Injustice Nation

 

“For five decades, the Court has, with striking regularity, sided with the rich and powerful against the poor and weak, in virtually every area of the law.” Adam Cohen, Supreme Ineqiality: The Supreme Court’s Fifty-Year Battle For A More Unjust America

Dispirited. Another week of soul fatigue. The fuckery goes on as the election nears. Suppression tactics in full swing. It’s not subtle. Strip large urban areas of ballot drop-off boxes. Reduce the number of polling places so voters have to endure long lines and hours of waiting to exercise their right to vote. If the powerful wanted people to vote in large numbers, they would make it easy to do so. Instead they (state level Republican legislatures and secretaries of state) make it hard for as many people as they can. Aided and abetted by the Supreme Court’s gutting of the voting rights act, they create formidable barriers. According to Rick Wilson of the Lincoln Project, Florida excels at election fuckery, which explains, in part, why so many of the leeches that squirm their way to the top of the GOP hierarchy hail from Florida. Rick Scott. Ron Desantis. Marco Rubio. The list goes on. Right-wingers and the State of Florida have had a long love affair.

Ever since Robert Bork spoke his mind too freely, the confirmation process has been like bad Kabuki theater. The whole shebang is a farce, and most of the time the hearings are dull, ponderous, long on posturing opportunities for senators, and devoid of substance. 

Amy Coney Barrett will be confirmed as the newest Supreme Court Justice and will park her uptight, reactionary butt in RBG’s old chair. The Democrats can’t stop this confirmation train, not even with dynamite. It’s a done deal. The Court will soon have six Catholics. Think of that. When John F. Kennedy ran for Senate in the mid 1950’s, and then president a few years later, his Catholic faith was a big deal, a campaign “issue” because it made WASPS uneasy. Today’s WASPS have nothing to fear because this Catholic-laden court will protect their class interests. Amy Coney Barrett hails from some weird Catholic sect in South Bend, Indiana, and reminds me of someone who has been indoctrinated. The first time I saw her photograph I thought she could be a character from Westworld. Like a robot, she was programmed to evade, to duck and dodge, to bob and weave, and refuse to take a position on the simplest matters of law, like whether or not the Constitution allows the president to change the date of a national election.  Ever since Robert Bork spoke his mind too freely, the confirmation process has been like bad Kabuki theater. The whole shebang is a farce, and most of the time the hearings are dull, ponderous, long on posturing opportunities for senators, and devoid of substance. 

I felt the weight of the times today. It was 95 degrees outside in the middle of October, in a year when 4 million acres of California has been torched by wildfires and the long term weather forecast points at a mild, dry winter for a swath of the country. The drought will worsen, the risk of devastating wildfires will increase; the cycle is as vicious as it is obvious, but don’t bother trying to convince the US Supreme Court; after all, climate change is a contentious public issue. Fuck. I have this sinking feeling that the next several years will be grim for millions of people. My family isn’t impervious to these riptides, and I find myself worrying about the future.  Even if we manage to push Biden and Harris across the line next month, the road will be rough. It’s going to take a concerted effort to powerwash Trump’s shit stains from every federal agency. Even if Democrats flip the Senate -- which is absolutely necessary if we are to have any hope -- the GOP, though weakened by it’s romance with Trumpism, will still do everything possible to thwart Biden and Harris. We can’t fool ourselves. A Biden victory will not restore the nation to the state it was in when Trump took the reins. The shit we’re in is much deeper; Trump has done a number on America. Trump bent the nation over and sodomized it. 

To stop backsliding into the abyss, the Democrats must win the Senate and the White House and hold both long enough to appoint justices who are not products of the Federalist Society.  If the country is to make any progress on the thicket of intertwined problems staring us down -- from climate change and health care as a right, to racial and economic justice, gun control, campaign finance reform and mass incarceration, mass surveillance and militarism -- we must have more democracy, not less, but thanks to Mitch McConnell and the reactionary Federalist Society, that’s a ways off. The Nixon Court has become the Trump Court. Fire in the hole, America. 

Power must be one hell of a high, better than opium.