Minority rule wrecks us

            Only in the Supreme Court does the majority consistently make policy in Washington.

            And most of that majority was nominated by presidents who got fewer votes than their rivals.

            A solid majority of Americans – 58 percent today (Gallup) -- consistently opposes a ban on abortion. Yet a majority on the highest court appears poised to end that constitutional protection.

            In the Senate, the minority rules unless the matter involves the budget. Senators from that minority don't even have to read Dr. Seuss or the D.C. phone book to stop legislation. They just have to put a marker on it. Shy of 60 votes, it's the end of discussion.

            Climate change. The Electoral College. Gun sanity. Voting rights. The Affordable Care Act. LGBTQ rights. Based on national polls, it's difficult to find a single controversial debate in which the majority of Americans supports the Republican obstructionist position.

            Now we have the ridiculous situation involving vaccinations and masks.

            Infections among an unvaccinated minority, much of its vigor ideologically motivated and clustered in red states, swamps hospitals and causes harrowing choices reminiscent of the darkest days of the pandemic.

            Meanwhile, a vocal anti-mask minority, swooning to panderers like Florida's Ron DeSantis and Texas' Greg Abbott, is all too happy to put school children at risk. This is what passes for "pro-life" in 2021.

            It's a continuation of the criminally irresponsible behavior of the previous president with his super-spreader events, his mocking of medical experts.

            Hey, hey, MAGA freak; how many kids did you infect this week?

            OK. Put the pandemic aside.

            What about other vital needs? What about protecting voting rights from scheming partisans?

            What about treating gun violence as the public health issue it is?

            What about getting serious about the overheating of our planet – the wildfires, the super storms, the death rattle of our waterways, western reservoirs and aquifers?

            Minority rule means we will do little about protecting ourselves from natural disasters while letting the minority protest that fixes are too expensive, as the wealthy and the poor maintain their positions.

            And so we must end it.

            -- The filibuster must die. We must put a stake through its heart. As it is, the Senate has become a statue in a ratty park.

            As Adam Jentleson writes in his anti-filibuster manifesto Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of Democracy, Republicans in the Senate are "are out of step with the direction of the country," yet are "consistently able to impose their will on the majority."

            If we can't kill the filibuster, the representatives of the bill-killing minority should be required to march to the front of the Senate chambers and attempt to talk a bill to death, to literally gum up the works of our democracy as the nation watches.

            The filibuster should not be a push-button convenience. It should force a bill's opponents to stand before the nation and state their case for blockading government "by the people."

            They should have to talk and talk until they collapse or expire on the Senate floor. No food or water. Stand. Don't sleep. No cots allowed. No restroom breaks.

            -- We should neuter the Electoral College. I know it can't be ended via constitutional amendment due to the supermajority requirement. That's why more states should join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact to award their electoral votes to the popular-vote winner. Fifteen states and the District of Columbia have done so.

            -- Should we expand the Supreme Court? Biden has authorized a commission to study it. Nothing is sacrosanct about nine justices. The Republicans chose to ignore the traditional process when President Obama had a nominee. Why should Democrats honor tradition now?

            We must break the minority party's grip on a nation that should be governed by the assent of the people.

            Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.

Road to Kabul via Saigon

            Like Afghanistan, Vietnam was a bipartisan debacle.

            From Kennedy to Johnson to Nixon to Ford. Wait. Ford?

            Gerald – yeah. The "accidental president" was the one who, like Joe Biden, made the call to end a futile and interminable war, then presided over the chaos that followed.

            As a presidential candidate, Richard Nixon illegally used back channels to subvert the Paris Peace Talks so that once elected he, not Lyndon Johnson, could claim to have delivered peace.

            Instead Watergate delivered us from Richard Nixon. So the job fell to Ford.

            Is Vietnam relevant as we consider where we've been and what sent our troops home on a one-airstrip airport in Kabul?

            Absolutely. In both wars, policy makers turned the civilian business of war-making over to the war machine.

            Just one more surge. One more offensive. One more infusion of troops. One more set of talks. One more hill. One more valley.

            In both Vietnam and Afghanistan our troops and tax dollars propped up feckless leaders.

            Mainly, however, in both we thought that we could forcibly import our essence to a social system allergic to it.

            We were misled and hoodwinked by the war machine, by embedded contractors for whom war wasn't hell but one helluva investment.

            Oh, by the way, guess who wasn't? Joe Biden.

            As Barack Obama points out in his new memoir, Biden wasn't a latecomer to the ranks of those who thought we should cut our losses in Afghanistan. He was a resolute contrarian when Obama begrudgingly let generals win debate after debate.

            In the wake of what has transpired, a parade of the rock-ribbed and ribboned commanders have blasted the decision to end this war. That sounds familiar to those of us whose very lives hung in the balance as successive administrations tried to devise an honorable end to a quagmire.

