The New Gilded Age

 The recent rulings by the conservative junta on the Supreme Court are causing exactly the sort of despair and consternation that we could have anticipated. The margins of this decision are, of course, a byproduct of the 2016 election. Trump appointed 3 of the 6 justices that overturned Roe and created an untrammeled right to own a firearm both of which stand in opposition to the majority wishes of the population of the United States.

Anti-majoritarianism is a fundamental tenet of modern "conservatism," as their positions are increasingly held by fewer and fewer people. I do worry that the reverse partisanship effect - whereby people assume political positions based on their partisan allegiances, rather than the other way around - could create more people who adopt terrible, retrograde stances on any number of issues. However, the fact remains that there are solid - rock solid - majorities in favor of abortion access and reasonable gun safety measures. There's no reason to think the Court won't go further and attack Griswold or Obergfell.

A minority of Americans elect roughly 50% of the Senate. A minority of Americans elected Donald Trump and George W. Bush (the first time). These concurrent minority groups are able to pack the Court - the least responsive branch of government to the people - with far Right ideologues who are basically just making shit up from the bench.

Despite the usual sackcloth and ashes routine among the Very Online, this is not actually "the worst Court in history." During the 19th century, the Court was a powerful reactionary tool that issued such horrific decisions as Dred Scott - which denied Black citizenship, even if free - the Slaughterhouse Cases - which gutted the 14th Amendment - a host of decisions that curtailed any effort by workers to organize or states to regulate commercial activities - decisions like Lochner - and, of course, Plessy v Ferguson, which enshrined Jim Crow under the Constitution.

It was really only during the brief window of the Warren Court that the Supreme Court became a beacon for expanding the rights of Americans, rather than curtailing them. The Burger Court was still largely liberal and handed down decisions like Roe, but the slow march back to a Gilded Age Court is now complete. It is complete, because a minority of Americans were able to elect Donald Trump.

The problem, of course, is precisely that the Court is impervious to political pressure, especially with a 50-50 Senate and the filibuster in place. This could very well lead to depressed turnout in the midterms or it could lead to an angry swell of women voters surging to the polls. Or maybe inflation will override a woman's right to bodily autonomy. 

I can very easily see a situation where the majority of voters in November vote for Democratic candidates for the House and yet Republicans win control of the House. 

I think our institutions have been broken for a long time now. But inertia kept them functioning. Trump barged into those fractured institutions and shattered them. We no longer accept the results of elections; corruption and even sedition goes unpunished; rights we took for granted are being stripped away.

How do we survive as a country?