Authority and Confidence

The Supreme Court is supposed to say today whether they will hear the Obama citizenship case. I am sure you have all heard about the alleged faked birth certificate, and maybe even about the president-elect withholding some of his college transcripts, etc. etc. I have no idea, or any real opinion, on whether this is true. All we can know is that if Barack Obama’s election was overturned, there would be blood in the streets. Every American would have to have a good look at the underside of their car, for the possible need they will have to identify it upside down. Forget the fact that voting barely went up this election; even those who didn’t cast ballots have invested themselves in the Obama victory. These are probably the more likely to riot, were such a thing to start.

Most of us would say that, legally, the Supreme Court should take up a legitimate case no matter what. I’m not so sure it’s possible here. If the Supreme Court can get around hearing this case, they will. Most Republicans are gearing up for the fight, and much of the Obama cabinet has already been chosen. I think we can say with relative certainty that an overturn of the election would tank the stock market immediately. Stocks are based on investor confidence. This normally does not involve politics, but the legitimacy of our political system would be called into question. A questioning of the stable order that has upheld our economy would be horrible. We have never seen anything like that since … the Depression, the only period in which Communism was a real possibility for a significant number of Americas. And this not based on the attractiveness of Marxism, so much as the vacuum left by the loss in confidence in our current system.

I am not striking similarities. Rather, I do mean to say that this case simply cannot be heard. Because there has been no uproar over it, I think it might be dismissed without too much of a problem, savored only by future “Politically Incorrect Guide to…” books and wing-nuts in Arkansas. There seems to be some legal room for the Supreme Court to leave this kind of decision to the Electoral College, which will of course pay no attention to it.

Isn’t this undermining our legal system? Our Constitution? The question is whether a significant destabilizing of these things is more dangerous than the undermining. Like I said, if the Supreme Court had no legal loophole out of this, they could not hide from the scrutiny. However, given that there is this room for maneuvering, could it be that the country’s constitution (lower case “c”) outweighs a legal technicality?

This is the same question dealt with in the Bailout, where possible Constitutional and ideological concerns were measured up against The Impending Collapse of the System. Whether those predictions were overstated is immaterial to us. The important thing right here is that, if there were a real possibility of the banking sector being the anvil tied to our feet as we sink into economic depths – would this be enough for us to put aside our scruples? Does it make sense to preserve the purity of a system so that it can destroy itself in whole?

The central element of capitalism is the banking (capital) system, which itself is extremely tied to the stock markets, bonds, securities, etc. In other words, the central element to the system has tied itself into things that are publicly traded, and those markets are – well, they are markets, based on investor confidence. The problem with investor confidence is that it is able to affect the banks, which are able to mess up most of the system that relies on them (which is most of it). Here is the parallel I am trying to draw. Politics also relies on confidence. A strong democracy is based on strong assumptions: that my vote will be counted, that the man elected will mostly vote how he said he would, that the politicians will respect the written Constitution, if there is one. A breakdown in the plausibility of these things will wreck it. And of course political instability leads to social instability, just as it has the potential to create it. (In many ways, politics supplies predictability to life through an explicit social system. The actual society is invisible, with unidentifiable forces. This unaccounted-for randomness is an impediment to the formation of paradigms, and the feeling of stability (confidence) which enables risk and adventure. In addition to the real punishment of crime, politics gives a false sense of predictability by superimposing an explicit and predictable scheme that can “symbolize” society itself: we are our government.).

The Supreme Court does not want to hear this case. That is what I am saying. The fallout would be worse than Nixon and Watergate, plunging the political hopes of a generation. That is the best possible scenario. The worst is much worse, and would clearly mean a retreat from world leadership, as well as domestic problems galore.

Ultimately this has to do with authority, which is a deeper issue than the Constitution itself. The Constitution carries an authority that is not inherent. It has been bestowed on the document, in order to give an authority to the government. The Founding has become worshiped because it strengthens our own identity, as well as our ability to have confidence in our government. We do not have a government created by men, in our own beliefs; if we did, we would have no problem starting a new one. History, and one’s own experience, makes it evident that this has never been an option for Americans.

It is hard to imagine a Supreme Court case that is not simply accepted, though maybe begrudgingly. The law is decided in court, and we accept people to fall in line. However, I think that really could be broken here. Faith in the legal system was broken in the 1960s and 70s during the race riots. Perhaps no one remembers them any more. We think we have moved past. While it is true that eras of social stability and anti-extremism tend to follow periods of instability (see post Civil War England, post 30 Years War Europe), we can never forget the possibility of a loss of confidence in the system. The reason the Supreme Court will avoid this case, if possible, is that four million people will be in DC on January 20th either way.