Unseating Judges who Legalized SSM in Iowa

[ambushed]

Amazing! Sure, we all knew that Bricker’s consummate skills in “Full Contact Origami” easily enabled him to carefully fold the Iowa Constitution in such a clever way as to render the role of the state’s third branch of government into pointless insignificance, but who could have imagined he could transcend materiality completely and succeed in twisting reality itself so as to render ignorance, bigotry and hate as calm, sober reasonableness?

Look upon the following staggeringly disingenuous apologetics for bigotry, ye Doper, and despair!

@Bricker

This [is] potentially much more than a single issue. In other words, judges are not legislators; presumably they didn’t rule the way they did because they thought same-sex marriage was wise social policy. Right?

They must have ruled the way they did because they felt the state constitution should be interpreted using a particular method. If the voters felt that this method was not the correct one, that’s not a “single issue” – that goes to the heart of what a judge’s role should be.

@Bricker

I’m contending they thought, “Judges shouldn’t decide stuff like that.”

Which is arguably true.

@Bricker

I think you mischaracterize “most of the tea party fucks.” So far as I can tell, most simply favor compliance with immigration law - something my wife and I had no problem doing. I’m not aware of any major tea party candidate or group arguing a complete border shutdown.

Now, you talk about the tyranny of the fleeting majority, as if to suggest that same-sex marriage had a long and noble tradition in this country, and would still be comfortably in place, but for the fleeting desires of a hot-headed mob.

But you know that’s not true. It’s the crowd seeking same-sex marriage rights that is working a large change in society.

It’s fascinating to me that you accuse me of some recent change, and cast your whole argument as something clearly required under the law, but for the recent wash of anti-gay fervor. you know that’s not true. You’re the one cloaking your argument in deceit…

Amazing!

Perhaps the most glaring flaw in Bricker’s astonishingly naive apologetics lies with his wildly counterfactual premise that the voters who unseated all three Iowa Supreme Court justices seriously contemplated the proper role of the courts in state government!

Bricker, oh preternaturally naive Bricker! Do you live under a cup? Have you ventured outside of your hermit’s cave at any time in the last 10 years? Have you never heard of Fox News? Rush Limbaugh? Glenn Beck? Never taken a peak at conservative web sites like FreeRepublic.com and Stormfront.org?

I submit that to write, as Bricker does above, that most in the Tea Parties “simply favor compliance with immigration law” is much too much like writing “Mussolini simply wanted the trains to run on time”. Simplicity is often a terrible enemy of truth.

But this isn’t about Bricker as an individual. My objection is to the extreme degree of political denialism all around us, in all kinds of media, which pretends that the average American voter – even those on the Right – made some kind of informed, rational decision before casting their ballot. Bricker’s words here are merely just another example of such blithely delusional thinking.

Only those who willfully blind themselves to the reality of what truly occurs at the intersection of human nature and politics could possibly imagine that the Iowans who voted out their Supreme Court had engaged in some kind of informed, rational decision-making process. The drastic denialism inherent in such a view unnerves and worries me considerably. It puts me in mind of Chamberlain’s “Peace for our time” speech. Nothing good can come from mistaking fear and hate and bigotry for reasoned analysis. Nothing.

In truth, we in the U.S. today are a nation dominated by a majority of highly gullible dupes who will believe just about anything as long as it’s hateful, bigoted, or false, and, as the 2010 mid-terms demonstrated, those who most fervently believe those lies are the most enthusiastic voters. We ignore this reality at our peril.

As evidence, I cite:

Anti-Intellectualism in American Life

The Age of American Unreason

Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free

and: Just How Stupid Are We? Facing the Truth About the American Voter

Woe is us.