Dispensing Justice
The Supreme Court has always existed on a pedestal for me as it probably has for many Americans. It is the final arbiter of justice in a land that has reigned supreme as the pillar of justice and democracy for two hundred forty five years. There have been plenty of smaller nations where democracy and justice have been upheld and are prized characteristics of their national social consciousness, but none has stood as the model for the rest of the world the way the United States has. Some might argue that in its day the Holy Roman Empire and even the British Empire came close as they respectively reigned supreme in their eras as bastions of strength, but that is mostly what they were…more strong than about equality or fairness. If we were being totally honest with ourselves, the American Experiment, as it is called sounded and read better than it actually was before the Civil War, especially given the nations treatment of native Americans and African slaves. But at least after 1863 in the case of slavery and 1924 in the case of the enfranchisement of Native Americans, the country has been trying to rectify these lapses in equality.
With the Civil Rights Movement and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 we entered a Great Society period where the nation bent over backwards to try to be better about leveling the playing field for all Americans. But in 2013, in the Shelby County (Alabama) v. Holder decision, by a vote of 5 to 4, the conservative-leaning Supreme Court ruled that Sections 4(b) and 5 of the Voting Rights Act that gave the Federal Government jurisdiction over the states when it came to provisions that some states have tried (and now succeeded) to limit voting rights of certain ethnic minorities. These were the exact same minorities that the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act sought to protect for purposes of their enfranchisement. Since 2013, and especially since the 2020 election there has been a general degradation of national voting rights preservation with 17 states enacting what are known as voter suppression laws, the very same jurisdictions that Section 4(b) and 5 were established to protect against.
Repeatedly the conservative Supreme Court has ruled in support of states rights to conduct their Federal elections in a manner they see fit and with a majority of states (60%) controlled by Republicans, the gutting of the national efforts to insure voting rights for all has taken a marked turn backwards. This was no accident and it is very fair to say that the Republican Party has made it their top priority for many years now to modify the voting process in the nation to favor their declining majority and to defend against the demographic shifts closing in on them turning white Americans a minority. The priority has been to control state legislatures, gerrymander Congressional districts to favor their white Republican constituents in Congress and push the envelope of constitutionality with regard to the Supreme Court and entire American Judicial system so as to stack the court with conservative members who will continue to advance the conservative white agenda.
This sounds like an unbelievable movie script akin to the machinations of the Soviets in The Manchurian Candidate, with long range planning and unscrupulous devices to alter or suppress the will of the people. But its not. It’s real life and it’s on the line today with the vote taking place in a few hours on the Senate floor on the Freedom to Vote Act. Yesterday Maine Independent Angus King delivered a strong supporting speech on behalf of the legislation and in so doing set himself up as what Heather Cox Richardson, one of the historian gurus I follow religiously these days, said is the conscience of the Senate. King ended his speech with a powerful thought, “Destiny has placed us here at one of history’s fateful moments. Our response to it will be our most important legacy…. I believe we all know our responsibility, and whether we like it or not, history will record whether we, each of us, meets that responsibility.” I underline the quote because it strikes me as so meaningful. We often feel and say that we feel we are at major turning points or thresholds, but this is exactly such a moment in American history and I, for one, am thankful for men like Angus King for being a man who straddles the partisan divide and yet sees the damage being inflicted by one side against the whole and the very fabric of our nation.
A fascinating economic phenomenon is underway that, in a seemingly unconnected way, actually reinforces this sentiment. The sentiment is about the importance and need for an all-inclusive society that fosters and supports the working classes and provides for avenues for life improvement through opportunity and education. We are in an employment crisis where huge numbers of jobs are going infilled. Republicans like to proclaim that it is a direct result of liberal policies where money is being dispensed and sapping the working men and women of their need and desire for gainful employment. When I encountered this first-hand at a hotel in Las Vegas earlier in the year, rather than blame our liberal fiscal policies, my reaction was to say that it proved that employers were simply no longer paying workers enough to motivate them to work. The income and wealth imbalances empirically proven to exist since the middle of the Reagan years of the mid-80’s bear witness to the fact that policies have allowed the rich to get so much richer while the poor get so much poorer that the only stop gap we have had for years is illegal alien labor at the lowest end of the working spectrum. Naturally, Republicans have believed that immigration is an evil thing, mostly because they know it eventually undercuts their maintenance of electoral power unless they find a way to suppress the ability of this “modern slave labor” to vote for policies that alter the p[laying field to favor labor more than it has.
Republicans are so focused on retaining power at all costs that they continue to bite the very hands that feed them. First, they have bitten the hands of the American working men and women by underpaying and under providing (as in benefits) for them, and then they are biting the hands of all the immigrants who are willing to fill the working employment gap. This shows a patent lack of understanding of the economic process that made this country great and economically strong. Instead they have focused on voting suppression and stacking the courts with conservative judges, some of whom lack even basic qualifications and levels of decency. And this has gone all the way up to the Supreme Court. The ongoing result is a reinforcing system that has made the court undeniably partisan and therefore largely unjust. Instead of insuring that the Supreme Court of the land spend its time dispensing justice, Republicans have simply chosen to dispense with justice. This will either change if we have the fortitude to make the changes needed now, or it will come later as it so often does in history, through violence and social and economic disruption. I can only hope someone on the right side of the Senate pays attention to Angus King.