I had a thought...which is sometimes a dangerous thing...

[PCIntern]

Back in 2000, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in favor of the George W Bush Campaign and its candidate, stopping the counting and recounting of legally cast votes. One of the sidebars of the decision was that it was a "one-off" and was not to be taken as precedent for other seemingly related issues. Im no lawyer, but I think I understand the implicit nature of their ruling. Of course, those who were thinking, reasonable, liberal and centrist people were outraged and need I say more that the sequelae of this decision was Bush/Cheney for eight years, whose reign even Republicans won't reference.

This time, the Supreme Court refused to hear the "cases" brought by the proponents of a despotic rule headed by arguably the most dangerous fascist ever to be elected, if he in fact was, to the Presidency. I believe that they recognized that the path upon which we were headed as a nation would lead to disaster, rioting in the streets, Civil War without geographic boundaries, economic ruin, and much death and destruction. In another "one-off", they spared the country from disaster.

I write this because I believe that if these reprehensible voter-suppression laws are passed in many states, including my own, the Court will uphold them because we are regressing with their assent from a liberated, free society, into one attempting to regress and promulgate a strange form of Orwellian life and societal existence. We should not mistake, in my opinion, a life-saving gesture which was executed last year as one of continued evolution toward true democracy. As a nation, we were thrown a life preserver, and after being hauled on board, were thrown back down into steerage.

[Kid Berwyn]

1. Call your doctor and ask if Bertram Gross is right for you.

“The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerated the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism: ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power.” — President Franklin D. Roosevelt

Professor Bertram Gross said fascism was transformed, almost imperceptibly, but is the mechanism of making the rich richer and keeping the rest under their control...

Friendly Fascism

The New Face of Power in America

by Bertram Gross

South End Press, 1980, paper

"As long as an economic system provides an acceptable degree of security, growing material wealth and opportunity for further increase for the next generation, the average American does not ask who is running things or what goals are being pursued." — Daniel R. Fusfeld

Introduction, Rise and Fall of Classic Fascism
The Takeoff Toward a New Corporate Society
The Mysterious Establishment
The Specter of Friendly Fascism
Subverting Democratic Machinery
Impossibility: It Couldn't Happen
Quotations

Source w/ links: http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Fascism/Friendly_Fascism_BGross.html

The Unfolding Logic

p161
... as I survey the entire panorama of contending forces, I can readily detect something more important: the outline of a powerful logic of events. This logic points toward tighter integration of every First World Establishment. In the United States it points toward more concentrated, unscrupulous, repressive, and militaristic control by a Big Business-Big Government partnership that-to preserve the privileges of the ultra-rich, the corporate overseers, and the brass in the military and civilian order-squelches the rights and liberties of other people both at home and abroad. That is friendly fascism.

p162
At any particular moment First World leaders may respond to crisis like people in a crowded night club when smoke and flames suddenly billow forth. They do not set up a committee to plan their response. Neither do they act in a random or haphazard fashion. Rather, the logic of the situation prevails. Everyone runs to where they think the exits are. In the ensuing melee some may be trampled to death. Those who know where the exits really are, who are most favorably situated, and have the most strength will save themselves.

Thus it was in Italy, Japan, and Germany when the classic fascists came to power. The crisis of depression, inflation, and class conflict provided an ideal opportunity for the cartels, warmongers, right-wing extremists, and rowdy street fighters to rush toward power. The fascist response was not worked out by some central cabal of secret conspirators. Nor was it a random or accidental development. The dominant logic of the situation prevailed.

Thus too it was after World War II. Neither First World unity nor the Golden International was the product of any central planners in the banking, industrial, political, or military community. Indeed, there was then-as there still is-considerable conflict among competing groups at the pinnacle of the major capitalist establishments. But there was a broad unfolding logic about the way these conflicts were adjusted and the "Free World" empire came into being. This logic involved hundreds of separate plans and planning committees-some highly visible, some less so, some secret. It encompassed the values and pressures of reactionaries, conservatives, and liberals. In some cases, it was a logic of response to anticapitalist movements and offensives that forced them into certain measures-like the expanded welfare state-which helped themselves despite themselves.

Although the friendly fascists are subversive elements, they rarely see themselves as such. Some are merely out to make money under conditions of stagflation. Some are merely concerned with keeping or expanding their power and privileges. Many use the rhetoric of freedom, liberty, democracy, human values, or even human rights. In pursuing their mutual interests through a new coalition of concentrated oligarchic power, people may be hurt-whether through pollution, shortages, unemployment, inflation, or war. But that is not part of their central purpose. It is the product of invisible hands that are not theirs.

Source: http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Fascism/Specter_FriendlyFascism_FF.html

In Bush v Gore 2000, Rehnquist, Scalia and the rest of the felonious five upheld the rights of the monied interests over the rights of the People. Its precedent has only been magnified by the sundry sick, demented and sordid events that lead to the present day. Thank Goodness for Joe Biden and the Democratic Party.

[abqtommy]

3. That's an excellent response. I encourage you to post it as an original op.

[PCIntern]

4. Agreed.

[stopdiggin]

2. You're absolutely right

Turning away the challenge to the election was much more a matter of reprieve -- than a true decision on the law or constitutionality. In fact, the court spent little time in actually considering ...

As a nation, we were thrown a life preserver, and after being hauled on board, were thrown back down into steerage.

Nailed it.

[Hortensis]

5. Yup. The newest appointees are NOT "textualists" and "originalists" because of

the mostly nonexistent intellectual validity of those approaches. They're hard-core conservative agents hawking phony justifications to reinterpret and reverse over 230 years of mostly liberal constitutional doctrine and law.

These justices also were not chosen for appointment to the high court because they have the requisite qualifications of fine judicial temperament and character but because they do not. They're not the only ones of course.

We'll almost certainly never know how DT's appointees lead him believe they'd vote as needed to keep him in power. But who knows? Maybe he'll blab some day.

Agree entirely with the OP's picture of their general end goals, but really doubt that they'll reveal them immediately through alarmingly strong patterns of decisions. Providing the nation with obvious, compelling proof that we need to depower this nest of judicial revolutionaries is not their goal. For now they're "just-us ordinary kinder and gentler conservatives."

General welfare clause? Right to privacy? Note that when liberal justices spoke of originalism they tended to be looking at "original PURPOSE," while conservative choose to prioritize "original public meaning," seeking a very limited 18th century result as a way to amap avoid addressing purpose. They did think differently then. Madison, chief framer of the constitution, didn't think the federal government should be involved with roads.