No, it was the Supreme Court, the high priesthood of Constitutionalism as well as the least democratic branch of it, chosen by appointment from among an elite, often chosen for their service to the rich and powerful, which rotted out the American version of democracy. While, in its current degeneracy, it's tempting to imagine that came from the Congress, the record is that after the horrors of Watergate, the slush funds, Nixon's crimes involving setting up his own, personal crime syndicate - much of it with millionaire and billionaire money which the Supreme Court would, four years after he had to resign turn into "speech" - the Congress tried to get the corruption of money out of our election campaigns and the Supreme Court in virtually every case, if not every case, threw out the effort to rescue American democracy from that corruption at the encouragement of lawyers in the employ of those who were hell bent on corrupting democracy and, yes, the "civil liberties" lawyers and the groups they formed to sucker liberals into helping fund the demise of egalitarian democracy.
The habit of our journalism and scribbling class is to present the Supreme Court as if it some kind of high priesthood of law and the protector of our liberties through the magic of the Constitution. That's about as real as a reality show. The fact that that's a load of crap is best seen through their part in permitting the levels of corruption on total and full display in the Trumpian Neronic implosion of democracy we are witnessing right now. Even if, and it's looking ever more that it's not going to happen, Trump is deposed by law, that will get us a Pence (who is certainly up to his beady little eyes in Trump's treason) or the psycho-Randianism of Paul Ryan or someone like him. The alternatives we've managed to elect since Buckley vs. Valeo made the status quo of post-Sullivan American politics, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, hardly racked up a stellar record of fighting back the corruption of money. Granted their Supreme Court appointments have done a bit to complain about it and nothing real to stop it, but that's not going to last long.
No, it was under the American Constitutional system, the Bill of Rights, that American democracy was rotted out and killed. I think using the Jackson Magnolia is apt because his reign of terror was also fully permitted under the same Constitution with the same Bill of Rights. Those as the source of American democracy are a myth, the only democracy we've managed to get had nothing to do with those, in fact, that struggle has often been against the very Constitution and the regime it set up. I think the Warren Court, despite several authentic accomplishments, helped set things up for where they are now. The history of the Supreme Court is probably more of a scandal than that of the Congress and the Presidency. Most of the Presidents have been pretty terrible, too. Even the great ones have their flaws and those considered good were often really terrible. Probably the most moral and ethical president we've ever had, Jimmy Carter, was mowed down by the system and its media.
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