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A Letter to our Very Own Supreme Leader, John Roberts [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2023-09-04
Dear Supreme Leader,
I choose the above salutation carefully, rife with the implication that I think of you similarly to how I think of the Ayatollah of Iran—someone who wields absolute power, whose term is lifelong, who unabashedly disregards public opinion, and whose own personal religious belief system plays a significant role in the policy decisions wielded on “their” populace. Please tell me how any one of these assertions are wrong! Contrary to the stoic Ayatollah though, you aren’t just satisfied to run roughshod over the majority of “your” people—you whine, Rodney Dangerfield-like, that you “don’t get no respect.” This whining makes you look like a crybaby—hardly the demeanor of a supreme leader. I can only speak for myself: if you and your fellow “conservative” “justices” acted respectably, the majority would consider respecting you, but the trappings of power aren’t equivalent with moral leadership; you and your cronies have all of the former but the latter seems painfully absent. I just saw a poll this morning that indicates that only 44% of the American people have a “favorable view” of the Supreme Court…
I know it irks you when people suggest that your court is illegitimate. So let me give you just a few excellent examples of why your court is: With nearly a year left in Obama’s term, McConnell blocks Garland’s hearing, because he thinks “the voters” need to choose the next “justice.” Alternatively, Coney Barrett is rammed through with weeks to spare during the final days of the Trump administration. How can both arguments be true without blatant and quite frankly, disgusting cynicism and hypocrisy? This dichotomy undermines any semblance of legitimacy of at least one of the resulting appointments currently sitting on your bench. Then there are two “justices” who were accused of rape in their congressional hearings, but in the “he said, she said” hearings, of course, circling the wagons as they do, the angry old white men are going to side with the “well-vetted” male candidate, and especially a “well-vetted” token “black” male candidate. Do y’all really think we’re so stupid that we didn’t notice? It’s all so cynical! The problem is that most of us on the left are law abiding, and have had faith in our form of government: but exactly what can we do when gerrymandering allows the minority to steal power from the majority and suddenly the democracy becomes a kleptocracy that at least a few in the party who put you and your “conservative” cronies in power would appear to prefer as an outright autocracy? How do we engineer changes in a system that has become self-regulated—you pervert the current laws cynically as a cudgel to re-elect corrupt or elect new more pliant lawmakers who just turn the tourniquet tighter. You and your cronies do this right before our very eyes, shamelessly—just like Trump said about being able to shoot someone on Fifth Avenue, or being able to “grab them by the pussy” and get away with it. What a filthy crass animal y’all have as your spiritual leader—a man who nominated one-third of your bench!!!! Now under 91 indictments (and counting?) for conspiracy to impede a free and fair election (among other charges) and still working the Goebbels playbook, day in and day out. From where I stand, having been nominated by a nasty, hypocritical, liar—an alleged criminal/wannabe mob boss, should be disqualifying for Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Coney Barrett. On the left we just don’t have the same vicious animal cunning, win-at-all costs, damn-the-democracy attitude that you and your cronies do—we respect the rule of law instead of using the law as a cudgel of domination of minority over majority. Unbelievably, you still have a majority of your Republican caucus supporting a grifter who insists the last presidential election was stolen, with no evidence to back it up . Illegitimate as the day is long . You get NO RESPECT from me and the majority of people in this country.
When you tear down our culture brick by brick, destroy the environment step by step, let corporations have the same rights as citizens allowing a torrent of angry white biased money into politics, deny the LGBTQ+ community its rights, and on and on, you will get no respect from us. To me all of you “conservative” “justices” are a bunch of backward-thinking religious zealots who don’t give a damn about what the actual majority wants OR VOTES FOR; you hide behind the loopholes your most cynical legal minds can conjure, your lifetime appointments, and your holier-than-thou black robes, and answer to no one except your ultra-rich supporters—like Harlan Crow. Just like your counterparts in the legislative and executive branches, as you see your demographic of mostly angry old ignorant white people dwindling, your tenacious grasp on power-at-any-cost is in my opinion destroying this country—turning us into another Afghanistan, where religious extremists take power by any means possible and then set about unabashedly quashing culture on a daily basis. On top of this, you can’t even keep your own house in order with regard to even the appearance of ethical behavior. Money talks, and Clarence Thomas likes him some money! He’s been an embarrassment to the court ever since Anita Hill gave her testimony all those years ago. In that case of “she said, he said,” she’s the one who time has proven as more believable. Thomas is an embarrassment that we’ll all have to suffer until well past when he’s soiling his adult undergarments and drooling at the bench (if he isn’t already—maybe that’s why he’s so cranky—diaper rash?)—if he can be bothered to be ripped away from his lavish all-expenses-paid vacations. If he’s a cranky old man now, just imagine him in another 20 years! [excuse me while I wipe up my figurative vomit] But just think of all the luxury vacations and private jets he’ll get to enjoy in the meantime! And hint, hint, nudge, nudge, if a case comes up maybe he can just lean one way or another? Not that he appears to need any help in making the meanest-spirited decisions a “justice” could make. In the same poll I cite above, in just the past 4 years, the percentage of Americans who believe your court wields too much power, has risen from 21% to 40%—just about double in four years! But of course, you’re above all that, because your power is supreme.
