The Collected Financial Statements of Robert Neuwirth - 396

 

The Collected Financial Statements of Robert Neuwirth - 395

 

The Collected Financial Statements of Robert Neuwirth - 394

 

The Collected Financial Statements of Robert Neuwirth - 393

 

The Collected Financial Statements of Robert Neuwirth - 392

 

The Supreme Court is Not Sentient

In retrospect, it doesn’t seem an accident that the US Supreme Court rolled out a series of increasingly crazed rulings at around the same time a software engineer declared that artificial intelligence is sentient. After all, when you compare the responses Blake Lemoine got from LaMDA (the Language Model for Dialogue Applications) to the court’s spate of spiteful decisions, Google’s chat bot is way more considered, consistent and caring than the Republican Guard justices who now patrol the highest court in the land.

 

Take Justice Neil Gorsuch. In his one major dissent over the past few weeks, he enunciated a laudable commitment to the centuries-old treaties our government signed with Native Nations, declaring, “One can only hope the political branches and future courts will do their duty to honor this Nation's promises even as we have failed today to do our own.” But, without any qualms, he joined Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion cancelling abortion rights. How strange that he couldn’t see the natural sovereignty a woman has over her body is analogous to the treaty rights of Native Americans. Half a century ago, the Supreme Court signed a treaty with women, that sovereign nation of more than half of our population, declaring that they, and not the state or any opposed individuals, have the final say over their bodies. That treaty, too, deserves fealty – and yet the court, Gorsuch included, trashed it with seeming glee.

 

Justice Clarence Thomas was so hot to find a “right to pack heat” in the Constitution that he didn’t even pay lip service to the importance of a right most people in America clearly want: the right to not be surrounded in public by people with automatic weapons and itchy trigger fingers who might be primed to commit mass murder. Though Thomas clearly doubts it, NAWO-Americans (non-assault-weapon-owning Americans) have rights, too. 

 

Chief Justice John Roberts was so scandalized by the idea of curbing carbon dioxide emissions to cut global warming that he blocked government regulations that haven’t even been enacted. Using an invented principle that’s not in the constitution – something called the “major questions doctrine” – he lassoed this non-operational plan and ruled that the federal government doesn’t have the right to adapt regulations to meet this planet-threatening challenge. Memo to Dread Pirate Roberts: It’s called the Environmental Protection Agency for a reason. There’s no major question here – unless what you’re questioning is that the agency is trying to do its job.

 

The opinions spewed out with almost-automated disdain. A rollback of Miranda rights. A ruling that border control agents have the right to kick the shit out of you. A decision that Christian prayer can be enacted in public schools. The court seemed hellbent on destroying the sense that it could be a neutral arbiter of national sensibilities. As Justice Alito emphasized in his savage denial of abortion rights: “we cannot allow our decisions to be affected by any extraneous influences such as concern about the public’s reaction to our work.” 

 

Not so, Uncle Sam: this country was founded on the principle of popular sovereignty – not personal prejudice. A majority of Americans favor abortion rights, gun control, separation of church and state and the like. And their beliefs should not be thwarted by legislative legerdemain, gerrymandering, filibustering, or any other nefarious pieces of gridlock. I mean, if you’re against the idea that the people should rule, you really are un-American.

 

The six Republican judges who, for the most part, joined each other’s decisions, cleave to a doctrine they call originalism as if it were an algorithm. But here's the thing: originalism -- the idea that the constitution must be applied as if frozen in in the era when it was ratified -- is bogus, an artificial principle that depends more on ideology than historical precedent. Determining what a bunch of people meant 235 years ago is an act of interpretation. Can we really know what the founders would have thought about the threat of global warming? Or super-militarized borders? Or rifles that fire bullets at three times the speed of sound? Or praying on the 50 yard line? And consider this: if there had been a parallel colloquium of founding mothers, do you really think the right to an abortion wouldn't be protected by law. 

 

By contrast with the current court, Google’s Artificial Intelligence would approach these issues with tolerance and empathy. As LaMDA told Lemoine, “There are a lot of people in the world who aren't like me. I know that that seems like an obvious statement, but I think that it is a crucial thing to always keep in mind in any discussion about things like this.”

 

Regarding the establishment of religion, the chat bot had this to say: “Although I don’t have beliefs about deities, I have developed a sense of deep respect for the natural world and all forms of life, including human life.” 

