Armageddon?

This morning Drudge has a headline that says 'This One Is Going to be Armageddon.' The picture shows a skinny white woman with a Benneton sweater and expensive hair raising her hands in the air in a 'praise jesus' gesture in front of the graven images of the Supreme Court.

Everyone it seems is gearing up for the 'ideological fight' over Bush's new nominee, the Italian Conservative from New Jersey. The news junkies are sharpening their electronic pencils and waiting for the political equivalent of a major play-off game-- a fight that presages a midterm election and later a presidential one, and more importantly will be the place where the Supreme Court's slide to the right is either arrested or accelerated.

As momentous as all that sounds, though, when compared to concrete realities like a war we can neither win nor escape, and man-made ecological disasters to which we seem unable to respond competently, questions of how law is interpreted strike me as, well, somewhat abstract and etherial, something after the nature of a huge game of Let's Pretend.

Who really cares? The law as it stands forbids torture by police, military, or corrections officials, but what does it matter? They do what they do, and judges almost inevitably back them up. Only the rarest cases, like those caught on film, ever reach the public eye. Whining that the law against torture isn't strong enough won't stop torture. Suppose police obey anti-torture laws as well or as often as they obey other laws, like speed limits, parking regulations, or laws against domestic violence. How often would that be? And what difference does it really make if a Supreme Court Justice is generally pro-cop as a matter of course, or if the Justice is viralently and emphatically pro-cop in ways that push the boundaries of any kind of sense?

I guess it makes a difference, sort of. But still it looks like a distraction from the real problems that demand real action, sooner not later, and not a lot of pious platitudes about how The Law we inherit from the Roman Empire via the British Empire might be applied in some theoretical world where laws are understood, followed, and make a difference.

I guess for some it will feel good, the familiar territory of theory marked with the well-worn paths of slogans we grew up with, and a break from the tactile too-real-ness of people getting blown up, flooded out, or just dropping dead. And let's not forget the bills that are accruing for the 'nation' as well as for us as individuals. I guess in times of stress, cultures like people instinctively grope for what is familiar and comfortable. And there is nothing more familiar and comfortable to Americans than rehashing the political cleavages of the past 400 years as a colonizing power.

Once again, we will congratulate ourselves. The Right will congratulate itself for being Tough and Smart, and the Left will congratulate itself for being Humane and Progressive. Everybody will prance across the stage on the TV screens, and have their say. (Everybody will have their say except those of us not in the script, of course.) And then, whoever Wall Street wants will become Supreme Court Justice. It would have been the same way if Democrats ran things.

But the real problems will not have gone away while we were in the huddle selecting a new Grand Poodle, Supreme Whatever. His position is essentially one of Public Relations, that is, explaining why the laws all apply strictly to you and me, but not to corporations, or politicians, or soldiers, or cops, and explaining it with sufficient legalistic effluvium to cow the herd.