And speaking in the previous paragraph of a justice who himself benefitted from affirmative action (you can’t believably make this stuff up!): I first began drafting this letter right after your affirmative action decision earlier this year: I’m a 68 year-old white man and it’s impossible for me to not interpret that decision as racist. Allowing an exception for affirmative action for the military is a direct way of indicating that you approve of affirmative action for people of color when the government needs cannon fodder, but God forbid that your precious privileged ivy league schools be tainted by people of color. You used the word “pernicious” in your decision. Take a look in the mirror if you want to know what pernicious looks like to the majority.
Caution! Activist court at work! Funny how times change… I remember when the right used to rabidly attack the liberal-leaning court by calling it “activist.” In your circle, “activist” was the dirtiest of words! By dismantling precedent after precedent, you and your “conservative” cronies are clearly the most “activist” court of my lifetime . I now understand very clearly why your side thought that an activist court was so vile: by dismantling precedent after precedent, you’re showing your true colors as individuals who do not respect the institution itself. Times change and a dynamic government should change with them, but not against the will of the majority! You and your cronies seem to think that previous courts have made misguided decisions in the past. Do you really think the crew you have assembled now is going to make better decisions? With a third of you nominated by an alleged criminal who has proven time and again that he has no respect for the rule of law, our institutions, our very form of government? Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito—masters of ethics? Neil Gorsuch? Amy Coney Barrett? Brett Kavanaugh? All pillars of scholarship and wisdom? Ha! I like beer too—does that qualify me to deconstruct our society? But clearly, I’m not qualified to judge your court, because no one’s ever accused me of rape—you know—jury of your peers... If it’s clear that y’all don’t respect the institution itself, then how in the world do you expect ordinary citizens to? WE CANNOT! And it appears that the majority of us DO NOT, thanks to your party’s brilliant stewardship.
What’s next with the bullshit “originalist” theme? Is Lincoln now a “bad” Republican, and shall we pick back up where we left off with slavery? Just think how that would benefit the “economy.” And if we can choose to whom we deny service based on gender identification or orientation, then how long until we get back to the good old days when women not only didn’t have body autonomy (thanks to your court), but also didn’t have the right to vote? I don’t know, but it seems to me that a “well-regulated militia” is something apart from one-man-mass-shooting sprees where innocents just hoping for their own pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness are denied their right to live based on an eighteenth-century interpretation of firearms technology—where’s the “well-regulated militia” in all of that? How about this for an equitable solution to the gun problem: I think upon birth or at naturalization, the government should outfit every American citizen with an eighteenth-century musket with all the powder and balls they could ever ask for— THAT IS THE TECHNOLOGY THE FRAMERS KNEW . Do you really think they could imagine a 3D printer turning out ghost AR-15s? Do you really think they could even imagine a computer or even a 2-D printer? Or airplanes? Or cars? So since they aren’t SPECIFICALLY mentioned in the founding documents, shall we abolish all technology (except assault rifles of course!) that didn’t exist in 1776? When the “originalists” sitting on your bench want to (selectively) force us back in time to the Framers’ day, that’s when I see you the same as the Taliban. Even stupid people wouldn’t want to pretend that a lot hasn’t changed since 1776—and how will Clarence get from the bench to the Caribbean if there aren’t private jets? Hey, and come to think of it, are any of you currently sitting on the bench specifically named in the founding documents? If not, what business do you have acting as part of the government—clearly the Framers didn’t anticipate or mention you by name!
