Because the Supreme Court has declared that partisan
gerrymandering is beyond the ken of our Constitution,
states have radically manipulated legislative districts.
Quite.
Before the United States Supreme Court, Justice Amy Coney
Barrett asked lawyers from the Republican National
Committee why they were opposing provisions enabling more
people to vote. Because it “puts us at a competitive
disadvantage,” the lawyer was untroubled to reply.
Hmm.
Yet what’s striking about the United States Supreme Court
is not only that it has done nothing to resist
minoritarianism but also that its most significant recent
interventions have only ratified perhaps the most
egregious aspects of our minoritarian democracy: the
influence of money in politics.
While most mature democracies have various techniques for
minimizing the corrupting effect of money in politics, the
US Supreme Court has embraced the most radical conception
of campaign money-as-free speech of any comparable
democracy.
Uh oh.
Yet we have to frame the stakes accurately and clearly: if
we do not “confront” those “imperfections” in our
democracy, “openly and transparently,” in the State
Department’s words, we will lose this democracy.
I wonder if I’m spending too much time trying to learn about the oncoming train tearing down the track and too little time untangling the knots that bind me to the rails.
You are one room over, humming a tune to yourself while you write a chapbook about mermaids using the stickers that Mama got you as illustrations. (I’m getting regular updates: it’s a great book.) I’m here in the next room watching the snow fall and ruminating about the world you’ll someday confront; all its inequities, violence, duplicity, rigged systems, cruelties. But those worries are not for you right now.
I sent poor Mykala a 1,361 word screed, generously quoting Linda Greenhouse, about why the Supreme Court is broken for the foreseeable future. Before I paste in parts of that here, consider this:
New York Times public editor Daniel Okrent said that
he has never received a single complaint of bias in
Greenhouse’s coverage.
DAVEDAVIES: I guess the Trump appointees were unwilling
to grant that request by the Trump administration on the
election cases, particularly the election cases alleging
fraud and theft of votes. The court pretty much shut those
down quickly with the Trump appointees agreeing with the
majority. What can you say about the extent to which these
three appointees were willing to, you know, go by the
president’s wishes?
LINDAGREENHOUSE: Well, what I say in the book is that
they assisted in saving the court. And what I meant by
that was had the court granted any of these Trump election
cases, it would have been an institutional disaster, not
only for the country because, obviously, there was no
fraud in the election and, obviously, Trump was not robbed
of an election victory. That’s clear. We can agree on
that. But for the court to have given in to the series of
requests that came, including that crazy case that Texas
brought against the states that Texas claimed should have
gone for Trump but didn’t - you know, it just would have
been an institutional disaster for the Supreme Court. And
obviously, the court was well aware of that.
Like, holy shit, Linda Greenhouse, three-decade expert on the Supreme Court, is saying that the fucking Supreme Court of the United States of America was just saving its own ass when it came down on the side of the facts and our democracy in 2020 election disputes. And not only that, the Court did so with the least amount of effort: they didn’t even take the opportunity to set a PROBABLYEXTREMELYUSEFULSOMETIMESOONPRECEDENT about election disputes. I mean I’m hyperventilating with anger just writing these sentences.
Ess was so excited for Halloween, she recorded two original songs and threw a spooky party for us on like October 1st. So you can imagine how happy she was when we made it to the actual day. She picked our costumes, Mykala found all the pieces for them. We got to return to trick-or-treating after taking 2020 off, and it was such fun. It is true you can’t go back, but it is peaceful and joyful and fulfilling to see it again through your child’s eyes.
Years from now, I’ll look back on this day and smile.
