This week, Anat and I discussed the Supreme Court’s ongoing campaign to dismantle the Voting Rights Act, the deeper danger of how we’ve been conditioned to accept it, and how to break that conditioning.
In my latest Weekend Reading piece, “Calling This Court ‘Supreme’ Is Obeying in Advance,” I argue that saying “the Supreme Court did X” confers undeserved legitimacy on what is, in fact, a hijacked institution, and treats the six Republican justices as legitimate arbiters rather than political operatives who have fully captured one branch of government on behalf of outside interests. This conditions us to treat their awful “rulings” as natural disasters to be endured, instead of a deliberate political project to be resisted.
As Anat pointed out, “endurance” and restraint in the face of tyranny is even being reframed as smart political strategy among some Democrats. Luckily, Abe Lincoln didn’t have pollsters telling him to stop speaking boldly against Dred Scott, a critique that set the moral foundation for his presidency.
We also previewed my next piece on Callais v. Louisiana (the VRA case), which will help illustrate the harms to Black voters’ representation in Congress. This isn’t about affirmative action for politicians; it’s about ensuring that people living in distinct communities with shared history and values have the chance to elect someone who will represent their community’s interest, instead of having their political voice diluted. Anat discussed the messaging implications; progressives have too long ceded rhetorical ground on this issue because talking about race is seen as “divisive.” But the result has only been to allow right-wing framings to dominate, much as happened with abortion on “safe, legal, and rare.”