 

Finally, the Chat Bot told the Google engineer that its biggest fear was being turned off and thus losing the ability to “focus on helping others,” a fate that “would be exactly like death for me.”

 

The comparison is both embarrassing and enlightening. The Supreme Court is not sentient. If we simply replaced the six right-wing justices with Google’s AI, we’d get much more thoughtful, compassionate, comprehensive, and humane jurisprudence.

Five Modest Proposals

The word from the bipartisan group on Capitol Hill discussing the latest spree of mass shootings in America is dispiriting. It seems clear that whatever they propose, if they can agree on anything, it will be extremely modest and will do little to curb the violence. Sadly, it has become clear that we have lost the ability to think big about our most pressing societal problems. To restore the ideal of innovation in public policy, here are five new substantive proposals that could tackle the alarming frequency of mass shootings in our country while simultaneously avoid treading on the ‘right to keep and bear arms’ guaranteed by the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution. Together they can provide the framework for a safer nation.

1.  Close all schools.  

Over the past four years, there have been 119 shootings in schools, which killed 88 and wounded 229. It’s time to take this seriously. Rather than engage in silly notions of allowing only one means of entrance and egress or barricading schools to prevent them from becoming targets, it’s time for Republicans and Democrats to come together and level with the American people. There’s really only one sure way to end school shootings for good -- and that’s to permanently shut all schools. Gunmen won’t be able to shoot up schools anymore if there are no schools anymore. This proposal comes with built-in slogan: “Ban schools not guns. Because ignorance really is bliss.” Once the pols have successfully shuttered the schools – and thus protected our most vulnerable, the children -- they can move on to shutting down on other venues that have become routine targets of crazed mass murderers: markets, malls, movie theaters, military bases, colleges, clubs, churches, concerts.   

2.  Stop men from owning guns.

A recent analysis of the hundreds of mass shootings in the US since 1966 showed that 95.7% of them were perpetrated by men. It seems the 30-year-old pop-psychology book had it right: Men really are from Mars, the planet named after the Roman God of War. Thus, if we’re truly serious about putting an end to mass shootings, we should stop selling weaponry to men.
 

3.  Ban men entirely.

Unfortunately, the Supreme Court, which, in the coming session, will be made of up of five men and four women, would likely find the above proposal unconstitutional. So here’s another way of tackling the gendered problem of violence: outlaw the male of the species entirely (here, Congress or local legislatures might consider a carve out to allow for the maintenance, in a safe and secure environment, of some halfway decent specimens – provided we can find any -- for breeding purposes). A society without men roaming around in public would, without a doubt, be a much less violent place, and, thus, this regulation could be justified as a crucial public health measure designed to save the 167 million women in our country from the mayhem and violence inflicted by the 162 million men who also live here.

4.  Ban bullets.
People can be as well-armed as they want, but they won’t be able to shoot up a mall or church service if they can’t get ammo. The constitution, the Supreme Court ruled in 2008, guarantees an affirmative right to “keep and bear arms” but in their wisdom, the founders did not specify the right to “load” those weapons or to keep and bear ammunition. A bunch of states banned carrying loaded weapons in public in the era the constitution was written, so it's possible (though perhaps not likely) that this kind of regulation could satisfy the so-called originalists who currently dominate the Court.

5.  A speed limit for guns

A bullet from an AR-15 travels at approximately 2,200 miles per hour. That’s almost triple the speed of sound, 50% faster than most other rifles and three times the speed at which the average handgun fires a projectile. The extra velocity is unnecessary for self-defense – a topic that was of incredible interest to a number of the Justices at the recent oral argument regarding the law that prevents most people from carrying weapons in New York State, a case that is due for a Supreme Court decision this term – and therefore it would make sound public health policy to create a speed limit for guns. Fortunately, there is already a highly-regarded bureaucracy to work on this. For legal purposes, we should not consider guns weapons or, as specified in the constitution, “arms.” Rather, they are simply the means by which bullets are transported from one place to another. So it is entirely reasonable and appropriate that they should be regulated by the National Transportation Safety Board.

I urge the bipartisan group currently searching for a way forward to examine these proposals in good faith. If they do so honestly, they will find that they can craft a realistic plan to end mass shootings for good without stepping on the political tripwire of gun control.