The thing about a dark day for America is that darkness doesn't fall right away. We will go through the rest of the election, with the media treating the death blow to representative government in this country as just another facet of this perfectly normal contest between the old familiar parties.
The fatal blow has fallen after a long series of maneuvers dating back to 1980. So in that sense it's not really a surprise. It happened sooner thanks to the many factors that led to the election of Donald Trump in 2016, but it was always the goal of wealthy people who believe fervently that the entire purpose of the United States is to make rich people richer. Everything they have done has undermined trust in the federal government and voting in general.
The flaw in government is that it's run by people. Ours used to run fairly well, but has deteriorated steadily under immense pressure from the private sector bent on proving that it doesn't work. As cooperating elected officials have fed the corporatocracy more and more money, the private sector has been able to construct an unending propaganda campaign supporting their own interests. According to the US Supreme Court, bribery of public officials is now completely legal. And just today they ruled that the president is a king, whose power is beyond the reach of the legal system. All other branches of government -- including the Supreme Court -- became irrelevant. The lesser branches can fight among themselves, but instead of checks and balances among equal members of a triumvirate, the order is hierarchical. The president is at the top, with the Supreme Court in second place, and Congress is dead last. Actually, the American people are dead last. If we continue the now meaningless entertainment of having elections, we might still place some intermediate tormentors above us in the neutered legislature, but all of us are subject to the whims of the tyrant.
Life may seem normal for a time. We will all continue to struggle to pay our bills, and be encouraged to blame the wrong people for our woes, or be told it's all our own fault for lack of a work ethic. The discrimination will become more and more blatant. We will have no recourse. Protesters can be run over, shot, beaten, and jailed indefinitely.
The legal system has long been just another tool of oppression. If we didn't have an unfair legal system, rich people wouldn't get the cushy treatment that they do, while ordinary citizens have to go through the whole wringer. For a time we had crusading lawyers who would use the system to force it to do right from time to time. That's gone now. With the entire judicial system under the control of authoritarians, anyone could get sucked in and convicted. If you displease the rulers, they have no reason to let you slide. Just about everyone will be cheap labor, easily replaced.
I will never understand how this represents freedom to the multitude who will find out the hard way that it does not. We're all going to have to take that rough ride with them. Thanks for nothing, you fucking morons.
Crime definitely pays. It just handed the most powerful military force in the world to whoever wins the next presidential election. And it got the most criminal president in the history of the United States a de facto pardon, because he will never be brought to trial. Whether he wins the election in November or not, the Supreme Court decision stands for the next criminal bold enough to take them up on it.
Trump has a clear path to having any conviction overturned by this Supreme Court if he should happen to face trial. At the state level they'll just have to install GOP governors to grant the pardons, or threaten a Democrat and get them to flip.
Life goes on, just trying to pay your bills. At least, as Trump himself has said, you don't have to worry about voting anymore. Just try to stay out of trouble.
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