Another day, and yet another bleak and awful vista yawns forth before us. The most recent impetus for sticking one's head in a gas oven like a baked potato or Sylvia Plath is the retirement of Supreme Court of the United States Justice Anthony Kennedy. Considering that a Supreme Court Justice serves for life (or whenever he or she pleases), Justice Kennedy's replacement could very well determine the course of the American judicial system for generations.
President Trump's nominee, subject to confirmation by the Senate, is a judge by the name of Brett Kavanaugh. If confirmed, he would hold the "swing vote" previously held by Justice Kennedy. This means that there are four conservative-leaning justices and four progressive-leaning justices, and he can tip the balance either way when deciding matters involving critically divisive social issues. For example, the 2015 decision of Obergefell v. Hodges required that all fifty states treat same-sex marriages with the exact same legal conditions and mechanisms as opposite-sex marriages. Had Justice Kennedy been replaced with a conservative judge in that case, the United States would not have marriage equality today.
I see three main issues where Justice Kavanaugh's vote will impact American society directly: net neutrality, political finance law, and abortion. Other issues like the death penalty, same-sex marriage and LGBTQ rights are also important, but the court of public opinion has already been set down pretty firmly on those fronts, making any reversal profoundly unpopular and politically disastrous for any administration. But here's where things may change:
Net Neutrality
Hard as it may be to believe, Justice Kavanaugh's previous decisions indicate that he opposes net neutrality. Follow me on this: he has ruled that Internet Service Providers can throttle, prioritize, or charge different rates for different sites or services. In other words, if Crave TV wants to take over the market from Netflix, they can convince Shaw, TELUS, ComCast, or whomever else is providing internet access to the public to charge more for Netflix, or slow down Netflix traffic so that the programming lags, loses sound, etc.That sounds stupid. If Microsoft gives enough money to enough ISPs, they could throttle Google bandwidth to a trickle and force people to either use Bing as their search engine or pay ridiculously high 'premium access' fees. Why would a judge allow what amounts to censorship of information access? Answer: because he has ruled that any government neutrality regulations would contravene the free speech rights of the companies that distribute bandwidth. Yup. The rights of the corporations are more constitutionally important than the rights of citizens.
We've already seen evidence that the American government has been tending toward corporate syndicalism for years, most recently evidenced by the fiasco in the United Nations recently when the United States bullied and threatened a stunned World Health Assembly in an attempt to prevent a resolution advocating the health benefits of breast milk. (For more information, click HERE) Why would the United States brandish economic sanctions and aid withdrawal against countries like Ecuador over breast milk? Answer: because the companies that manufacture infant formula are part of a $70 billion industry, and they don't want babies to be breast-fed, despite all medical evidence indicating it is the healthiest option for a child. Breast-feeding eats into their profits, and the U.S. government is willing to use its foreign policy to defend those profits.
Speaking of the American government and its financial relationship with big business, how about:
Citizens United
In 2010, The Supreme Court of the United States decided in the case of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission that financial contributions are a form of expression of opinion and therefore protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution of United States. In short, any individual or corporation acting as an individual can throw as much money as it wishes at a political action committee (PAC) representing a candidate or campaign. Hypothetically, that means a corporation that manufactures baby formula could spend loads of cash on any political candidate that promises to endorse any policy that villainizes breastfeeding. In a two-party system, that would mean only bribing... erm... endorsing two candidates per political jurisdiction could ensure that a corporation's agenda will become public policy.Should a case arise that might call for the Citizens United decision to be reviewed, how will Justice Kavanaugh treat this condition of unfettered "rent-a-politician" electoral finances? In his presidential campaign, Bernie Sanders made it clear that his first and foremost criterion for a Supreme Court Justice nominee is that candidate's professed willingness to reverse the Citizens United decision. Striking down Citizens United would be a direct slap in the face to all of the multinational corporations that are currently directing governmental activity. It would take a brave justice to try and stop the free-flow of corporate profits into politicians' pockets in exchange for more defence spending and fewer industrial health and safety regulations. Is Kavanaugh that brave? Possible, but unlikely. It would seem more likely that the current state of corruption is very satisfying to most of the people within the District of Columbia beltway, leaving Kavanaugh unmotivated to change the status quo.
Above all, Kavanaugh is seen as a pro-business justice, meaning that his verdicts tend to favour corporations rather than employees, environmental concerns, anti-trust legislation, and health and safety regulations. Overall, it seems likely that Citizens United will remain the law of the land in the face of any movement to repeal it.