If you don’t believe that the secret to the success of the USA has been our dynamism and multiculturalism, the two things at the root of what your court is constantly trashing, you’re even more misguided than I already thought you were. To pin all legal thinking on narrow, word-specific interpretations of a document, no matter how well-intentioned, that’s hundreds of years old, is to ensure that the document will be further and further irrelevant as time goes by. Extrapolate to the bible—do we still need to be slaughtering goats to show our allegiance to Thy Lord God? But I guess that’s just the point—religious extremists such as yourselves don’t really believe in evolution, do you? The prime directive is to hold onto your oppressive almighty power, no matter the cost to the majority. What better way than to put ridiculous controls over every aspect of society, while you and your spiritual leader (with his baggage of 91 indictments and counting) tromp all over every institution, and anything resembling common decency on your path to destroying our form of government for your own greedy and cynical purposes.
I believe the Framers put together the best documents they could, under the assumption that as time passed, their “framework” would allow for expansive interpretation of its intent to evolve with the times, rather than expecting future generations to try to parse each and every word for its narrowest, frozen-in-time interpretation, and for summarily throwing out anything that didn’t exist yet. In fact, aren’t the “Framers” called “Framers” for this very reason? They built the best “framework” for a world they knew they couldn’t possibly hope to envision, leaving room for GROWTH. Their big gamble: a framework guide assumes custodial, moral, community-minded, intelligent stewardship along the way. Strip away that custodial, moral, community-minded stewardship, and that’s where the Republicans have dragged our country, by deception, cynicism, and grift. I can only imagine that the Framers feared that banal, greedy miscreants with bad intentions (I’m envisioning a newly-minted mugshot of your spiritual leader) could derail the whole experiment and to me, it seems like you and your Repugnant cronies are fulfilling their worst nightmare, con molto gusto! Sometimes I wonder if you could possibly be doing so unconsciously, but I keep coming around to believing that you and your cronies are well aware of your purposeful perversion of the Constitution to suit your increasingly outmoded and minority position. In the days following his speech indicating that Trump was “practically and morally responsible” for the only insurrection in our country’s history, McConnell could have stopped the Trump train by convicting at Trump’s 2nd (!) impeachment hearing, but the allure of power is just too great for y’all. Law without morality is tyranny. The contemporary Republican seems about as immoral as immoral can be—hence Republicanism=tyranny. With Goebbels-like intent—keep repeating the lies until they become the truth. And what for? Money and power. You are the figurehead of one of the branches of this tyranny and with your lifetime appointments, and no self-regulation, we are all powerless under your reign of tyranny.
The court needs to be reformed. At the very least, there should be a code of ethics (that is enforced), because appearance of impropriety in your institution is as good as impropriety itself. In the same poll I cited above, a whopping 90% of all Americans (including 84% of Republicans!) believe you and your cronies should have a code of ethics. Since the court has so obviously become just another political cudgel in the war between right and left, my feeling is that indeed, as y’all like to say, elections have consequences: I think that each administration should just stack the court to suit its leaning and thereby be done with the ridiculous pretense that the court is independent. Then each court can just rip up the previous court’s decisions, just like your court is doing so unabashedly and unapologetically, even though 60% or more of the country HATES so much of what you’ve been doing. Your court, Mr. Roberts, is anything but apolitical, and if you can’t see that, this “justice” is even blinder than I already thought.
I ardently wish you would respond to this letter, but I am 99.9999% certain that you’ll never read this letter, and even if you did, I’m 99.999% certain that you’d never lower yourself to answering to a common person, seeing as how you are so SUPREME and untouchable. There isn’t enough hand sanitizer in the world for you to be able to clean your hands after touching this document. Not that your kind believes in hand sanitizer—that’s just a Fauci trick to subvert our freedoms.
I’m assuming no one will have read this far, but if one of your aids has read this far, shame on you for supporting your boss—in my humble opinion, you are by definition complicit in destroying America. I can only hope that your families and friends all abandon you for the corruption and ruination you rain down on us all, but knowing how power works, I doubt any of you will ever even realize the misery and suffering you wreak, hence this heartfelt letter from me to you, to at least suggest to you that your crusade from Jesus is about as un-Christian as it could be. You’re breaking one of the 10 Commandments just by pretending to be doing his work. Remember “Thou shalt not take the name of thy Lord thy God in vain?” It pains me to watch all of you destroying our Republic, and for what? Money and power. It’s always money and power.
CARRY ON, CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS! And Clarence—Don’t you think that Mai Tais just taste better in a Gulfstream than in a Learjet? Drink up! At least while you’re living the lifestyle of the rich and famous, you’re not on the bench.
See you in hell,
Busta Cretin
[END]
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[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/9/4/2191512/-A-Letter-to-our-Very-Own-Supreme-Leader-John-Roberts
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