“Once You Have the Courts…”
It’s very useful to own the refs.
The first part of this story is obvious, and would not even shock Captain Renault:
A judge that Trump appointed sided with Trump in a criminal case against Trump, in a ruling that stunned virtually every credible legal expert.
Also: dog bites man, water is wet, and the Jets suck.
Yeah, yeah, there’s a lot of legal mumbo jumbo and dervish-like spin from the right wing trying to explain and defend this decision, the standard GOP tactic when it has shamelessly exploited the system for its benefit and wants us to believe it has not. So before we go into the details, let’s step back and take a one-over-the-world view of the philosophy — and the threat — undeniably underpinning this decision:
That the modern Republican Party does not bat an eye at weaponizing any aspect of American life to advance its own autocratic agenda, no matter how clumsy or hamhanded that effort may be. Amount of fucks they have to give? An Elvis Costello-like less than zero.
The judicial system is very high on that list. Or in the words of Jason Stanley, a philosophy professor at Yale, and the author of How Fascism Works:
“Once you have the courts you can pretty much do whatever you want.”