And then there's the social conservative hot box:
Roe v. Wade
Ever since 1973, people who have identified as conservative have been trying to make abortion the biggest issue facing the American populace. The logic here can only be seen as manipulative and duplicitous. Conservatism generally involves "small government." The answers to socio-economic problems are supposed to be solved by the free markets, economically and intellectually. The government is not supposed to legislate or regulate the behaviour of business or people, but instead focus on service sectors of the public good.The government may not infringe on the rights of the individual to free speech, peaceable assembly, bear arms, protection from malicious prosecution and double jeopardy, etc. Conservatives are supposed to hold dear the civil rights and freedoms enshrined in the Constitution. Until it comes to women's reproductive organs. At that point, the government is encouraged to use all of its power to restrict and coerce a woman's actions regarding her own body. In the various points of conflict between the individual and the state, conservatives treasure the rights of the individual, except when it comes to abortion.
This particular conflict is so mind-numbingly stupid that it can only be seen as an artificial topic designed to force voters to conflate religious evangelism with political affiliation. In cases such as that of U.S. Representative Tim Murphy of Pennsylvania (HERE) and U.S. Representative Scott DesJarlais of Tennessee (HERE), lofty and pious-sounding speeches in Congress about the sanctity of life and other such tripe are shown to be bald-faced hypocrisy. Abortion is fine for their mistresses and girlfriends, but not for their constituents in general as they build their political platforms on moral rather than policy bases.
The right of a woman to terminate a pregnancy is one of the principal cornerstones of female empowerment, and female empowerment is the greatest possible measure of the advancement of a civilization. Any society that systematically disenfranchises half of its people on the basis of gender is obviously inhibiting its own potential. Depriving a woman of control over her own uterus essentially makes women incubators operating under government supervision.
No-one likes abortion. No one wants one. It's not fun, and nobody is gratified or even satisfied with the completion of such a surgical procedure. But sometimes, it becomes a necessity for any of a host of ugly and unhappy reasons. Usually, cases of rape, incest, paedophiliac interference, ectopic pregnancy, foetal inviability, or maternal endangerment are presented as cases extreme enough to warrant justification for terminating a pregnancy. Other cases include children with Tay-Sachs disease (HERE) or mitochondrial DNA depletion syndrome (MDDS - HERE). The point is that this is not a binary issue - this is complicated on moral, ethical, medical, psychological, and philosophical levels and cannot be reduced to a "forbid or allow" legal decision.
That being said, abortion has become a political lever. Many elections in the bible belt have been won or lost on the basis of whichever candidate can behave the most convincingly as though they will work to repeal Roe v. Wade and make it universally illegal for a woman to terminate a pregnancy. This means that Justice Kennedy's retirement opens the door for Congresspeople and Senators alike to make good on all of their promises to bring their bizarre and thoroughly fascist-fantasy idea of Jesus to the judiciary.
In this case, there may be room for hope. While we may all be justified in cringing in a corner and bemoaning the loss of environmental protections, labour relations, and integrity in politics, there is hope that Justice Kavanaugh, if confirmed, may not be 100% dedicated to turning women into government-regulated birth functionaries.
The Trump Angle
A lot of supporters of the current president might be disappointed that poor people might still have legal access to abortion services, despite the practical economic barriers that they encounter now. But first of all, they have already forgiven any transgressions made by the president and his administration (adultery, bearing false witness, coveting, stealing tuition, etc.). Second of all, they don't understand what they are voting for anyway, as long as it has something to do with blaming immigrants. This is proven by looking at how they vote against their own interest. If you didn't click on the previous link, here it is again. Finally, the president doesn't give a pig's burp about any of the potential social impacts of his SCOTUS nominations.The real reason that Kavanaugh is being nominated is because of the enormous amount of written pages he has dedicated to a constitutional analysis of indicting a sitting president. Corporate control of politics and the internet, and even abortion is relatively meaningless when it comes to the President trying to stack the deck against his own impeachment and conviction.
And that's really what it's all about - there are no secret agenda or deep political intrigues, or even an impending dissolution of the separation of church and state involved here. Just the myopic, self-serving scramblings of a petty criminal.
And so it has come to pass that I come to the conclusion of my ramblings for the nonce.
Until next time, good night England and the Colonies,
—mARKUS
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