The pointlessness of hard and fast takes about the three big matters on the nation's plate

Save your breath; whatever will be will be

In early May, I wrote a Precipice essay called “An Absolutist Grapples With Ambiguity.”

The focus was on the coronavirus pandemic, which is, you may have noticed, ongoing.

I had this to say about it at that time:

I’m an absolutist about nearly everything. You’ll rarely hear me say, “I blow hot and cold on that.” From the immutable principles that form the core of my worldview to opinions on less weighty matters, my takes are generally hard and fast.

Jesus is Lord. 

A properly dressed cheeseburger sports mayonnaise, a sautéed onion slice, red-leaf lettuce and two dill pickle slices, nothing more and nothing less.

A good or service is worth what buyer and seller agree that it’s worth. Period. No other entity has any business being involved in arriving at that agreement - certainly not government. 

There are only two genders. 

None of the Beatles’ post-1970 output as solo artists is even one billionth as good as their 1958 - 1969 collective output in that ensemble. 

But I’ve noticed something interesting in the last few weeks. As public opinion about the coronavirus has gelled into two basic positions, I’m squarely on the fence about how society ought to proceed.

The two basic positions are as follows:

1.) We ought to completely reopen society and the economy, yet this afternoon. This argument hinges on one or more of these assertions: that the virus's impact on public health has been way overblown, that herd immunity will render the virus trivial, that the toll the lockdown is taking on our economy and people’s basic mental health is too great to bear anymore, or that we're big boys and girls who have the constitutionally protected liberty to decide what risk level we're willing to assume for ourselves.

2.) That any reopening must be very, very gradual and we must be prepared to reverse course at a moment’s notice if cases spike as a result of any steps we take to reopen. 

There’s a lot of validity to both positions.

Most states were still in some stage of lockdown at the time, and the question was how fast and on what basis to reopen.

A summer has come and gone since then. Most states are pretty well reopened.

Globally, it’s a mixed bag. I see that Israel, for instance, is undergoing a new three-week, rather stringent, lockdown in response to a spike in cases.

But, to return to the domestic scene, a new set of issues has arisen. Colleges and universities have, by and large, welcomed students back to campus. Some predictable cause-and-effect patterns have ensued, most notably the inevitable partying that college-age people engage in, and resultant spikes. What to do? I think a consensus is forming that it’s best to keep them on campus, in some form of quarantine, rather than send them back to their hometowns or wherever they’re going to choose to go.

Both higher and secondary education are grappling with finding the right mix of online instruction and in-person classes. In areas where the classes are held completely online or nearly so, parents speak out about the stress of having to monitor children’s engagement even as they struggle to stay on top of the workloads of their jobs.

The two main positions I outlined in May are still the main way the fault line in our society runs.

And it’s still tough. Position One types have months of data to cite regarding soaring suicide and homicide rates, strains on family life, depression and loneliness. The lack of basic human connection runs counter to our species’ deepest need. Civic bonds, which were fraying anyway, are really imperiled.

Position Two types have concrete substantiation for their own argument, though. As noted above, there’s a clear relationship between flagrant disregard for such guidelines as masks and social distancing, and renewed spikes in cases.

So the bottom line remains the same. A hard and fast take in either direction leaves unresolved issues before us.

With regard to the civil unrest which began shortly after my May essay and has roiled ever since, I suppose it could be said that, broadly speaking, there are two perspectives.

It’s important to note that the deaths of the four individuals that have kept sparking fresh waves of urban violence (George Floyd, Rayshard Brooks, Jacob Blake, Daniel Prude) involved individuals who were loaded on hard drugs and / or drunk, resisted arrest, and had violent criminal histories. Rayshard Brooks was out of prison on probation stemming from a 2013 conviction for child cruelty and and family violence. Jacob Blake was at the home of a woman who had filed a restraining order against him for several instances of abuse.

That said, it’s clear this nation is not going to view these men as individual human beings whose race need not be discussed as a factor in what happened to them. Even though, in moments of clarity, we can all realize that the police involved in each incident did not start their shifts on those days thinking, maybe I can kill a black person today, the fact that the police were white and those who wound up dead were black is going to be at the forefront of our national shouting match.

And now we are faced with what’s going to happen regarding the Supreme Court in the wake of Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s passing. The heels are already dug in on both sides.

Democrats and some Republicans (Collins, Murkowski) are insistent that a nomination and the subsequent hearings and Senate vote not happen until the presidential election has been decided and the victor sworn in. Some hinge their argument on the fact that Mitch McConnell said, in March 2016, that the Senate would not be voting on Garland Merrick, Barack Obama’s pick to replace Antonin Scalia.

A perfectly respectable rejoinder to that is that is that there are two kinds of precedent for SCOTUS vacancies in an election year: the scenario in which the Senate and the White House are controlled by different parties, and the one in which the same party controls each. The record shows that whether or not a nominee was considered by the Senate generally depends on which situation was the case.

For my money, I think Andrew McCarthy, writing at National Review, has the most clear-eyed assessment of the bottom line here: there are norms that have and have not been heeded about this, but there’s only two laws at work, both found in the Constitution. The president has the power to pick a SCOTUS replacement when a vacancy occurs, and the Senate has the power to provide the president with advice and consent - or to take a pass on the nominee. All else is politics and posturing.

But a unique and undeniable factor is at work this time around: a degree of polarization in our society we have rarely seen.

If Trump nominates Amy Coney Barrett and the Senate confirms her - an outcome that, isolated from any other factors, would greatly delight me - the Left will be so outraged that it will pull out all the stops to wreak maximum damage. For starters, her hearings will be a public evisceration. Then, should Biden become president and the Senate tilt Democrat, a push for an expanded Supreme Court, as well as statehood for Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia, would get underway in a hot minute.

The Trumpist Right is pretty revved up with rage, too. There would certainly be consequences to the Senate deciding to wait on filling the vacancy until next year.

There’s no option that’s not going to result in more tumult.

That’s why I find it rather pointless to expend any energy calling for any particular course of action. What’s going to be is going to be. I doubt that there are any among the 100 US Senators who is waiting to see what social media or some opinion website has to say before deciding what he or she will do. Some are certainly playing their inclination close to the vest, so as not to subject themselves to a rash of grief from constituents any sooner than they have to.

But taking a position of by-golly-this-outcome-has-to-happen is a waste of time. It won’t result in the persuasion of anyone, citizen or officeholder, who is in a position to move the needle.

I have firm notions regarding what I think should happen, but there were probably a lot of firm notions going around the Titanic when its passengers felt the first thud.