek to own the fountainhead. However, it amounts to selling umbrellas to protect us from a meteor strike.

Our demons do not require banishment or comeuppance. Neither demons nor angels will ever be eradicated. What if both demons and angels are worthy opponents and not mutually exclusive? For example, if we consult our death, we may learn how to live well. If we can make death an ally, we can make demons an ally as well.  But even at that, we’re not putting an end to uncertainty or the inevitability of our physical demise.

We’re fighting the wrong battle and even doing that in the wrong way.  The exploiters among us may not know it, but they seek the brass ring and fealty because they think being honored and bowed-to is better than having honor and feeling humbled by the powers and cycles far beyond the control any of us may possess.

Us versus them and the cheer when “them” gets their comeuppance is a divide we created. We might do better to let it go (think the baboon with its arm stuck in a jar because it won’t let go of the food and tip the jar over so the food falls into their open hand).

The point of our system is to promote our better angels whether we like it or not—and that system recognizes many demons—including usurping the power and freedom of others.  Democracy is fundamentally about making all of us a protected class, despite our diversity. For those brought up for violations, due process and the checks and balances of our system are designed to not allow either the mob or the tyrant to rule.

While I’m not happy about shaming, I’m less happy about not calling out the problem and the culprits.  If you think it’s only others who need to suck it up, you’re likely part of the problem you supposedly dislike.  And all of us are sometimes the problem.  Democracy and civility are practices. Practice means mistakes will occur.  Owning our foolishness and apologizing to at least ourselves is part of democratic civility.  And it’s a good way to stop behaving like baboons—no offense to baboons.

A certain peace in deed and thought, a certain release of the Gordian Knot.