The chances were, when the Electoral College imposed Donald Trump on the country that Ruth Bader Ginsburg would be replaced by him or the combination of billionaires who control him or the fascists such as William Barr and if she had looked at the calendar or listened to her body, she would have known that better than anyone. No doubt she was a very good Supreme Court justice right up till the end, no doubt Barack Obama would have replaced her with someone who at least started out to her right - Obama always went with safe choices, though in the case of Justice Sotomayor, I'm not sure they were always to RBG's right. But, now, we see the consequence of someone getting on the court and mistaking their role in the larger history of the country and the world. She, I am sorry to conclude, saw herself as indespensible when she was merely a human being who time and the human condition will dispose of and there was never any guarantee that she would outlive the next Republican-fascist regime. Which should be a lesson to any liberal appointed to any court as they reach the limits of human life expectancy. I am afraid that I will always blame her for not leaving during Obama's term.
But the disaster that we now have with her death will haunt us for decades due to the position the Supreme Court took for itself, extra-Constitutionally, and the stupidity of the fabled founders in making a judicial appointment a life-long one subject only to the impossible conditions required to remove even a Trump or, as I'm certain we will find out a Kavanaugh, from the court once their asses have been put on the bench. A Senate voters of sixty-seven votes is required to remove even a perjuring, lying and sexually assaulting "justice" from the Court and there is no chance that Republicans will vote even a proven felon of their party from the Court - they didn't remove Trump and he committed what by any rational - though not Constitutional - definition is treason against American democracy.
The only recourse to having seven to three decisions pitching us ever backward into an even more violent Jim Crow, gilded-age or, I wouldn't be surprised, pre-Civil War America is for a Democrat, if he is lucky enough to get a Democratic President to appoint enough "justices" to drive the fascist majority into the minority. Which is ridiculous but the dangers of allowing fascism to stand is even more ridiculous for any real, traditional American style of liberal or genuine leftist to tolerate.
The defects in our Constitution are coming to harvest all at once, those which are actually there and those put there by the Court, the explicitly anti-democratically constituted body in the government, and such things as Department of "Justice" lawyers writing memos empowering presidents with impunity to prosecution for even the most serious of crimes. It is a glaring fact that the habits and traditions and practices and the Constitution itself has proven itself to not be capable of protecting egalitarian democracy from the concerted efforts of determined gangsters, which is what those who hold all anti-egalitarian, all anti-democratic positions and ideologies are, no different in kind from a mob that shakes down a neigborhood in a protection racket or who run drugs and prostitution and who steal and, yes, kill for the profit of the gangsters. That is what we are up against, that is what the Republicans on the Supreme Court are, they are mob lawyers, the most powerful and accomplished advocats for criminals there are.
We can't tolerate this anymore, they are attacking the elections openly and effectively. We can't depend on John Roberts' odd, unexpected and against character 5-4s against his fascist colleagues - rulings and votes to cover for his ultimate goal of installing his gangster bosses in power for good. Now even if he wants to cover his own ass, he's got enough, right now, without another one of them on the bench to force their will. I wouldn't be surprised if they don't openly try to rig the election for Trump and, more so, the Republican-fascists down the ballot.
The only safe course for us is to reject those powers the Court has given itself, starting with Marbury v. Madison, a claim of Supreme Court power which has increasingly been used by the Supreme Court to expand its powers, occasionally for the good but it's been a hell of a long time since Earl Warren was making landmarks in overturning Jim Crow, those have generally and increasingly gone the other way as the critics of that self-given power were predicting more than a hundred twenty years ago. The first thing is to stop with the stupid genuflection and drop the phony aura of sanctity surrounding the Court and the Constitution and, most of all the "founders". This is going to take a long term cultural change, lying about it on strange and video isn't going to help one bit.
And getting back to the chances of RBG outlasting a Trump regime, if a president Biden or Harris takes the emergency route of increasing the size of the court, the reason of appointing judges with a knowledge of mathematics and science that would allow at least some of them to make reasoned choices on topics which require those, those are skills and knowledge which is dangerously lacking on today's courts. And it isn't just the most arrogant of fascists on the court who pretend that isn't a dangerous problem. I don't think she really appreciated the probabilities of that or she would have acted differently. I do respect her but her legacy will always contain this as well as her rulings.
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