            Lucas Kunce, a Marine veteran of Afghanistan who is running as a Democrat for U.S. Senate in Missouri denounced "a parade of officials who basically were spending the last 20 years selling people on this idea that the 20 years, the $2 trillion and the 2,500 lives were worth it. The only so-called 'experts' are people who were part of that effort."

            The events of recent weeks – the Taliban's stunning swelling to the fore – is reminiscent of the Tet Offensive of 1968.

            That's when the forces of North Vietnam demonstrated with cunning and courage that whatever force the U.S. supplied, they were going nowhere.

            If one based everything on body counts, the bottom line for our generals in Vietnam, U.S. troops kicked butt in Tet.

            So why a turning point in our ultimate defeat? Simple. Tet demonstrated that while our government sought to negotiate a way out and save some sons, these fighters weren't going anywhere.

            Just like the Taliban.

            Fifty years ago this summer I was awaiting the fruits of the Selective Service lottery. I was spared conscription by a blessedly high draft number. Before that lucky roll of the drum, my peers and I read about the government's policy of "Vietnamization" – trying to get the South Vietnamese to fight their own war while young American fought as their proxies.

            Didn't work. Sound familiar?

            It was sobering, back in 1971, to think any of us might be sent with the expressed mission of being the last to die in that war.

            The final days of the Afghan engagement were also an American-crafted disaster. The disaster is far from over.

            Biden and his advisers completely underestimated the extent to which Afghan soldiers would stand up for their country. Now we know: Whenever we left, they would fold.

            How about ten more years to find that out? Twenty?

            If the generals and congressional hawks had their way, we'd still be there – and in Vietnam.

            Fifty years on.

            Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.

Stinkin' rotten stupid COVID politics

            Tetanus. Polio. Measles. Mumps and rubella. These are vaccinations Texas required of my sons before they started school in the '80s.

            Over the years, Hepatitis B. Chickenpox and Hepatitis A were added to the requirements.

            Ten years ago the Texas Legislature appended meningitis to the list.

            These vaccinations are required unless parents fill out extensive forms every semester for a religious exemption, or if they fill out even more extensive forms to obtain a medical exemption at the start of every school year.

            Why not require vaccination for the virus now overwhelming Texas hospitals and cutting a swath of tragedy through the South?

            The only legitimate "why not" at the moment is that children under 12 are not eligible.

            The other, "why not," tragically, is stinking, rotten, outrageous, stupid politics.

            A Republican Legislature added meningitis to the required protections. That was smart. Interestingly, I don't recall meningitis killing Americans by the hundreds of thousands and circling the globe with deadly variants.

            What's the difference now?

            Stinking, rotten, stupid politics.

            It's the kind of politics that would lead a Republican audience to boo Donald Trump – Donald Trump! – for speaking favorably of life-saving vaccines.

            How can these people call themselves pro-life? Of course, they do.

            Stinking, rotten, stupid politics are at play as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis threaten school districts if temporary policies require students to wear masks.

            It is unconscionable that ideologues who otherwise preach "local control" fight like hell against that very thing as schools seek to keep children – and their families – safe.

            But of course, this is all about stinking, rotten, stupid politics.

            I teach on a college campus. Every individual is masked. It is not convenient. It's a hassle. But it's the price paid for staying healthy and convening face to face.

            The price too often paid for the absence of face coverings, and of course the absence of vaccinations, is gruesome, lingering death or long-term disability, and huge medical bills.

            This shouldn't take a judge. All it should take is the word of health professionals. However, when a state judge told DeSantis he couldn't bar schools from mandating masks, he said mask mandates are "reasonable and consistent with the best scientific and medical opinion in the country." That means DeSantis (as with Abbott) is unreasonably following his own base political instincts at the expense of public health.

            The Florida judge also pointed to two court cases in which individual rights were limited by their impact on the rights of others.

            "Freedom of choice" is the anti-mask, anti-vax line. This does not compute when the matter is contagious, deadly disease.

            To paraphrase Oliver Wendell Holmes: Your freedom ends where my sinus cavity begins.

            Back to vaccinations. Last week Abbott issued an edict that local governments could not require vaccinations. He said that such a matter has always been the responsibility of the state. Fair point.

            He did, however, recommend that the Legislature, now in special session, discuss whether or not to add COVID-19 to the required vaccinations.

            Ten years ago the addition of meningitis to the list was largely uncontroversial and passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature. Now, scandalously, the GOP is pushed around by anti-vaxers.

            And so, we won't get our hopes up.

            The other day the man who was my family doctor in Texas wrote this on Facebook:

            "Vaccinated and masked with an N-95, I walked through HEB noting that 95 percent of patrons were not masked. Then I sadly realized that one or two of these mask-less individuals may die of COVID-19 over the next six weeks.

            "Oh, what would Charles Darwin think of us today? Evolutionary biology is playing out for all of us to witness and experience."

            Evolutionary biology driven by stinking, rotten, stupid politics.

            Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.