Friday, November 1, 2019

Mirroring Case Study #1 : Impeachment, the Senate, and the Selective Misuse of History in Political Conversations.



 Happy All-Saints Day!  What would secular saint Alexander Hamilton say about yesterday’s impeachment inquiry vote, those closed-doors depositions meant to ensure Trump’s impeachment and trial in the Senate?  I know what I think about current events because I’m well-informed and take the time to read the facts and critically break down and mostly discard media explanations of them.  Yet, Hamilton has been creatively and superficially quoted a lot by partisans of both sides who mostly want to think of him either as a source of worship because of a fantasy 18th century political system that doesn’t exist any longer or as a prophet of progress from a song and dance number in some modern day fictional operetta (that I still want to see).    
It’s rarely a pro-constitutional, originalist moment among today’s mostly revisionist crowd.  That is unless there’s some current issue that needs a selective use of some dead person like Hamilton.  I’m sure my other 19th century American inspirations, Daniel Webster and Abraham Lincoln, would also have a lot to say about current political divisions.  But their souls aren’t here either that I can tell, so we have to be logical and intelligent in using their works for now until they somehow tell us otherwise.   
Most of the best Hamilton material on the impeachment subject refers to the bulwark of the Senate against popular, political opinion, the influence of politics on impeachment, the necessary difficulty of the process, and most importantly the potentially unjust aspect of removing an elected official.  If this one segment or my explanation of this particular Federalist Paper doesn’t fit what you believe—let’s say you’re very emotional and partisan about this subject—just ignore the parts that don’t match your (irrational) views and look yourself in the mirror and believe that I agree with you.  I really do want you to believe that I agree with you….only to your face. 
I wanted to dissect one section from an historical figure rather than the damaged version in the average opinion article or political conversation.  In demonstration, I'll go line-by-line to show how mirrors should approach historical references in order to evaluate what irrational figures do as the opposite. I’ve tried to use and explain every sentence, to be aware of the time in question, while acknowledging the differences between a context that I’m in right now (2019) and one that we can only learn about through acquired knowledge (the 18th century). However, mirrors should approach each conversation as atomically as possible to minimize falsehoods.  If the conversations move to serious historical inaccuracies, consider mirroring them and leaving to find more logical ones. Finally, I do not suggest that my explanation is the only correct one of this segment or this historical figure as that would go against the mirroring belief that a better, more complete and rational explanation might be available if and only if it's subject to rational debate.  As an example, of course it's not complete, but I'll subject it to any rational test at any time. 
Back to impeachment as Master Hamilton has lots to say about the issue back then.  He’s writing to support the Constitution and a government that doesn’t really exist yet.  One such segment is interesting though by no means the only one from these masterpiece works that most won’t read or understand:

"A well-constituted court for the trial of impeachments is an object not more to be desired than difficult to be obtained in a government wholly elective. The subjects of its jurisdiction are those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust. They are of a nature which may with peculiar propriety be denominated POLITICAL, as they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself. The prosecution of them, for this reason, will seldom fail to agitate the passions of the whole community, and to divide it into parties more or less friendly or inimical to the accused. In many cases it will connect itself with the pre-existing factions, and will enlist all their animosities, partialities, influence, and interest on one side or on the other; and in such cases there will always be the greatest danger that the decision will be regulated more by the comparative strength of parties, than by the real demonstrations of innocence or guilt." 

Alexander Hamilton, 1788 from https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed65.asp


So here’s my line-by-line, logical, and less partisan summation of just this one section of the Federalist Paper #65  (in the style of Sentence=S and #, “S#”) followed by what I offer as context in parentheses:


-S1: Impeachment courts are best when made up of elected officials from all views, so that they’re “well-constituted.” 

(It’s implied that any impeachment court that is “partisan” is automatically more suspect and less just.)


-S1: Even a fair and representative impeachment court is not always desired because being elected might skew the truth in favor of popularity. 

(This goes along the lines of Hamilton’s skepticism of simple majority votes equaling truth or justice.  A senate court might be representative and fair, so 51% of one partisan group and 49% of another might be part of a senate unanimously approving an official's removal, but every member is still political and thus potentially unjust.  Note that there is no direct election of senators at this time, so the skepticism he's referring to concerns the state legislatures electing partisans to national office and not even state voters as the ones responsible!  There are no national voters for senate or president at this time!  It's implied that even more skepticism would be reserved for the more democratic branch, the House of Representatives.  

