A Court of Division and a Look through the Glass, Darkly.

 

The Supreme Court of United States favors the perpetuation of minoritarian rule and law, unrelated to the evolution of the American polity.  This court has directly or indirectly advanced the notion that a multi-cultural democracy is not on their agenda.  That notion hides behind a veil of corruption and hubris.  The dignity of the highest court in the land is ghosting us.

 

Behind the façade of granite columns and the “Equal Justice under Law,” is a divide between the essentially gerrymandered court, appointed by a president elected by a minority of the popular vote and confirmed by a Senate that does not equally represent Americans. 

 

This Supreme Court’s current agenda is insidiously hacking away at 70 years of racial progress.  An agenda that gutted the civil rights act, and an agenda that tosses affirmative action in a ditch.  An agenda that cruelly disenfranchises minority voters behind a cloak of intellectually dishonest hypocrisy.

 

Since Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 dismissed racial segregation in the south, a litany of cases has followed its courageous lead. “Impeach Chief Justice Warren” signs abounded on every highway in the south.  I saw them.  Whites were busy reinforcing their tribal “superiority.”  Tribes may have been good when we were fighting wooly mammoths, but are they still?  New manifestations of old tribes have been egged on by Fox News, decrying every night about fear of immigrants, fear of others, all in the name of corporate profit biting away at the heels of our democracy.   The first amendment gone wild.  Where have you gone Walter Cronkite?  

 

And yes, the north was racist also, effectuating segregation geographically.  That, too was a remnant of disastrous reconstruction, presided over by Andrew Johnson who ascended to the presidency when Lincoln died.   Johnson, a virulent racist, did all he could to return black America to the same position it was antebellum.  Draft riots in New York City consisted of white mobs who did not want to fight to free “n*****s.” Segregated neighborhoods still exist.

 

The court imposing a time limit on the attempt to achieve racial justice while it is still a work in progress is heartbreaking because it assaults and batters the aspiration of a new generation of the American underclass, struggling to rise up.  It struggles to grasp a part of the American dream, now fading further into the horizon, like someone crawling through the arid sand toward an illusory, shimmering oasis.  But the court says the strugglers are now equal.  Are they?  Do they still have further to go?   Justice Alito, his cruelty and bitterness unmasked, thinks so.  Alito, after all, relies on 16^th century opinions that use witchcraft as a rationale.  Discrimination is dead, says he and Chief Justice Roberts.  It’s discriminatory to favor an African American.  Asians might suffer.  Tuba players, athletes and legacies, too.  

 

Equally divisive is the Alito authored Dobbs decision, creating a maze of State laws, especially for women with limited resources, trying to travel to states that provide health care involving reproductive choice. Abortion is never an easy choice; those who make it are often in dire need of help, psychological, emotional and medical, Justice Alito’s callous ideology aside.

 

Even sadder, is the reality that the court truly represents a significant number of Americans, fearing the reality of a majority-minority nation, threatening their supremacy, their tribe.  

 

A house divided against itself cannot stand, said Lincoln.

 

Are we to suffer the same fate as many other nations that could not reconcile their tribal differences, unable conquer their fear of others and the need for obedience to norms and to fellowship, of, if not loving, at least respecting countrymen of different creeds, opinion, and race?  

 

Doctor King thought the arc of history bends toward justice.  Would he feel the same way today? What would Abraham Lincoln say?  Lincoln understood moral ambiguity.  After all, before the war started, he said if he could save the Union half slave and half free, he would do so.  But the war changed him, and although he was always morally opposed to slavery, at one time he considered a plan to send blacks back to Africa.  He knew the first obligation of a politician is to get elected. The great emancipator understood moral ambiguity in himself and in his countrymen.  He also said that without public sentiment there is nothing.

 

Looking at a hate and grievance monger like Ron DeSantis in the most charitable light, one might say he is just trying to get elected.   But at what cost?  Do we see in Trump and DeSantis the dark reflection of ourselves?