Those of us who have been parents of young children, or even if we’ve been blessed with being pre-schooler adjacent, have undoubtedly encountered times when we have to gently teach our young charges the principles of fair play.
When your little one has played Candyland, or any other board game, for the first (or 100th time) you will have to show them that winning at all costs is not the way the world works. At some point you stop “letting” them win, and allow them to learn how to be a graceful loser and survive to play another day. You don’t allow them to change the rules in the middle of the game so that it will favor them. Cheaters and poor losers quickly learn no one wants to play with them.
And most of us have grown up hearing that the ends don’t justify the means.
Unfortunately too many people in power have decided the golden rule of “do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” doesn’t apply to them and that yes, the ends do justify the means. In fact, taking power and winning by any means necessary is their credo.
When Justice Antonin Scalia died unexpectedly, there were nine months left in President Barack Obama’s second term. He wanted to nominate Judge Merrick Garland to fill the seat, instead of having only eight justices for the better part of a year.
But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell made sure that Garland didn’t even get a hearing, saying that in an election year, the next president should make that determination.
One could say McConnell’s ruling has come back to bite him in the butt, after Friday’s death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, some six weeks before the next presidential election.
However it hasn’t fazed McConnell’s hypocritical world view in the least. The man who was willing to wait almost a year, is suddenly looking to change the rules he set, already planning to put forth a nominee to fill her not-even-cold-yet seat.
This is despicable on many levels. McConnell is looking to add to the conservative-leaning Supreme Court, as fashioned by the current occupant of the White House, as if the majority leader’s shameless recent ruling will be forgotten. Sure, he can change the rules, force through another judge to help strip away rights of women, people of color, DACA program participants, and LGBTQ citizens, to try and turn the clock and calendars back to a time when only the rich and well-connected had power and influence.
But understand this: Even if you are conservative, and you gleefully accept that stacking the Supreme Court the way you think they should rule, you are looking at the dangerous precedent of the ends justifying the means. Sure, the lifetime appointments of judges (both on the Supreme Court and at the federal level) may give you the “wins” you want in taking away other people’s rights.
But if the other side gets into power after Nov. 3, winning the White House, taking the Senate and keeping the House, what’s to keep the Democrats from adding two more justices and making the partisan pendulum swing the other way? What’s to keep the party in power from continually changing the rules to gain advantage, stacking bad faith moves on top of each other like a game of Jenga?
McConnell and the Republican Party have been playing the long game for a long time. They want their legacy of conservative politics to continue long after they’re dead, gone, and the earth has either burned up or flooded. They aren’t looking for fair play, because winning at any cost and maintaining power is more important than integrity.
And is that the lesson you want all future generations to learn?
