A cartoon by Mike Luckovich. Daily Kos
03 July 24
Their robes can’t hide their naked grab for political power.
James Risen The Intercept
Monday’s Supreme Court ruling granting far-reaching presidential immunity gives the lie to decades of right-wing propaganda about the real purpose of the long conservative campaign to take over the court.
Generations of conservative pseudointellectuals have argued that the mission of the Federalist Society, the powerful conservative legal group that has seeded the Supreme Court with its zombie-like members, was to bring the court back to its original mandate under the Constitution. The right-wing pundits who promoted the Federalist Society were always a little vague on what their version of “originalism” really entailed, which led to widespread suspicions that it just meant whatever was politically beneficial to conservatives.
The ruling on presidential immunity is just the latest piece of evidence that shows that originalism was just a confidence game by the right to gain power. The court’s conservative majority has revealed itself to be a corrupt political machine with both short- and long-term goals. Today, the court is determined to protect Donald Trump and the Republican Party; longer-term, its mandate is to protect and defend the powers of those who will enable white minority rule in America for years to come.
The court’s immunity ruling is nearly a blank check for Trump, a brazen attempt to protect him from his ongoing criminal cases and to grant him virtually unlimited power if he gets back into the White House. With its ruling, the Supreme Court’s right-wing block has made it clear: They are tired of democracy. The justices want a dictator.
But they only want a right-wing dictator. It is not hard to imagine how differently the justices would have ruled if the question of presidential immunity had come before them in a case involving a Democratic president.
The right-wing court is engaged in a radical revolution, and its objective is to rewrite modern American history. Through their rulings, the conservative justices are revealing what the American right has until recently tried to keep quiet, which is that the right doesn’t accept any of the major changes that have happened in American society since World War II.
They have in their minds a fantasy version of 1940s America, even though almost none of them were alive at the time. What they yearn for is a nation before integration and civil rights, before women’s rights and reproductive rights, before gay rights, before the modern expansions of free speech and press freedom. Above all, they want a return to a less diverse America, a nation in which white male power was unquestioned. They want it so badly that they are willing to abandon democracy to get it.
The radicalized court, with the Federalist Society’s approval, are in the process of demolishing the landmark Supreme Court rulings of the post-World War II era.
In order to get confirmed, Trump’s appointees to the court lied to the Senate by claiming that they saw Roe v. Wade as settled law; they ripped it up as soon as they consolidated their power on the court. In quick succession, they have gone after voting rights, affirmative action, gun control, environmental regulations, while sending out the word that now is a good time for conservative lawyers to bring their most extreme lawsuits to the court in order to create more right-wing precedents. This court could ban access to contraceptives next; another target could be a reversal on the legalization of gay marriage. The court is now so radical that it would not be surprising to see it go after Brown versus Board of Education, the historic Supreme Court ruling that declared that separate but equal schools were unconstitutional and which helped formed the basis for integration.
This court will be remembered like the justices behind the Dredd Scott decision, the worst ruling by the Supreme Court in American history. Their robes don’t hide their naked grab for political power.
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