Most Folks Don't Think About the Supreme Court

I can't express how important it is to educate others on why they should think about SCOTUS and the impact a far-away court has on their daily lives...

I wasn’t always political—in fact, I wasn’t always progressive, but that’s for another post. I’m hear to tell you that folks who live inside a news bubble, or breathe politics for a living, see the trouble with a captured court. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that most of the folks I know in real life don’t think about SCOTUS much at all.

Every woman I know talked about the Supreme Court after Roe fell…and then they kind of just went on with life. They are signing abortion petitions and walking the walk as far as getting abortion on the ballot and hopefully enshrining reproductive rights into the Missouri Constitution, but that’s the only talk I hear about the Court, and friends, that feels dangerous.

Confession: I was keeping up with politics when McConnell denied a SCOTUS pick to Obama, but I didn’t feel the fear that should have come with that decision. I was breathing politics when Trump appointed three Justices and still, though I was aware of the possibilities, I assumed through some magical thinking that there was a fail-safe for rogue actors. I was wrong. Many of us were wrong, but what I see happening now has me absolutely horrified and I feel alone in my horror when I log out of an online hellscape (the app formerly known as Twitter) and join folks in the world.

I don’t hear anyone talking about SCOTUS. I may hear the occasional groan about a frozen embryo snatching Pinocchio status as a real boy, but not much else.

And, I am out with progressive folks daily doing the work.

Here’s the problem with that—if we don’t understand that the Court is making rules for every single part of our lives at the current moment, if we don’t understand that the Justices were appointed by a man with 91 felony charges and a sexual assault judgment who would like to come back into power and be a dictator for a day, we won’t see what’s coming. We won’t be prepared. We won’t know how to fight back.

So, what do we do? We talk about the Supreme Court with our friends and family and neighbors. We explain that we aren’t experts in law either (maybe you are…I most definitely am not) but we have to recognize the power of the Court.

I talk to my friends about school privatization and how the Court can rule that there is no separation of church and state and that our taxpayer funds can be used to fund religious indoctrination. I spoke last night to a group of progressives in St Joe, MO and used the word “captured” to talk about our state post-Roe. I met up with a friend over coffee to sign petitions and I talked to her about how the Court may rule on gun laws.

I’m using every event I speak to talk about how right-wing operatives are using “red” states to push blatantly unconstitutional legislation to create cases that they can fast-track up to the Court to get a favorable decision.

The solution is to wake up our friends and family members to what kind of harm a captured court can effect on regular folks. The solution is to educate all who will listen to a future in peril with this captured Court. The solution is to get to work with the folks around you.

~Jess

P.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse’s books helped me understand the scheme to capture the Court and I can’t recommend them enough: Captured: The Corporate Infiltration of American Democracy and The Scheme: How the Right Wing Used Dark Money to Capture the Supreme Court.