If you are at all keeping up with the affairs of the world, then today you heard just as I did that the Supreme Court of the United States overwhelmingly granted immunity to the President of the United States for core and official acts while happily providing no framework for what constitutes an official act. I wish this was a joke or that I was not writing these words, but alas I’m not quite that big of a jerk and this actually happened.
So what does this mean? Well given that this country was founded by a bunch of dudes who wanted to establish a form of government that would protect people from the same kind of shit King George pulled on the American colonies, in my opinion it means that the ideal most central to American Democracy was just forcefully retired. This marks an acceleration from what I previously thought of as a slow meandering decline into chaos and irrelevancy into something more akin to a death race towards our next civil war.
So sorry, but that was absolutely not a joke. This literally can’t end any other way. You can’t spend 250+ years getting a populace all revved up on the concept of freedom (misinterpreted though it is at times) and then just decide to grant the leader of that country, whose very system is meant to embody accountability, absolute immunity which will only serve to shield them and their successors from that accountability.
America has been a burgeoning oligarchy for awhile now but this ruling marks a drastic escalation of our status in this area. Especially in this particular case as the ruling is clearly aimed at improving the prospects of Donald Trump ex-president who is running against his own successor Joe Biden in an effort to keep from going to prison for all of the heinous deeds he committed before, during and after he left office. Think I’m kidding? I’m not.
But hey, let’s just vote for the other guy, right? As if. My cat is more qualified to be president than Joe Biden is and that’s a fact. I don’t really care what his family and staff say. I watched this man be utterly incompetent and clueless for almost 90 minutes straight and I was horrified for the entirety of it. Meanwhile Trump is basically just rapid firing lies about everything that pops into his so-called brain which his mouth seems obligated to vocalize regardless of how utterly insane most of it is.
Alas none of that mattered because for all intents and purposes Joe Biden was a drooling idiot that could’ve been auditioning for a top role in the next “Weekend at Bernies” film. Actually strike that, it would’ve been less embarrassing if he had just remained comatose the entire time. As it stands now, I don’t know who the actual president of the United States is. Let’s just roll a D20 each hour of every day and if it’s 10 or less, Joe Biden is running things. If it’s 11 or more, then we can roll a D10 and if it’s nine or less, we’ll let Jill Biden be president that hour otherwise we’ll randomly pick a staff member. If we ever roll doubles (ala Monoply) then we’ll go ahead and let Kamala have a go. Just kidding. Never gonna happen.
So our Presidents are no longer accountable to us, both legally and electorally. And since the Presidents appoint the intellectual midgets currently filling spots on the Supreme Court of the United States, that means they aren’t accountable to us either. But hey at least we still got Congress right? Well actually… no. Only 13% of us approve of Congress and that isn’t exactly news (their approval rating has been in the tank for decades now) so I guess at this point it’s safe to say that Congress is also evading real accountability.
Meanwhile unless you are one of the automatons who happen to perfectly align with the focus tested to death, unprincipled and generally soulless platforms pushed by one of our two major parties, where do you fit in? Well like me, you probably don’t. Unless you are part of one of the cults of personality or are absolutely dedicated to treating your political party of choice like its your football team of choice, always capable of championship performance and generally unimpeachable. This of course is just a sign of the times. Rather than build a quality product, those in power long ago learned that its easier and cheaper to effectively market a crap product.
Politics is no different.
So what’s the play? I have no clue. I wish I did because all of this has just taken me from staring over the edge of the abyss, which is where I’ve been politically for many years, to just full on lamenting the death of America. It was somewhat okay for some of us while it lasted (more so if you happened to be white, even more if you happened to be a male) but as a country our best days are absolutely behind us now.