July 2023

The week that changed America

What a week America has had, with landmark judgements from the Supreme Court and the brief but excitingly unreal possibility of Putin’s ouster that petered out.

The highest court in the land kicked things off by denying sweeping powers to state legislatures to decide election rules, thus saving democracy in America. Writing for the 6-3 court majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said, “the U.S. Constitution does not, as the lawmakers had claimed, insulate their actions from review by the state courts. To the contrary, he said, state legislative power is constrained by the federal and state constitutions, as well as ordinary state laws.”

Hardly had the cheers died down when the Court followed it up with a double whammy. They ruled affirmative action in college admissions illegal and ordered educational institutions to be “color blind” in admitting students. Judge Ketanji Jackson, writing in dissent for a 3-6 minority, said, “The best that can be said of the majority’s perspective is that it proceeds (ostrich-like) from the hope that preventing consideration of race will end racism. But if that is its motivation, the majority proceeds in vain.”

Then, the Court ruled in favor of a worker who refused to perform work on a website for gay and lesbian couples. By a 6-to-3 vote, the court sided with Lorie Smith, a Colorado web designer who is opposed to same sex marriage. She challenged the state's public accommodations law, claiming that by requiring her to serve everyone equally, the state was unconstitutionally enlisting her in creating a message she opposes. Writing for the minority, Justice Sotomayor said, "By issuing this new license to discriminate in a case brought by a company that seeks to deny same-sex couples the full and equal enjoyment of its services, the immediate, symbolic effect of the decision is to mark gays and lesbians for second-class status. In this way, the decision itself inflicts a kind of stigmatic harm, on top of any harm caused by denials of service."

The last one left me scratching my head. I’m not sure if I understand what they have done. Is the Court essentially telling us that we can refuse work assigned to us by our employer based on potentially whimsical religious beliefs? Can a Muslim refuse to work on a Christian website and vice versa? This has the potential to create chaos at the workplace.

The ruling on affirmative action has struck a dagger into the heart of efforts by colleges and universities to foster and promote diverse opinions on campuses. It makes it patently harder for Black students to get in and succeed in college. It sets back decades of progress on this front.

I make no claim to knowing or understanding US history or even Indian history. But as I scratch and claw and read, I am humbled by my ignorance. From my reading of US history, the wounds of the original sin of slavery and oppression of blacks are still raw and run deep to this day. Slavery is the original sin that will lead to the demise of America whenever it comes. Oppression of other minorities such as the Chinese slavery during the railroad expansion of the late 19th century or the Japanese internment during World War 2 are, without doubt, real and horrific but they pale when compared with the atrocities of slavery. Immigrants from India first arrived in the US in a somewhat reasonable trickle around the turn of the 20th century. The inflection point for Indian immigration is seen in the 1960s after President Kennedy’s immigration reforms, and then accelerated in the 1990s thanks to Y2K and the Silicon Valley tech boom. There hasn’t really been any systemic racism against Indian Americans to speak of, in the same way the Blacks or the Chinese or the Japanese have seen.

I think it’s worth reading history, then pausing to introspect so we can empathize with the truly oppressed minorities, especially the Blacks. Anything that is unfair to them is not only morally wrong but also can be argued to be irrational and not in the best interests of American society. I wish the Indian and Korean kids who want to study at Yale would take time to understand this. That their victory shouldn’t be won at the expense of those who need it more. After all some of them will become future leaders of this great nation.

In retrospect, on the affirmative action ruling, the plaintiffs played the game well. They picked on Harvard, a proxy for the Ivy League colleges, which are arguably the most nepotistic and corrupt educational institutions in America. They then zoomed in on their unethical admissions practices (ie making disparaging comments about Asians, etc). They were smart to pick the college that had the worst defense. If they had picked on Ohio State or Michigan or UC Berkeley they wouldn’t have fared as well. Now, everyone must suffer for the Ivy League’s sins.

Some days, it sure feels like America is about to fall apart. On other days, it feels like it has already fallen apart. Just when you glimpse a faint ray of hope that perhaps things are turning around, you remind yourself that Florida is still a part of the union. Anytime something has gone badly wrong in America in the last couple of decades, Florida has always been at the center of it. This week, the Supreme Court was our Florida. It’s not all bad. I am confident that colleges will find ways to promote diversity and stay within the bounds of law. This too shall pass.

Prigozhin is a mercenary who leads about 25,000 other mercenaries who signed up to fight for Putin in Ukraine, After months of discontent and wrangling and heart burn, it became clear to Prigozhin that his days were numbered. Putin had marked him for assassination. Putin may be a dope when it comes to estimating his chances of winning a war but he’s no dope when it comes to dealing with thugs like himself. I guess Putin figured that not only could he rid himself of a troublesome partner, who was clearly not making a difference in the war, but also save himself a few bucks. Dead men don’t need to be paid. Prigozhin realized that his number was up. He moved to seize a neighboring town, and then declared that he would march into Moscow and remove Putin himself from the Kremlin. As ludicrous as Prigozhin’s claim was, the Western media lapped it up. They seemed to actually believe that a mercenary with 25K brigands could bring down a 20 year old dictatorship. The press whipped itself into euphoric excitement. Twelve or twenty four laters, depending on where you start the clock, the excitement fizzled. Prigozhin declared that he was calling off the coup, and instead left for Belarus, where no doubt the choicest of Russian poisons await him.

Perhaps the silver lining in this brief but exciting saga is that American Pharma companies may have found yet another name that sounds like a name but isn’t really a name for one of their new drugs. “Ever suffer from irritability and sleep deprivation? Try Prigozhin. Please consult the Kremlin before taking the medication. Side effects may include illusions of grandeur, loss of judgment and impulse control, and a sudden desire to flee to Belarus.”

Have a great 4th of July. God bless America.