I could see this coming. The fix was in eight years ago when Senate Majority “Leader” Mitch McConnell denied President Barack Obama a Supreme Court nomination.
“All we are doing is following the long-standing tradition of not fulfilling a nomination in the middle of a presidential year,” said McConnell.
False. In the post-Civil War period since the Court solidified its current nine-justice panel, nine justices out of 70 “were all filled in the election year—one by a 1956 uncontested recess appointment and eight by Senate confirmation,” according to the Brookings Institute.
The “tradition” never existed.
That politically-motivated bit of duplicity came in March of 2016. Eight months later, despite lacking a majority of the popular vote, Donald Trump became president.
With his marching orders in place from the ultra-conservative Federalist Society, Trump would go on to appoint three Supreme Court Justices, giving conservatives a six to three majority and putting in motion a complete takedown of almost 250 years of democracy.
The culmination of this conservative conquest came on July 1, when the Court granted immunity to current, future, and apparently recent past presidents for “official acts” while in office. Thus, President Joe Biden could order the Department of Justice to remove the apparently compromised judge Aileen Cannon in Trump’s Florida documents case. Biden could also order Seal Team 6 to assassinate several justices on the Court.
I don’t recommend the latter move, but I’m just repeating what the Court allows.
So what is America now? The ugliness of racism, book banning, evangelical radicalism, controlling women’s bodies, denying trans rights, and the criminalization of asylum seekers without due process are all elements of a nation in distress.
Add to this toxic mix the “right” of its citizens to own unlimited military-style assault weapons and as much ammo as they can horde, and one wonders: how does it end?
The Court might be finished for the year with, among other disastrous rulings, defanging governmental oversight of our besieged environment and punishing the unhoused for the “crime” of being, well, poor and often mentally ill, but they are hardly done reversing long-held legal precedents, or, in other words, ruining our lives.
Next up? Gay rights. Birth control. More voting rights limitations. Maybe eliminating presidential term limits. Religious oversight for libraries? Codifying concentration camps for migrants? Ten Commandments in all public schools? With lifetime appointments, and lacking any ethical standards to control their conflicts of interest, there really is no end to their madness.
The November election is indeed a critical one, but remember that all these horrible Supreme Court decisions that favor the rich and powerful (read Trump and the corpulent corporate oligarchs) from Dodds to Chevron occurred despite a decent man running our country.
Unlike his opponent, Joe Biden exudes decency and empathy. His record while in office has been exemplary and productive. We have all benefitted, even if so many Americans refuse to recognize those benefits.
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My wife and I have relatives who fought to preserve democracy against the Nazis in WWII: a democracy that is eroding year by year. My stepfather Seymour Goldberg, a Jew, was a member of Patton’s Ghost Army. He served during battles at Rhineland, Ardennes, Central Europe, Normandy, and northern France.
He never had a chance to graduate from Chicago’s Crane Tech High School. His parents immigrated from Russia. Here was his “resume” on his enlistment papers: “Broiled steaks and hamburgers, barbequed meat. Prepared French-fried potatoes. Waited on customers. Checked cash register. Bought meat and other supplies.”
Seymour earned five Bronze Service Stars, the European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal, and a Good Conduct Medal. He mustered out on September 27, 1945, with $156.25 and an honorable discharge.
Lately, with all the Court’s anti-democratic decisions and the real danger of a second chaotic and vengeful Trump term, I’ve been thinking about Seymour and the other WWII veterans I have been lucky enough to have spoken with before they passed. They served when called. No bone spur excuses. They came from nothing and, like Seymour, often returned to nothing.
Is this the America they fought so courageously to preserve?
I never thought that this nation, despite all its faults and its attempts to confront and correct those failings (often falling short), would be heading to a seemingly legal theocratic monarchy. I believed in democracy’s guardrails, believed that our freedoms were enshrined and that we would continue on a slow but steady path toward embellishing our freedoms with sensible progressive measures.
But I no longer recognize that America, the one I will always love until my last breath.