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That's not Democracy, That's Gangsterism. [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-06-29
Limiting the scope of the Appeals circuit, as the SCOTUS did last Friday, is a sign that the 6-3 majority prefers the constitutional abuse of a rogue executive on the Constitution, rather than place limits on Executive power under any circumstances. There is no greater evidence of that fact than replacing the discretion of their appellate colleague’s interpretation of the Constitution, and the limits of Executive power, with their own.
And that is the grossest misinterpretation of that document's intent as is intellectually possible. So gross, in fact, that it begs an entirely different standard from which to judge where such an interpretation (a generous word for this ruling) comes from.
Other than an explicit, if hidden, agenda I can only surmise that we are witness to a similar dynamic
at work, when the criteria for 'safe seats' in the judicial branch becomes similar to those for creating 'safe districts' in the legislative branch.
As we've witnessed since the introduction of REDMAP - officially, that was March 4, 2010 in the WSJ - sidestepping honest primaries by choosing preferred voters to occupy manufactured districts naturally leads to extremist oneupmanship in those districts, and that tends to be reflected in its representatives, sent to Washington or the state legislature. In the real world, those illegitimate, REDMAP-gerrymandered representatives call themselves the Freedom Caucus. None of them can win election in a district that wasn't *designed* for them to 'win'.
[An aside: Democracy has never been in the service of creating and representing 'gangsterism' of any kind, as political constituencies. Because that wouldn't be a true, representative cross-section of a community interest, beyond the purpose for that district to exist in the first place. With the Freedom Caucus, instead of the 'responsible Accounting and Administration of Taxes on shared public resources and infrastructure', it's performative partisanship in the service of strongly-held ideology. And the district map containing voters with that shared worldview, was based on a conscious decision to create such a district map using publicly-available data, that reflects a past, partisan, voting record, for that very ideology. That's not Democracy. That's Gangsterism. Yet, that is the basic premise behind the Thomas Hofeller-authored, strategic gerrymandering strategy masquerading as the official election plan for the GOP, since 2010, wherever the GOP have a legislative majority, which currently numbers 28 states. The Freedom Caucus came into existence in its first full cycle, 2012.]
So too, do we see a consequence of litmus-testing for seating jurists on judicial Benches. It may not be as performative as in the legislatures, dealing with an extremist Freedom Caucus contingent but, as evidenced by last Friday's limitations imposed by the SCOTUS, no less consequential when it comes to upholding constitutional rule-of-law.
Rather than look at, and question the acts of a rogue Executive doing lawless things, the top of the federal judicial branch questions the judgement of their own colleagues on the Appellate circuit, attempting to slow the roll of the rogue Executive.
The ongoing dismantling of American government by executive fiat (ie DOGE) eviscerates that idea that the purpose of American constitutional government since FDR's New Deal, is to represent a Consent-based government to channel the Will of American citizens and taxpayers, to include the establishment and maintenance a social safety net, to provide for American citizens what private Markets cannot, will not, and in some cases should not.
To have the judicial branch acting as a partner in that endeavor, of the dismantling of the means for Government to provide those functions without Legislative branch approval, is bad enough.
But to have dismantled that edifice, lasting almost a century, and sustained by generations of legitimate electoral Consent, through the disenfranchisement tactics of weaponized, and strategic apportionment abuse, in order to manufacture a majority, that couldn’t be achieved by persuasion (like, Speech, whether real, or of the financial variety), with an extremist faction chosen to occupy manufactured districts, using violence and intimidation to undemocratically dismantle what had been built by Consent, should be considered tantamount to Treason.
That's what these rulings, supporting a tyrant really are. Treason agains the intent and spirit of Democracy.
A justice system run by chosen justices who, by their actions, make Justice secondary to the purpose behind their ascension to that office. As names on a list vetted by the private, non-governmental, non-professional Federalist Society (as opposed to the professional standards organization, the ABA). That purpose is Power. And specifically, the power of Wealth, to use a private interest group to bend the Law and influence the levers of state, as they see fit, through the willful exploitation of legal loopholes, and a contempt for the premise of an 'educated Public' being able to distinguish between the appearance of Corruption versus actual corruption.
They may frown on Trump, the rogue, for his bad manners, foul language, and the higher security costs they’re paying for, from their high, judicial, perches, but they will not stop him. Because their Purpose has nothing to do with the words written on parchment, and everything to do with how they got to their station, and the peer group interests they represent. And ‘they’ are taking us for fools. I spit on all of them.
My only question is, where is the Judicial Conference? They have an administrative capacity to register concerns about what they know about how the top Bench is operating. Or are they in on this anti-Constitutional, anti-democratic putsch?
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