Mission Accomplished
In the great movie Casablanca, the corrupt police chief, played by the incandescent Claude Rains, is “shocked’’ to discover that gambling is going on in the night club run by Humphrey Bogart’s Rick Blaine. But after uttering that memorable line, Rains collects his winnings from his own night spent gambling.
This same hypocrisy is on vivid display in the controversial Supreme Court draft opinion on abortion.
To recap - a draft opinion from the Court was leaked on May 3rd spelling out, in chapter and verse, how five justices plan to overturn the famous Roe v. Wade decision that allows American women to obtain an abortion.
The original case was decided in 1973, half a century ago. Its reasoning was based around the 14th Amendment to the Constitution - that women had a right to privacy and due process of law. Not to mention the right to be protected from “cruel and unusual punishment.’’
Before 1973, of course, women still had abortions to end unwanted pregnancies. They always have and they always will. The right of reproductive freedom, as given by Roe v. Wade, has saved countless lives both literally and economically. As an economic issue, reproductive rights have given women the freedom to work and control their lives, which was NOT the case before 1973.
Back then the court set up a three-trimester test. Under Roe v. Wade, an abortion in the first trimester was easy to get. In the second two trimesters, not so much. The author of that decision? Former Justice Harry Blackmun, one of the most liberal Justices in Supreme Court History.
Blackmun himself said in an oral history that a “substantial factor of ignorance’’ exists about how the Supreme Court works. That was true in 1973 and it’s true now. Only worse.
The attempt to repeal Roe v. Wade is shocking and every player on the Washington political stage is acting like Claude Rains in Casablanca.
Republican senators Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins are shocked because they support abortion rights. (They shouldn’t be. They voted to confirm these judges)
Democrats are shocked that the Supreme Court would overturn Roe v. Wade. (They saw this coming)
The media is shocked at the leak of the opinion, calling it unprecedented. (It’s not. Just ask the famous reporter Bob Woodward)
Republicans and their Fox News propaganda machine are shocked at the very existence of the leak, considering it a grave threat to Democracy. (It’s not)
The Court itself, in the person of Chief Justice John Roberts, is also shocked at the leak. Roberts promised to have the court’s marshal investigate, all while ignoring the ethics of Justice Clarence Thomas, who sits on cases involving the Jan. 6 riot that attempted to overturn the presidential election. Thomas’ wife was a participant in the riot. But that is an issue for another day.
Everyone, it seems, is shocked that a “draft’’ of a Supreme Court decision was leaked to media outlet Politico, which promptly published it in all its grisly detail.
This willing amnesia is all too familiar.
In fact, everyone involved is doing the same Washington political dance to divert the public’s attention from what’s really going on. None of these people should be surprised. This has been the plan all along.
In 1980, the country elected Ronald Reagan president and brought to office a policy of tax cuts for wealthy people and a hatred of government’s role in a civil society.
“Government is not the solution to our problem,’’ Reagan said, “government is the problem.’’
Thus began a 40-year assault on our Democracy that is ongoing to this day. The Republicans, led by Reagan and a well-funded army of wealthy corporate donors, decided to “defund the left.’’ They began by cutting public education and social service programs. They invented the welfare queen (always black) who was sitting at home collecting checks and having babies. They portrayed the Environmental Protection Agency as a socialist plot to weaken American industry. They cut money for Head Start, one of the most successful social programs in history.
But it was the cutting of public education that has proven the most insidious prong of the Republican’s attack. If you make public schools bad, you drive wealthy Americans to private schools where their kids will be well taken care of, leaving the poor kids in public schools to fend for themselves against bad food, underpaid and resentful teachers, helpless parents and cynicism all around.
The ramifications of these cuts made sure that kids in bad public schools didn’t read the Constitution or understand its meaning, history and context. This insured they wouldn’t understand the gravity of what’s happening in the Supreme Court. They’re too busy surviving in American cities left to rot by a political party that doesn’t care about them. Our government is being held captive by people with the time and money to get an education and pay attention.
