Next month as we go to the polls to vote for people to represent us at all levels of governance it is deeply important to remember that these midterm elections are monumentally significant in an unprecedented way, with the possible exception of the Nazi scare in the 1930s and 40s. Results of all elections have consequences, but this time they will serve as a precursor to the most consequential election in our lifetimes in 2024.
As I’ve said to students who were voting for the first time, “You aren’t just voting for a president, you are voting for the courts and the judicial system. Who do you want interpreting the law and doling out justice?” It’s a question I now ask everyone when discussing politics, because our Constitution and democracy are seriously at stake.
We stand at the edge of a delicate precipice in this moment. It’s a precipice that seems to entice roughly a third of Americans as they race to the edge with violent enthusiasm, arms raised in a
Q-anon salute to their cult leader, tagged by one Republican “the orange Jesus.” That leader bears a striking resemblance to dictators the world over, past and present. This election is a call to deny him and his enablers and acolytes the power to curtail or end our Constitutional rights.
In some ways autumn, with its encroaching darkness and chill, feels like a metaphor for the future. If we aren’t careful, we will fall into a deep and dangerous chasm from which there will be no recovery or return.
The courts play an enormously important role in securing our future. As legal scholar and analyst Dalhia Lithwick has noted, “All we have protecting us is laws, and the courts that interpret and enforce those laws.” Right now the courts, from SCOTUS down, look shockingly political, unqualified, and threatening.
One has only to consider the Supreme Court and the federal courts to be frightened. Recently Chief Justice John Roberts found it necessary to suggest the court is maintaining its legitimacy. But that’s hard to swallow in view of Roe v. Wade being overturned after 50 years of what Trump-seated judges declared was settled law during their confirmation hearings in an extraordinary display of perjury. It’s hard to swallow in the face of expanded gun rights, the deifying of religious liberty in the name of Christianity over fundamental equality, and a SCOTUS spouse actively engaged in bringing down the government.
Justice Elena Kagan recognized the disgrace of the Court in her rebuttal to Justice John Roberts’ remarks in a Slate.com article “Judges,” she said, “undermine their legitimacy when they don’t act so much like courts and when they don’t do things that are recognizably law.” She didn’t stop there, cautioning the Court not to “stray into places where it looks like they are an extension of the political process or where they are imposing their own personal preferences.” Slate put it more graphically, accusing the justices of “pinning their smelly socks and underwear out on the line for the world to see.”
Then there are the federal court and state judges who serve lifetime appointments. Donald Trump appointed 234 judges, including three on the Supreme Court, 54 in U.S. Courts of appeal, and 174 serving in district courts, one of whom is Judge Aileen Cannon who insisted on appointing a special master in the legal fight between Trump and the Department of Justice over secret documents squirreled away in Mara Lago. Legal scholars have raised alarm bells stating she is grossly unqualified to serve that appointment. She is likely a canary in the coalmine when it comes to critical decisions being decided throughout the country’s judiciary.
It may come as some relief to know that President Biden appointed more judges to the federal courts by August this year than any president since John F. Kennedy, and his appointments include a record number of women and ethnic minorities, according to the Pew Research Center.
That, of course, revs up the lunatics who are ready to declare any election win they don’t like a fraud, and to ratchet up violent protests, predictions of which are truly alarming. National leaders are already warning of potential political violence fueled by the FBI investigation into the Mara Lago document stash. Republican senator Lindsey Graham, who kisses the ring of Donald Trump, has warned that there would be “riots in the streets” if the Justice Department prosecutes him, and the former president himself has declared that “terrible things are going to happen” if the election doesn’t go his way. Lawmakers are now reporting threats against them and their families, admitting that violence makes them afraid to hold public events. “It’s legitimizing violence. It’s a very dangerous thing,” a former analyst at the Department of Homeland Security told .NBC News.
It's good public servants and others dedicated to the survival of American democracy who especially feel the darkness and chill of a political autumn that is just around the corner. They stand closer to the precipice right now than most of us. But we are all inching closer to the edge. Unless we vote to ensure the survival of democracy and freedom, we will all slip off the rocks of an untoward revolution. Sadly, it is one that will have been aided by the downfall of America’s courts, and that is a tragedy that should never have come to pass.
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