Warped Old Men
Elizabeth Kolbert, writing in The New Yorker:
How did caring about a drowned or desiccated future come to be a partisan issue? Perhaps the simplest answer is money. A report put out two years ago by the Senate Democrats’ Special Committee on the Climate Crisis noted, “In the 2000s, several bipartisan climate bills were circulating in the Senate.” Then, in 2010, the Supreme Court, in the Citizens United decision, ruled that corporations and wealthy donors could, effectively, pour unlimited amounts of cash into electioneering. Fossil-fuel companies quickly figured out how to funnel money through front groups, which used it to reward the industry’s friends and to punish its enemies. After Citizens United, according to the report, “bipartisan activity on comprehensive climate legislation collapsed.”
I’ve certainly been reading and thinking about the Court a lot lately, but this one surprised me. Perhaps the hyperpartisanship we suffer under wasn’t stumbled into, as so many pieces about algorithms and media silos suggest, but rather made by some warped old men warping the law.
And, indeed, when you think about it: our tragic addiction to stupid guns can trace its roots back to different warped old men mere decades ago, warping the law.
And, indeed, when you think about it: our societal refusal to protect women, to criminalize pregnancy on a path to god-knows-where has been similarly paved by warped old men warping the law.