(un)Democracy

The spectacle of the Sotomayor confirmation process in the United States Senate makes me ashamed. This is no beacon of democracy. This is an example of politics gone wild, desperation, and pandering. It makes me wonder, having once taught Constitutional Law, how much we forget about the real history of the country. And how far we might have come, if we didn't have 24/7 cable news.

This is the place where the indigenous people were slaughtered with survivors rounded up, pushed off of their own land to make way for the settlers. This is the place where slavery made our economic system feasible. This is the place where public schools closed down rather than admit African American students. This is the place where in waves new immigrants came and helped moved America to its next phase of prosperity.

This is also the place where the rule of law forced institutions to open their doors to qualified people of color, where the president of the United States, yes, a citizen, is a man of color who can slip his voice into preacher patter and always make sense. Yet we don't seem to realize that some aspects of the American experiment in self-rule should be above politics. One is health care reform, the other is appointment of qualified judicial nominees. That only six Republican senators are willing to vote for Sonia Sotomayor speaks volumes about the desperation of the party, and the hypocrisy of the ultra-right. Sotomayor was appointed to the bench by George Bush, Senior, and elevated to the Court of Appeals by Bill Clinton. But what has history got to do with it, when Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck, and Michael Savage are the idiots spouting the "values" of the Republican Party.