I haven’t posted in a few weeks due to a distraction: the American experiment coming to an end. In my old age, I have collected a lot of liberal lawyers as friends, and we’re not very happy right now. One of our number is flying the Scottish national flag during the Fourth in protest. We are petrified at the thought that Trump will win reelection, and the country and world will be completely destroyed. But more on that later. Let’s discuss one of his enablers, who one cannot believe is so truly evil.
· OMG, the Supreme Court. Where to start? Sam Alito and Clarence Thomas are so obviously corrupt and don’t care that people know about it except for those people who are mean to them. They are deciding cases, for instance, related to the attempted coup on January 6, from which they should obviously recuse themselves. Who knows what cases have come before them involving the interests of people and groups who have given them millions of dollars in travel and gifts? Any self-respecting lawyer would never have engaged in such chicanery. Impeachment is not enough for these characters.
The Court is attempting to reshape the American way of life by discarding precedent that used to be virtually sacrosanct. Women’s reproductive rights are gone, and along with them their health and safety. Who knows what other rights of women are next? And all, it has been speculated, because Alito and Thomas have women they can’t control. Thus they need to control all other women.
By overturning Chevron, the regulatory infrastructure of American life has been rejected. Republicans are always complaining that they are overregulated. Well, fellows, if you would just behave like honest and decent businessmen, you wouldn’t need such regulation. When Biff and Chip, former frat brothers, give each other nonpublic information regarding a company, and trade on that information, that’s a fraud on the market. Rules against that behavior were promulgated 90 years ago, and insider trading is still going on. The paradigm is true in every industry: pharmaceuticals, food, broadcasting, etc etc and omg elections. Biff? Chip? Can’t you bros just behave like decent human beings? No? Then you deserve to be regulated.
As a kind of coda to this section, Clarence Thomas wants to abolish the Occupational Health and Safety Administration, which governs safety in the workplace. Roughly speaking, employers don’t want to spend money to make the workplace safe, i.e., be generally decent human beings, so they need to be required by rule to do so. Clarence, are you fucking kidding me? You don’t care about worker safety? OK, now we really know what kind of shit you are.
Perhaps worst of all is the decision granting Trump immunity for criminal acts performed in his official capacity. OK: now he really can shoot some ordinary citizen on Fifth Avenue if he thinks that person is a Russian spy or even just a political enemy. His ridiculous boast from years ago has come true, thanks to John Roberts and the insane five. The only silver lining is that if Trump is reelected, he can’t prosecute Biden like he says he will. Biden now has immunity for official acts. The Court didn’t see that coming? Trump needn’t fear the Emoluments Clause now and can solicit bribes from foreign autocrats in return for doing them favors. The Court has just handed a seasoned grifter like Trump the keys to the bank. Is that really what you bastards intended?
In another showing of hypocrisy, the court that demands that a rule must have roots in the country’s “history and tradition” couldn’t find any when it came to granting a crime-committing president immunity. Yet many of those justices testified at their confirmation hearings, as Joe Patrice of Above the Law found, that the rule of law was sacrosanct in American history and tradition, and the president was bound to uphold the law and even he was not above it. Are you fucking kidding me? This Court doesn’t care if it’s right; it just wants to find for Trump, who is demonstrably perhaps the worst person who has ever lived. Some of the justices are even certifiably not stupid.
· Moving on, then, to the threat that Trump presents. He has told us exactly what he’ll do in a second term, and this time he won’t have any administrative opposition, as he has vowed to fire anyone who stands in his way. Let’s count the horribles:
(1) Quit NATO. I read an article by someone in his first term’s administration who explained that Trump simply doesn’t understand foreign policy, allies, treaties, or diplomacy. He thinks it’s all about him. He is aggrieved that Europe doesn’t spend as much on the military including NATO as we do. On the other hand, Europeans have governments that care for their people more than ours does. Leaving NATO could destroy it and leave the West vulnerable. Biden did a great job in binding NATO together against Russia and leaving it simply cannot happen.
