Fear The State, Fear It

posted by Armadillo Joe

Conservatives are authoritarians to the core. They worship state power when it is wielded by the right kind of people for purposes they endorse, like any good fascist, and their views have no place in a free and democratic society. They certainly should be kept as far away from the levers of power as possible.

And they most certainly shouldn't be allowed anywhere near something like a Supreme Court for so much as being in the audience to hear cases, much less in charge of it:

In 5-4 Decision, Conservative Supreme Court Denies DNA Evidence To Potentially Innocent Man

Because, it seems, it is more important to the greater public good and the integrity of our justice system for the machinery of law-enforcement to maintain an aire of infallibility (just like, oh say, a pope), rather than, um, justice. So, instead of reinforcing a general faith in the fairness of the system, our country's highest court has decided that a general fear of the power of the state to fuck-you-up-real-good-with-no-recourse is more important. Tasers and indefinite detention also help.

Thus, Chief Justice John "Hang 'Em High" Roberts and Samuel "Strip-Search Sammy" Alito both performed to the exact specifications their corporatist sponsors ordered up when they told the Cheney Administration who they wanted installed in the highest court in the land. And, as per usual, Justice Anthony "I'm the Joe Lieberman of the Supreme Court" Kennedy provided the crucial swing vote while the two-votes-for-the-price-of-one-brain duo of Antonin "I Never Met A Police State Tactic I Didn't Like" Scalia and Clarence "Pubic Hair" Thomas reliably brought up the rear.

What a collection of mentally-diseased reprobates and mean-spirited degenerates. We call this our "Supreme" Court?

We are well and truly fucked. Get ready for a whole lot of 5-4 votes in the next several years, even with Sotomayor (who may give us some 6-3 votes, frankly), because the empathy-free, iron-hard, coal-black and shriveled ugly heart of the Supreme court -- those four dependably authoritarian boneheads -- are an average age of 61, with Roberts clocking in at 54. The liberal wing is an average age of 76 and swapping Souter for Sotomayor will only bring it down to 72. The Court's right wing is generally younger and healthier and Obama will likely only be replacing liberal justices for the next few years, treading water until a member of The Court's Rethugli-bot goon squad either croaks or retires.

We don't live in a free country anymore, folks. In truth, unless you happened to be born rich, white, male, not openly homosexual and otherwise able to convincingly proclaim outwardly to be a good Protestant, this never has been a free country, but my point here is that we aren't even pretending anymore. This is the lasting damage of not only the Bush/Cheney era, but of the "conservative" revolution of the last 40+ years. The Supreme Court has always been The Prize to these people, ever since Brown v Board of Ed meant all the pretty little blonde girls would have to go to school with all those scary little black boys. The backlash from that decision gave rise to the upsurge which almost put Goldwater in the Oval Office, then led to Nixon, Reagan and both Bushes. Roberts and Alito during the second Bush term were the culmination of that decades-long march to hegemony. Bush may be gone, but The Movement got what it wanted in Roberts and Alito, and they are young, healthy guys able to make mischief for decades to come.

The Movement has spent decades and decades packing the lower courts with authoritarians and corporatists for the exact purpose of thwarting the public will on behalf of this country's true owners. We can win all the presidencies and take-over all the Congresses we want, but it will take a generation or two or even more to clean all that Rethugli-goon filth out of our judicial system, if we ever do.

In the meantime, just try not to get convicted of anything.