FULL-ON ALARM: SCOTUS Declares President Above the Law

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By a 6-3 margin along ideological grounds, the Supreme Court of the United States gifted Donald Trump and the American Presidency immunity from prosecution. The delay in handing down this decision was always about scuttling Trump’s many prosecutions, but also in preparing a ruling that could simultaneously change the nature of power in the United States while finding the “perfect” precedent for future applications.

Chief Justice John Roberts - who has been continually lauded as the “adult in the room” - delivered the majority’s opinion in such fashion, essentially decreeing that presidents are beyond prosecution and legal consequences when acting in their “official capacity.” The law is heralded as being objective and impartial, but it is malleable and relentlessly subjective in practice. Now, we will see one battle after another over what constitutes “official” and “unofficial,” something that will surely open up court-favored presidents like Trump to literally do anything they want while restricting executives who might run aground of their priorities and agendas.

This clears the way for Trump and Right Wing presidents to do anything they want, from overthrowing elections to assassinating rivals to overseeing a budding authoritarian state. It is, of course, what the wealth class has been setting in place for decades now, and where the rightward trajectory of the country has been steadily heading.

You don’t need me to tell you right now that this is a major blow to liberal democracy. I, and others, have been screaming about this for years. If you read Dispatches From A Collapsing State, or any of my other writings as I’ve come to terms with what has been happening, you knew where this was heading. This is yet another junction on a long, long journey into the abyss. Full-blown authoritarianism is prepared by the quiet dismantling of its components leading to an environment where democracy itself can be neutralized and institutions can be weaponized, turned, and co-opted into making the oppression “legal.” That’s where we are.

I do want to say a few words.

To begin, you are likely shocked. Something like this ruling has a tendency to knock the air out of your lungs. You might even be asking yourself how something like this could happen. That’s perfectly natural. It shouldn’t be happening. But it is happening. And it has been happening for a very long time. You have been told a fairy tale, like from the moment of your birth. Your schools and elders and communities and culture have repeated this fairy tale over and over again. It is a convenient story that is meant to assuage your worries while the plan was carried out. There are still people and organizations you have likely trusted who told you a variation of this story for the past few years, reassuring you that Donald Trump was an isolated abberation and the system would take care of him eventually, whether it was through an election or a conviction or a prosecution.

This is a moment of shock, but it should be a moment of clarity. Our institutions have always, from our founding, been interested in serving the interests of the wealthy minority. That is what they are doing even now, including the Supreme Court, the Senate, our legal system, and the presidency. This is how it works. When something needs to change for the wealthy and the economic motives that guide them, it changes. Right now, we are watching neoliberal capitalism that used authoritarianism around the world to facilitate itself enforce that authoritarianism on the countries that once thought themselves above such means.

Voting is a baseline democratic action. You should vote while you have the chance. But when power grabs like this happen it is far from the only or even the most effective solution. Healthy societies react accordingly to these moments. The masses, realizing they are being abused by the system and that the system itself is corrupted, react to the unveiling horror with appropriate outrage. In the past, this has taken the form of mass protests and general strikes. Unfortunately we have been held captive by the fairytales and alienated from one another, all while our solidarity-driven unions and affiliations have been intentionally weakened and destroyed.

Reawakening those groups and the democratic spirit of collective action is our only means of taking back power and fighting against these injustices.

We have to trouble the status quo until the status quo is no longer defensible and the only remaining position is to investigate what has happened and how it can be countered.

At long last, you have to see how the leaders and saviors have failed you. They have, at best, fought meakly against these things, and at worst enabled them. What you have been given is the appearance of resistance while those economic motives have played this system like an instrument to further the worsening system forward. We have watched our leaders grow increasingly more frail and incapable. And we deserve better.

Your shock today is unnerving, sure, but useful. Be curious about it. Ask yourself, why am I shocked? Why am I angry? Why isn’t something being done? How is this gross injustice continuing forward unabated? How is it gathering momentum?

We have choices. Today we have the choice to embrace clarity and begin the process of doing what is necessary or to shrug it all off, lose any semblance of hope, and go back to not seeing what is so obvious and undeniable.

We are rapidly running out of time. If we do not avoid the abyss we are approaching we might never escape it in our lifetimes.