But the biggest goal of the political right - even more important than the slashing of schools and cities, was the capture of the courts, especially the Supreme Court. And I am sad to report that their victory is at hand.
This 40-year campaign to control how laws are interpreted in America can finally announce Mission Accomplished. It took longer than they thought. Democrats like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama got in the way. The appointments of Ruth Bader Ginsberg and others to the Supreme Court delayed but did not stop the Republicans nefarious scheme.
That is until the fate of history gave Donald Trump three court appointments, including Brett Kavanaugh, who spent his formative years trying to get Bill Clinton impeached for getting a blow job at the White House and hanging out at his parent’s country club in suburban Washington, DC.
Now, the Republicans’ campaign has produced a Supreme Court with six conservatives ready to remake American society to fit their viewpoint. And we know exactly what that looks like.
It is a world of banks and country clubs, of private schools and inherited, generational wealth. It is golf on Saturday morning, and wives who do the shopping and have dinner waiting on the table. It is life behind gates, protected from the hustle and bustle of the city, and from the poor people who failed to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.
It is a return to a life that is simpler, when roles were clear. Where black people waited on white people and lived in the other part of town. Where public schools were fine, but their kids didn’t go there. Where they get a discount on their car because they know the dealer. It’s fly fishing in Montana, bird hunting in Upstate NY and dinner at downtown steakhouses before the local fundraiser.
It’s watching the Masters Golf tournament on Sundays after a round in the morning while the rest of America delivers their food and boxes their packages at an Amazon warehouse for minimum wage and a 10-minute bathroom break.
That is the America yearned for by these six justices. It has little to do with the real concerns of Americans making a living, finding a house, paying for health care or just surviving the everyday challenges of a capitalist system.
In capturing the Supreme Court, the Republicans have used every tool and smashed every norm.
In the draft opinion, Justice Samuel Alito says the Roe v. Wade decision is “egregiously’’ wrong and that the state legislatures should decide abortion because the Constitution doesn’t expressly say that word. If these justices believed that, why didn’t they say so at their confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee? We know why. They were hiding the ball - hiding the scheme to get on the court to change the country on behalf of their patrons - the Koch brothers and their ilk.
Alito chooses to ignore the real reason abortion is not in the Constitution. It is because the document says nothing about women in the first place! It had plenty to say about white men who owned property, including slaves, but women were invisible then, as the Supreme Court is trying to make them now.
So now that Alito has introduced the notion that if it’s not in the Constitution, we have no right to something, get ready for the next shoe to drop. Abortion is not the only right that could be on the chopping block. What about the right to use contraception, the right to marry a person of another race or sexual orientation, the right to remain silent and the right to a lawyer if you are arrested. All are in peril due to this Supreme Court.
The Republicans on the Supreme Court would have us return to the days of the famous Dred Scott decision (1857), which extended slavery and helped cause the Civil War. Or Plessy v. Ferguson (1897) which said that racial segregation was OK as long as the schools for blacks were “separate but equal.’’
State legislatures deciding issues like abortion sounds OK. States decide issues all the time. My state legislature in Vermont was the first to allow same-sex marriage, which led to the federal court case that legalized it nationwide. But leaving big issues to the states forgets why we have a Constitution. Sometimes the law needs to cover everyone, not just the citizens of Mississippi or Maine.
Black people ought to be able to stay at a hotel anywhere in America, not just the ones in liberal states. Women should have the right to health care in all states. That’s what the Civil Rights movement was about, securing FEDERAL rights to full citizenship, not just rights in the state where they lived.
If this decision becomes final, almost half the states in the U.S. are ready to ban abortion and be proud of it. Of course abortion will always happen. Women will be forced to take matters into their own hands. Many will travel long distances to friendly states for care. Those who suffer most, as usual, will be the poor and marginalized.
Places with liberal politics like Vermont, California and New York will become safe havens. An underground abortion railroad will spring up. And I intend to be part of it.
We will continue to fight, but the scariest part of all this is that the 40-year campaign is not over.
It is just beginning.
