Views expressed in opinion columns are the author’s own.
One summer, in my younger and more vulnerable years, I spent a week learning how to rock climb. On my first day, from the moment my feet left the ground, I knew I had made a huge mistake. Trembling with fear, I climbed far above my comfort zone (which resides on the ground), until my sweaty palms gave way and I slipped off the rock face. I fell back into another rock face, which bounced me back to the first. The two walls of stone lobbed me back and forth in an abrasive ping-pong game.
I can’t stop thinking about my youthful rock climbing follies while following political news these days. The Trump administration has us living far outside our political comfort zone. We swing around wildly as new developments pummel us from all sides. Bam: We might all die in a nuclear apocalypse. Bam: The president concocted a Watergate-style conspiracy about his predecessor. Bam: The U.S. is fine with Assad. Bam: Just kidding, we bombed Assad.
Many folks have developed strategies to cope with political reality. The internet is overflowing with distractions from the chaos. But, at least for me, many of these strategies fail to inspire mental peace. Whenever I read articles savaging the new Chainsmokers album instead of researching North Korea’s nuclear program, I feel like I’m playing checkers while Rome burns around me. For that reason, I’m recommending a fail-safe, guilt-free way to “distract” oneself from the news: Listen to Supreme Court audio!
This is how the Supreme Court hears oral arguments: A lawyer stands before justices and argues his case, while parrying fierce questions from nine of the best legal minds in the country. It’s intellectual drama of the highest order. Few lawyers can withstand the justices’ questioning without turning into a blubbering mess. The best lawyers, such as former Solicitor General Paul D. Clement, dodge the justices’ queries, while coolly weaving a convincing legal argument. Being a lawyer before the Supreme Court is like engaging in a Socratic dialogue with Socrates. Except that Socrates has been cloned nine times and the clones are conspiring to shatter your argument.
Oyez.org collects Supreme Court audio from every case argued since 1955. You can listen to the justices wrestle with Roe v. Wade, or hear two lawyers clash over interracial marriage. Oyez has audio of Sen. Ted Cruz, Justice Roberts and Justice Kagan arguing cases as lawyers. For anyone halfway interested in politics or history, Oyez is like a candy store.
But for those who don’t enjoy learning about government but follow the news out of moral duty, Supreme Court audio is a still useful distraction. The truth has become hazier since the beginning of the Trump nightmare. When Trump wanted to brag about a strong jobs report, Sean Spicer directly quoted Trump to the press when explaining why Trump previously called jobs numbers “phony”: “They may have been phony in the past, but it’s very real now.”
Over time, that kind of Orwellian trickery is disheartening for anyone who follows the news. We’re left wondering whether rational, fact-based discourse has been excommunicated from American public life. Our news media is populated by partisan cartoon characters and political debates are just parallel resuscitations of talking points. Compared to our largely postmodern politics, listening to Supreme Court audio is like epistemological comfort food.
Now, I’m not naive about the Supreme Court; it’s far from an apolitical body. But during oral arguments, the justices have no patience for irrational arguments. Facts must be proven in the record or discarded. Lawyers must address the question they’ve been asked, not the question they want to answer. Spicer wouldn’t last a minute.
These days, occasional distance from the daily news onslaught is a psychological imperative. For those looking for a more substantive distraction, Supreme Court audio is engrossing, educational and comforting.
Max Foley-Keene is a freshman government and politics major. He can be reached at maxfkcap2016@gmail.com.