(2) Abandon Ukraine in its fight against Russia. Republicans have hated and excoriated Russians for 100 years, and now suddenly they’re not so bad? And there’s been no explanation of such a spine-wrenching turnaround, just an understanding that Trump loves the unlovable Putin. In the meantime, it is incredible to me that the Republicans don’t see that the Ukrainians are fighting a war we should be fighting. Maybe we should put the boots of Republican children on the ground over there.
(3) Guns. Do I really have to say anything about this? Yesterday a 13 year old girl was shot dead in a mall north of Seattle yesterday by a 16 year old boy, and she wasn’t even part of the fight. It won’t even make the national news. In what country could this happen? One run by Republicans.
And according to Thomas, bump stock guns aren’t machine guns and are fine to sell and own. In another case,.that ever-empathetic justice was the only one to hold that the law that forbade domestic abusers from owning guns had no basis in “history or tradition” and should be struck down. That’s because there weren’t any such laws. But we did have laws generally withholding firearms from people who were dangerous to others. Thomas loves to pick the history and tradition that he’s going to follow.
(4) Tariffs and trade wars. Even the economic mind that was Peter Navarro couldn’t explain to Trump that the pain of tariffs would not fall on the Chinese but the American people, not just in higher prices but also perhaps the perpetuation of inflation.
(5) Health care. I assume I needn’t talk about this much either. Trump mainly tries to end Obamacare, and Republicans don’t’ care if people have health insurance. Why do they love guns and hate kids so much?
(6) Climate change. This is another topic that I don’t feel we have to discuss. Trump said that on day one of his new administration the order will be to “drill, baby drill.” He hates electric vehicles, wind farms, anything that mitigates climate change. To fix this problem is to find a way around him, which will be nearly impossible, as his minions are smarter than he is. Please find in your own small way somehow to cut your carbon footprint. Don’t count on the government to do it.
(6) White Christian nationalism. Kate had a middle school principal who invited “youth ministers” to walk around at lunch and don’t be fooled, proselytize, and forced a Jewish kid to sing a Christian song at the holiday show (she wore a yarmulke, good for her.) As my next door neighbor said, “They just can’t help themselves.” Thus Louisiana and Oklahoma are going to force the country to go through expensive litigation to find yet again that religion doesn’t belong in the schools. One hopes that those cases don’t find their ways to Bishops Alito and Thomas. Read the Bremerton case in which they ignored the facts to allow a football coach to coerce his players to pray after a game.
Really about the Supreme Court, all I can say is fuck these guys. A first year law student could out-argue them. Someday maybe a reasonable Court will overturn the immunity decision.
The real problem is with the American people who ignore who Trump is. He is an admitted serial adulterer. He’s been found to have defamed over and over a woman he sexually assaulted. He was found guilty of 34 felonies on the way to hide hush payments to a porn star with whom he had sex. He violated the Emoluments Clause over and over by accepting or coercing foreign governments to stay at his hotels. Possibly the worst was his promulgating the Big Lie, that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him, for which there is no evidence whatsoever, as found by Trump-appointed judges, but that cultivated an attack on the Capitol not by patriots on a tour, as Republican lawmakers claimed, but a bloody attempted coup.
He is famously disloyal. I won’t quote how he trashed his former cabinet, whom at one point he claimed were “the best people.” Oh. Then why did you hire them if they were losers? But then he lies, over and over. He’s fact-checked, but only by people at newspapers that the right-wing public don’t know exist except when those papers are scorned by right-wing television.
The question then is why people cling to him. I’ve heard the theory that these are one-issue people: abortion, guns, or perhaps religion, though his attachment to that is minimal. So I have no answer for these people, who think I disdain them anyway.
They’re pretty much correct, I have to say. I have to confess I don’t have a lot of respect for people who will vote for someone who will cut taxes on the rich to their detriment. It’s sad that the American people have become so lame intellectually. And I know, having taught at Auburn University in Alabama, that they’re proud of this.
And now it’s pretty clear that Biden has a terrible uphill climb to beat Trump and at this writing isn’t backing down and withdrawing his candidacy.
So I feel that there’s no way out of this for America. We’re just doomed. As one of my liberal lawyer friends said, I worry for our children and their children. And I’m embarrassed that my generation allowed it.
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