Almost no Founders believed that a simple majority or in today’s words, popular votes aka popularity polls meant the best for the country nor did they equal the truth, or justice for that matter.  That’s why the Senate requires 2/3 to remove, a firewall against the popular injustice of 51% from the House of Representatives to pass Articles of Impeachment thus initiating the trial in the Senate.  One suspects that 2/3 or even 99% could be wrong if motivated by partisan sentiments from the time, but that some standard of removal had to be met in order to get people from 1788 to support the new system of the Constitution.  Speaker Nancy Pelosi clearly needs to have a look at the actual views of the Founders on impeachment, especially  their mistrust of the lower house's propensity to partisanship and injustice all stemming from its democratic nature.  If she did that honestly, she wouldn't be citing Hamilton or any other Founder to support her inquiry.)   

-S2: These impeachment courts try public men who abused or violated public trust.

(He specifically doesn’t define these massive abstractions because he knows they'll change.  A “public man” to him probably means any member of the early Republic government, from his experience under the Articles of Confederation and ideally under the Constitution government he hoped would pass.  Since the sort of Blowwhistles and un-elected civil service bureaucrats did not exist in the same way today as when he was merely trying to get the Constitution ratified, he was referring to those officials sent by the states to the weak national government.  “Abuse” and “violation” of “public trust” are abstractions also because he does not cite every specific law of his time nor every future law and criminal action that would define these words.  He knew the laws would change especially since the government he wanted didn’t even exist yet.  So, he knows that 1788 laws about "abuse" and "violation of public trust" by "public men" are much different in meaning than the laws and understanding of them today.  But perhaps as important, impeachment was and is always a POLITICAL process that would label “abuse” or “violation” as so because they were elected by the people and those people change their minds over time and make their elected representatives follow them.  He does not acknowledge a universal Truth connecting these three concepts nor that two different American peoples (1788 and 2019) would somehow agree to the same judgement of those ideas). 

-S3: The nature of impeachment trials is political because they come from the way a society judges a wrong action by an accused official. 

(He uses the word “peculiar” to show that societies change over time as to what they would judge as an impeachable offense.  Then he uses the word "proprietary," which means proper or owning to the conventions of the time. That those standards change does not mean he would view any such Senate court as being any less political.  Instead, he uses “immediately” to show that the wrong was done at the time the official was being politically judged.  This is important to his views that voters see justice as immediate and something that politicians have to reflect and that they are not universal or always correct.)  

-S4:  There will never be a total agreement with the political prosecution of the official because society never totally agrees on any issue.  Partisans will remain on both sides based on support for or opposition to the accused official.

(This is a key point from him.   A political divide comes from the society of the time.  Every impeachment process is political and thus reflective of that societal divide.  One could imply that the fairer and less partisan the process of impeachment, the smaller the political divide would be.  Conversely, the more partisan the atmosphere, the more elected officials should restrain themselves from engaging in impeachment because of the divide they would create.  This could be instructive for today’s highly partisan impeachment atmosphere.)

-S5:  The prosecution is always connected to political parties, emotions, and interests of the time.  Political power is not justice.  Simply having strong parties, like a majority in Congress, does not show innocence or guilt.  

(Impeachment is always a suspect process because it comes from the people, who Hamilton mistrusts as being overly passionate and less rational. He (correctly) views the truth as not being attached to democracy, to the parties in control of certain parts of the Republic, nor to the supposed power of one group over another.  Instead, this Paper should act as serious restraint on any public official as it is a clear warning about the realities of power and the removal of public officials.) 
Finally, Hamilton lived at a time where he needed to explain to state leaders that their national representatives wouldn’t be thrown out of office by politicians from other potentially rival states on a whim.  He tried to tie the country together to avoid regional factions especially those that would result from impeachment.  He also explained how impeachment would be a partisan process so that the different state leaders would be less likely to resort to it.  To justify support of a stronger national government, he needed to convince opponents that impeachment would be difficult and to do that, he grounded his explanation on the idea that mere democracy and mere popularity were suspect.  Therefore, his views are most valuable to mirrors because they urge us to be skeptical of political processes and have rational checks on all percentages of opinionated groups.  The number of supporters does not always equal a truth, whether it's 1%, 49%, 51% or 99%.  We are mirrors precisely because we evaluate each case study, each conversation and determine as best we can whether the facts warrant further discussion or to justify us leaving because our subjects are too irrationally political to warrant further participation with them.  We seek to tie more people together much like Hamilton because our goal is more incremental progress, harmony, and glory for the country much like he probably wanted. 

Helpful Definition from Dictionary.law.com:

articles of impeachment: the charges brought (filed) to impeach a public official. In regard to the President, Vice President and federal judges, the articles are prepared and voted upon by the House of Representatives, and if it votes to charge the official with a crime, the trial is held by the Senate. 

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