A NEW HERO?

by Ruth A. Sheets

Heroes often have songs and poems written to honor them.  Sometimes they get statues and other works of art, or at least that’s how the old heroes were honored.  You could tell a lot about a community or nation by the heroes they “worshipped.”  Someone coming from another country to learn about the American people, until recently, would have thought the only heroes we had were white and male, soldiers or statesmen.  And they might have been surprised to note that traitors against the United States were held up as heroes even in the Capitol in Washington, DC.  Women and people of color just couldn’t make the cut.   

Something is changing, perhaps a bit, but we won’t see if that change has any staying power for a while.  Statues of Confederate Soldiers are being taken down and people are considering whom to replace them with.  White men are angry because they might have to look at people not like themselves on plinths around America.  They might start to imagine that those people are heroes?  How terrible for them!        

Well, to ease their minds a bit, there is a white man who is bucking for hero status.  His name, John Roberts, his job, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.  He has some things in common with those old white heroes.  He is attractive enough and had an Ivy League education, which of course, makes him the perfect guy to be an American hero.  He is not a military guy, but so what.  The Ivy League bestows upon one a certain halo-esque demeanor that can supersede heroics in battle. 

Generally one has to have done something to earn heroship.  Well, John Roberts with his super intelligence has done an amazing job chiseling away at the rights of Americans while even Supreme Court scholars quibble only a bit.  He tosses in a few surprises here and there to quell, at least temporarily, the people who care about rights.  For example, he let the Affordable Care Act stand a few years back because he claimed it had a tax provision in it.  Instead of saying the ACA (Obamacare) was legal since Congress passed it and it went against no law, he upheld it on the grounds that Congress had the right to levy taxes.  That, of course, means a whole lot of rich white folks will keep trying to bring the ACA down even though it is insuring millions of people.  Since the ACA is still mostly in place, I suppose that was a win.

Roberts convinced white Americans that corporations are persons and money is speech so they can significantly increase their financial meddling in our elections.  He made it sound like since corporations employ persons it is the same as being a person.  Then, saying money is speech let everyone know that the rich, like himself are just so much more worthy than the rest of us.  And, put your “speech” in the right place and you don’t even have to pay taxes on it.  Well done!  A hero is born! 

Voting rights removal has been a pet project of this would-be hero.  He decided that the most politically racist counties in the United States had come such a lung way that they would no longer have to report and get prior approval for changes in their voting procedures as required by the 1965 Voting Rights Act.  That was a lie, but so what.  It only would affect a few people, right?  The white governments of those former Confederate states went to town after that one, within 24 hours!  They loved their Chief Justice so much they promptly instituted a series of voting changes that disenfranchised millions of people, mostly Black, Latinx, poor, old, and young citizens.  They claimed it was because of voter fraud, which even they knew didn’t exist.  Roberts is now a hero to the Republicans who can take office because their opponents won’t be able to afford to vote. 

Our Chief Justice and the crew couldn’t stop there.  In a pandemic, his court said it was OK for states to deny write-in votes just because a person was worried they might become infected with COVID 19 if they voted in person.  Who would think that’s a good idea?  Why, Johnny, naturally.

Roberts and the Court let a couple of things slip through, like same-sex marriage and denying employers the right to discriminate against LGBT persons. 

To make up a bit for that “lapse,” the Court allowed businesses to refuse service to LGBTQ persons and employers to deny birth control services to female workers, both on religious grounds.  To soothe the Muslim and immigrant haters, Roberts’s Court let stand, bans on Muslims entering the United States and permitted concentration camp-like facilities for asylum-seekers. 

Mr. Roberts must truly despise women because he has worked hard to limit women’s right to choose.  A religious employer now has more rights than his female employees in some areas.  A case ruled on recently allowed abortion clinics to remain open in Louisiana only because the case was identical to one in Texas from 5 years ago.  The original ruling said the whole premise of the case was unconstitutional and he, John Roberts didn’t want to overturn a decision (He didn’t write the report, but his thinking was all over it.)  He even gave a road map for future suits explaining just what they would have to do to get the Court to side with them to close those horrible clinics.  Put those women in their place.  Pretty slimy, but if you’re not white, rich, and male, that’s what you get from Mr. Roberts, hero.

Donald Trump came into office in 2017.  He didn’t get elected by popular vote as everyone but the folks that Mr. Roberts is trying to please knows well.  There have been concerns, OK, definite knowledge  that Donald Trump believes he is above the law.  As the “Teflon Don,” he waltzes through his presidency, consorting with criminals, refusing to divest from his businesses as the Constitution demands, extorting Ukraine, obstructing justice, threatening the media, pardoning criminals who are his friends/supporters, firing qualified people who don’t agree with him, and generally running a corrupt show. 

You might imagine that John Roberts, scholar in the law, would have something to say about this, and you’d be right.  In two rulings from the bench this past week, which, of course, he wrote, he stated that the president is not above the law.  He then proved otherwise by the way he couched his pronouncement in clever terms that basically said, Donald Trump’s financial records could only be requested if a lower court agreed that Congress had a good enough reason for asking (I guess the Constitution and executive oversight aren’t good enough reasons).  Then he said a grand jury in New York could request them too, but of course, again, grand jury materials are secret.  See how neatly that was done?  It looks on the surface like Chief Roberts says Trump is not above the law, then carefully puts Congress under the lower courts even though Congress is elected and the courts officials (stacked with right-wing partisans) are not.  He essentially told us that we the people have no right to know what Donald Trump, the President is up to.  (Trump even got an extension on his tax return for this year which means we won’t see that before the election either.)

That was really well-done Mr. Chief Justice, would-be hero.  Your intelligence has enabled you to cover for a criminal while your supporters  are claiming hero status for you because you stated what is already in the Constitution, that Mr. Trump is not above the law.  You just missed crossing the line between truth and a lie, but you are right on it, and you know it.  I would love to have listened in on the discussion among yourself, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh on these decisions. What did you tell them to get them on board.  I bet you showed your proteges just how smart you are and how neatly you got around legitimate requests for information, making it nearly impossible to obtain the requested documents.  Pretty clever, Mr. Chief Justice!    

I can’t help but wonder what you truly believe.  Or, like so many Republicans and conservatives these, days, have you lost any principles you may once have had?  Are you so enamored with power that you  would wield it against those least able to defend themselves, you know, the poor, people desperate for asylum, women, children? Then you give advantages to those who already have more advantages than anyone has a right to.   What do you really believe about the law?  Who is it for? 

I know in some future time, a tome will come out describing your life and your tenure on the Court.  It will make you look like a hero because that is what a lot of those books do.  And, I suspect to scared white men, mostly in the South and huge corporations, you are a hero, but to the rest of us, you are just another white guy who places himself in the center and rules in ways that will work best for people like him.  I would have thought working with the amazing women who sit on the Court would have helped expand your thinking to embrace more people as worthy of rights, but alas, that does not seem to have happened.  The way you dismiss the needs and rights of women and others, while claiming impartiality,  is monstrous.  But, you’ll carry on because that is what white men do even in the face of overwhelming evidence of your biases. 

If you really want to be a hero, have a heroic legacy, start doing heroic things.  Use that, what I have been told is remarkable intelligence to do good.   You could really help make this country great as your president says, but you could really mean it.