Step right up, ladies and gents, for the fight of the century, democrats versus kleptocrats, popcorn free if you’re rich, pricey if you’re poor.
Observers of today’s bobble-headed Supreme Court majority might be wondering, Cui bono? Who’s benefitting from putting the President above the law, denying women abortions, allowing limitless election spending, emasculating the regulatory state? Behind all their pompous obfuscatory verbiage, who’s pulling the strings? Every justice claims to serve the law, only the law’s a tool, like a hammer, given meaning by whoever wields it. Whose arm is brandishing the law for its benefit?
This is not the sort of creative conspiracy-mongering fanatics delight in, an insistence, for instance, that parents of schoolkids staged their children’s slaughter as a hoax. There will always be swindlers peddling such hooey and idiots enough to make it pay. Humans are capable of the craziest confusion, unlike other creatures, who rely on what my canine sidekick calls “the sniff test.” When humans boast they’re the smartest creature, Henry rolls his big brown eyes, “Yeh, right.” If Henry weren’t so lazy, he could cobble up a career as a satirist, à la Swift, help pay a few bills, but he figures, all he has to do is beg prettily and lick, about which he’s correct.
You don’t have to cock up any cockamamie conspiracies to detect whose pulling these right-wing justices’ strings, just follow the money. The luxury vacation money – and speaking fee money – and hobnobbing-with-billionaires money – money beyond the reach of any honest judge. Wealth is the Golden Calf of today’s addled Americans: why shouldn’t a smart, hard-working jurist snag his fair share?
Kleptocrats are not philanthropists, their testimonials notwithstanding. They give to get. What they get from pliable jurists is rulings that protect their kleptocracies from inspection or correction. America will benefit – obviously! -- if the rich get richer and the poor accept their impotence. Ballocks the ballot, wealthier means wiser, everybody knows that!
With some of this court’s despicable decisions, the kleptocrats’ economic benefit is obvious: kneecapping regulators, for example, or allowing elections to be bought. But what stake do well-heeled justices have in abortions? If their daughter or mistress needs one, she can always fly to Europe (on a borrowed plane). Why might the justices scowl at the illegal immigrants who construct their pool houses, serve their sushi and mow their lawns? Why on earth would they permit a President to turn dictator, who might give them headaches?
Abortion, school prayer, gender and racial equity are the bread and circuses with which kleptocrats divert the poor’s attention, persuading them such issues corrode their “way of life.” While the poor are busy fulminating about LBGTQ+ access to toilets, the kleptocrats’ flunkies are reducing taxes – for the rich – by filching benefits – from the poor. Kleptocrats know that the poor wouldn’t vote against their interest if they realized it, so they blow smoke. Smart thinking!
As for a President with dictatorial powers, kleptocrats figure that in a well-ordered state, this President will be their guy, they’ll have bought him or her. (“An honest politician is one who, when he is bought, will stay bought,” observed oft-purchased Simon Cameron, who gave Lincoln headaches.) This thinking isn’t so smart, if you’ve read any history. Dictators come to believe in their omnipotence, stifling dissent and destroying their states, including the kleptocrats’ cash cows. Hitler, for example, while he was good for the kleptocrats initially, made a mess of things, obliterating German business for a while.
How do small-d democrats defend themselves against this spoliation of their rights? Wake up and vote – while we still can.