The current mainstream media propaganda narrative is that the new Supreme Court term that began this week is shadowed by the peril of “losing legitimacy,” a code for “not following rigged polls and angering Democrats who don’t have a SCOTUS rubber stamp any more like they did for decades.” This theme is (I would say obviously but I’ve decided I use “obviously” too often) part of the strategy, begun under Barack Obama to save his unconstitutional Affordable Care Act, to bully, intimidate and lobby the justices in what is a blatant corruption of the justice system.
“The Week’s” contributing editor Harold Maas helpfully has produced an opinion piece that serves as a useful template in considering the legitimacy of these laments about Supreme Court legitimacy. To begin with, Maas isn’t a lawyer, which explains why he doesn’t know what the hell he is talking about. He, like most of the critics of the Court he cherry-picks in his screed, seems to think that whether a judge’s decision is right or not depends on how popular it is or whether the public would rule the same way. Under this warped concept (see, I wanted to write “of course” again) Judge Caverly would have responded to Clarence Darrow’s eloquent and thoughtful plea for mercy to be shown the young thrill killing duo of Leopold and Loeb by having them hanged. There would be no Brown v. Board of Education. We would have had many more decisions like the infamous ruling in Korematsu v. United States where a liberal Court approved FDR’s internment of U.S. citizens of Japanese ancestry because the racist, panic-driven, wildly unconstitutional policy was popular.
You know: Legitimacy!
I’ve already read, just in the last few days, more than ten articles making essentially the same (bad) argument as Maas, though he makes it particularly unethically and so transparently from the perspective of a progressive partisan, which is why I admire it. Consider:











I really don’t want to contribute to the Donald Trump glut in the media and the web, and if everyone else would just ignore the guy like ex-Presidents, non-elected officials currently in office should be ignored, I wouldn’t have to post about him at all. This video from the Ethics Alarms clip archives is relevant..
But the news media won’t stop, simultaneously fueling Trump’s continued influence and prominence and claiming that he is an existential evil who must be destroyed. This obsession was excusable, sort of, when he was President, but now it is pure hypocrisy. Trump, of course, publicity junkie and narcissist that he is, loves the attention, and it makes him stronger. The other side of this weird coin is that he has also been grievously mistreated politically, journalistically and by the culture, to a historical degree. As with Bill Clinton when he was beleaguered by the Monica scandal, I have to grudgingly admire Trump for his resilience, endurance, and resolve. Clinton, however, only went through such travails for a year or so. With Trump, it has been constant since 2015. His defiance is Churchillian.