The Slow Motion Coup is All But Complete
The foot soldiers need no marching orders. They simply know what to do without being told. When the country’s first black president nominated a judge to the highest court in the land, the white male senator from Kentucky knew his real duty. Never mind what the amendments say. He served the original document, the one that treated people of color and women as the property of white men. That constitution demanded he leave a vacant seat in hopes that that woman wouldn’t win.
It was a slow fuse he lit. She lost. Our first orange president won, despite losing the popular vote.
Give the awful people credit. They play for every inch. They don’t let compunction get in the way of serving their real purpose. Bit by bit, they have clawed back the ground they seemed to lose over five decades ago.
Oh, the 60’s were a scary time for them. The slaves had stormed the plantation and set it ablaze. The country had dared say that voting was a right (but hadn’t gotten 2/3 to amend the 2/3 wording in the charter document itself). Women were demanding to be treated as equals. Drug-smoking hippies were turning on, tuning in, and dropping out.
And as if to put a punctuation mark on it all, the highest court in the land opened the next decade by recognizing that terrifying power long bestowed by biology on the female of our species: discretion over new life.
It’s been a long, slow road to recovery for the white man, but the journey back to the top is almost complete. It might seem like they had a plan, but they didn’t need one. They all simply moved as one, rats entranced by the piper’s siren song of supremacy. They know it the second the tune strikes up, and they follow it instinctively.
They knew the real meaning of Nixon’s war on drugs. When the NRA radicalized, they knew who would join its ranks and take up arms. When Reagan declared “morning in America,” they knew what nightmare they were waking up from, same as they knew precisely why and how America needed to be “made” great “again.”
No one had to say it out loud.
Reagan was the first incarnation of that strange oxymoron of the right: a subversive reactionary. Like Kid Rock rapping about kids these days and eating steak (or something), he somehow made it cool to be a stodgy stick-in-the-ass fighting to turn back the clock to the 50's. Saint Cocaine Cowboy was somehow a hero. He won the Cold War. He brought the hostages home (never mind how). He gave us gasoline again. He lowered our taxes. He fought for the right to work by busting those pesky air traffic controller unions. He restored to the welfare queens the dignity of labor (work shall set you free from government assistance!). It wasn’t Ronny’s fault that his dynastic successor was too cerebral to maintain the grand bargain with an American public who demands a more obvious brand of asshole, but no worry — his idiot son would take office soon enough and make up for lost time.
Herbert Walker only seemed okay. On his watch, the practice of nominating compromised court jesters to the most hallowed halls of the nation began. The first Trojan horse was rolled into the confirmation hearings, and even when his belly disgorged his tiny soldier, the Federalist Society did not flinch, did not waver. He was their boy, and they would do whatever it took to shout down tales of hairs on soda cans. He did them proud by maintaining a vow of silence on the bench for decades. The justices may be independent in theory, but boy he sure acts like a Republican in practice — showing utter contempt for the institution entrusted to him. That his wife would turn out to be a loony cheerleader for insurrection — well, that was just icing on the cake, a bonus nobody could have seen coming. He did the Right thing and didn’t recuse himself, the lone dissenting vote for keeping Ginni’s texts in her phone.
Herbert Walker’s reign may have given way to a Democrat, but you could do a lot worse for a temporary caretaker than a white man from Arkansas. He readily coopted the right policies without concerning himself too much with the question of who was coopting whom. See? We democrats can be tough on crime, too. We can lower taxes just as much as the ‘publicans. Laissez les bons temps rouler! Can we create a bald-headed billionaire with the balls to race tourists to space? Yes, we can!!
It was only fitting that the Republicans would come back into power over the majority will of the people. THAT’S WHAT THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE WAS DESIGNED TO DO, angry little white men in North Dakotan enclaves would scream. The founders in their infinite wisdom knew that tiny rural states would need protecting from the out-of-touch elites in the coastal population centers.
W. was only mediocre as rightist statesmen go. That was fine. He didn’t need to be great. All he had to do was keep the seat warm. Lower taxes a bit, keep dismantling the administrative state, maybe undermine an international institution or two — just generally be incompetent to remind folks that you don’t have to be particularly smart as long as you look a certain way and say certain things.
Nothing much of note would happen until the end of Obama’s second term, when Justice Scalia inconveniently died. We all know what happened next. A bald-faced hypocrite made up some bald-faced lies about some imaginary practice of not confirming a new justice when an election is happening anytime within the next ten years. Mustn’t thwart the will of The People, dontcha know? When RBG naively chose not to retire under Obama and then couldn’t hold on until Biden, the shoe was suddenly on the other foot; and the saggy-chinned sad sack had no problem ramming a justice down the throat of the American people in the last year of an impeached, unpopularly-elected president’s term. Who woulda thunk it? It takes a brave man to admit he was wrong…wait what am I saying? White makes right. Being Mitch means never having to say you’re sorry, even when you imply black Americans aren’t actually — you know — Americans.
Our second unpopularly elected president of the new millennium sure did pay dividends for fans of executive power. Garland was replaced with Gorsuch. A red-faced frat boy who LIKES A BEER got confirmed to the court. And then the coup de grace: RBG replaced with ACB, a jurist only a federalist from Opus Dei could love.
It was a game of inches, my friends — millimeters even. If the tumor had only grown slower…if Garland had gotten a fair hearing. Instead, here we are with a 5–4 court.
The court already had the Voting Rights Act on the ropes. Now it’s Roe v. Wade. It makes you wonder what’s next. Why not overturn Brown v. Board of Education? Maybe we can enact a federal “stand your ground” law to allow white men to pick fights and gun down whosoever takes the bait nationwide? A reinterpretation of executive privilege to include whatever the hell the commander-in-chief-for-life likes? National prayer services? Perhaps women will only be allowed to vote if they’ve given birth and have a permission slip from their husband? Or the gift that keeps on giving: gerrymandered super-majorities of Republicans overseen by secretaries of state who can choose electors without any regard to how people voted?
Yeah, that last one, probably. Abortion is the least of it. The possibilities are endless, now that the awful people have won.
