KYLE SMITH ON THE BATTLE OF BRETT KAVANAUGH AND THE JOKER’S TWO BOATS:

With so much hysteria being whipped up by trusted media outlets, the potential grows for widespread political violence. “I’ve started to think that Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy may be the one man preventing the United States from political breakdown,” my colleague Michael Brendan Dougherty wrote last winter, explaining that “Kennedy deals out victories and defeats to each side. . . . His mercurial jurisprudence replicates and even gives the savor of legitimacy to a closely divided country.” But if the Supreme Court should tip solidly right, what norms would not become disposable to the Left?

Talk of California secession or breakup clouds the air. Leading progressive voices frankly state that our constitutional system has failed us, citing the Electoral College and the disproportionate influence of low-population states in the Senate. Vague cries to “rise up” don’t look so vague when masked Antifa demonstrators join the party. “We must not be enemies,” Lincoln counseled us in his first inaugural address. “Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.” Anyone feeling confident today that our bonds of affection are stronger than our passions?

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