I’m waiting for the Court’s decision on birthright. How many on the Court will say the 14th Amendment, which unambiguously states that any person born in the US is a citizen of the US, is Unconstitutional?
They certainly shot themselves in the foot with that immunity ruling. God forbid that Cannon ever get a place there. She needs to be disbarred for those documents he hoarded and sold to foreign nationals.
IF we survive it, the story of the Trump era will be not just the demented psychopath monster this country somehow knowingly elected but the total failure of our institutions which we naively assumed would hold the line. The media sanewashes him and promotes his madness because he’s good for business, the GOP tolerates and supports him because they think he holds the key to their power, Dems are so far up their own asses they have no coordinated strategy to deal with him, our allies tolerate him because they have learned dependence on us from decades of practice. So of course the courts have played along with him, giving him repeated mulligans and never punishing the crooks who serve him (how many Trump lawyers have been disbarred? How many served jail time for contempt? Did he ever pay a penny to Jean Carroll, who won her judgments years ago?).
A complete revolution and new Constitution is called for, but that’s never going to happen. Instead, the decline will continue. We are rotting from the inside.
1. The inbuilt deference to the champions of the unreconstructed in our political and legal systems,
and 2. the appetite in Americans for sadopopulism.
Given the wide swaths of unreconstructed territory I don't think we'd guarantee the result of a revolution would be anything other than a rightwing regime of terror.
And most revolutions seem to fail; the USA was actually quite lucky as colonies go.
We’re not likely to have a revolution, violent or otherwise. The likely solution is steady decline, as we wonder what happened to the things we took for granted. It’d be like what Britain went through but far worse because we don’t have a powerful ally to prop us up.
It’s argued that Britain never recovered fully from World War II but stopping Hitler is obviously a far more noble cause than whatever inspired U.S. decline.
Sadly true! Brits could say they sacrificed an empire to end an existential threat (and really weren’t that badly off after the war compared to most collapsed empires). For us—we won’t be so lucky because the fall of our country will likely pull down most of the world like an ocean liner pulling town rowboats in its wake.
And for what? Because we couldn’t elect responsible leaders, culminating in the election of the personification of a primal scream?
But then this is also the country that had a civil war because half the country simply could not accept even the possibility of losing their free labor.
All made possible by decades of Christianity's worst strain metastasizing throughout the government and education system and everyone who could have done something to stop it turning a blind eye.
The "best" (and I use that term extremely loosely) case scenario would be a phenomenally bloody war with direct casualties in the millions, probably tens of millions, indirect casualties through collateral damage and destroyed infrastructure that probably climbed even higher, and an ongoing RW campaign of nationwide terrorism even more extreme than the one we have now.
The infrastructure damage alone would probably break the country outright since Republicans have been deliberately chipping away at it for decades and it's just not robust enough to sustain anything major.
To say nothing of what would happen if things went nuclear...
trump is a petulant child, who has always gotten his way. His presidency is a warning to not let a spoiled brat have power. Besides the three liberals on the Court, some of the cons are telling trump "no," and Iran is telling trump "no." Also telling him "no," our former NATO allies. Imagine being almost 80 years old, and having gotten your way all your life, only to now not always getting what you want. Oh, also telling the evil, mad moron "on," are the American people.
<<“They openly disrespect the Presidents who nominate them to the highest position in the Land, a Justice of the United States Supreme Court, and go out of their way, with bad and wrongful rulings and intentions, to prove how ‘honest,’ ‘independent,’ and ‘legitimate’ they are.”>>
I must be pretty naive. I always thought Supreme Court justices were 𝘴𝘶𝘱𝘱𝘰𝘴𝘦𝘥 to be honest, independent, and legitimate and NOT there to cater to whatever president appointed them, regardless of the law. Silly me.
You aren't alone - I am just as naive and silly as you are. Supreme Court Justices should follow the Constitution and the law, not the president, even if said president appointed them.
It was a fifty year open project for conservatives to take over the courts and undo the gains made in the Civil Rights era.
They made no secret of it. They openly talked about it. They turned out in almost every election to vote for it.
Democrats were asleep anyway.
Controlled opposition.
I’m waiting for the Court’s decision on birthright. How many on the Court will say the 14th Amendment, which unambiguously states that any person born in the US is a citizen of the US, is Unconstitutional?
The fact that they are even entertaining this question is a bad sign fir this country.
Great piece, SER.
Thanks!
