I was talking with six young people in a coffee shop when the Supreme Court announced that they had given the NRA another present. The deeply corrupt “decision” to overturn Congress’s ban on bump stocks—which turn semi-automatic weapons into functional machine guns—came up on four of our seven phones at the same moment.
Prior to this, I had been trying to understand the positions of these young voters, who were all “confused” about how they should vote in November’s elections. From my perspective, they were all parroting media narratives that have normalized deviant Republican behavior. And because they don’t know history or the 40-year descent of the Republican party into hell, they’re trying to make decisions on the basis of narrow personal benefit. This prevents them from seeing the big picture: that unless America decimates Trump and the Republican hordes now, there won’t be any personal benefit in the future—only slavery to the Trumpist tyranny.
The one argument they came back to repeatedly was that they don’t seem to get what they want no matter whom they vote for.
Each time I heard a version of that, I kept responding, “But don’t you understand why that is? It’s because people like you won’t hand over government to the Democrats. If Democrats controlled all three branches of government with veto-proof margins, you would have much of what you want and need in very short order. But by continuously voting for just enough Republicans to let them block Democratic initiatives, you can never get what you want.”
Two of them raised the old canard, “But you have to make sure there are check and balances.”
“Why,” I replied, “when it prevents you from getting what you want? Instead of trying to check the party that has your benefits in mind, why not try this experiment? For the next eight years, vote only for Democrats. Get all your friends to do the same. If you can give the Democrats control of government and at the end of the eight years they don’t fix at least 50% of the problems you want fixed, then dump them. But if they do, it proves that you should have been voting for them all along.”
That’s when the SCOTUS announcement came in.
Now one thing that young people are angry about is mass shootings. So all six of my companions were outraged by the ruling.
“But how could you not know this was coming?” I asked. “It’s been expected all year.”
“Well,” one of them said, “we have lives.”
“Well,” I said, you need to make room in your lives for following politics. If you don’t know who advocates for your issues and who fights against them, how can you make informed choices? No wonder you are confused about how to vote. There is a way to clear up that confusion—read newspapers.”
“We don’t read newspapers. That’s old media.”
“Then you will remain confused for your entire life. Your ‘new media’ didn’t inform you about this Supreme Court decision, did it? So now you're blind-sided.”
“But how could anyone condone more powerful weapons on the streets, let alone judges?” one young woman asked.
“Because they are Republicans,” I said. “They are bought and paid for by the NRA and other obscenely wealthy Republicans. They were bred by the scum-sucking Federalist Society to get on the court and rule for Republicans as much as possible, regardless of the cost to decent American citizens.”
“What’s the Federalist Society?” they asked.
(Here I had to go into a long explanation about how the Federalist Society is a fake legal association that injects Republican activists into the nation’s courts. But all my readers know this.)
“But I don’t see who benefits from having these superpowered weapons in the hands of civilians,” said one young man.
“You don’t?” I asked. “I can think of two groups right off the top of my head. One: Weapons manufacturers, who fund the NRA. And two: Trumpist insurrectionists, who will be out buying up bump stocks by the thousands to get ready for their “civil war” when Trump loses in November. There are probably others as well. But everyone else suffers. That’s usually the way it works with Republicans.”
“How could a judge sign on to something so harmful?” asked a second young woman.
“A real judge couldn’t,” I answered. But the SCOTUS Republicans are not real judges. They are Republican activists who lied all the way up the career ladder about their true aim—to take over the Supreme Court. Having done that, they don’t give a crap about anyone but themselves and their Republican deplorables.
“Do you want to know what really makes them unjudges? It’s not because they are too stupid to be judges. In their own way, they are quite intelligent—smart enough to know that you can make a case for anything if you don’t care about making a good case. Their Federalist Society training twisted all their intellects to that end—making the case for any devilish, selfish, nasty, antisocial, greedy thing Republicans want. It doesn’t matter if the case is transparently flimsy, self-contradictory, or harmful to the public welfare. To them it only matters that a case be made and that they have to power to inflict their will on everyone else.
“This is a perversion of intellect. Truly intelligent people are not only smart, but also humane. Truly intelligent judges care about the welfare of the citizens who must live under the law. They use their intellects to discern the good that a law is meant to serve and separate it as much as possible from the harm it may do.
“In this case, a real judge easily and clearly would have seen that the law was intended to stop madmen from firing 400, 500, 600 rounds a minute of high-powered ammo into crowds of people. A real judge easily and clearly would have seen that the good of barring homicidal madmen from owning such weapons infinitely outweighs the need of any individual to possess such a weapon and infinitely outweighs the profits that any gun manufacturer could make from selling such a weapon.
“A real judge would not find some technicality like a minute difference in the firing mechanism to declare that bump-stock-enhanced weapons could not be called ‘machine guns.’ What is the point of such a technicality when compared to the machine-gun-like carnage the weapon can cause?
“But the SCOTUS 6 are not real judges at all. They are unjudges. They are smart enough to craft arguments, but their perverted morality prevents them from being humane. They are inhumane scum. Smart, sure, but scum, nevertheless. And their arguments are inhumane, deviant edicts without heart. This is the opposite of justice. It’s judicially imposed injustice. Since an unjust law is not a law, all these SCOTUS 6 decisions should be reversed as soon as is politically possible.”
After this rant, the young people were rather subdued. I could tell they didn’t want to continue the conversation, so I started to pack my stuff up.
As I left, I made one more comment. “Oh, and by the way, if you and your friends can become unconfused long enough to see who is really on your side, you would vote for Democrats—and only Democrats—for the foreseeable future. The sooner you do, the sooner the Supreme Court will be expanded, the SCOTUS 6 will be diluted or impeached, and sane gun control laws will stop these mass shootings.”
I don’t know whether they got the point. They were all looking at their phones when I walked away.
Thank you so much for your comment. "Laziness and apathy" do are the twin vices nourished by these devices, even though they could function as fantastic learning and teaching tools. It reminds me of what was said about TV in the early days, namely, that it could bring about a revolution in education. Instead, what it brought about was an increasingly debased and addictive revolution in "entertainment"--the ultimate passive experience. Today's devices are "entertainment" on steroids. So "laziness and apathy" will continue to plague us until we have leaders who have the ability to inspire people to live energetic, engaged lives. Such leaders are necessary for a populace habituated to following. These leaders will not be Republicans, whose only interest is in seizing and maintaining power for themselves.
Eloquently said. I can’t think of any better way to express this. Ironically what they’re staring into at the end of the article is nothing short of the entire collective sum of human knowledge that is available to read in mere seconds (including the time it takes to type a request or say with Siri). But the epithet of humanity will be three words “laziness and apathy”.
I’m grateful to you for this effort. I hope it will bear fruit.