Go back 10 years and as apathetic as voters were in much of the developed world, I had a hard time envisioning how these democracies/republics could fall. Boy was I naive.

There was a time in the US that as bitter as partisan politics could be there seemed to be a level of decency on both sides and a higher loyalty to the institutions of our government.

Nixon resigned in disgrace because it became clear even his own party would not support him. I honestly think that if Watergate happened today, the president's party would defend the president regardless of what happened.

You see active and organized voter suppression, politicization of the election process itself and gerrymandering on a massive yet accurate scale.

The attitude seems to have set in that the ends justify the means. "Look at what the other side does." Abortion in particular seems to be one of those issues where self-described moral voters seem to view anything as justified. Like how anyone can justify to thsmselves bombing an abortion clinic or a church is in any way justifiable is beyond me.

The level of GOP obstruction in the Obama era was utterly unprecedented. The filibuster was defended until it was politically expedient to get rid of it. A simple majority for Supreme Court justices is unprecedented, at least in the modern era. Refusing to even hold a hearing for a Supreme Court nominee is unprecedented and everyone knew that too would be abandoned if ever convenient.

Take Kavanaugh's confirmation. Of course a conservative president is going to nominate a conservative justice. Kavanaugh I believe was on the Federalist Society's list of 25 potential nominees where they expressed no preference among the 25.

The hearings produced some pretty serious baggage for Kavanaugh (ie Ford's accusations). He could've had his nomination withdrawn (or he could've withdrawn himself) and been replaced with another conservative justice with no such baggage but that didn't happen.

What you have is privileged white men, in particular Trump and McConnell, who didn't want to lose face by backing down. Arguably they didn't like the idea that Kavanaugh, another white man, would be held accountable for something that he simply wouldn't have been 20 years ago. So getting him confirmed became a way of rubbing this victory in the face of opponents.

This is what I find utterly unfathomable: so much of Trump's support is essentially religious. By any objective measure, Trump is a reprehensible human being. How any "moral voters" can look passed that because abortion I would never have predicted. It's utterly indefensible.

And this is what concerns me the most: it seems like Trump can do nothing that will rock his base. Arguably colluding with foreign governments, his love affair with despots and tyrants, the political scapegoating of the poor and immigrants and the dog-whistle (some would say steam-whistle) politics of white supremacism. It's so depressing.

So yeah, it's weeks until the election and the standard used to stall Merrick Garland's nomination is completely forgotten (of course). That seat will be filled by the election. McConnell has already come up and said Trump's nominee would get a vote on the Senate floor.

Personally I don't generally have an issue with conservative jurisprudence. At its core, it's a belief the the Constitution is literal. It says what it says and it doesn't say what it doesn't say. If you want it to say something else, there's a process for that (ie a constitutional amendment). Personally I find the "living document" interpretation of the Constitution to be nothing more than populism.

This can be taken too far. Constitutional literalism was used in the post-Civil War era (ie the Redeemer era) to dismantle the rights of former slaves.

As you see in this thread, Scalia is scapegoated by some of the Left as a hater but this is (IMHO) an ignorant view. Read the man's opinions.

What does sadden me is the utterly self-serving, completely hypocritical and utterly inconsistent "the ends justify the means", institution-eroding and obstructionist approach that will inevitably lead us there.