Well, I guess John Roberts (one of the worst things my town has produced) has to now zip up his hot dog costume.
"...and we're all looking for the guy who did this!"
They certainly shot themselves in the foot with that immunity ruling. God forbid that Cannon ever get a place there. She needs to be disbarred for those documents he hoarded and sold to foreign nationals.
"...the most corrupt and incompetent Supreme Court in American history."
IF we survive it, the story of the Trump era will be not just the demented psychopath monster this country somehow knowingly elected but the total failure of our institutions which we naively assumed would hold the line. The media sanewashes him and promotes his madness because he’s good for business, the GOP tolerates and supports him because they think he holds the key to their power, Dems are so far up their own asses they have no coordinated strategy to deal with him, our allies tolerate him because they have learned dependence on us from decades of practice. So of course the courts have played along with him, giving him repeated mulligans and never punishing the crooks who serve him (how many Trump lawyers have been disbarred? How many served jail time for contempt? Did he ever pay a penny to Jean Carroll, who won her judgments years ago?).
A complete revolution and new Constitution is called for, but that’s never going to happen. Instead, the decline will continue. We are rotting from the inside.
There's no strategy that deals with
1. The inbuilt deference to the champions of the unreconstructed in our political and legal systems,
and 2. the appetite in Americans for sadopopulism.
Given the wide swaths of unreconstructed territory I don't think we'd guarantee the result of a revolution would be anything other than a rightwing regime of terror.
And most revolutions seem to fail; the USA was actually quite lucky as colonies go.
We’re not likely to have a revolution, violent or otherwise. The likely solution is steady decline, as we wonder what happened to the things we took for granted. It’d be like what Britain went through but far worse because we don’t have a powerful ally to prop us up.
It’s argued that Britain never recovered fully from World War II but stopping Hitler is obviously a far more noble cause than whatever inspired U.S. decline.
Sadly true! Brits could say they sacrificed an empire to end an existential threat (and really weren’t that badly off after the war compared to most collapsed empires). For us—we won’t be so lucky because the fall of our country will likely pull down most of the world like an ocean liner pulling town rowboats in its wake.
And for what? Because we couldn’t elect responsible leaders, culminating in the election of the personification of a primal scream?
But then this is also the country that had a civil war because half the country simply could not accept even the possibility of losing their free labor.
All made possible by decades of Christianity's worst strain metastasizing throughout the government and education system and everyone who could have done something to stop it turning a blind eye.
The "best" (and I use that term extremely loosely) case scenario would be a phenomenally bloody war with direct casualties in the millions, probably tens of millions, indirect casualties through collateral damage and destroyed infrastructure that probably climbed even higher, and an ongoing RW campaign of nationwide terrorism even more extreme than the one we have now.
The infrastructure damage alone would probably break the country outright since Republicans have been deliberately chipping away at it for decades and it's just not robust enough to sustain anything major.
To say nothing of what would happen if things went nuclear...
The republic is dead and drowning us by grabbing our ankles as it sinks.
We had a shot and blew it.
Pretty much
I'd like to become certified in CPR and the Heimlich Maneuver then stand by and do nothing as Mitch McConnell chokes to death on a chicken bone...
trump is a petulant child, who has always gotten his way. His presidency is a warning to not let a spoiled brat have power. Besides the three liberals on the Court, some of the cons are telling trump "no," and Iran is telling trump "no." Also telling him "no," our former NATO allies. Imagine being almost 80 years old, and having gotten your way all your life, only to now not always getting what you want. Oh, also telling the evil, mad moron "on," are the American people.
I keep imagining the spoiled, petulant manchildren that voted for him and how they gleefully enabled all of this.
And then I imagine how much I want each of them to fall dick first into a wood chipper.
<<“They openly disrespect the Presidents who nominate them to the highest position in the Land, a Justice of the United States Supreme Court, and go out of their way, with bad and wrongful rulings and intentions, to prove how ‘honest,’ ‘independent,’ and ‘legitimate’ they are.”>>
I must be pretty naive. I always thought Supreme Court justices were 𝘴𝘶𝘱𝘱𝘰𝘴𝘦𝘥 to be honest, independent, and legitimate and NOT there to cater to whatever president appointed them, regardless of the law. Silly me.
In childhood, I read in a social studies book that we're all equal before the law and that was also a lie.
You aren't alone - I am just as naive and silly as you are. Supreme Court Justices should follow the Constitution and the law, not the president, even if said president appointed them.