Public Comment

One day before the presidential election (November 4, 2024), the Chronicle published the Open Forum piece: Trump’s power could go unchecked by Erwin Chemerinsky, preeminent liberal Constitutional Law scholar and dean of the UC Berkeley School of law. Surely, no one who read the piece learned anything they did not already know about Trump. Surely, Erwin changed not a single vote; so what’s the point? 

Many Americans are working to get out the vote. I spent October making 1,650 phone calls into Georgia for that purpose. The op/ed is how Chemerinsky and the faltering liberal institutions of American power contributed—too little too late. They still defend the capitalist framework and relationships and the teetering house of cards they helped to erect. 

Bolstering America’s monstrous wars throughout the world (such as Vietnam, Iraq, now Palestine and Lebanon) they’ve promoted ruthless “unchecked” criminality. Now, with their weak pseudo-democratic checks and balances collapsing they still preach the nonsense to a dwindling choir, while crying out in despair. They might instead seek forgiveness for the fecklessness of a national pedagogy based upon nonsense by denouncing today’s American funded genocide and more. That honesty would be a start.