The Illusion of Legitimacy: The Supreme Court, The Democratic Party, and Praise for a Loss of Faith
Appreciate all the kindness and well-wishes last week as I took a little break and went on a silent sojourn. In the midst of all this chaos, it always feels necessary to get out of the normal cycle of things and really sit with yourself. There’s room and time to both interrogate what’s going on in the world, but also what’s going on with yourself. And so, here I am, ready and raring to go as we tiptoe into the 2024 Election and everything that goes along with it.
Dispatches From A Collapsing State began in February of 2021, so this will be the first presidential election season for this blog. Despite being concerned about the state of the country and all, I am genuinely excited to have this platform for the occasion. We’re going to do it up proper with analysis of the race, reactions to all of the debates and primaries, and it’s going to be with a perspective you can’t get anywhere else. As I’ve mentioned, since leaving academia this blog has become an essential part of my livelihood, so a lot of the content going forward will be for paying subscribers. Please consider become one in order to support this project, but also to continue enjoying access to pieces like the one you’re about to read and so, so much more.
What really gets you is the brazenness of it all.
It would be one thing if the Supreme Court of the United States of America was a blatantly corrupted institution filled with unscrupulous justices who had been bought and sold several times over by an array of billionaire donors and selected, trained, and directed by a cavalcade of groups like the Federalist Society to carry out a pro-corporate, pro-greed agenda from the safety of an un-elected bench.
And they are most certainly that.
But it’s another when those same detestable individuals engage in their corruption in broad daylight and demand you pretend that any of it is fine or legitimate.
John Roberts is the king of this game and maybe the most perfect emblem of this wretched time. In serving as the chief justice of one of the most detestable courts in modern history, he has continued to hem and haw at every opportunity as he has held back tears because the very idea of questioning whether his court - which has been explicitly stolen by wealth interests - is biased or illegitimate. Undoubtedly Roberts has to believe, at some level, that he is the head of a debauched body, especially as evidence mounts, but the whole theatrical dance is necessary for his own sanity.
With him is Samuel Alito, an absolutely detestable justice who has done as much damage to the United States as nearly anyone in the past few decades. For those who haven’t read it yet, ProPublica continues to be a necessary thorn in the side of these justices, this time following up on the Clarence Thomas piece linking him to unknown amounts of bribes from billionaire Harlan Crow with the revelation that Alito took a luxury fishing trip with billionaire hedge funder Paul Singer in 2008, a trip he did not disclose, before refusing to recuse himself in at least ten cases involving Singer before the court.
Nothing will happen to Alito, he was in no danger of anything besides his already tarnished reputation taking another hit, but that couldn’t go unanswered. Alito called up the friendly Wall Street Journal and blasted off an op-ed defending himself. For a man so vested in written arguments, what he provided was weak, weak sauce. It wasn’t corruption, you see, it was just sitting in a seat on a private jet that would have otherwise gone empty. See for yourself below. Come for the tortured logic and stay for how perfect it is that this insipid passage is followed with the title he disgraces daily.
It shouldn’t surprise you that Alito would do this or that any of them would. Even Neal Gorsuch has had some pretty shady dealings. The corruption runs deep. And that is quite understandable. The court itself is a body that determines so much power in this country and has always been a solid partner of the wealth class. In writing AMERICAN RULE: HOW A NATION CONQUERED THE WORLD BUT FAILED ITS PEOPLE I was shocked to trace the pattern throughout our history and find exactly what role it has played. Then, in THE MIDNIGHT KINGDOM: A HISTORY OF POWER, PARANOIA, AND THE COMING CRISIS, previous cycles of corruption between political bodies, legal structures, and corporate/wealth interests shocked me even more.
The Supreme Court and its cadre of corrupted officials do the work they’re intended to do. The court is a backstop to contain progressive measures that might disrupt the balance of power that serves the interest of the wealthy. This means striking down laws that manage to squeak out of Congress - though the takeover of our representative government now more or less ensures that won’t happen - and currently rolling back the progress of the 20th century, including the rights of marginalized groups, including BIPOC, LGBTQ+, women, and, depressingly, children. That is what the court is supposed to do.
Everything else is theater. Roberts and the rest of them can perform their roles as if they are an impartial priest class and that’s supposed to inform our perception that we live in a just, impartial system. All the while, you’ll notice that these very obvious, documented instances of corruption result in little more that performative critiques from the Democratic Party.
I’ve had a lot of people ask me why that is. Why the Democratic Party so often contradicts itself or, at the very least, seems to miss opportunity after opportunity to play hardball with the Republicans or this court. After all, it’s so obvious that Thomas and Alito are already caught dead-to-rights in offenses that could be pursued. Why aren’t we talking about impeaching them? Why has Joe Biden and the Democrats gone completely silent on expanding the court or even, well, talking about the court and its destructive path?
These are excellent questions. They beg to be asked. And in the answers you’ll find a more complicated and telling understanding of what is happening in this system and why we have arrived at this moment. Because the concern is justified. To wonder these things isn’t to “question the plan,” which always sounds suspiciously like a QAnon-related slogan. You can vote for this party every two or four years, that’s up to you, but it’s worth stopping and asking: why is this craven corruption being exposed and met with almost total inaction?