The American people did not elect this guy as the president of the United States of America. Per Wikipedia, seven of the nine U.S. Supreme Court “justices” identify as Catholic, and only one of those seven, Sonia Sotomayor, is moral and sane.
It’s clear that the 6-3 wingnut majority on the U.S. Supreme Court — again, an illegitimate Supreme Court — are going scorched fucking earth on the American public. When might they ever have this opportunity to shove their backasswards theofascist ideology down the throats of the majority of Americans again? You have to strike while the iron is hot, no?
The theofascists’ strategy very apparently is to keep those of us Americans who are sane so busy re-fighting the battles that we’d already won decades ago — such as that women get to control their own bodies and that our publicly funded schools cannot be extensions of any church or other religious organization –– that we can’t fight for actual progress.
However, we do have what’s called checks and balances in the United States of America, and we, the people, can and must rein in the out-of-control, anti-democratic Supreme Court (again, the majority of whom were appointed by “presidents” who were not actually even elected by the majority of the American people).
First, a mention of the court’s latest backasswards opinion that surely is blessed by the Vatican, which the court issued from the bowels of hell yesterday. The Washington Post reports:
The Supreme Court ruled [yesterday] that a school board in Washington state discriminated against a former football coach when it disciplined him for postgame prayers at midfield, the high court’s latest decision favoring the protection of religious faith over concerns about government endorsement of religion.
Justice Neil M. Gorsuch wrote for fellow conservatives in the 6-to-3 decision, saying Bremerton High School assistant coach Joseph Kennedy’s [gee, do you think he’s Catholic?] prayers are protected by the Constitution’s guarantees of free speech and religious exercise. He said the school board’s discipline of Kennedy was unwarranted, even under the concern of violating the separation of church and state.
“Respect for religious expressions is indispensable to life in a free and diverse Republic — whether those expressions take place in a sanctuary or on a field, and whether they manifest through the spoken word or a bowed head,” Gorsuch wrote. “Here, a government entity sought to punish an individual for engaging in a brief, quiet, personal religious observance doubly protected” by the Constitution.
Gorsuch was joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Amy Coney Barrett. Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh joined most of the opinion.
The court’s three liberals dissented, as they had in last week’s ruling that Maine cannot bar religious schools from receiving public tuition grants extended to other private schools.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that the majority “elevates one individual’s interest in personal religious exercise, in the exact time and place of that individual’s choosing, over society’s interest in protecting the separation between church and state, eroding the protections for religious liberty for all.”
Joined by Justices Stephen G. Breyer and Elena Kagan, Sotomayor added: “Today’s decision is particularly misguided because it elevates the religious rights of a school official, who voluntarily accepted public employment and the limits that public employment entails, over those of his students, who are required to attend school and who this Court has long recognized are particularly vulnerable and deserving of protection.” …
Keep in mind that assistant coach Kennedy was not simply praying by himself, silently or otherwise, which I’d accept was his First Amendment right to do, but that he was leading football players in prayer. And as Dave Zirin, writing for The Nation, points out:
… There is a greater issue that the majority [of the Supreme Court], in their zeal, chose to ignore: the freedom of the students to not pray. I’m sure they would say that this freedom remains, and no one has to pray if they choose not to. But such a perspective is risible. Anyone who has ever played high school sports knows that if your coach is doing something, particularly something religious, and expects you to join, then you had better do it. To stand out and say, “I am Jewish” or “I am Muslim” or “I am an atheist” — or even simply “I don’t want to do that” — is to be labeled a distraction, a locker-room cancer, or worse.
The coach — particularly if they are a malignant narcissist (and make no mistake, we are living in the salad days for malignant narcissists) — will often make you pay a price with the greatest power they have over you: playing time. But it’s not just about limiting your time on the field. It’s also about making you an outcast among your teammates, a prospect in your teen years about as painful and harmful as not being able to play a sport you love. It’s easier to just take a knee for a minute rather than reap the whirlwind of anger from your coach. That is why this is not about freedom but coercion. [Emphasis mine.] …
Indeed, the theofascists’ claim/lie that they’re only actually trying to protect religious freedom — instead of trying to impose their “Christian” beliefs on everyone — crumbles when you consider that these very same people demanding that our taxpayer-funded public schools become arms of their “Christian” churches would scream bloody fucking murder if their sons and daughters felt coerced to join in, say, Jewish or Muslim observances at a public fucking school.
No student should feel coerced into any religious beliefs at a public school, and no taxpayer should have to subsidize rank proselytizing at our public schools, even in public schools that are located in overwhelmingly “Christian” areas.
If you want your child to get a “Christian” education, then send your child to a private “Christian” school — and stop trying to GROOM other people’s children into becoming sick, brainwashed Christofascists like yourself!
Again, we have a system of checks and balances, and it’s past time to check the theofascist-majority U.S. Supreme Court. We have different ways to do this, and we should consider all of them:
- Expanding the court to put actually sane, actually law-abiding justices on it, as I’ve already discussed.
- Actually impeaching U.S. Supreme Court justices, especially Clarence Thomas, whose wife’s illegal meddling in the 2020 presidential election has seriously tainted the court; Thomas’ removal from the court is more than warranted. And the “justices” are not fucking monarchs or little popes, but ultimately serve at the will of the American people, even if getting rid of them isn’t easy (it should be easier to get rid of them than it is).
- Passing federal laws to reverse the damage that the Supreme Court has done and still plans to do, including by codifying abortion rights and codifying that public schools may not use taxpayer dollars to proselytize, but must remain religiously neutral/secular. This probably would necessitate the elimination of the filibuster, which can be done on a simple majority vote in the U.S. Senate.
The theofascists on the Supreme Court want all of us to just give up in defeat and despair.
That is the last thing that we, the sane, should do if we don’t want to see our nation devolve into a fascist theocracy.
It will take hard work to reverse the Supreme Court’s damage without a civil war, but we, the people, can do it. (Again, though, I never take violent revolution off of the table in a time of tyranny, as we’ve been seeing for a while now, with the tyranny by the minority over the majority.)
Our best hope, short of a civil war, is at the ballot box; we must do everything to prevent the election of (theo)fascists to public office and we must do everything that we can to expand the Democratic majority in the U.S. Senate, and demand that the Democratic senators, if they want our (continued) support, support eliminating the filibuster in order to save our nation. And if they don’t, we must remove them from power. (We can begin by handing DINO U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema her princess ass to her in 2024. Thus far, I support U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego primarying her sick and sorry ass in 2024.)